Stationed at Fort Hood with the 1st Cavalry Division and we got to play combined arms for a congressional delegation. Division had everything planned to a "T"! A full battalion of 155mm doing a 20-minute prep. A mech infantry and a tank battalion taking over and dumping four deuce followed by a ten minute live fire with everything, including the firing of a dozen TOWs....and then the Air Force would show up and demonstrate how deadly accurate the F-111 could be. And herein lies our story.
We had finished the last of our firing series and got the word to cease fire since the Air Force was inbound. Everyone was in the bleachers waiting to see the big bombs drop. Minutes passed and every pair of binoculars were in use as we tried to spot the planes. The AIRLO could be seen next to his jeep, giving the instructions to the F-111s...and we waited. And waited...and waited. Finally Range Control came on the radio and advised that the planes were rolling in for their final leg.
And we waited some more.
Finally, a series of blasts sounded. Well off to the right and completely off the range. We all looked at each other realizing what had happened.
You see the AIRLO had radioed the wrong map grid. And four F-111s dumped about 20 750-pounders. Scoring a nice line of craters right down the main tank trail.
Thankfully, nobody was on the trail....and it sure was a pretty line of craters! But the running joke on post, especially when any Air Force pukes were around was...
The Air Force is the only service to ever acheive 100% accuracy. Everything they drop will hit the ground....somewhere!
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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