Mini Mortars

 

During the days there was a lot of down time, meaning, of course, that we were waiting for the next mission or combat assault. If we were at Cu Chi, we would be released into the company area to wait. However, we were also often at small airships near fire support bases or at small villages like Trung Lap, Trang Bang or waiting at other airfields. It meant that we needed to find ways to amuse ourselves. You could sleep, read books, play cards or talk with the other flight crews… or you could make mini mortars.

Waiting for the next mission.

A mini mortar was made by pulling the nose off a 7.62 tracer round. You punctured the rear of the bullet so that the material inside would be exposed.  You then pored some of the gunpowder into your hand, forced the bullet into the cartridge, and then poured the gunpower on top of it all. You set it on the ground and used a match to touch of the whole thing.

The gunpowder flared and ignited both the tracer round and the powder below it. The tracer then launched, spinning, into the air. It had almost no penetrating power. It never got more that 25 or fifty feet into the air before falling back to the ground.

Okay. Not exactly the brightest way to spend the down time, but something to do. We were at Dau Tieng, which was a rubber tree plantation to the northwest of Cu Chi. The flight was sitting on the side of the runway and we were waiting for the next mission. We were making mini mortars because, as I said, it was something to do.

Remember, we were all basically young. In the Crusaders, we had one pilot we called Papa. He was the oldest of the pilots and he was… twenty-three. I was, if not the youngest, certainly one of the youngest at nineteen, which might explain our fascination for mini mortars.

At Dau Tieng, we set off a number of mini mortars that caused no damage, fell back and started no fires. The trouble came as an aircraft from another company came in for a landing and one of the tracer rounds went off about that time. It never got very close to the aircraft, and had the round hit the helicopter, it would have bounced off the thin, metal skin. The problem is that the AC saw it, and jerked the controls to avoid the “ground fire.”

That ended our creation of mini mortars. We were told not to do it anymore. Of course, we ignored that, but, from then on, we were careful not to “endanger” any other aircraft.