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Old 10-19-2009, 04:21 AM
AKAOV1MAN AKAOV1MAN is offline
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The photo of the Mohawk brngs tears to my eyes. I flew them early on, when they carried ordinance (JOV1A). The Mohawk was the only Army AC to have ejection seats. They were the Martin-Baker type and were petty good. They were not the 0-0 seats that we have now, where air crew can eject literally on the deck and survive. IIRC there were only 2 Mohawks shot down in VN. They took a lot of damage and kept on flying. While I was flying them, the BG did not shoot at us because we could shoot back, with an impressive array of ordinance, later on when they were used as unarmed battfield intelligence AC, they took a lot of fire as the BG were quite quick to learn which AC were dangerous to them and which were not.
By the time they had disarmed the Mohawks I was back in country flying gunships, first the Hogs, then the Cobra. The BG would not pick a fight with a Cobra, so we trolled for them using a scout ship low and slow, and when Charlie or the VN started shooting at them we would come in from altitude and literally brighten their day.
We don't have any Mohawks left now, NOAA has a couple and the IDF have a few(they never throw anything away). Really neat aircraft, I kind of felt like a real fighter pilot, for a while anyway.
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