My father was an infantryman in Viet Nam in 65-66. His stories about his year there are… interesting. I believe the euphemism might be “character building,” though getting thrown around by RPGs and being lit up by Commies is the sort of opportunity to enrich one’s outlook on things that most people would probably wisely prefer to avoid. His experiences helped inform my own outlook on the undesirability of collectivist economics, given what it seems to inevitably leads to.

There are tales of air support… the AD-1 “Spad” came in handy and Spooky showed up from time to time to look like an ancient god of war. But he has mentioned that he would’ve liked to have seen the A-10 Warthog roll in to provide assistance. And who wouldn’t: the plane is incredibly badass. Were we not now in the era of expendable drones, I would heartily recommend revisiting the design and putting a modernized version of it back into production (along with, of course, the OV-10 Bronco). But the fact is the Warthog was a number of years too late to show up in Viet Nam, certainly far, far too late for my dad’s term of service there. Still… there’s this:

A-10 Warthog Emerges Painted In Green And Tan Camouflage

Had the A-10 been deployed to Viet Nam, it likely would have looked like this:

This one, while not very close up, shows a Spad alongside two Warthogs… one in Nam colors, the other done up in D-Day duds:

And a video of the three together:

https://www.facebook.com/A10DemoTeam/videos/242240330896452/