I came across this news story today that the US Marines are retiring that AH-1W Super Cobra
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Another reminder of getting older is when equipment you used to see daily starts to retire.
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yeah reading that story today just made me feel ten years older
I remember one incident on Spring Break 03, my unit was escorting a convoy of Army HETs back to Kuwait and we had to stop in a town because multiple trailers had developed flats from debris in the road. Some of the locals were getting kind of frisky with us, demanding we give them money and food. They kept trying to escalate things right up until the convoy commander, LTC (later COL) Pat Malay asked for a couple of gunships to do a slow orbit of the town. As soon as we could hear the snakes the locals started to back things off a bit; when they showed up and made their first pass at low level the whole demeanor changed. Everybody wanted to play nice, and when we left we left them several cases of HDRs. Amazing what an attitude adjustment those birds could cause just by showing up.
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One of the nice things about Marine vehicle markings is it can difficult to tell who belongs to who. My Cpl and I where testing out my new Humvee license out by reconing firebreaks on CamPen and up and around a firebreak popped a Whiskey. One should not be able to make out facial features of the pilots. I am not sure who was more surprised to see who. The reason for mentioning the markings is our XO was a reserve Cobra driver. A young E-3 tries to avoid such heat.
Much to the angry of our CO’s, it seemed every formation a Whiskey would buzz us. The XO’s always enjoyed the sound and never knew why it happened. Course being close to the flight path made the buzz very convenient.
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