We’d also learn about problems that fighter-bomber pilots might encounter on bombing runs in Southeast Asia while we, as FACs, directed them from the OV-10. Those of us who had already flown fighters were not exempt from this training. Among the T-33 trainees were older pilots who’d flown all kinds of airplanes, including single-seat fighters. There were also youngsters straight out of pilot training, and a few of us who’d flown backseat in the F-4. The T-33 was the trainer version of the then-ancient P-80, the first operational jet fighter (1945) in U.S. history. My having to do this T-33 gunnery training was like Brer Rabbit’s being thrown into the briar patch. I knew I was going to love it because it meant flying alone, flying formation, and flying bombing-range patterns. A range pattern works like a traffic pattern: the aircraft flies in a big rectangle and drops bombs or shoots rockets or strafes with machine guns during one of the legs of the rectangle. The rocket and bomb patterns are from higher altitudes than traffic patterns for landing, and the strafing pattern takes the aircraft closer to the ground than either bomb or rocket patterns.
