This picture shows one of our 2.76 inch rockets being fired from the ground and heading away from our El Toro pad into space and to a destination unknown.
The problem is, we never fire rockets this way. Infact, this rocket was one of many rockets that just decided to go anywhere it wanted.
This image was taken sometime between the hours of 7am and 2pm when over 250 rockets were "cooked off" by an attack that occurred around 3am on the morning of May 3rd.
When all of this occurred, I was in Da Nang.
I don't care if you believe in god or not. But I'm here to tell you that there was more than a physical event that occurred on the 2nd of May that told me not to be there.
Luckily, no one was killed the morning of May 3rd. But 4 AH-IG Cobras, a hanger, a TOC and over 250 rockets were destroyed. And if that was not enough insult to injury, some of those rounds went through the various buildings -- we called hooches.
I recall one solider had just came back from a 30 day leave when this incident happened and had one of these rockets literally punctured the PSP, went through the sandbags and 3/4 plywood. It just missed him by inches and started swirling around on the floor.
In effort to stop the hooch to catch fire, he kicked it out of the hooch.
From the look on his face and the way he looked at me, I could tell he needed another leave for 30 days just to recover from this event.
I could have been there that morning but I'm glad I wasn't.
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