On the afternoon of April 19, 1967, two A-4Es from VMA-121 showed how well it could be done. Flown by Captain Robert C. Blackington (flight lead) and his wingman, 1st Lt. Samuel B. Vaughan, the Skyhawks had twice struck targets adjacent to rice paddies about 21 miles south of Chu Lai. Then the forward air controller called them in again. “After our spotter told us of the Viet Cong activity,” Blackington recalled, “I immediately made a run, dropping two 250-pound bombs. Vaughan followed about a mile behind me, dropping identical ordnance.” Vaughan was of the opinion that the fires the Skyhawks had started indicated a hidden ammunition dump, but the forward air controller remained skeptical that the target had been totally destroyed.

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On his target assessment overflight, the Air Force pilot noted more enemy troops and called for another pass from both A-4s. More bombs were dropped, and on his final run Blackington fired 200 rounds of 20mm ammunition. Once more the O-1E flew over the target. This time the Bird Dog pilot was satisfied and commented, “You guys do excellent work.”

Marine pilots flying the small, maneuverable Skyhawk were indeed popular candidates for close air support because they rarely lost any time in arriving over the target. The A-4 squadrons had initiated “hot pad” alerts at Chu Lai, during which a section of armed aircraft awaited the scramble call with pilots in their cockpits and engines turning over.

There were enough hazards to be faced by Marine airmen south of the Demilitarized Zone without undue attention from the enemy’s defense trump card, the SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air (SAM) missile. It was used mainly in the North, but two Marine Skyhawks were to fall victim to SAMs during the war, one of them flown by Major Ralph E. Brubaker of the Tomcats. On July 6, having ejected after his A-4 became uncontrollable when the missile detonated, Brubaker suffered a dislocated knee. Safely on the ground, he was rescued by helicopter.

By the end of 1967, little progress had been made toward a successful end to the war. The North Vietnamese planned a nationwide coup to unite the country under Communist rule that was timed to start during the 1968 Tet, or lunar new year, celebrations. When the Tet Offensive began in January 1968, a focal point of the North Vietnamese attacks was the U.S. outpost at Khe Sanh. Having been isolated by the loss of the A Shau Valley area in 1966, the garrison expected an attack, and the 26th Marines stationed there were hardly taken by surprise when the offensive began.

The core of the enemy offensive was concurrent attacks on towns and U.S. installations throughout South Vietnam. Among the targets was Chu Lai, where, on January 31, rockets injured two men from VMA-311, damaged four of that squadron’s A-4s and destroyed part of the bomb dump. In retaliation, the Bulldogs destroyed an enemy rocket dump south of their base on February 25.

The battle to prevent the capture of Khe Sanh became one of the epic ground-air actions of the war. It included a huge logistics airlift to bring the Marine defenders food, medical supplies and ammunition. To help this effort, the Corps devised the “Super Gaggle” formation, which centered on a Lockheed Hercules C-130 cargo plane, flying with helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft escort.

Twelve A-4s flew the first Super Gaggle on February 24, 1968, joining 20 CH-46 and UH-1E helicopters on a mission coordinated by a TA-4F. The role of the Skyhawks was to “sanitize” the en route and landing areas by working them over with bombs, napalm and 20mm cannon fire. Operation Niagara, the huge, coordinated air plan to hold Khe Sanh helped break the Tet Offensive; yet the break was not exploited, and the United States ultimately began withdrawing combat units. A number of bases lost their front-line status, among them Chu Lai. It was handed over to the Army on September 3, 1970; the last Marine sorties were flown from there on September 11.

MAG-12 had meanwhile departed Vietnam in February 1970 and relocated in Japan; VMA-211 accompanied it, while VMA-223 returned home. The Marine combat units that remained in Vietnam moved to Da Nang, among them VMA-311, which then came under the operational control of MAG-11 and continued to support the ongoing war in Laos and Cambodia. One of the earliest arrivals in the war zone, VMA-311 had by May 7, 1971, flown 47,663 sorties. That looked like the end of the war for VMA-311, but on March 30, 1972, the North Vietnamese invaded the South, and the squadron flew into Bien Hoa, near Saigon. On May 1, VMA-311 began flying combat missions again. Many sorties were flown into Cambodian border regions, and on August 29, 1st Lt. Charles G. Reed flew VMA-311’s 50,000th sortie. The squadron went on to raise its sortie total to 54,625 before the war’s end.

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