Richard Clark Interview, 11 July 2003
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certain area, and when they released the bombs, it would tell you on the scope that the bombs were released at this particular instant. So then we can project where their bombs are going to land and how close they're going to be. | ||
TT: | OK, so you just calculated airspeed, wind | |
RC: | Yes, all that good stuff. It wasn't too difficult once you figured it out, you know. Once I got there, I'd never done any work with 52's I was working with fighter-bombers. It took me about two weeks. | |
TT: | Oh, OK. Why because with fighter-bombers you're using missiles? | |
RC: | Yeah... well, you know, you're using bombs too... but they don't bomb by radar, they bomb by sight. Now that was 35 years ago, now they've got these, laser-directed, so... | |
TT: | They didn't have them in the late 60's? | |
RC: | No, those didn't come until the 90's. | |
TT: | Yeah, I did interview a guy who worked on the Norden bomb sight, back in World War II, and it was interesting to hear him talk, because, before that it was just seat of your pants 'OK, let it go!' | |
RC: | Yep... it was in [unintelligible] close. | |
TT: | OK, day to day did you do eight-hour shifts five days a week? | |
RC: | Primarily. | |
TT: | So you guys had a pretty regular schedule compared to the flight crews. | |
RC: | Oh, yeah. We were at peacetime there so we had very regular schedules, you know, when the operational readiness inspections come they'd usually start those on a weekend, and we'd have five days of hell, then they'd go away. Over in Vietnam, I was on twelve on and twelve off, and we worked nights, it was pretty much seven days a week. You did get a day off if things slowed down or something, | |
TT: | Were you officially with SAC while you were in Vietnam? | |
RC: | No. | |
TT: | Oh, so you got transferred back into SAC. | |
RC: | Right, I was with what we referred to it as a Recce Tech wing [Reconnaissance Technical Squadron], and I don't even remember what Recce Tech wing it was back then. |
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