Building Rockets

We have to build rockets. They arrive in two sizes with six motors as we called them and six warheads, all packed in wood crates. The motors are a tube of propellant with four fins that open when the rocket leaves the pod at 2200 hundred feet per second and the propellant burns out in two-tenths of a second. The fins would open and starts the rocket spinning. This creates accuracy and arms the warhead which is seventeen pounds of high explosive.

The lead gunship has two rocket pods. One on each side and each has 19 rockets. We shot high explosives, (HE) on nearly all our missions. However, we also had white phosphorus which burns at five thousand degrees. It starts fires but has one drawback. It can obscure the target if there is no wind as it creates a large white cloud. We also had a very nasty rocket called Flechettes. The warhead was filled with tiny metal arrows, an inch and a quarter long. They were a miniature version of your standard arrow with an arrowhead, and fins where the feathers would be. This rocket had a proximity fuse so it exploded above the ground and sprayed 1200 arrows out at 2200 feet per second and tumble and bend in the human body causing severe damage.

The wing ship had seven rockets on each side. It also had two electric Gatling guns, also called a mini gun, and carried five to ten thousand rounds. It had the capacity to shoot up to six thousand rounds per minute so it was fired in short bursts to conserve bullets.