Don Paul Email
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997
Hi Ted:One day we heard the squadron was going to get a special piece of ordinance.
Special it was!
We got two gigantic boxes and inside the first was, as I recall, a 16 in diameter rocket body about 10 ft long. It also had a slew of small rocket nozzles on the tail end with a long cable hanging out of the center nozzle.
In the other box was the 16 in warhead which itself was about 3 ft long.
This was an experimental air to ground rocket called "Tiny Tim." We assembled the warhead to the body and trundled this assembly out to one of the F84's and hung it on one of the bomb pylons. This was quite a large assembly hung on that airplane! The long cable at the rear of the rocket was pulled up and put into the bomb arming solenoid.
This is how the rocket was ignited. When the rocket was dropped off the bomb pylon the cable stayed with the airplane which spun a magneto, inside the rocket, igniting the charge and off it went! I'm sure we hung two Jato bottles on that bird to help it off the ground. I'm sure the pilot, whoever he was, was really goosey on takeoff with that big beast hanging underneath the airplane.
He did get airborne with no problems and we later heard that he had been sent to attack a bridge with this rocket. We heard that he made his run on the bridge and dropped the rocket off which ignited with much flame and smoke.
He said he had no idea where the rocket went but the bridge was still intact when he pulled up from his run. Apparently Tiny Tim was not much of a weapon.
Don.
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