Battleships have big artillery guns. The inside diameter of some of the barrels are 16 inches. They can shoot a 2700 pound shell over 24 miles. My VW Beetle only weighed 1600 pounds... so they are huge shells.
One day I was headed home for the night. I was descending with my power still up and I was doing my maximum allowed airspeed and it was loud in my airplane. I was talking on the radio to the next FAC that was on his way in to relieve me. It was play time... I was going to play with the waves.
I started hearing some whistling and I checked my window and my door to make sure they were all the way closed... they were. Next I started looking for holes in my airplane... none.
Then I popped out of the clouds. Not too far away from me were two very large US Navy Ships and they were smoking... ugh... they were shooting those great big guns. What I was hearing suddenly made sense. I sounded like... THIS
Luckily I didn't hear the impact that is on the recording. I quickly got on the emergency radio and said: "This is Covey 62, would the two Navy ships off the coast near Hue (pronounced "way") please stop shelling for 30 seconds, I am flying through them".
Thankfully they stopped. After 10 seconds or so the whistling stopped and the smoke cleared from around the ships. I called them back and apologized for causing the delay and said thank you for stopping. They never answered. There would have been nothing left at all if I would have been hit by a 2700 pound shell... and I knew that right away. There was no playing with the waves that day, and a very serious young man went to the bar that night. Those shells had to be very, very close for me to hear them in my noisy cockpit.
I believe this incident is as close as I came to dying in Vietnam.
