Spycraft - Melton [168]
Another gun, code-named Golden Rod, concealed a 9mm machine pistol inside an ordinary looking flashlight. About a foot long and six inches in diameter, the weapon had an internal circular magazine feed. “You loaded all the rounds around the barrel, then pressed the firing button, and this thing would spit out these 9mm rounds at a faster rate than you could distinguish an individual shot,” said Parr. “You just leveled it toward the target and it went ‘burp, burp.’ It stopped when you let your finger up and started again when you put your finger down.”
One of the more colorful weapons of the Vietnam era was the Gyrojet.27 The pistol was actually a handheld rocket launcher designed by a California contractor. Constructed of stamped steel and plastic, it fired 13mm projectiles powered by solid rocket fuel that reached a speed of 1,250 feet per second within sixty feet after leaving the barrel. Because the fuel burned quickly, the gun had virtually no recoil and was nearly silent, except for a distinctive “whooshing” sound. Despite its low noise level, it packed a punch. During one test, the projectile penetrated the door of a three-quarter-ton truck and tore through a fifty-five-gallon drum filled with water before embedding itself in the opposite door of the vehicle.28
Unfortunately, the gun had two major flaws: inaccuracy and unreliability. The expended rocket fuel, venting through two holes at the base, often sent the projectile off target. “It stabilized itself by using miniature canted jets to introduce a spinning rotation along the axis of flight. It would almost ‘spin up’ in the barrel as it was getting ready to depart, and that was part of its problem,” said Parr. “You’d pull the trigger and you’d hear the ignition cartridge fire and it would sizzle, and then a whoosh. It was like a bottle rocket—it took a little while to build up momentum. It was spinning as it was leaving the barrel. Compared to a firearm there was a delay.”
Solving the problem required spending huge sums to machine the mini-jets on each round to precise tolerances. “I was managing the Gyrojet contract and the contractor was trying to defend its accuracy,” recalled Parr. “So, he said, ‘Come on out to our range and I’ll prove it to you.’”
The contractor escorted Parr out to the company range, which consisted of a porchlike affair overlooking a dirt patch. Squeezing off several rounds from the Gyrojet, the contractor made shots that clearly were off target. “The rounds were all over the map. And the contractor says, ‘Well a .45’s no more accurate,’” remembered Parr. “He handed me a .45. I fired once and hit right in the middle of the target. Pure luck, but it made my point.”
TSD discontinued the Gyrojet contract because of its accuracy problems, though the gun found limited deployment with SOG. First Lieutenant George “Ken” Sisler was armed with a Gyrojet when he single-handedly charged a North Vietnamese platoon to rescue injured members of his squad. After saving his fellow soldiers, he was shot a short time later by a sniper and awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously.29
Throughout the Vietnam War, Dien Bien Phu remained a potent reminder of the defeat of the French colonial power. With the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) continuing to use the garrison as a military base, the former French stronghold presented an inviting psychological as well as a military target for some U.S. planners.