 At first, the bombs were dropped from medium or high-altitudes, but as SAMs became more dangerous, a shift was made to lower altitudes.Unfortunately, this technique also exposed the aircraft to small-arms fire from the ground

While at Da Nang, aircrews complained that they were missing many opportunities to shoot down enemy MiGs because the F-4C lacked an internal cannon and its missiles were ineffective at short ranges.So, wing maintainers mounted an external 20-millimeter SUU-16/A Gatling gun pod on the F-4Cs, and in less than a month the wing's aircrews had scored four MiG kills.