1965
VAP-61 - Squadron detachments continued to operate from carriers in the South China Sea and later in 65 from Danang Air Base; providing photo reconnaissance support for Yankee Team Operations; as well as flying missions over North Vietnam, part of the Rolling Thunder Operation; assisting in Market Time Operations, coastal and shipping surveillance along the coast of South Vietnam.
It’s a small world and sometimes an even smaller Navy. In the summer of 1965 MCB-74 had a building project in Danang. The chief in charge of building the Senior Petty Officer barracks, the junior barracks, the shower hooches and the chow hall was BUCS W. O. Haynes. Later PH2/1 (AC) J. D. Haynes and shipmates got to stay dry and eat well between Yankee Team Missions. Thanks, Dad.
November 16, 1965
VAP-61 - Commanding Officer CDR George H. Lee
In 1965 and 66 we were working off carriers. I was still flying as the XO of VAP 62 so it was probably the fall of 65 this happened.
The staff air warfare officer called me in and asked me to do a weather recce for a pre-strike then follow the pouncers in and shoot Bomb Damage Assesment photos after. He asked, “What do you do while waiting?”
“Go sight seeing. We never fly over the target before the mission. That’s a good way to get shot down.”
“Well, if the weather is good, call us and we will send the boys.”
“Yessir.”
The weather was good. The target was Laos so we motored around the Plain of Jars at 12,000’ and while we were waiting and stumbled upon a large airfield. This was news. We opened the camera windows and took a few shots. The flight joined up, we followed them in, took the BDA photos and returned to the carrier. My crewman downloaded the film, tagged it and turned it over to the photo lab.
About three days later the Admiral called me up to the flag bridge. “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”
“George, we received this letter and we have to show it to you. We don’t agree with it but we have to show it to you. “
I said, “Okay.”
He handed me the letter. You needed to handle it with asbestos gloves. Every other word was a cussword. The nicest thing the author called me was “a stupid son-of-a-bitch.” I was never to even mention the mission over Laos three days earlier. It was signed by Lyndon Banes Johnson.
The Admiral asked me how I felt about it and said again he did not agree with the letter. He thought I was doing a good job.
I handed it back and replied, “You write my fitness reports so this doesn’t matter to me. Have a nice day.”
Twelve years later I was sitting in a movie theater and the movie was Air America. I recognized it immediately. We had photographed the secret CIA base in Laos and, it seems, upset the President of the United States. Capt. George H. Lee
Lt. Frank “Hurricane” Carson was one of the original characters fostered by VAP. Phil Lang , the Parachute/AMH Shop Officer fogged up the right window and P02/3/2/3 Bill Clay kept the back seat warm.
Between the SPO barracks and the showers there “grew” a large mud puddle about eight feet across and some three plus feet deep in the middle. As it happened one Saturday, Danielson, Bill Clay and myself managed to “acquire” a case of steaks and a can or two of beer. Several of our fellow vappers exhibited sign of hunger and thirst and joined us. At some point someone fell in the mud hole. It must have the steaks, it couldn’t have been the beer. Now when one vapper gets wet we all do.
We were trying to “help” each other out of the mire when a young U.S. Army sergeant came down the street. It was one of those bright sunny Danang days and the fresh rice starch on his crisp uniform sparkled like cut crystal.
He seemed to think all those sailors playing in the mud was funny so a couple of us petite lads invited him to join us. We weren’t sure what upset him but he came up sputtering and hollering vile things about our parents and wanting to see our Officer in Charge.
Hurricane rose from the mud wiping the grime from the railroad tracks on his collar. When he had reach his full six foot four height he stared down at the sergeant and asked, “You wanted to see me?”
We never saw that sergeant again. Go figure.
Jim Haynes
1966 NOTES: Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter, becomes India’s Prime Minister-
What were you guys doing in Sydney? Oh. Never mind.
April 22, 1966
VAP-62 - Commanding Officer – CDR Harry F. Bryant
Det Southpaw – Staging: Royal Australian Air Force Base Garbutt, Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Approximately 19 degrees south Latitude. Mission: Map Papua New Guinea before it gained it’s independence from Australia. One high point of the trip, cold Carins Draught Beer. Ten cents (Aus) Sergeant’s Mess.
Guam is good!
Summer 1966
The pilot that picked up the IR gear from NADC Johnsville was Ed Grady, who was lost at sea in November of '66. His photo navigator was Dick Slovacek.
August 7, 1966
VAP-61 - The squadron flew its first night combat infrared reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam. This began the use of infrared devices on squadron aircraft for interdicting truck convoys at night along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They were also known to “interdict” bomb craters full of water; especially those first four at the beginning of Six Golf. You know the ones right after you dropped over the ridge. Anybody else want to ‘fess up?
66 – 67 Night Missions. F.R. Duck and all.
The IR gear did indeed save lives by being passive but we were not altogether invisible, especially on cloudless moonlight nights. The mission parameters were 1500’ at 350 knots. Some of the hills on either side were considerably higher and we noticed what looked like fireflies blinking. We finally realized it was muzzle flashes from small arms fire.
When we returned to Cubi I sent the maintenance crew to buy every can of flat black spray paint in the exchange.
They painted the entire plane with rattle cans. They even smudged the Stars & Bars. It worked. We were no longer visible from above at night. However the powers that wuz back in Alameda at the repair facility decided this wasn’t camouflage and painted them the mottled grey we used the rest of the time. They didn’t get it. We were once again visible from the top at night.
Bob Skillen
1966 – 1969
I’m Tom Sutton and I was a third crewman in VAP 61 in 1966, 1967 and 1968.
One mission people always ask about is the time I worked with the New Jersey. Lou Jordan was the pilot and Bill Coffee the navigator. We found a convoy of about two hundred trucks all balled up. We called in the pouncers and because the weather was bad they couldn’t get in. Bill Coffee noticed the New Jersey had a block time in about thirty minutes. We called the New Jersey, gave them the co-ordinates and watched them walk those sixteen inch guns very accurately down a twenty mile stretch of road and back. There were approximately one hundred and twenty secondary explosions resulting from that barrage.
After one Alpha Strike just south of Hanoi I spotted some hot railroad railroad tracks, again Lou Jordan and Bill Coffee were up front. We followed the tracks to a rail yard by a fuel depot where some twenty tank cars were unloading fuel. We called in the pouncers and there were numerous secondary explosions. The flames shot up approximately one quarter of a mile.
We went feet wet over Hai Phong harbor and I saw some two hundred motorized small craft unloading freight from ships in the harbor. We called in the pouncers from both the primary and standby carriers to prosecute. Over a hundred secondary explosions that night.
. I was in nine combat flight crews and flew over a hundred missions over North and South Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos I was nominated for three Distinguished Flying Crosses.
Thomas R. Sutton – Third crewman
Another Hurricane Carson story. Hurricane was six foot three or four with a size fourteen shoe, which insured he had no problem hitting the rudder and the brakes at the same time on landing. A little rough on the tire inventory but fortunately he didn’t have to pay for them directly. He and his merry crew landed at Agana one day and managed to keep the air on the inside of the rubber but it was close. Anyway after inspecting the obviously defective Goodyear product and as a warning to those who followed Hurricane dutifully reported it on the yellow sheet, “Port main mount almost needs changing.”
Any gripe on the yellow sheet has to be answered in writing by the appropriate maintenance man. Now VAP had it’s share of characters in the maintenance department too. And the one that drew the task of “fixing “ the tire was one AMS2 Dick Schneider, often referred to as a blacksmith rather than a metal smith, and always by the nickname Swingin’ Dick. Ole Swingin’ Richard went out to the plane, walked around it, inspected the damage and returned to the hanger. He wrote, “Almost changed port main mount.”
It took Hurricane a long time to live that down.
October 1966
VAP-62 - The squadron transferred a detachment of aircraft and personnel to VAP-61 to augment that squadron’s operations in Danang, Vietnam
The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club.
Let’s see…our Command Task Force is in Atsugi, Japan and some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. saw this so we must not have ever been in Danang. Right?
Who was in Danang when Jim Shaw cleaned the head.
Jim Shaw stood six foot five, had a fifty four inch chest and would rather fight than eat when he was hungry especially if he was drinking and he was known to pop a cork or two. It seems after he bailed out over North Vietnam, they were feet wet at the time, he decided he would carry grenades in his flight vest.
He and I were sharing a jug of Guam homebrew called “tuba” down in Merizo once and he told me, “I ran myself a betting pool as to whether the sampans or the destroyers would get to me first. I decided next time I could at least bomb the bastards.”
I asked him what the pot was since he won?
He grinned and rolled his eyes heavenward, “Four days in Caviti City in the Philippines”
About Danang. Before the head was built at the end of the barracks in Danang the head was a curtain around a 55 gallon drum outside the door. Someone who was new to the neighborhood had been assigned to “inspect” the barracks. He was just finishing up when he met Petty Officer Shaw returning from a mission.
“Do you live here, Petty Officer?”
“You talking to me?”
“Yes I’m talking to you. That head is a mess and needs to be cleaned.”
Jim shrugged, pulled a grenade from his vest pulled the pin and tossed it in the head and walked on into the bar.
He told me over that same jug of tuba, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
1967 NOTES: First human heart transplant – First TV transmission by laser – laser rangefinder introduced – first MIRV’s (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicle – Israel defeats Arab States in Six day War
15 April, 1967 Alameda, California. 146446 fresh out of “Paint And Return”
June 16, 1967
VAP-62 - Commanding Officer – CDR Frank S. Coleman
November 14, 1967
VAP-61 - Commanding Officer CDR Archibald S. Thompson
1968 NOTES: Wankel rotary automobile engine introduced – N. Vietnam launches TET offensive –M. L. King, Jr. assassinated – Vietnam peace talks begin in Paris – Robert Kennedy assassinated – Soviet troops invade Czechoslovakia – Richard M. Nixon elected President
July 1968
VAP-62 - Commanding Officer – CDR Burke E. Eakles
November 1, 1968
VAP-61 - Commanding Officer CDR Arthur R. Day
In Bangkok the Miami Hotel is four floors high. They put a chain link fence around the roof edge overlooking the pool after the new commanding officer and others jumped off the fifth floor ledge (the roof). Personally mine got a lot smaller after once off the fourth floor ledge.
The only time I ever saw an entire squadron thrown out of a seriously noisy night club was in
Bangkok. Except for the dance floor the places were dark caverns. When the front door opened all the
waiters would flicker their flashlights to attract the new victims to their area.
One night all of VAP took flashlights.
Yep, they “asked “ us to leave.
I often wondered how much Mama-san and Charlie made off us the four years we were there.
Singha beer is a very good pilsner, especially when it is cold. Domestically it is brewed without controls. In that case a one liter bottle can contain anywhere from three percent to 25 percent alcohol. Let’s see that’s from 6 to 50 proof. You never knew if that first bottle was going to just bloat you or bury you.
1969 NOTES: U.S. astronauts walk on the moon – Nationwide Vietnam protests by anti-war demonstrators first commercial service of 747 Jumbo Jets – Test of SST (Concorde)
Det Osan, Korea
Interesting project. Low obliques of the coastline. They had to overlap to from an uncontrolled string mosaic to provide a reference map from which to identify the forward fire insertion points. I don’t remember the altitude but it was several thousand feet. The next phase was low level sequential forward fire to mimic as close as possible the view a coxswain on an amphibious landing craft would have. Now “low level” in this case is fifty feet. At 200 knots heading into beach cliffs a hundred foot or more high this really is an “E” ticket ride. This was repeated many times up and down the South Korean coastline.
One crew came up off the water up a gorge to the top of the cliffs only to find a power line stretched across the cut. Ripped a deep slit in the vertical stabilizer. Anyone remember the crew. Joe Gibbs was the really really white boy in the back. I don’t remember who was driving for sure but I think it was Cdr. Flyum. Who was looking out the right side?
July 18, 1969
VAP-62 - Commanding Officer – CDR James E. Service
Det Thailand
Mission: Map the country for the Royal Thai Army. VAP was there some four years.
There was nothing better than coming back from a mission in Thailand and crawling out of that 130 degree cockpit. Then walking across the road by the maintenance shed to the little sari-sari stand and buying a baggie of iced pineapple chunks. Well, almost nothing.
Our driver in Bangkok was George. I don’t think I ever knew his real name. I know I was told but I couldn’t pronounce it then so I couldn’t remember it ten minutes later let alone now. George was a sergeant in the Royal Thai Army, the folks we were ostensibly mapping that country for, and a member of the elite special forces regiment, the Queen’s Tigers. Walking in Bangkok traffic was suicide so operating a vehicle other than yellow gear and RA3B’b was out of the question. So-o-o, the Royal Thai Army provided us drivers. George was given the cushy job of driving us around as a reward for outstanding service against the Pathet Lao.
It was indeed a reward as no one was shooting at him, he wasn’t sleeping in the jungle and we kept him in enough PX booze to support his family in style. George was cool. He liked to party. Another benefit of hanging around with us was the chance to improve his conversational English.
One morning George encountered one of his officers whom he knew to speak English. He snapped to attention, whipped up a crisp salute and proudly said, “Good Morning, Son of a Bitch!”
Corporal George came back to us that afternoon more than little upset. At first he didn’t think it was nearly as funny as we did.
