October 15, 1969
VAP-62 - The squadron was disestablished. During its period of service the squadron conducted mapping and special photographic projects in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Italy, Spain, various countries in Northern Europe, Greenland, Iceland, Labrador, various Central American and Caribbean countries, Morocco, the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean areas and numerous areas in the United States.
November 10, 1969
VAP-61 - Commanding Officer CDR William E. Pippin
1970 NOTES: Commercial videophone service in U.S. – first nuclear powered heart pacemakers – portable electronic calculators from Japan –four jetliners hijacked over Europe by Arab militants. Some 300 passengers are held for ransom for Arab prisoners. The planes are blown up but most pax are released. – Most destructive cyclone of 20th century hit Pakistan killing some 500,000.
January 31, 1970
VAP-61 - The squadron’s participation in Yankee Team Operations came to an end after 68 months of providing day and night reconnaissance over hostile areas in Southeast Asia. Yankee Team missions were flown from carriers operating in the South China Sea as well as shore facilities in Southeast Asia. VAP’s participation was from the staging detachment in Da Nang.
VAP 61 – Det Southpaw – Pilot Lcdr Dean Gatterman, NFO Ltjg Mike Truax, 3rd Crew – PH1(AC) Jim “Indian” Haynes
This one is about the car.
Det Southpaw. Several of the guys bought a car. It was truly a thing of beauty. A 1949 Hillman and after the haggling was done and the monetary exchange rate was figured “The Car” cost us $37.84.
In the interest of safety and international relations the metalsmiths took the car behind the barn and painted it like the American flag. The whole damn car. There was no doubt who owned it or why it was on the wrong side of the road.
Lo and behold it came to pass it was my turn to take “the car.” It was a dandy VAP evening until about two o’clock in the morning. I find myself standing in the middle of the barracks wondering how I got there and where the car is. Since there is an obvious equipment discrepancy I reported it up my chain of command forthwith. Which was real easy since Chief De Fiore lived right across the hall.
“John.”
“What do you want?”
“I lost the car, John.”
“You what!”
“I lost the car, John.”
“Where in the hell did you lose it?”
“John, if I knew that it wouldn’t be lost.”
“Arrgh! Go to bed! We’ll talk about it in the morning!”
In the morning Chief De Fiore talked. I listened. At that distance at that volume you can’t help but learn some things. I learned the car was no longer lost. Something about the Wing Commander’s front yard.
That of course was the end of the car. One footnote. Do you have any idea how long at ten cents a beer it takes to pay back $37.84?
November 30, 1970
61 - Commanding Officer CDR Robert L. Skillen
As det and crew rotations would have it I was the available third seater for this trip. I had no clue why we went except the Skipper said,” Pre-flight it and get in.”
From Bob Skillen: Jim, Here is something that you personally would like to know about that trip to Atsugi.
VAP had been requested to see if we couldn't map Diego Garcia. Yale Sneed and others figured out that we could do it but would have to refuel in Sri Lanka (semi British at the time). We let CTF 77 know that we could if they got us a fuel stop in and out at Sri Lanka. The next day VAP got two msgs from CTF 77 one said to go and the other said to not go but neither one referenced the other. I mulled this over and decided to go to CTF 77, anchored in Yokohama. We left that evening and made a straight in from Hachijo Jima to Atsugi.
Jay Adams (deceased) was in the right seat and I was not happy with my inability to get the airplane slowed for the GCA. The light was out in the nose wheel indicator and I asked Jay to see if the nose wheel was down. He scrunched over to line up with the indicator so he could see it better and reported the nose wheel was down. I still felt I was too fast and not comfortable with the feel of the aircraft. We continued in on the GCA and were contact, lined up and still I was not pleased with the way the aircraft was responding to me. I added power and went around and asked Jay to shine a light at the nose wheel indicator, which he did and indeed it was down and indicated locked. On the down wind leg I started to experience a real serious case of vertigo. It was a real fight. We followed the GCA instructions and landed with no problem. I did my thing with CTF 77 the next day and we took off that night for the trip back to Guam.
This was an IFR departure and I don't remember how low the ceiling was but I guess it was about 500'.
It was a lot less. We weren’t zero-zero but the fog bank was wafting down the runway.
Just after the nose wheel lifted off and we were airborne the primary VGI flopped over to about a 60 degree angle of bank. I knew that that wasn't me so I looked at the standby VGI and it was flopped about 90 degrees in the other direction. At this point you should acknowledge that 2,700 hours in the left seat mean something.
Trust me, Boss, about the time you hear “0h shit! I’m partial panel.” over the intercom from a man you rarely hear swear you not only acknowledge those hours you pray they mean something.
What to do? I used the RMI and started gentle :S: turns of about 5 degrees on either side of our assigned heading and kept a positive rate of climb and ended on top in the dark night. We flew the 1400+ miles to Agana and made a VFR approach and landing. Our enroute scenario was with the altimeter and RMI. It worked out fine. In reconstructing the situation I do believe that the VGI was giving me problems in the let down and I know it was not responding correctly in the second GCA approach because it was making me have vertigo which was not something that I had had a problem with before. The real problem here is that I did not recognize the faulty gyro and blamed the problem on me. This is another survival tale among many.
What Bob doesn’t mention here is we were heavy as well and by the time we got to Guam we were a tad low on petrol and the loud thump when we took off in Atsugi left some doubt as to whether we had a nose wheel at all. We made one pass so the tower could tell us we had a round thing up front and landed on a foamed runway.
Another job VAP did but never got credit for – we mapped Cambodia. As things started winding down VAP started getting nuggets in the squadron. Now Guam is four to eight miles wide and thirty-two miles long. Some 65 % of the land is used by the U.S. military and that it doesn’t take much to map what is left. The rest of the islands anywhere near Guam are not any or in most cases as big so the payback of map-able land mass versus gas to and from is a negative balance. Kind of tough to get in any meaningful training. The Air Force came up with a request to map cities in Cambodia.
They came up with twenty-one “cities.” Now there aren’t twenty-one cities in Cambodia so it was fairly obvious we were filling in the gaps from the SR-71 and/or the U-2 coverage. On our own we used Cambodia as a carto training area.
In 1970 a representative from one of the alphabet agencies came to me and asked us to map Cambodia. “Now you won’t get any credit for it but we will be grateful and of course we need it in a hurry.”
I smiled, “How long do you think it will take?”
“A year would be nice. Can you do it?”
We had not one but two complete sets in the vault. One at 1/50,000 and one at 1/20,000 scale. “Would you like to take it with you?”
He was flabbergasted but grateful and he was right; we never did get credit.
Cdr. Bob Skillen, C.O. Vap-61
1971 NOTES: Communist China admitted to U.N. replacing Taiwan – First laser guided “smart bomb”\
July 1, 1971
VAP Disestablished. Assets absorbed by VQ-1
Bob Skillen was the first pilot assigned to RA3B training in 1959. As luck would have it the rag did not have any RA’s so he transitioned to the right seat. He says this was actually probably lucky since it gave him a chance to learn the radar and photo system, as he never would have just from the left seat. Bob Skillen was in the heavy photo community from 1959 to 1971. He was the first assigned photo pilot and the last Commanding Officer of VAP.
VAP lost six aircraft in Southeast Asia. Four in combat – BuNo 144842 was hit by AAA on 13 June 1966 and BuNo 144844 on 14 October, 1967. 144842 was shot down on a night recon mission. 144835 and 144847 also disappeared on night recon missions on August 25, 1967 and January 1, 1968 respectively.
The other two were lost to operational accidents. BuNo 144828 caught on fire on 16 June, 1967 and was lost but the crew was recovered and on 8 August, 1969 BuNo 144826 left Da Nang for Bangkok but a fuel flow problem parked the plane in Cambodia. The crew had to hitch-hike home.
After we both left VAP I ran into Hurricane Carson down in south Texas. He was a Flight instructor at Beeville and going to Texas A & M working on his masters. I had been attached to the CNATRA Staff and was going to school under the ADCOP program trying to finish my degree. His masters research program was trying to prove you could accurately estimate citrus crops using Infrared film. He bought a Cessna 172 with a camera port cut in the bottom and asked for my help with his little project. We flew all over South Texas “mapping” orange groves with an old K-20 and a speed graphic. I was supposed to get paid but that never happened so we lost track of each other after the project. I later heard he hit the round down on the USS Lexington in the Gulf of Mexico trapping aboard with a student.
The patches and coffee cups may have become memorabilia but our beloved Whistling S___ Houses carried on. VAQ, Pt Mugu, Key West and jobs beyond
Thanks,” to Bob Lyons
October 2003 Whidbey reunion
The OHT Pink Ladies Head Caucus
Yep, That really is the ladies head at the OHT.
TO OUR FALLEN SHIPMATES
Vappers Passed
