Escape to U Taphao: Repost NamSouth 2009

 

For Skipperdaddy

South Vietnamese Air Force A-1E (AD-5) Skyraider

(I've mentioned before that the VNAF pilots were like kids with new playtoys when we sent them back up near the end, after the ***Skyraiders had been grounded because of money. They loved them. I caught a hop on a *Bird Dog from TSN to Bien Hoa once, and man, they could land and stop on a dime. Really impressive. They have an **A-37 Dragonfly on display at the War Museum in Saigon. They also had a Huey there and they would rent you a flak jacket and helmet, so you could get a picture taken behind the doorgun. Vietnamese Communists!

It was still called the Museum of American War Crimes in 1992 when I went there, so I wore my T-shirt with a picture of the Soldier's Statue in DC on it with the three soldiers, and the words "Vietnam, We Were Right Then, We Are Right Now, We Have Always Been Right" and a large American Flag on the back. Kerry's picture was indeed in there, though it was removed when he ran for President, I read.BT)

"We went by jeep to a nearby rice paddy where an *O-1 was stranded on a cart path with barely a foot clearance on either side of the landing gear," Youngblood recalls. "Dogood paced off the length of the path, put some gas from a tanker truck into the plane. Then he got in and in a cloud of dust flew the O-1 off the cart path." 

Escape to U Taphao
** http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/escape.html
"In the final days of the Vietnam war, chaos and heroism converged in the effort to evacuate U.S.-supplied aircraft."

"The copilot’s wife had been leaning outside, helping load passengers at the front entryway. As the plane lurched forward, she fell. The left main gear rolled over her, crushing the woman. No one told the copilot until the aircraft landed in Thailand."