by Anthony G. (Tony) Paulson
Chief Master Sergeant USAF(retired)
Vietnam assignment and arrival
There I was, a flight engineer flying C-141s with the 86th Military Airlift Squadron at Travis AFB. I had been there several years hauling cargo worldwide, but mostly to Vietnam, moving everything from hand grenades to helicopter blades. I returned from the latest trip and had just gone into my inviolable three days of crew rest. Within an hour of getting home my phone rang and it was my boss. He apologized and admitted to the violation of my time but told me that he thought I would want to know now rather than three days later that I had just gotten an invitation to the southwest Asian party. Not only that but I had 19 days to report to England AFB in Louisiana for enroute training. I lived on the base with my wife and six children. What a scramble, spending my rest time with transportation, clearing base housing, arranging for a place for the family to spend the next year and doing all the PCS things.
Knowing that my wife could use some help with the six, I called my parents in Breckenridge, Minnesota, and asked if they could help out by trying to find a rentable house in their area. Dad said he would call back soon and did with the news that the answer was yes. The movers came soon, which was way fast for them and we got the move done in record time. Moved the family in and got to England AFB at 10:30 the night before my reporting deadline. During my first term I had spent about three years in a unit with five C-47s that we used to fly air support for 5th Army Headquarters, which was in Chicago at that time. We were at O’Hare, which was an AFB at that time. I was a crew chief and flight mechanic those years so I was well acquainted with the aircraft, making the course at England a breeze.
The Air Force decided that I needed Basic Survival School and Jungle survival enroute as well, so spent a couple of weeks at Spokane, Wash., and a week in the jungles on Clark AB in the Philippines. From there I got a ride into Tan Son Nhut. Arriving, I went to the passenger terminal and asked about a ride to Pleiku. They told me to go to a certain building and check out a bunk and linens, then I was to report to the terminal each morning for possible transportation. I asked for hints and the man told me that there was usually something every couple of days. The next day I got ride on a C-123 up to Pleiku.
At arrival, at the one man passenger check-in they called andmy new squadron sent a bread truck and welcomed me. We housed in a World War II style open bay building. Quite primitive, but it is a war zone. Settled in one of the several empty bunks, found out the basics and prepared for my next year of existence. Within a few days I was issued my personal equipment and whatever else I would need and assigned to a new guy instructor/mentor. I was to fly my first four missions with him but it turned out that I knew the airplane and it’s performance much better than he did so after two he cut me loose. I was then assigned to a crew and we were off and flying.
My new flying friends consisted of an old timer Lt. Col. who had been flying tankers and a 2nd Lt. who had no experience and a navigator who sat in the back and I hardly got to know him. Most of our missions consisted of an hour or so getting to the target line we were to follow, then about 7 hours on that line, then the hour or so to get home. Many of the aircraft we had were powered by the original R-1830 engines and did not have enough power to maintain the required 400 feet per minute climb on one engine so we often left base with only about 275 or 300 gallons of gas instead of the 804 gallon capacity. Thus we had to make at least two stops, usually at Danang, to refuel.
We had no oxygen on board so were limited to 10,000 feet altitude. We had no autopilot so hand flying was it. When my A/C found out that I could handle that we normally split the actual flying three ways. We flew at 2,000 feet above ground level at 105 knots to accommodate the backend guys. Low and slow. It was awkward when the Nav would tell us to expedite a turn 90 or more degrees either way. We, the flying crew, had a contest that we would make those turns without adding power or losing altitude. It was challenging but made it a little more interesting because those hours could get boring except occasionally we would find someone on the ground that the powers to be were interested in. Sometimes it was "OK we will look for them again tomorrow and see where they are headed," but sometimes we would be told to get out of the way, and we could watch the fighters come in and let loose. Scary!
Shortly after I got there, but I can’t remember exactly when, we were airborne near Hue Phu Bai and we got a call to return to base (RTB). When we got there we found out that Cap 72, ours, had gone down over Laos. No survivors and the aircraft remains were not found for a very long time. The only ID of any crew member found was a cover for a checklist with the Navigator’s name on it. That was our first casualty. Later we had an aircraft lose an engine on takeoff from a stop in Ubon, Thailand. He crashed in a river paralleling the runway with no loss of life or serious injuries. We lost one more to enemy fire in the north part with two crewmembers lost. Then the army flew an HH-54 flying crane directly over the runway while one of ours was landing, destroying all the lift, doing serious damage to the plane but again no one was seriously injured. Other than those, we had a few planes return with some bullet holes but minimum damage.
During the 364 days I spent at Pleiku I flew 179 combat support missions for 1,279 hours. It was stressful at times and occasionally frightening, but not near the war that the ground guys suffered through. We were co-located with the 4th Infantry Division at camp Enari and a helicopter brigade at camp Holloway. We also had a Green Beret camp a few hundred yards from our front gate, and an Army hospital a few miles away.
A few weeks after I arrived a couple of us were wandering around at a refueling stop and found several pallets of ¾ inch plywood that had been sitting for a while. We informed the rest of our flight mechanics and over a period of time we liberated enough of the stuff for a construction project. We scrounged some 2 by 4s from our Red Horse guys and built some primitive 2-man rooms. As we were flying about 20 hours each day we had guys trying to sleep and others trying to unwind after a mission. The contrast was noisy and difficult. Adding the rooms, basic as they were, gave us some semblance of privacy and a quieter atmosphere.
Our Officers lived in what was called the RMK quarters, far greater than ours. We alternated, with the officers throwing a Friday evening party one month and we enlisted the next. It was always a competition to outdo the other. There was an Army-run distribution center nearby. They received all of the incoming supplies for all of the local bases. We aircrew members were awarded a 1 and 1/2 ounce of VFQ brandy for each mission we flew. It was awful stuff and no one would drink it. The army had a rule then that for an enlisted to buy hard liquor required rank of at least E6. The guys doing the day-to-day operation of that distribution center were mostly or all Spec 4s. We got acquainted with them. We had 34 flight mechanics flying abut16 sorties each day. We threw all of the brandy in a couple of boxes and it did not take long to get a pretty good supply. Those boxes of brandy earned us a free trip through the hundreds of containers of everything. We, without question, threw by far the best parties. We never squealed and the mystery of supply was never breached.
Rockets
At Pleiku AB in the years I was there, we got the opportunity to head for the bunker an average of 4 nights per week. The enemy seemed to have an unending supply of those 122 mm rockets and they fired several of them at us often. They had a very distinctive sound when they hit, almost a double explosion. The first one to hit sent all of us out the door and into the bunker in 30 seconds or less. We actually kept a 30 cup coffee maker in the bunker and the first guy in plugged it in. We knew we were going to be in there for at least two or three hours waiting for the all clear. We actually had two of them land very close, one striking a supply storage and the other the little hobby shop. We never had any one injured or killed from those attacks, at least not that I know of.
Incidentals
The city of Pleiku was ‘on limits’ for only one afternoon the entire year I was there. It was a Sunday. We had access to an old International six passenger pickup truck. About a dozen of us scrambled in and on that truck and drove around and visited the downtown parts of our host city. Quite interesting and the local population were not unfriendly, though of course we could not communicate well.
I had an opportunity to spend one weekend in Hong Kong through the base flight having a C-47 of their own and needed some training for one of their mechanics. Had a very interesting visit and could not believe the amount of a duty free electronics, cameras, tape recorders, and other goodies that crew could pack on the aircraft, so much that I was concerned about weight. When I mentioned that to the pilot, who was a full colonel, he said "Oh, we don’t worry about that stuff." The departure from Hong Kong was over water so if we had lost an engine we might well have had a swim.
Later in the year my crew was selected to go to Taiwan and pick up an airplane that was over there for overhaul. We went to Saigon on one of our planes and then flew commercial to Taipei, carrying all of our flack jackets, helmets, and other combat gear. It must have cost the government a pretty penny in overweight penalties. We overnighted in Taipei, then rode a train to the city of Tai Chung where the overhaul depot was located. The airplane was supposed to be ready to go but required a test flight following the complete overhaul. We found a couple of items on the test flight that required repair so we were delayed three days before we could leave. Darn! We stopped at Clark AB on the way back so we all hit the commissary and stocked up on things that just were not available in Vietnam. I brought the troops the makings of a good meal and became a hero for a day.
Like so many, I have some personal friends whose names appear on that wall in Washington, D.C., including a first cousin. I have visited the wall a few times and each time is a good cry. Rest in peace, my friends and fellow servers. They also served.
I read the story by Gordon Bassett regarding the B-52 near miss and I am quite sure that I was the flight mechanic in the left seat at that time. That corresponds exactly to an adventure I had. I can’t remember the name as our crew makeup changed constantly because of people coming aboard and others completing their assignments almost daily. No one stayed with the same crew throughout the entire year. My memory of the details differ just a little from his, but it has been 55 years so ???? I do remember that it was a scare, each B-52 carried about 70 bombs and they would drop in a continuous line until they were gone.
As I mentioned earlier, I had arranged for my family to live in Breckenridge, Minn.,where my folks were. My Dad was an area supervisor for a large section of the State Highways in the western part of the state. It just so happened that the winter of 1968/1969 was the highest snow fall in that part of the state in many years. The kids had to walk to school which was a Catholic school about 3/8ths of a mile away. They were 10, 9, 8, and 6 and all went to the same school so they could walk together. They survived and for the most part enjoyed the adventure. Gave them something to brag about. The snow was piled deep, and my 9 year old son became a superior snow shoveller. We have pictures of the walkway with the snow two feet above his head. When spring arrived and the snow became water the entire area was a lake. Money, of course, was scarce as Uncle Sam was not generous when it came to paying TSgts. I lived frugally in 'Nam and left as much as possible for the family. That is probably my biggest beef with our government, sending troops to war and putting their families on starvation income. My wife, and so many others, deserve high gratitude from this country for the sacrifices and efforts they made in the call of duty.
Overall, the year was not that bad except for the separation and the loneliness. My wife and I did get to spend a week R and R in Hawaii. We stayed at Fort Bellows for the princely sum of $56 per night and it was great. A very difficult thing for me was to get on that airplane heading back to the War for the last four months of my tour.
Peace to all who served and who continue to serve. I am 90 years old now but my memory is good so I think what I have written is accurate. Thank you for keeping our unglamorous part of the war effort alive. Not many will remember.
Tony also sent several photos taken duirng his Pleiku tour. These images, and his observations about the wartime scenes they show, make up a part of the story that stands all on its own. Click here to view Tony's "Pleiku Album" on a separate page.
29 Sept 2024
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