Patch

A little history to explain a couple of previous statements. Some of this is a little patchy, after all this was 40 years ago.

The US Air Force sent me to S.Vietnam in 1965 via Operation Top Dog in Support of Operation Rolling Thunder. Operation Rolling Thunder was LBJ’s plan to bomb a near stone aged country back to the stone age. 10 years later it almost worked.
The military being the military, arriving in South Vietnam the USAF did not have a job for us, so we got to sight see for a few days.
Long enough to learn that the Viennese were no threat to the US.
Any how I ended up in an emergency repair team. The Air Force had emergency airfields all over the place for aircraft that could not make it back to its home airfield. We traveled around to these airfields repairing busted airplanes, Pretty cool job. This is where I learned helicopters can and will take you anywhere and that most of the time in Vietnam anywhere was a place you did not want to be. This only lasted a few weeks, and then the Air Force found a job for me in Korat, Thailand and the F-105 Thunder Chief, nicked named thuds. (from the sound they made hitting the ground after falling out of the sky). Almost the entire production run of F-105s were lost in Vietnam, from crashes and being shot down over North Vietnam.I was here at Korat long enough to get to know a few Thais that were contractors working for the USAF (building external fuel wing tanks). Also got to meet their families. Which is how I learned that gooks are people. They were people trying to get by just like my friends back home, just like people everywhere. Rob
Posted By Patches