SamMcGowan

At this point in the war, 315th Air Division operated a number of scheduled missions into South Vietnam, mostly from Okinawa, which was a major supply depot. I can't say for certain, but the mission number was probably the mission number for one of those scheduled missions. In 1966 the 314th TCW was involved mostly in missions operating in and out of South Vietnam. The wing did have a rotational mission at Nha Trang but this crew was not on it since they crew rested at Tan Son Nhut. The mission report doesn't say, but they had probably picked up their load at Naha, Okinawa then went to Da Nang and on to Tan Son Nhut for crew rest. Since they hit a mountain in Taiwan, the Vietnam portion has no bearing on the accident. The report says the airplane had been continually off course, which indicates a navigational error.

They were on a routine transport mission carrying cargo to Vietnam. That's the whole reason the 314th Troop Carrier Wing was sent to the Pacific in the first place. The mission number is just the number for the mission; it means nothing.

Registration forms are coming in nearly every day. The registration packet and the registration forms are posted on www.troopcarrier.org/convention.html. If you plan to go to Marietta to visit Lockheed-Martin, we need certain information (posted on the page) as soon as possible to turn into Lockheed for security. They need the info by September 1. Tom Stalvey and Roger Greuel are doing a fantastic job putting everything together.

Interesting. Darrell and I are in Email contact and if I remember correctly, he joined the TCTAA not long ago. He has never mentioned that he was involved at Kham Duc.

Actually, Memorial Day was originally intended to honor GAR dead from the Civil War. In the South it was Decoration Day. In 1967 LBJ got Congress to declare a national holiday in order to gain support from veterans groups such as the Legion and the VFW. He had escalated the Vietnam War two years before and was losing support.

Since the book just came out in January, there are no "used" editions. There are book sellers who have access to wholesale prices who advertize "used books" on Amazon which really aren't used. Right now Amazon has this book for about $2.00 off.

Jeff, send me a check for $56.00 at Sam McGowan, 3727 Hill Family Lane, Missouri City, TX 77459. For $75.00 I'm including my Vietnam novel The Cave (also about C-130s.)

Up until the spring of 1969, all of the airplanes at Cam Ranh were As and Es. The Es moved there from Nha Trang in the spring/summer of 1967. The 463rd operated out of Tan Son Nhut from early 1966 to the spring of 1969 when the As and Bs swapped. There was another swap sometime in 1970 that brought the As back to Cam Ranh and the Es went to Tan Son Nhut. The reason given for the original swap was that the Bs and Es were parts compatible, but it was also because the 463rd was starting COMMANDO VAULT and would be loading at Cam Ranh. The move would cut down on ferry time. I am surprised that maintenance would have been in a qounset because as far as I know, 315th Air Division only had two and one was used for enlisted aircrews and the other for officers. Maintenance guys lived in open hooches not far away.

Herky Hill opened sometime in 1968. I rotated to Cam Ranh from Naha from August 1966 until I left in August the following year after first spending two weeks there in February before the Naha/Tachi rotation started. The West Ramp opened sometime in early 1967 but flight crews continued living in the air conditioned qounsets on the East Side. I think the maintenance troops lived in hooches. I've got pictures of the West Ramp that I took in the summer of 1967 and there were no revetments.

Not that I know of. He went into the C-130E-I program at Pope after I left for Naha in early 1966 and as far as I know he stayed in it until he retired. He went to Germany in the early 70s.

http://www.macon.com/2012/05/08/2018773/c-130-pilot-sees-plane-for-first.html - I put this in the Video and Image section originally as a response to Chris Shutz' thread about his visit to the Robins Museum but since it's news, it belongs here. I talked to Mack right after the airplane went to Robins and at the time he didn't know if it was the airplane he flew or not. Crawford Ingraham was his engineer and Al Collins from 5th APS at Evreux was second loadmaster. He couldn't remember who his crew loadmaster was. There is an article about the airplane's delivery at www.troopcarrier.org/convention.html. Mack is planning to attend. There's a lot of information about Dragon Rouge in both of my books. Also, this is a link to my page about the mission - www.sammcgowan.com/dragon.html.

Our crew was in Recife, Brazil on the way back to McDill from Leopoldville when my icon photo was taken by Don Sweet.

Capt. Shoupe was my AC in the 779th at Pope. After I left the crew, he and our engineer, Don Sweet, went into the Sky Hook program: Retired US Air Force Major Marvin Eugene “Gene†Shoupe, 80, of Fayetteville, died Wednesday, May 2, 2012, at the VA Medical Center. The family will receive friends on Friday, May 4th, from 7 - 9pm at Jernigan Warren Funeral Home in Fayetteville, NC. Funeral services will be held Saturday, May 5, 2012, at 11 o’clock am in Jernigan Warren Chapel with Rev. Dean Kennedy, Rev. Clarence Privette, and Chaplain Smith officiating. The burial will follow at LaFayette Memorial Park on Ramsey Street with military honors. He is survived by his wife, Gloria C. Shoupe of the home; daughter, Rosemarie Haynes and husband Kenneth, of Mill Spring, NC; son, Charles “Chuck†Shoupe and wife Melissa, of Harrisburg, NC; 4 grandchildren, Lisa Marie Haynes, Carson Shoupe, Erica Shoupe, and Sarah Shoupe; and a sister-in-law, Mary Cardwell of Richmond, Va. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Alzheimer's Association National Office, 225 N. Michigan Ave., Fl. 17, Chicago, IL 60601.

The blanket orders won't be much help because they covered the entire Western Pacific. No, TDYs are not on personnel records except for credit for days in SEA (which includes Thailand). The only record is travel vouchers, which are in pay records. However, the official history of the USAF tactical airlift mission is proof that personnel from Naha, Clark, Mactan, Tachikawa and CCK operated in South Vietnam. A far as Agent Orange goes, there really is no "test" or "evaluation" for it. There is some kind of Agent Orange registry. For Agent Orange benefits, the veteran has to be diagnosed with one of the illnesse that are attributed to it. Go to www.va.gov to find out which ones they are. Prostate cancer and Type II diabetes are two. Any veteran can apply for VA medical treatment but there are income and other considerations that can prevent acceptance except for service-connected disabilities.

It may have been at Naha but I doubt if it was in the 41st unless it was transferred in later. All of the double 0 airplanes went to PACAF. Most of them wer ein the 815th but there were a couple at Naha.

I don't know where he got "black and brown." They were all painted two shades of green and tan with gray bellies. The only black was on the radome and the prop spinners.

Interesting - I didn't realize the wing and 50th were at CCK that early. The 345th was still at Naha when I got there in February 1966 and the 776th was at Tachikawa.

I forgot to make a post on here when Charlie West passed away a few weeks ago. He was one of the old-timers at Pope, going back to the C-123 days when he was part of MULE TRAIN. He was a North Carolina native and had retired in Fayetteville.

The registration packets which include a registration form and a membership form as well as information are now on the TCTAA web site at www.troopcarrier.org/convention.html. The convention starts on October 17 and runs through October 21. We'll be going up to Marietta to Lockheed on Friday, the 19. Total cost is $160.00 for members, $120.00 for spouses and $185.00 for non-members, which includes breakfast Thursday-Sunday and lunch Thursday and Saturday as well as the reception on Thursday evening and the banquet on Saturday. Non-members have the option of joining and paying the member rate (the cost is still the same.) We're looking forward to a great event!

Bennie was more famous in airlift then in special ops. He was in the 21st at Naha and a squadron commander at Pope before he got into the Black Birds.

It most likely WASN'T an AC-130. After the initial trial, the prototype AC-130A moved to Ubon, Thailand for work on the Ho Chi Minh Trail as a truck-killer and the production models ere all assigned to Ubon. As it was, six were shot down and several were shot up but managed to get on the ground. Considering that there was only one squadron, that's a pretty high casualty rate. AC-130s worked over An Loc in 1972 but by that time the Aussies had left, as had most of the US ground troops, and they were supporting South Vietnamese, as were the airdrop crews. The AC-47s left the USAF in 1969 and AC-119s were used over South Vietnam after that. All transport aircraft are highly vulnerable in areas of medium to high intensity ground fire - and if there are fighters around, it's Katy-bar-the-door.

When Lockheed first came out with the C-130H, the only USAF versions were HC-130Hs. They sold a lot of them overseas before the USAF started buying them in a modified version, including an APU that could be run inflight. (By the way, I wish people would understand that an APU can be any kind of supplemental power system. A lot of people are confused because Lockheed referred to the gas turbine compressors on the As, Bs, Es and original Hs as GTCs. Heck, any jet engine with a compressor is a GTC.)

If you have McAfee and get a "risky site" message if you go to www.sammcgowan.com, ignore it. McAfee Site Advisor has a reputation for misidentfying sites as "risky" and for taking a long time to rectify problems. I had gotten messages before but not in a long time, but today I sent out a BCC Email to several people on my Email list from [email protected] and the next time I went to my home page, I got the message. I then did some research on the Net and learned that there have been a lot of completes about Site Advisor.

I have done some work on the list of airlift/C-130 related books I have had on the Internet for some time at www.sammcgowan.com/books.html. If possible, I've added a link to a particular book on Amazon so you can easily order them. Incidentally, I've found a few that I wasn't aware of before. I'll be adding new books as I learn about them. If anyone knows of any I've not listed, please drop me an Email at [email protected] and I'll add it.

Col. Crane will be buried in Arlington sometime in April.