C 130 Crash Vietnam 10/2/66

[jpfeiff]

Am looking for information about this incident. Air Force reports appear to be inconsistent. Additional remains of the 5 member crew, my brother being one, have not yet been identified, nor will the AF release location where remains were found. I would be most grateful for any help.

[donwon]

I was in Bangkok at that time working on any C-130 that came through.

I don\'t remember hearing anything about it.

Over 40 years ago thare is much I don\'t remember.

Today I don\'t remember how to spell.

[bobdaley]

The airplane was 62-1840 an E. Shot down 20 miles south of Cam Ranh Bay.

May have been friendly fire?? Only a rumor.The crew names are posted on this site. Graff, Smith, Thorpe,Wheeler, Clayton.

Bob

[SamMcGowan]

That airplane flew into the top of the mountain just west of Cam Ranh while trying to go to Phan Rang. At the time the E-models were operating out of Nha Trang. How it got reported as being shot down is beyond me unless it was so the survivors could get triple indemnity on their GI insurance. I knew most of the crew when we were at Pope. Most of them were in the 779th except for the loadmaster, who had been in 3rd Aerial Port. Right after it happened something came out in the FCIF about keeping track of position because the GCI sites did not take terrain into consideration. I think I was flying out of Cam Ranh when it happened but don\'t remember if I was there that night for certain or not.

[SamMcGowan]

Let me elaborate a bit on this incident. This particular accident occured just southwest of Cam Ranh Bay where there was a pass through the mountains that crews would fly through on the way to Phan Rang. The pilots would be in contact with a Ground Control Site and the radar controllers would provide vectors. For some reason this crew was further east than they should have been and hit the top of a ridge. I\'m not sure if they had taken off from Cam Ranh or Nha Trang. I was in A-models out of Naha and we were operating out of Cam Ranh while the E-models from CCK were flying out of Nha Trang, which was just up the coast a bit. They often picked up loads at Cam Ranh. I don\'t recall how I found out about the accident and who was on the airplane, but I probably got the names from one of the other 776th guys. The pilot, Captain Graf, had been a lieutenant in the 779th. The loadmaster was Billy Clayton who went through the basic loadmaster course with me at the FTD at Pope when we both cross-trained. (There were so many cross-trainees at Pope that ATC set up a special AFSC course on base since we couldn\'t get in to the school at Sheppard for awhile.) I was pretty shook up about it because so many of the crew were people I knew.

I didn\'t know it had been written off as a combat loss until I started working on my book and came across the list of C-130 losses at the USAF museum. I suppose they used the premise that since the place where they hit was under VC control that they could have been shot down. The VC owned those mountains which is why the bodies were never recovered.