gizzard

On this, my last day as a firefighter, this thread really brings back memories. I went to Warsaw in '73, unreal, especially the rebuilt portion. Yeah we backed up and all that too. Howard was great. my crew hauleda general around there in the summer of 73, and that man treated us like his sons. He took care of us, then went about his business. Crete was cool, Torrejon with the kilo steaks, sangria by the gallon, globe bars, ship models....SEA, with the buffies(my god why anyone wanted one of them). Copen hagen.AHHHHH, excpet for havin' our crew chief detained for a while by police cause he looked like a wanted person. 5 lb. lobster at Goose Bay, and hell yeah, the Bonnie Prince Charlie. Wake Ilsand with the goony birds all over the runway..... Doin the five qual drops for a group of airborne troops in I think Weisbaden, and the low level pass after their last jump and the probably 4 G pull up.........Thanks capt, Joe Broderick, I am permanetly an inch shorter from that....Just a small portion of my memories. Glad i have them, and thanks to the rest for sharing Aboard closed and checked

Yep, anybody who got through one of SGT Devitt's checkrides had been through the wringer. If ya had the basic stuff down well, he went into trivia mode.......I know of no one who passed a check ride from him. he always found something you had to work on, and you were always better for it. He passed away a couple years ago. As for langeford............what can be said?????????The guy was a ball to be around. Maybe four years ago he stopped here at my firestation for a visit. he was doing camping trailer deliveries then. Told me he was gettin' real close to bein' kicked out due to age. Glad he made it. A real fun guy load clear

Bob, I flew with Dave on several CTF flights when we first got to langley. I have a fuzzy mmemory of flyin' a check ride together, I think it was his, but am not sure. I do remeber it was with the Gray Ghost CMST V. Devitt. Now there was a stan/eval guy!!!!!Yup, I agree, also, I remember Dave as a good guy also. wondfer where he is today???? Aboard closed and checked

I made SSgt at 3 years, 6 months, under Waps. Only loady in the 36th at the time to make it. I think there was one in the 37th, Dave Puyear, Ithink his name was, and maybe one in 38th, but can't remember. Was that sorta quick or about average????I did not have any high-grade decorations or anything, so don't really know how it came about. Load clear

Don't remember the tags, either, but December 1970 was cold and wet, too. But this was one experience I am glad i had, but sure as hell would not want to go through it again, if it is still like back then, aboard, closed and checked

I remember this from way back in tech school, 1970. may nto be true, but sure is funny. nearly as much as when a loady of my acquaintance, sneaked up into the cockpit, and stealthfully ties 550 cord to the boot of the FE, will flyin' a drop. When the heavy goes oput the back, this loady grabs the cord and starts runnin back with it, givin' the FE, who had been giving this guy severe grief for quite a while, the impression he was attached to the pallet. apparently, there was never again any further aggravation. ain't sayin' this is true, BUT........................................... Also, anybody out there remember the old soup in a barf bag passed back to the loads on a troop drop, who then proceeded to eat it?????? Or, during a fairly long trip to do troop drops at Bragg, a certain navigator who loved to throw empty beer cans down the crew steps into the cargo compartment??????????

In 26 days, i join the ranks of the retired, finishing my work life as a career firefighter. I am in the process of assembling a book of my life experiences. If anyone out there has any pictures of 36TAS herks from 70-74, or any of the 36th aircrews,any from the '72 field trip to SEA, could I possibly beg, steal, buy, or whatver copies? I had quite a few pictures on film in my camera bag that gotten stolen by one of our SVN friends, and i never replaced it. I think I have about six off another roll. I have seen some of the pictures posted of someof the places we were at. Hope I can find some more Thanks, brothers.. Aboard, closed, and checked

Losin' your dad, especially if you had such a fine one as mine, is one of the worst things you can go through, like you have said. My Dad was with the Army Engineers at Attu, Kiska, Cold Bay, Dutch harbor, all those places in WWII. He then went to France in June of 44. he died 23 years ago, but still I think of him. We never talked about each others military experiences, wish we had. Last Sunday I particpated in a Round Table ceremony with my chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, for MIA-POW Day. awesome ceremony, if you ever get a chance to see it, do so. One last rant,on the subject of MIA-POW, a very large portion of them from Vietnam were flyers, like us. Think about that. REMEMBER!!!!!!

Yup, I'm back, Col. Some reason, after the shif to this format, i could not get my old passwords and so on to work, new ones either, Just quit tryin'. Thentried it yestedray, for the first time in months, and away i go. I only have 79 days, and 15 shifts and i am out of the firefightin' business. Yep, I am SHORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Load clear giz

I was drivin' the crew bus the day the F-100 hit the chimney of one of the houses close by there and the bird ended up right by the LOX plant. pilot opped the canopy, jumped over the side, but got hung up on his starps some how, aft end of the Hun was burning. The crash/fire guys were doin' a demo of AFFF fire fighting foam and just ran right over and put it out. somewhere i have the base newspaper( Mildenhall Flyer(?)) clipping of it. I thinkit was the '71 Rote for the 36TAS load clear Giz

Guys, just sort of consider the source here, and bear with me:unsure: I was looking at the picture of what appeared to me as a stretched C130, couple weeks ago here on the site, and my minds got to waundering back to CG\'s and so on. I am curious as to how dfferent the limits, ect are for a stretch versus the common old \"E\" I flew.are the stations still determined from in front of the nose?How much different are the H\'s and J\'s in reference to weight and balance, load planning, etc? No particular reason to want to know this stuff, just nostaglia I guess:lol: Load Clear

You are SOOOOOOOOOOOO right, Tiny!!!!:P

How about horsecollar, football pin, slip-stick, milk stool, nose-hose, zoom-bag, Johnson bar, :)

Just a side question, this is the same Kalitta family of drag-racing fame, is it not??? Connie was the patriarch i think, and had a lot to do with Shirley Muldowney\'s success int he 60\'s and 70\'s. really datin\' myself now,huh:laugh:

As opposed to many of the \"urban legends\" floating around on the internet, this is genuine. In connection with my present job as a career firefighter( how does one go from stretchin\' straps to runnin\' into places everybody else runs out of, i don\'t know:laugh: )I have seen a lot of wanrings and articles about this situation. Anyway, this is very much a problem, for about any kind of similar container. Fortunately, it seems that most of the cylinders end up in landfills, roadside dumps and so on. Not necessarily in the exchanges, even thouhg it is possible. Probaly the best thing you could dois look for any type of corrosion or discolorization around the valve assembly. Propane does not normally corrode the brass, and ammonia does. So be careful folks. When you are usin\' one of these things, often we have family and friends nearby, so caution is the best bet always.

Bob, I was at Langley, more or less, from July 70 to Feb 74. I can\'t for the life of me remember seein\' any 123\'s there.Where they gone by the time i got there or is my memory worse than I think? When I first got there, there was just the 36th and 37th, later the 39th came along, and toward then end of i guess 73 an AWACS bird came in. One of our FE\'s transferred to that, as a matter of fact. Of course there was the 48 FIS up by our end of the filed.

Don\'t much understand electricity:S but I know of one time needing to have access to 120 V AC for an incubator and our crew chief and I dug up an extention cord cut the prong ends off, and taped them to the prongs on one of the hot cup plugs. Maybe didn\'t meet safety and all that crap, but we were tryin\' to save a premature baby and that\'s all we had. Unfortunately, it was not enough. The poor thing dies as we were entering the pattern at Ramstein, I think it was:( At least we tried.

Sorry i didn\'t read this closer, with my glasses ON. This thing had tanks??? Coulda been one of the early firefighting systems birds, but why at Pat Henry? you sure it was a 130 in stead of a 123? they flew most of the Ranch Hand AO stuff. Plus, havin\' flown a million laps around the flag pole down there, often in that area, I do not recall any defoliation. However, this, like I said in my other reply, could open some very interesting situations.:ohmy: Bob Daly, you were around there at the same time, I think. What are your thoughts?:unsure:

I was flying out of Langley at that time, and there were NO C-130s spraying agent orange. What you probably saw was fuel coming out the dump tubs on each wing tip,. They did this quite commonly, at low level and bouncing around, especially in turns. or else, it was dumping fuel intentionally. I was at Langley, off and on, for three and ahalf years and never knew of agent orange activity. If anybody else does, speak up, we got a whole new group of Agent orange victims.

Hey, that\'s how Dale Earnhardt Sr lost the Daytona 500 one year:laugh: Load clear,

Quite the truth, George. I knew several loadies who came to herks from Ranch hand, and I really wonder how many of them now are the victims of Agent Orange:( And for that matter, has anyone did any research on people who may have been exposed long after they stopped the sprayin\"? I\'d be willing to say some of the vehicles, artillery and so on that i hauled, in \'72, probably at one time or other was exposed to it. :huh:

I can\'t get over how young these guys look, even with the mud and the anxiety and all that. Thanks for posting this....Ya know, for several years now i have noticed that if someone asks if I was in the Nam, and I say \"yeah\" ( most often,as with most of us, somebody has to ASK us}, and they say what branch and i say Air Force, many time you get a sort of\" Oh okay\" type response, until I say I was a loady on C-130\'s, and then it is often a whole new situation. Guys, I am comin\' to believe that the ground guys knew we would be there, somehow some way, and many of our brothers paid the price. There was a documentary on TV a ways back, and there was a marine major i think it was, praisin\' the trash haulers for keepin\' them goin\' at Khe Sahn. Ol Herk and her crews did the job and then some, but I also know that without our crew chiefs, engine guys and all the rest we would never have turned a prop. Sometimes these tributes only show the ground troops and the chopper boys, but damn it we were there too, and regardless of the ultimate outcome, we did it GOOD!!!!! :)

Yup, it WAs Andrews, dunno how i got the Wash/Nat thing. How many trips did you make that day, Bob?

I can remember havin\' a rather nice weekend planned, that is as far as i will go with THAT, and something like a Thursday or Friday morning bein\' told that a number of crews, i don\'t recall how many, were on phone alert for a I think the word was \"project.\" Sure enough we got rang up and spent probably 18 hours runnin\' back and forth. My memory seems to wanted me to say we landed at Washing BNational but I ain\'t sure. I AM certain a grand weekend got ruined. load clear

Does anyone out there remember hearing of or being involved in an operation in April 1971, in which a large number of Marines were airlifted from, I think, Cherry Point, to DC to respond to a war protest? If so, what airfield were they landed at, how many were transported, how long were they there, and how did they get back to their home station. I remember making at least three round trips on this operation ( crew day be damned), but can\'t remember any of the rest, or find any reference to the event. I ain\'t losin\' my mind am I? :unsure: