War Stories

[drine]

Is there a way to make a new sub-section called "War Stories". We've all got them and it doesn't necessarily have to be something from the military. This would be for stories, with little embelishment, from our tours in the services or whatever. Doesn't have to be in time of war either. I like hearing other folks tales and people around here have heard mine enough. I'm not trying to pry dark memories from the true vets either. Your antics in a Bangkok brothel or the weirdo you served with in "91 are more what I'm thinking. Light-hearted stuff.

[Global Gunsmithing]

not to plug another board, but I am, in my signature line we have a forum set for for this, lot of excellent reading there

[Buelligan]

I am in ,its a good idea.:America:

[k98k792]

We aren't going to add any new sections for awhile. We could do a sticky at the top of General.


Done. Post them if you got them.

[oramoc]

ok i'll make this story short my grandfather in world war one had been blinded by dirt been blasted under his eye lids. he had been near a shell that had gone off. he was hideing in a cellar of a blown up building with others that were hurt when a german officer came down in the cellar and found the hurt men he captured them but made sure they were given first aid . grandad got his sight back but spent the rest of the war working on a potatoe farm as a pow. i still have my grandads prisoner id card.

[Norton]

You asked for light hearted stuff here is mine.. I posted this before on another thread but this is still OT

I was detailed as a range cadre helper (Stooge) while waiting for my MOS school slot to open at FT Gordon.
My Job was to say
'Remove your magazine and lock your bolt to rear'Then I would run a brass rod thru the bore untill it hit the bolt carrier.
They would say '' no brass no Ammo"
I was supposed to look at their magazine pouches and make sure they did not come of the firing line with any live rounds.

A bunch of females were shooting that day and a chick who was built particularly well in the chest area came off the range.
This was still the time of the old green uniforms you tucked in at the waist.
So I was looking this girl's chest, holding the barracks rod and I say my bit

Then I just hear ringing and smell powder.
I looked up and see this M 16 barrel a few inches from my steel pot and this Purto Rican girl's suprised face.
I think she mouthed sorry, I don't know becasue I could not hear.
The real range cadre rolled up to the firing line in a hurry to see what had happend. I tried to explain but the quickly sized up what happend and yelled at her and sent her on back to her PLT.
The put me in the front lean and rest for what seemed like a long time. At least it gave my ear time to have that ringing stop.
They latter admitted that they too were looking at that particular troop themselves. But that I should have been more alert as she could have shot me in the head I was far more careful with the next group. But none were built quite like Torrez

[turbothis]

i have a vietnam buddy and his stories he tells are not light hearted but very interesting for technique...

[k98k792]

I am moving this to the history section,seems like the logical place.

[turmanator]

Mine is not a war story so much as...well you'll see.

As some know I am part of a historical group in Houston
and we portray mainly WWII and some Viet Nam era soldiers
and encampments for air shows, displays, some reenactment.
Anyways, about 10 yrs ago we got invited to a talk at a local VFW
hall in west Houston. The speaker was Dave Severance, the CO
of Easy Company 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, 5th Marine Division. (the flag raisers).
He helped write Flags of Our fathers ...

Anyway, me and my dad (both former Marines), my 10 yr old son and my dads girlfriend went. The place had about 50 old Marines in their white shirts and red hats. We started out by singing "The Marine Corps Hymn". It was humbling. There was Para-Marines there for gods sake! Then we all had to stand up and state our name, rank and where we served. Holy crap, Guadal Canal, Tarawa, Bougaineville, Guam, Iwo, you name it. I was pretty embarassed to just say "Camp Pendelton"
Anyway, there was one Sailor there. Poor guy....!

Mr. Severance went over the whole thing, the landing and everything...
My son got a picture with him and got a Flag Raising photo signed....

Hell of a night. I had tears in my eyes during the Hymn....One of my proudest moments.:America:

[Phirebug]

i'm not sure i want to tell some of mine because some of you are still serving and we may end up in the same unit one day...

Last tour i did get arrested for driving the commander's truck onto the runway at Anaconda though. :( I just made a wrong turn but holy CRAP did the air force MP's get excited!! they hauled me out of the truck at gunpoint and threw me onto the pavement and then handcuffed me and brought me back to the provost marshall's office.

This was about a week after we got a new First Sergeant, and this was the first of many "interesting discussions" that the two of us had.

[drine]

We were in W.Germany 1985. Our company was the designated Ready Reaction something so we were on lock down for the week. Bradley's and Jeeps sat in front of the barracks loaded and ready.
The Kaserne next door was an Arty company (some kind of med. range rocket) and they had females. We see through a window from our barracks that there is some hanky-panky going on in one of the rooms.
Since we all liked anything that hurled a projectile, we had slinshots bought from the local gun shop. We move to the top floor (rec room) and start pelting the loving couples window with pebbles.
Now this is a good 50 yards so we may get 10% on target but all of the sudden CRASH! The window shatters, the female screams, and we nearly piss ourselves.
Then the trouble started. A huge number of MPs descend on the scene. Of course we had noise and light discipline but someone figured it must have come from our AO. We had long since retreated to our bunks and were sound asleep:sleepy: when the MPs began checking every room. All evidence had been tossed on the roof and to my knowledge, those items are still there.

[CrossFire]

Ubon in 1971-72 was a bizzare place. Not sure what I'd want to admit to.:icon_confused:
I was just a 19 year old riding an AC-130.
Of course we did our share to make Bangkok what it is today.:America:
We had a dick-head who kept picking on our crew chief. One day this butt hole was driving a garbage truck of to the dump or where ever they took the trash as we were setting around waiting for a preflight briefing.
A buddy had a 25mm flare gun and aimlessly lofts a flare in the guys general direction.
Damn if the flare don't land smack in the back of the Truck!
The guy finally sees the smoke and like the idiot he was starts driving faster!
He disappears over a small rise and all we see is growing smoke as we scatter!
When we got back the next morning we heard he was bagged for wrecking a truck and no one bought his story about someone lobbing a flare at him.

[bladeworks123]

Been wanting to relate this story,,,,it's not mine, but for some reason I am particularly fond of it as it was told to me by a close friend who was a member of the 7th USAAF....this is from the notes I took.....

WWII, Pacific theater, Tarawa, Japanese airfield at Bititu. In late 1944, sometime just before another missed Christmas, the US decided to embark on the taking of the Gilbert and Marianas Islands for the purpose of establishing air bases from which to attack the Japanese mainland. The first one of these was Tarawa. The plan included amphibious landing of Marines to take the island, landing of construction engineers to repair any damage to the captured airfield, and the landing of elements of 7th USAAF to ready the fields, and begin landing US fighters and bombers. There were, however, a lot more Japanese on the Island than the planners had accounted for. There was also a "little snafu involving someones ability to correctly forecast tidal flow." This was further complicated by the assault starting four hours later than it was supposed to. In the rush to catch up, some of the construction battalion and all the 7th AAF got put on the beaches before the Marines had secured the island. The 7th AAF guys were issued .30 cal M1 carbines and four bandoliers of ammo. When they landed they dug in on the beach and for the next two days they repeatedly followed the tide in and out with their fox holes. Late on the second day, a squad of US Marines showed up and informed the group of 7th AAF guys that they needed all the weapons and ammo they had. The ranking officer in charge of the 7th unit told them he was not inclined to comply and leave his guys inadequately armed. The Sergeant in charge of the Marines told him "OK, you have two choices, keep your weapons and ammo and fight the Japs that are getting ready to take this God damned beach back, or give them to us so we can keep them from getting here." One of the PFC's immediately stood up and handed the Sergeant his M1 and his four bandoliers. The Sergeant handed him an 03 Springfield that had a bayonet and a four power scope mounted on it together with a half a bandolier of ammo, and said "Here, keep this piece of ******** til I get back, I can't hit anything with this god damned scope gadget anyway." The others followed suit with the other Marines, including the commander of the AAF unit.
The Marines took the Island, and the 7th AAF boys began moving into the airfield over the next few days. One day the PFC spotted the Marine Sergeant who had traded him rifles and "Probably kept me alive because of it". He went up to the Sergeant and said "Hey Marine, you want your rifle back?" The Sergeant said he really didn't want it back, and jokingly said, "I'll let you keep the SOB for five bucks." The PFC reached in his pocket and counted out five of seven silver dollars he had won in a card game on ship. The Marine laughed and said as he trampled off, "It's your problem now, if I were you I'd rip that piece of crap telescope off of it!" The PFC noticed that the Marine was now shouldering a BAR and a .45 Thompson, and thought to himself that he probably wouldn't want the '03 back either.
The AAF PFC carried that same rifle all the way to Okinawa and the end of the war. When they were leaving Okinawa, he stripped the stock off of the rifle, tied the bayonet to the side of it and hid it away in the center of his duffle bag. About day three aboard the ship he was on, they called for a search of the ship for the purpose of dumping all contraband weapons over the side. His rifle was not found, and he made it all the way back home with it.
For all the years that followed, he kept the rifle, hunted with it, and killed many animals with it. He changed out the scope for a more modern one, and put a his own hand made "Huntin' stock" on it. He taught two sons two hunt with it. He often said "I wonder sometimes if that Marine Sergeant made it home, I'd sure like to run into him some day, and ask him if he would like to buy his rifle back." The PFC and story teller, died at age 86 and one of the sons still has the rifle to this day, scope, bayonet and all and has taught his sons to hunt with it.
The "Marines '03", as it has always been referred to, is retired now and in the process of being restored to it's original issue configuration stock,,,,and the little "piece of crap" four power scope is going back on. As for the two left over silver dollars..... they are still kept wrapped in the now empty bandolier together with sea shells, a tobacco can of Tarawa sand, shrapnel, small gun parts and all the other treasures the PFC collected from every island on the way to the Japanese empire.
This is just one story about the men and rifles that made this country what it is today...Keep telling these stories, never let them die....We need their spirit and ideals to live and breath again, now more than ever. That's why this thread is an excellent idea. Thanks:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

[brewskzilla]

Anyone who served at MCAS Beaufort after 1990 may have heard this story from base indoctrination. My 15 minutes of fame, as it was...

We'll call my two buddies Rob and Allen. We'll call them that because those are their first names, and that's all you need to know. We had been in Beaufort about three days, all arriving from NAS LeMoore, where they teach sailors and Marines to fix FA-18s. Perhaps we had been there as long as five days... I dont really remember. Rob had been driving this van he was thinking of purchasing from a fellow Marine. It was pretty cool looking. It looked like the A-Team van. No windows except for the front. Black with red trim. You know the van. Inside the van was the gaudiest, longest shag carpet you've ever seen. Up the walls and on the ceiling, even. Blonde colored and hideous. The shag was, no exageration, at least three inches long. This is important.
We were new to the base, and the only thing we really knew that there was to do locally was to go fishing. We decided to do so. Rob needed to go to town and get some fishing gear. I told him I had plenty, but he wanted his own, and I kind of understood. Allen caught wind that we were going into town and wanted to go with us, but needed to stop at the MFCU (Marine Federal Credit Union) first. Since it was right outside the gate of the base, nobody protested and we stopped there. We just thought he needed to go to the ATM or to make a withdrawl or something. What we DIDNT know was that he was actually opening an account, and would be longer than we expected.
Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Rob and I were getting bored. He looked around the van we were sitting in and said "You know what? I'm buying this ride. And the first thing I'm doing is getting rid of this (expletive) carpet..." He began to rip the aforementioned hideous shag carpet from the walls and ceiling of the van.
Now, I'm not one to blame fate for anything, especially when human stupidity is involved, but at that moment, ZZ Top came on the radio. Rob cranked it up. I, trying to get a laugh from the guy, took my scissors out of my tacklebox and cut me a rather uncanny ZZ Top beard from the carpet and stuck it to my face. (the adhesive was still sticky...) Rob saw what I had done and laughed. He decided to make one for himself. (you see where this is going, dont you?)
We sat there in the driver and passenger seat of the van, air guitaring and mimicking the ZZ Top "circle wave." Then the song was over. We looked up and noticed Allen, finally emerging from the Credit Union, coming toward us in somewhat of an apprehensive trot. He got to the van, got in and said "We better get out of here... Some lady just came in and said there's two guys outside putting masks on..." Now Rob and I had already taken the beards off and thrown them in the back of the van with the other hideous blonde shag carpet scraps we had removed from the interior of the otherwise magnificent vehicle, so Allen was completely clueless as to what was about to happen, but Rob and I looked at each other and said "You're right. We'd better go..." About that time, every cop in South Carolina came screaming into the parking lot. Beaufort PD, Sheriff's dept, Marine MPs, NIS, South Carolina Highway Patrol, or whatever they're called... About thirty cop cars. They surrounded the van. Right about now, Allen starts to say "They think it's US!" He looked at Rob and I who had already assumed the position with our hands on our heads, and we were both laughing... Nervously.
We were put on the ground, searched, the van was searched. The only weapon they found was my fillet knife in my tackle box, which they confiscated. They DID find the beards in the pile of scrap carpet... We explained to them what had happened, and after a few minutes we convinced them that we had merely been incredibly stupid, considering our current location... They let us go, but we had to go see the skipper the following monday. I was first. I marched into his office, snapped to attention and reported as ordered. He stood up, glared at me for a couple of seconds, then could no longer contain his composure... He began laughing... He then extended his hand to me and said "Congratulations. You just put the whole city of Beaufort South Carolina in a panic. Welcome to VMFA-251. I assume you wont be doing anything that stupid again. That is all."

[Norton]

LOL that sounds like a movie script for a old Chevy Chase vacation movie

[Sapheit warrior]

I was in the Coast Guard. I’m originally from Fayetteville, NC which is why I didn’t join the Army. I got in July 2000. My first unit was the Coast Guard Cutter Dallas. The larger cutter class in the fleet and based out of Charleston, SC. We were on the Old Navy Base which at the time was shared by the Border Patrol and Detney’s Shipyard. North Charleston is not that great of an area. Some of our guys would get mugged up at local gas stations and such.

A few weeks after I reported to the Dallas I was invited to a party at one of the Boatswain’s house. See these guys fished every day after work off the pier. One night while they were on duty they noticed a boat load of big shrimp in the water under the Border Patrol pier. Thinking about the potential catch they made a box style trap and tossed it in the water. After work they checked it out and it was slam full of shrimp. They had to get help to get this thing on the pier. They went home and cleaned all the shrimp and the next day at Quarters they invited everyone off the boat. They had a keg of beer, about 60 lbs of shrimp, it was a great party. That night we floated the keg, good eats and slept very, very well.

The next morning about 30 minutes before liberty expired we got to work. We walked down the pier and noticed a 2 local sheriff’s boats beside the pier right where these guys had put the shrimp box. We thought the BM’s were in for it because they kept looking in the water for something. After watching for a bit longer we saw the one of the cops drag a dead guy out of the water on to deck of the boat. That fella must have been there for 2 weeks. Not a pretty sight.

Some folks got really bothered by this to the point that the Skipper had called the work life counselors to the ship around lunch time to talk about what had happened. I started thinking about it and it’s really just the circle of life which at the time was the only thing I could think of that would keep me from throwing up. I was wondering why those shrimp were so big.

This happened my first month in the fleet.

[brewskzilla]

EWWWWWWW! Dang, dude...:spew:

[jfowl31]

Dead dude shrimp... sounds like a dish at Joe's Crab Shack.

I don't like thinking about what the stuff I eat... eats. Just what it tastes like.

[Planning]

back in june of 1968 we had been fighting for several days and needed some help. GEN WESTMORLAND agreed that we needed a little help and sent the 101st abn to help us out. they also brought in a battery of 105's and 155's. there were a couple of heuy's shot down. there is a picture of one being carried out.

we got word there was about 10 c-130's loaded with troops heading our way. our landing strip would only hold about 5 of them (c-130's) at a time. we also had c-123's and c-7a's there on the strip, so it was getting very crowded quickly.

my job was to park them so if one got hit with a mortar we could get the others out. as i was giving hand singles to the pilot of the second where to park his a/c a jeep came off the first a/c and drove up to me. it was a fully inclosed vehicle. there was a driver and a major sitting in the front passanger seat. the major wanted some kind of instructions and i told him i was busy at the moment. he told me he was a major and i couldn't talk to him that was. i told him to "get off my f___ king air field i had stuff to do here"
they left and i parked all the a/c.
i when into the building and opened the door and this army major got in my face and started to read me the riot act. i just stood there. when he got thru i said "YES SIR". when he started to sit down one of the AF BIRD col. stood him at attention and proceded to read him the riot act. (not going into details) he explained that when i was out there doing my job on the landing strip i out ranked him and anyone else. he said "YES SIR" to the col.

i was still holding the door open while all this was going on and then stepped inside and closed the door. on the other side of the door was GEN WESTMORLAND and GEN ABRAMS. they got up to leave and GEN ABRAMS put his hand on my shoulder and thanked me for doing my job. he then turned to the major and said to him it was time to go and let us do our jobs. i almost felt sorry for the major ( NOT).

i added a couple pictures,
notice the hills around the landing strip, they were full of NVA that were shooting down on us along with mortars all day long.

ron

[Norton]

Great story Planning and I like the photo Was the Army or AF flying th C 7s ?

[Planning]

Great story Planning and I like the photo Was the Army or AF flying th C 7s ?

the air force took over the c-7a's from the army ( i think it was in late 65 or 66 i don't remember for sure now)and in 1968 the AF was flying them.

[Planning]

in the mid 60's we started getting the c-141's. part of our mission was to train pilots and loadmaster's in cargo air drop and personnel drops. about half of our team members were loadmasters and sometimes we would fly along just for fun and watch the drops from inside the a/c.

this time were were doing personel drops. maybe 150 t0 160 new just out of airborne school troops. this was the new loadmasters first personel drop.

while we were getting ready for the drop the first light came on and the troops got ready, then hookup, then the next light and then about 3 min out from the drop zone they were ready, man standing on the door ramp. the new loadmaster wanted to tell the first guy in line "good luck" and slapped him on the shoulder. in less than a min. they were all gone. we are still 2+ min's out from the drop zone. we spent the next 3 days and nights hunting for troops.
ron

[Norton]

great story planning

[brewskzilla]

YEE HEE HEE! Once they make field grade they think they're god... Awesome story!

[Airmedic6]

Thanks for the story and the pics

[Airmedic6]

Thought I would add a "light" story my Dad use to tell us when we were kids as he never spoke much about his service in WWII- he was a 50 Cal gunner- 4th Marines. The story goes that after spending quite a bit of time up on the line repeling banzai attacks, little rest, food and all the other inconveniences of jungle warfare they were relieved for so hot chow and a bath- that night as it was getting dark as only it can in the Pacific they heard this movement coming toward them and they were suppose to be in a rear area- they immediately formed hasty defensive positions as the sounds grew louder nerves janggled. Just as they were about to open up on the infiltrators it was discovered to be a local farmer driving his heard of cattle to a safer grazing area- he never told us what happened after that but I'm sure the farmer was directed to a safer area

[Tanker Bob]

I was compelled to write a scary story based on my experiences for a newspaper once, and this is what I came up with. True story ..

The moon hung overhead like a big chinese lantern, sometimes casting an eerie glow across the rice paddies outside our compound, at other times covered by the dark and silent clouds that foretold of another monsoon on the way. I sat behind the big .50 caliber machinegun and scanned the rings of barbed wire surrounding our little piece of South Vietnam known as Firebase Charlie. The year was 1969 and I was 20 years old, on guard duty at 2:00 in the morning somewhere deep in the jungle and eager to hit the sack.
The night had been quiet and I stayed alert by picking out objects with the big Starlight night vision scope mounted atop the gun. Using only starlight and moonlight, the device electronically intensified the faintest glow to where the gunner could literally see in the dark, an amazing innovation at the time. The images it presented were fuzzy and green, so the image on its tiny eyepiece had a weird and spooky look to it. Every so often I'd fire off a hand flare, watching it rocket up to a thousand feet in the air and pop its tiny parachute. Then the bright burning flare would hang over the jungle for a few minutes before it burned out and fell into the darkness. On the way down, as it lit the night like a stadium floodlight, it cast moving shadows that danced like ghosts behind the intense glare. It was a night of eery, haunting images like that and of staring outside the firebase perimeter through the Starlight scope. The silence of the jungle was occasionally punctuated by the sound of distant artillery fire and faraway bursts of automatic weapons fire. It felt surreal and I was in a strange mood.
The relief guard finally showed up and I turned the fortified position over to him. I grabbed my M3A1 submachinegun and headed for the guards' bunker. As an armor crewman in 2nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, we were issued the compact M3A1 instead of the M-16 rifle so we could move around with it easier inside the cramped interior of our M-48A3 tanks. Known as the Grease Gun for its resemblance to the lubricating tool, it fired the powerful .45 caliber bullet from a 30-round magazine.
I was the only person in the guard bunker, since the other guards had returned to their own cots after their final shift. I still had one more turn on guard at 4:00 a.m., so I settled into the small, dark shelter for some sleep. The bunker was simply a big box made of heavy wood, then half-buried and covered with sandbags. One end was open with a short entry space to stop shrapnel from slicing in if mortar rounds exploded nearby. The only other opening was a straight piece of three-inch drainage pipe that ran from a corner on the dirt floor out to the barbed wire. The one light inside was my little green Army flashlight with a red filter over the lens. I hung it overhead with a strip of parachute cord like a tiny chandelier.
Slinging my grease gun over the end of the cot, I then ate a couple small cans of C-rations, leaving one about half-empty before deciding to get some rest, rolled up my flak-jacket for a pillow and was fast asleep.
I awoke a while later, irritated by a tiny noise somewhere in the pitch-dark bunker. It's curious that such a small sound would arouse me when the sounds of helicopters, jet fighters, artillery shells flying overhead and small arms fire were always part of the local ambience. But those sounds were generally far off and infrequent.
This sound was right here, right now, with me in the bunker and it was getting louder. From an almost inaudible scratching, it increased a little at a time and was soon joined by a vague tapping sound. Wide awake now, my mind began to race with thoughts of the deadly poisonous Bamboo Viper, known as Two-Step because, once bitten, you died before your second stride. There were some big-ass spiders out there, too, some really big fuzzy, fangy, dang-that-hurts tarantulas and don't forget the giant centipedes!
By now it seemed the sounds had increased not only in volume and tempo, but in numbers, too, what sounded like dozens of tiny feet pattering around me in the blackness.
My heart raced. I'd made it through ten months in the war so far and I wasn't about to get killed by some poison critter, so I slowly began to feel across the bunk towards my grease gun, waiting and ready with a full magazine and the bolt cocked back to fire quickly. My other hand crept towards the flashlight, since I needed to see my enemy before I could hit him … it …......... them.
I connected with both at about the same time, running my hands along their sides until I could feel the trigger on the one and the switch on the other. As I raised the gun to the ready, just before I flicked the light on, there was a sudden, tense, dead silence. I was being watched.
In the total quiet, the little click of the flashlight switch sounded like a rifle shot. The batteries were nearly dead and the bulb shined weakly, but in its pathetic red glow there showed dozens of pairs of tiny red eyes … below me on the floor … beside me on the walls … and overhead in the beams.
Rats.
I panicked at about the same moment they did, squeezing the trigger in the same instant they bolted for the drain pipe like a school of herring fleeing a shark. The submachinegun's muzzle flashed in the dark like a strobe light at a rock concert and the hammering sound reverberated like a Fender Stratocaster on steroids. I didn't let up and the mass of filthy, scrambling rodents soon plugged the end of the pipe, so they turned for the entrance, panic stricken and screaming a horrid rat-herd screech of terror. Wood splinters and rat guts flew in every direction as dust and smoke filled the bunker in a violent orgasm of concentrated chaos.
And then it stopped. As the last bullet cleared the muzzle and its empty cartridge bounced off my empty helmet on the floor beside me, the last living rat cleared the sandbags and was gone into the dark night. Around me lay squirming, wriggling shards of dead and dying rodents everywhere, especially by the drain pipe where they clumped together into a nasty pile of sticky gore. The bunker walls were perforated like a country road-sign and my ears were ringing like the Liberty Bell the day it cracked.
But it wasn't over.
Just as I crawled out of the bunker, the whole firebase lit up with machineguns, grenade launchers, rifle fire and hand flares. Everywhere I looked my fellow soldiers were laying into their weapons and saturating the jungle outside the firebase with all the firepower they could muster.
As if we were under attack.
My best guess was that the ruckus I raised in the bunker was mistaken for enemy fire and everyone awakened by it simply jumped to their guns to fight back. So I joined in, sticking a fresh magazine into my grease gun and taking a position up next to the bunker. I suppose I went through another three or four magazines before it quieted down. I went back into the bunker and cleaned up the mess, scooping the dead rats into an empty sandbag, then I threw it onto our trash burning pile. No one ever mentioned all the bullet holes inside the bunker, or the cot with one end all shot up. And nobody was hurt, other than a pile of rats.
But to this day, my ears are still ringing.

[Planning]

a few more pictures of a day in vietnam 1968.
i have more for later in the day and the next few day of some of the fighting going on. i just need to find them.
i will post them .

ron

[chili]

Back in 1989 I was in the 4th year of my assignment to the Security Police Squadron at Charleston AFB. We had on alert some fighters (F-4D's from the 107 Fighter Interceptor Group, New York ANG) that were part of the old NORAD air defense system. These planes would scramble from time to time. Some occasions it was a drill, training, lost aircraft etc. But on this day in particular The Boys from Niagara Falls found this, a Soviet Tu-95 easing down the South Carolina coast. Quite an exciting day. One of the crew gave me the below photo.

28349

[Norton]

There I was..In the last days of the COLD WAR
Wouldn't be prudent to fly TU 95s down the east coast.
Cool picture Chili

[RicePaddyDaddy]

Does anybody remember several planes crashing together in the California desert sometime in early or mid 1967 ? They were taking photos of different types of aircraft flying together and something went wrong and there was a crash.I was in Barstow heading to RVN at the time,we heard what sounded like thunder on a sunny day and were told later it was the crash we heard.My memory is getting fuzzy so take that in consideration.

[mitchstoner]

posted by RicePaddyDaddy
Does anybody remember several planes crashing together in the California desert sometime in early or mid 1967 ? They were taking photos of different types of aircraft flying together and something went wrong and there was a crash.I was in Barstow heading to RVN at the time,we heard what sounded like thunder on a sunny day and were told later it was the crash we heard.My memory is getting fuzzy so take that in consideration.

Would you mean 1966 instead of 1967? I wonder if you might have heard the crash of the XB-70 Valkyrie prototype/research aircraft #2, following a collision with an F104. This happened 8 June 1966, and the aircraft went down north of Barstow. The pilot of the F-104 and co-pilot of the XB-70 were killed, the XB-70 pilot survived with serious injuries.

The XB-70 was an awesome aircraft, Mach III capable with a range of 10,000 miles at an altitude of 70,000 feet. But it was being developed at the time our Air Force was beginning to realize it was no longer feasible for manned aircraft to penetrate Soviet airspace to drop nukes. The program was canceled, then restarted, then reduced to 3 research aircraft. The surviving example is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xb70

[kagans]

I gotta post this before I forget. My great grand father and great grand uncle both fought the Pacific during WWII. Family lore says he was one of the guys that raised the first flag on Okinawa before the famous one. His brother never came home. Some say he died in action but we got a letter years later stating he didn't feel like he could return home. There was this story of a Hong Kong banker who befriended my great grandfather writing him thanking him and wanting to keep in touch. However, my great grandmother hated the war so much because it took so much away from the family that she never let the letters get to him. Sometimes I think it would be cool to try and find that family. Family lore also says that my great grandfather was awarded the MOH but never received it. My grandfather was a Marine scout sniper that Enlisted just before the Korean War. As a kid he got hit in the eye with one of those metal spin tops and had lost sight in that eye. Despite that injury he fooled everyone until some one finally found out and he was honorably discharged. My grandmother told me stories of moving to California just before the war. My dad's dad joined the Texas guard to avoid being drafted and being sent. My father has told me stories of living on the base in Corpus Christi playing with all the tanks and jeeps.

I forgot to mention we still have a captured Japanese hand squeeze flashlight and a Japanese flag.