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The Love Chronicles: A Vietnam Experience

Posted: June 21, 2013 in Life, Uncategorized
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A VIETNAM EXPERIENCE

I found some declassified documents, which gives a snapshot of our missions and just how busy we were during Linebacker 2&3. We were deployed to Cubi Point in the Philippines from Iwakuni Japan, our home base. We flew all missions out of Da Nang, but for two reasons we kept our main base of operations in the Philippines. Reason one; President Nixon had made the statement that all combat Marines had been pulled out of the Da Nang area of Viet Nam. So we were told to grow our hair and mustaches long, basically a loose form of Navy regs. We could wear any combination of Army and Marine jungles we could lay our hands on.  No dog tags, no insignia, ID card in boot, no covers.  Reason two; the NVA had put a sizable bounty on our jets because besides electronically protecting all the fighters and B52 bombers going up north to wreak havoc on their ability to wage war, we were also very good at finding SAM missile sites and directing strikes to within yards of where they were sitting. So every black pajama clad lad around Da Nang was lobbing rockets at our flight line. As a result we were not popular with our neighbors! We were not allowed liberty in Nam; we were required to stay in our operational area, no gabbing with strangers. We could go to chow in the Army Mess once a day, our choice. We could not have any barracks, chow hall, or supply, because we were not actually there! The rest of the time we ate whatever we could scrounge. If we were asked by anyone who we were we instructed to tell them we were Army truck drivers. This did not fool anyone, but the basic reason we dressed and looked like we did is so a photographer could not take a picture and slap it on the cover of Life Magazine showing Marines were indeed in Da Nang.  Our jets did have Marine in big bold letters down the side, but hey, it was the military, what can I say! Once the jets had run all the missions and hours they could handle without falling apart, we took them back to Cubi, and a new crew with fresh jets headed for Da Nang.  The crew coming back stayed on the flight line in the PI and repaired the jets they had brought back until they were ready to roll, after a good meal of course in the Navy chow hall. Then 12 hours off, then repeat. We usually had worked a 48 hour shift or better, but it was a 3 hour flight to and from Da Nang, and I would be asleep as soon as wheels up on the C130 both ways.

These jets were EA6A Grumman intruders. There were several versions of the A6, the EA version was an electronic warfare bird, very advanced back then. Everything on it was Final Secret, the other Sgt. from Avionics, Sgt. Regan, was the only other person I know of beside myself to have this clearance. We both were Sgts working out of Avionics electric shop. Except for countermeasures, radar, and the radio, we were responsible for everything else that had electrons running through it in the aircraft. All of the wiring, flight instruments, fuel systems, flight computers, visual display consoles, engine wiring, landing gear, anything that had a wire or an electric actuator or switch, and on and on. This aircraft carried no conventional weapons. Where other versions of this jet would carry extra fuel to act as an emergency refuel stations, on ours this  was a computer room. All of the skin on the top of the fuselage came off and was full of computers, huge wire looms, and signal feeds. Basically we were the first ones to check out any gripe on the aircraft, and then once we determined it was not our equipment, or the wiring or power supply going to someone else’s equipment, we could tell them to pull their equipment and repair or replace it. I had also been trained in how to test and repair the ASN-66 flight computer, but I hated sitting in an air-conditioned van with no windows fixing the same thing all day. So I was never so happy as the day I got transferred to Avionics. Much harder and more technical, but never boring, I loved my job!  By the time I was a L/Cpl I had a license for everything in the squadron with wheels. Trucks, jeeps, tractors, support equipment of all kinds, you name it I was licensed to drive it. Then I got the only one I really cared about, a seat license for the EA6A. This meant I could climb in, fire it up, and test engines, cockpit equipment, and the like. I could go to the compass rose and set the remote compass and transmitters to spec, the compass rose was a big huge plate that you took the jet to out and away form any metal buildings or other aircraft that could possible disturb the electromagnetic fields. It turned and was incremented and set for magnetic north at it’s starting point. All compass settings had to be done with all systems on and engines running to be accurate, as both the cockpit compass and flight computer used a signal from a remote compass transmitter located in the top of the tail section. I loved this part of my job. Anytime anyone fixed anything in the cockpit or anything that required the jet to be fired up to test, I got the call. I was the only tech who went to Nam and the PI to have a seat license, so I got to play a lot.

When we first got there and started combat missions, we had no support systems in place. We did however have, what was called fleet marine force priority one.  This basically meant that if any other A6 squadron on a carrier or anything that landed either in Nam or the PI, if it had anything on it that we could use, we were allowed to take it, as long as we gave them the broken piece of equipment so they could have it repaired. All A6 aircraft shared a lot of the same cockpit instrumentation. Both times the carrier Enterprise came into port on a liberty run we stripped both the aircraft and their supply depot down to the bone. The second time they came into port they refused to give me or the marines I had brought with me access to the liberty boat so that we would not be able to come aboard and wreak havoc. The result was that they received an order from the Admiral in charge of fleet marine forces in Westpac that I was to be treated as though I were he. It turned out that since we had started our electronic protection of the flights going to Haiphong harbor and other strategic places in North Vietnam they had not lost a single aircraft to SAM missiles. The month prior they had lost 21 aircraft, or so I heard. Anyway, I got all my broken junk carried on board; all the new stuff carried off and loaded in my 6×6 and the way we went! The two officers were yes sir, and no sir, and packing and carrying and yes, saluting me. I never did anything but stand by. I had on my rain hat with a Sgt. chevron in plain site on the front panel, so I was sure they knew my rank. Of course I did not know what orders they had been given, actually did not find out for months, but that was about as scared as I have ever been. You would have to be in the Corps to know why. I would rather have had to dodge rockets.

We stayed busy for months on end. I was nearing the end of my tour in Westpac when I went on the Cubi detachment and on to Da Nang. I had just picked up L/Cpl just before we left Japan, so as an incentive to extend they gave me and Regan both a meritorious promotion to Cpl. They needed us to run avionics but we had to be an NCO in order to do that. When we started getting short again, they gave us both meritorious promotions to Sgt., of course with the proviso that we extend again. So in a about a six month period I went from PFC to Sgt., a bump of three ranks!  A few months after that, or maybe less, I never knew what month it was and did not care, but the CO, Major Carlton, got orders from Command to send us home before we became unstable from being overseas so long. To late for that! We had both got in trouble, which I won’t go into, but the CO knew about it, so he just gave us open orders and we took off for Japan. Since we had open orders we did not have to report anywhere at any specified time, so we just went to dispersing, drew pay, and went out in Iwakuni and partied for a month, then we checked in, checked out, went home and took 30 days leave before checking in to our last duty stations.

Now some of this had been told in other articles I have written, but I was on a roll, so you got what you got. I am going to try to paste some pages I downloaded from the Internet, secret documents about our missions that have recently been declassified.  I will try and highlight anything I think may be of importance, but they are historically interesting, at least to me.

Keep in mind as you read the parts documenting our lost pilots that we knew our pilots intimately. In the air wing the pilots want to know who it is that will be keeping their aircraft in the sky. So they talked to us willingly and wanted to get to know our capabilities and us. So I knew both pilots who went down off the coast of North Vietnam. Because I had licenses to drive so many kinds of vehicles on base, I qualified to go to school and get a license to drive in Japan off base, which was very hard to get. As a result I was the only person, enlisted or officer, who had a car. So I was asked to pick up a lot of officers wives at the Hiroshima airport, some who had places not far from my place out in town. So I had a good cry when no one was looking.

The first two pages are our orders to Vietnam, describes our first combat missions in which I was the ranking NCO in Nam the first day of strikes. Further on down you will see mention of our MIA, our mission sorties, hours of operation and missions. Please pay specific attention to the last page of documents where I have put the brackets. When they are talking about maintenance and how well we performed, the supervision was primarily Sgt Regan and myself, however that is probably not who they meant. If you could take a snapshot of the flight line in the PI or Da Nang on any given day the highest rank you will ever see is Sgt, except for pilots of course, and the only two of those you will ever see is Regan or myself. The other Sgts rarely went in country, and in PI were too busy drinking coffee and hanging out in the Avionics hut polishing their chevrons. The support squadron that joined had Sgts that outranked both of us as we had just been made Sgts, but we were the official Sgts in charge, which pissed some of them off. However two of the Avionics techs that came with the support squadron turned out to be two of the best men we had. ImageImageImageImageImageImage

The Love Chronicles, Foreign Students Afraid

Posted: April 17, 2013 in News and politics, Uncategorized
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Foreign Students Afraid

John Kerry recently stated that foreign students are afraid of gun violence in the U.S. and so are coming in fewer numbers as a result. The article I read was not very good at nailing down any point he was trying to make, but as he is aligned with president Obama, you can predict with a certain amount of certainty that he is talking about the need for gun legislation. Legislation aimed at curtailing certain firearms and their accessories. I will examine a couple of subjects today. One will be about my opinions on gun control, and secondly, the real reason behind fears of foreign students who are considering an American education, which has several parts, the least of which is the actual guns themselves!

First I firmly believe that the second amendment does in actuality guaranty our right to possess and bear arms. I think that all states should adopt gun regulations similar to Idaho. In Idaho, for example, if you apply for a license to carry, you are guaranteed the permit within 90 days. Now this is of course if you are not a convicted felon. You do not have to prove special circumstances however. Even so, as long as you carry in the open, and adhere to local statutes, such as weapons not being loaded inside city limits, you do not have to even have a permit.

I also do believe however, that anyone buying a gun, or wanting a carry permit, should be required to go through a mandated background check for criminal record, mental status, and the like. Sure, career criminals will find ways to acquire guns and bypass this process, but that does not mean it is not invaluable in keeping documented loonies from getting a gun. It has been argued that most guns used in mass killings have been purchased legally. I am sure that is true, but why all the fuss over registering your weapon or submitting to background checks. I have relatives that will tell you that is the first step to the government taking them away from you. I do not believe this is even possible. Say they show up, you tell them you were crossing a stream up in Hell Bent for Leather country, lost your footing and had to ditch all you weapons in order not to drown! There is squat they can do as long as you use your brain housing group for more than a hat rack! There are so many weapons all ready out there, that the gov’t getting them is not going to happen.

Second argument is so we can fight back if the gov’t goes south and we need to protect ourselves. Well, if the gov’t ever went so far over the deep end that we need to start an armed conflict, I don’t care how many assault weapons, fully automatic machine guns and the like you own, you will lose against a drone attack, or maybe a heavily armed F18, or even a few missiles coming your way, and you haven’t even had an enemy you could shoot at yet, and your just an ash heap.  We do need to keep our right to bear and own arms, but to register and be checked out to see who and what we might be in relation to our mental health or our criminal record before we can buy, no problem with that. I believe every citizen should have the right to carry, and my next section will tell you why.

The second point I would like to make is the real reason that not only foreigners but also we at home fear violence in our country. It has nothing to do with our gun ownership or our rights under the 2nd amendment. Gun violence has gone up in countries like the United Kingdom after it deprived the public of most of their gun rights. The criminal element had no problems getting them however, thus the populace was made even more vulnerable, and there are statistics to back that up! The real reason is that gangs in America are responsible for the overwhelming majority of gun violence. They are actively engaged in prostitution, slavery, illegal gun trade, drugs, illegal gambling, and are even organized across state lines and borders! They should be classified as terrorists and hunted and prosecuted as such. This is the prime reason we are not safe in America. If I, a white man, was to walk the streets, day or night, but especially at night in certain areas of Compton or Watts, my chances of being alive would not be good. At the very least robbed and or hospitalized.  This is not politically correct, but it is accurate. I have personally been in these areas and barely survived. I was lost at the time; I was not looking for trouble. I will not admit to anything in this blog, but there was a reason I escaped unharmed, and damn lucky I was armed with that reason.

Now I used the examples I did because I had personal experiences there. But I am not picking on any particular race. Gangs exist in all ethnicities. Yep whites are an ethnicity and not exempt. Some of the most heinous and worst examples of gang violence and organized crime come from white gangs. So again I reiterate, gangs should classified as terrorists and pursued as such.

Just one last thought, who and why did gangs become so prevalent. The reasons are as diverse as the gangs themselves. But one overriding reason does come to mind, the American public! Yes, you, me, everyone! If you look back to the not so distant past, where the gangs are most prevalent there used to be Spartan neighborhoods, the inhabitants wanting nothing more than education and career opportunities. But affluent America did not want certain segments to live in their neighborhoods, or go to their schools, or even work alongside them. So gradually neighborhoods of people began to emerge that had disillusioned populations about any chance or change. This in turn caused an increase in alcohol and drug use as an escape from the depression this caused. Naturally crime became a way to earn a living when nothing else seemed available except as an underpaid menial laborer or other subservient job.  These gangs became more sophisticated, more violent, and more daring as they discovered that a lot of what they did would be overlooked as long as they had the sense to stay out of affluent neighborhoods except to supply them with the fruits of their endeavor, drugs and prostitution being the most prevalent. As I stated gangs are as varied as the makeup of the American citizens themselves. Some gangs actually immigrated here, already fully functioning and organized from abroad! Some are more vicious than our homegrown versions and some are as well organized as any well-oiled business organization. This is why they have to be recognized as terrorist organizations and the federal govt. needs to back up local law enforcement in cleaning up these terrorist cells.  I think we as a nation are starting to understand that racial diversity is our strength, and not a reason to segregate. We still have a long way to go, regardless of what laws are on the books; we still have rampant racial prejudice in this country that we need to deal with. All of it tied together with a poorly administered welfare system. Education, real education of every child is the answer. Just like in Iran and Afghanistan, the biggest reason for the attitudes and abiding terrorism is the uneducated masses. Well it is no different here. Until we stop using our schools as a way to house students during the day instead of educating them, we will never get ahead of this problem.  Schools have to be our biggest weapon against welfare, gangs, unemployment, and poverty. Education cannot be the first thing you cut because big business told you not to bother them or no contribution will be forthcoming and you will not be reelected.  Education, education, education, in case you didn’t get it, education not gun control! We need to get our priorities straight, and forthwith, if I might use a Middle English terminology.

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