easter of 72
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Posted by fred alvis on 09:52:03 1/15/2004
its funny you should mention those tanks. 60th ahc,(ghostriders) were stationed with the white horse,ROC division, headquarters in a tiny place called ninh hoa.Its located between nha trang and tuy hoa.on the coast almost.Anyway,near easter of 72,me and my buds were walking from lunch back to the flight line.There sat a charlie model ( could havebeen a b model,dont remember clear anymore).guns covered ,no numbers on the tail boom,nor art on the nose hatch.Ship was seal up tight (locked). One crewman was on guard. As you know,we crewmen are very curious when seeing something "out of the odinairy" on a ship,espically when we cant quite put our finger on it.Aproching the crewman on guard duty,we ask the usual . Hey buddy,where you from? "Cant tell you" ,was the answer.Who you with ?"cant tell you"...same answer to other questions..whats under the wraps,what kinda guns you got there,why no numbers,ect... the only time we got an answer different was when we ask..what you doing here,and that was replied to as ..eating lunch. I aint no Einstien,but I could figure out that this line of questions was a dead end. So,we just shruged our sholders and went back to working on my red Xed bird.Little bit later,the crew returned and off that strange bird flew, heading north.up highway one. we forgot about it.A short time passed (weeks i suppose) when we got he alert about the new offensive charlie was trying.Heard all kinds of shit hit the fan up towards An ka pass (where my former unit lost a bird) and Dak To. Seems the pass was held by rocs on one side and nva on the other. Holy shit,charlie has tanks. Then we heard about some new choppers equiped with wire guided missles,and the first use of them. click....thats what was on the bird we saw after lunch. You guys know the rest of the story. One thing I havent figured out..they were shipped out from fort Lewis.but was it cia flying them or regular heli.people ?Anyone see them before me? That april we also lost a bird (both my roomies) in the vrung ro pass, just south of tuy hoa.Seems about that time we also started hearing that charlie had new ..shoulder held, heat seeking missles. I think i remember fairly correctly, or I could be full of shit.
note, this was written 1,15,04., in a letter to a gunner friend of mine up dac to way.anyone remember talking to me during that stop over for lunch?
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