M14 Forum

Voodoo

For me it's GOT to be the DC-3 they've got rolling out of Kandahar.

After watching Apaches, Chinooks, Blackhawks, Tornados, etc. taking off and landing all day, out of nowhere comes....



Turbine retrofitted DC-3. The first time it had us scratching our heads saying "did we really see that?"

stickboy

Air America is back!?

CAVman

Wow!

I Flew in One of Those Back in 1967 When I Was A Green Troop...Texas to Louisiana...and it was Old Then!



"Trans Texas Airways" ! Affectionally Known as 'Tree Top Airways'!

Thanks For Sharing That !!!

CAVman in WYoming

siefly

I believe theres a Company in Oshkosh, Wi. that converts the DC-3/C-47 to turbine engines. That is probably where this one was converted.

Nice Pictures..

Siefly

Butzbach

Kinda has "company" written all over it even without having "company" written all over it.

CAVman

Kinda-Sorta...

The "DoS Air Wing' on the Fuselage Stands for 'Department of State'...

The Internet Makes It Pretty Hard to 'Conceal' Who is Doing What These Days...

http://www.airplane-pictures.net/image74376.html

http://oig.state.gov/documents/organization/139642.pdf

CAVman in WYoming

davidgcalderone

They still use those things in Alaska, have flown on them many times.

dwight55

For lack of a better way to describe it, . . . it was just a small mountain. A limestone mountain, . . . about 200 clicks wsw of Saigon, . . . we only went there with our Mike boat.

Way up on top, . . . they broke out big chunks of the stuff, . . . and "dropped" em down to the next level, . . . they broke em up smaller and "dropped" em down further, . . .

This went on all the way down the darned thing, till the rock became gravel (no machines, . . . arms and hammers only), . . . and they just shoveled your boat full, or wherever you wanted them to stop.

The last time I went with em, . . . our Mike pushed about a 5 foot wave in front of it all the way back to Long Xuyen, . . . it was slow, . . . and I just figured I'd been sitting duck # 13 long enough.

May God bless,
Dwight

Lewis

Dwight, Interesting story...I don't often hear about guys serving on Mike boats, I was with the 1098 medium boat out of Danang, mostly LCU's and Mikes, even had a couple Mike threes that we used as pusher boats working with tugs to get the big rigs tied up alongside the pier. Danang had a wicked tidal surge and those little Mike 3s did the deed. It used to amaze me to see how much work those little people were capable of doing. Once while hitch-hiking down the highway I watched this little old woman, beetel nut chew the whole nine yards, musta been 45 and over there that was old. She had two halves of a 55gal drum slung across her shoulder and both of them were full of water, she was humpin down the road, there couldn't been more than a couple inches of freeboard and she had spilled all she wanted to by now. I stepped up and told her..."Little lady let me give you a hand." She sets the buckets down, backs up a little, mops her brow...I get under the carrying board and start to stand up..."Holy shit, this is heavy." I stagger a few steps and start sloshing water, she steps up and stops me, after I get them set down she gives me this look, gets down under them, picks them up and off the boogies, never spilling a drop. That same day it was murderous hot and the highway was melting, a rig would go by and you could hear the tires swishing through the asphalt, you could actually see the tire prints melt away shortly after the truck passed. I guess I had been waiting another 15 or 20 minutes waiting for a decent ride and I see this ancient (maybe 70) old papa-san with the wispy uncle Ho whiskers and all walk up to the side of the road, he looks up the road then down and starts to hobble his way barefoot across the molten highway, he gets about a third of the way and starts doing this little dance, going from one foot to the other,hoppin like a tick in a fryin pan, all the time he is saying something like "TOO TAH!" "TOO TAH!" its funnier than hell and theres a couple of us and we start laughin, theres this one guy and he is absolutely dying, has to sit down he's laughin so hard, finally he says...Do you guys know what he was saying? None of us knew much more than the basics, so "No." we don't. He's got tears in his eyes and says its the closest thing they have to "Goddamn!", that really did it we was all dying laughin, because that really fit. When the old boy did finally make to the other side there was a smashed up cardboard box, he stepped on it with this relieved look on his face...it was poetic.

Voodoo

Basler Turbo.

carpshooter

I was at the terminal at Chu Lai ,RVN one day back in '70 as I was walking around where I worked and there it was , a military Army jeep with an Amputee ,who was all healed up and had no bandages on ,( one leg gone below the knee ,the other leg was gone below the ankle and one arm was gone below the shoulder ) who had duct tape around his eyes and another one around his mouth ,he could still breath through his nose.

I went and got my camera and was going to take a photo when the MP guarding him with drawn pistol told me he'd smash my camera and to put it away as this wasn't a photo session !

That prisoner couldn't run if he wanted to ,much more be able to get out of that vehicle !The Army would fly the amputee prisoners out ,would see this again later on !

Hamstrosity

Hey Voodoo,

I believe you'll find your C-47 here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Spe...perations_Wing

Picture is on the right side, after the org info..

Someone else also got a picture of that bird too (6th pic down): http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums...tions-Aircraft

It's cool to see the '47's still flying for Uncle.

wookiee

was driving from work to go back to my tent in kandahar. going by perimeter road we usually see kids out there herding goats and camels. one of the kids looked at us and did the 'slit throat' motion. he got reported to the cops and intel. we never saw him again...hmmm

JR

I was a passenger in one of those old things in 1969. Flew from Manila to Clark AFB. It belonged to the Navy back then. It still had the older reciprocating engines in it. We had been driven from Clark to Sanger Point NAS, as a bunch of us were Navy, and heading home. The Air Wing there was rotating back to the States.

After we got there, the USAF decided to send every hardship transfer, or emergency transfer, they had there, also.

Upon being surplused out of the last flights home, a Commander who was similarly left behind decided that we WEREN'T driving back to Clark AFB, and ordered us up a plane, or the closest thing that they had to one, anyways.

SGTPinder

my second tour in Afghan, one of our guys had a donkey, at night some of the Arty guys just a lil wild and spray painted the entire donkey with Zebra strips, white and black spray paint. I came off my overnight shift at dawn, was walking back to my room when out of no where, a monkey, (Rheasus, Reese's SP?) was riding on a "Zebras" head. Not something you expect to see before everyone wakes up in the morning. Walked right on by me, Monkey cleaning the "Zebra's" Maine. Thats the first that comes to mind.. Im sure there are plenty more, haha!