An interesting story

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Al Smith

Al Smith

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In light of the fact this is traditional veterans day one story of a Viet Nam vet my age .

Nate was a door gunner on a little "loach " chopper which ran in conjuction with a Huey gun ship .After his tour he somehow ended up being an electrician and later retired .Fact I worked with him over 20 years .

In addition to being a very strong advocate for environmental things he was also somewhat of a woodsman having milled about a zillion Bd ft salvaged hardwoods .

It seems after 20 years of dilligent search he found the exact machine he served on plus the pilot he flew all those missions with who also lives in Ohio .

Those two pulled some strings and got that thing from the air national guard ,restored it exactly like it was some 40 years ago and donated it to a museum in Ohio .It made the news plus about 50 members of the "Chained Eagles " escorted it from this area to somewhere near Dayton last week .

Kind of cute painted on the tail of that war bird was the name ZIT ,his wifes name spelled backwards ,Tiz .I've met her too,nice lady .
 
I flew on copters in the Nam. Convoy cover, med-evac, supply, recon and test flights. Though only a little over 60 hours of total flight time. Of it all,, the memories of med-evac stick the most. I was only a volunteer.

Exciting and awakening times for a 19 year old boy at the time. I can relate to this very closely.
 
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Well there's another story this one is a Huey .Maybe 10 years ago I was involved in a similar thing with an M-60 tank,a 155 howitzer,the anchor off the USS Texas and a Huey .All that stuff is on static display in the little podunk town of Harrod Ohio pop 550 where I grew up at

One of the guys involved was a gun ship pilot and crazy as a marsh hare ,still is .He went to Cleveland and brought that bird back on a triaxle trailer and signed a zillion pieces of paper that he wouldn't fly it .Well he fibbed just a little and did anyway .:lol:

I'll take a look see I think I have the pictures some place .
 
Exciting and awakening times for a 19 year old boy at the time.
Click to expand...

Similar for me, only it was from working on the roof of the Enterprise. Sweet heavy metal thunder.

I like smoke and lightning.
 
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When the big E was home ported in Norfolk we passed her in a pea soup fog going inbound .So foggy the visability was only about 2-300 feet .You can't imagine the size looking up at that giant that close knowing full well you'd sink like a rock if a collision were to occur .

The difference in size between the two was like compairing a pea to a watermelon .
 
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I worked with a then young Vietnamese electrical engineer shortly after the end of the conflict .He said he could never again return to his native home land for fear his countrymen would take his life .
 
I looked for the Viet Nam Memorial when I was in DC in the early 80s. I asked some locals and they were clueless. I knew it was not far from Lincoln and Washington Monuments. Turns out it is kind of sunk in, so not easy to see.

One would think we would have evolved past the point of entering in to war without serious consideration. Have Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, or Afghanistan been worth the pain and loss?
 
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