Military Charters into Vietnam

[Jackbr]

Does anyone have any memories of flying the Military charter flights into Vietnam?

Many airlines operated the flights, the most obvious being the Braniff, Continental, Pan Am, United, Seabord World etc 707s and DC-8s, as well as the smaller charter airlines like Universal

I also understand the approaches into the airport there could at times be comparable to emergency descents - very rapid!

[merlinxx]

You should post on "Where are they now?" thread. World, TIA, ONA, Tigers et all
worked the contracts. Good luck.

[Brian Abraham]

Flew Qantas Sydney - Singapore - Saigon and Saigon - Darwin - Sydney on the return. Wondered if we were ever going to get off the ground on the take off at Saigon, being intimately familiar with the airport the toes were beginning to curl and much white knuckle clutching of arm rests. Were supposed to fly direct to Sydney but explanation for the lack of direct and the long take off was the amount of goodies we troops were carrying. Impressive demonstration of a short field landing of the 707 in Darwin though. The trip to Saigon was Captained by the then youngest (mid 20's) 707 airline skipper if I recall.

Flew PanAm 707 to and from Hong Kong on R & R. Well used aircraft, elderly cabin staff and a very impressive falling out of the sky approach from overhead (20,000 feet) at Da Nang.

[4Greens]

First trip into Saigon in a Qantas 707, we had helo gunships firing into the ground underneath us. Presumably to keep the baddies heads down. Still have my Viet transport medal as a souvenir.

[David Layne]

I flew a World Airways 707 out of Travis Air Force Base. At Guam the aircraft taxied off the runway intersection and got bogged down in the mud.

After much pushing shoving and revving of engines we got free, refueled and proceeded on to Ben Hoa.

On arriving at Ben Hoa we were made to hold as the base was then under attack. On landing we were hustled off the flight line and into a secure area.

My first impression of Vietnam, not the arrival but the smell!

[WHBM]

Just about all the US charter operators of larger aircraft at the time were involved. It was then a very fragmented business, but for many of them the aircraft of choice was the Super DC8 61F or 63F, which they could use on either passenger or cargo work. They all ordered aircraft together from Douglas in 1967-68, which the Douglas sales team happily accepted and then production got into a mess trying to deliver them all on contract date. Much work had to be subcontracted out, and there were then further quality problems when it was inserted into the airframes. It was a key part of Douglas running out of cash and having to be taken over by McDonnell.

The mainstream airlines involved, Pan Am, Continental and Braniff, all kept clear of the DC8 and bought 707-320Cs, which served them well, generally operated as separate subfleets to their scheduled operations.

Pan Am also had a small fleet of their 727s based (somewhere) in the area which operated the short-haul R&R flights to Bangkok, Hong Kong, etc. I once read an account that they charged the GI's $1 per round trip for these; if correct I wonder where the rest of the funding came from. Pan Am had no regular 727 operations in the Pacific, normally the aircraft were confined to Berlin and the Caribbean.

[pjac]

Cathay Pacific did a daily flight in to Saigon with Convair 880s until the very last day of the war. The ler down and approach to Tan Son Nut a/p was (like a fruit cake), studded with advisory calls from ATC, about aircraft at some position (twelve o'clock, three o'clock), high speed/low speed, low flying/altitude unknown and these were sought by the crew and could turn out to be things like a large "Chopper" lifting/towing a smaller chopper on a long, wire or an opposite bound fighter on a mission. Landings were sometimes carried out during a sudden offensive by the North Vietnamese. Sometimes, the service returned to Hong Kong via Phnom Penh. Completing the transit with scant equipment, heat and frequent deluges of rain-No big deal.

[CharlieLimaX-Ray]

There was a number articles written by Len Morgan for Flying magazine about his experiences flying troop charters, certainly interesting operating into a war zone.

[Evanelpus]

My first impression of Vietnam, not the arrival but the smell!

How true, that's what I thought when I first visited in 1990. I was told it had something to do with the fuel used in both cars and motor cycles. It was a similar smell in San Paulo as well.

[WHBM]

My first impression of Vietnam, not the arrival but the smell!My father said exactly the same about arriving in India by troopship from Britain in WW2. He said the smell began about 50 miles offshore (presumably approaching from downwind), when land was still out of sight.