Salute!
Nice call, Wolfie, but it's too good a base for the Vee to lose. Two long runways that could handle biggest thing we had at the time, including C-5 Galaxies.
I flew over 300 missions from Bien Hoa, 1967 to 1968. And dozen or so were Ranchhand escort as they sprayed the vegetation. Their hootch was about 50 yards from ours and we shared a squadron bar for a few months.
We flew an orbit around them and got down alongside for "intimidation" factor, then came around the oval again. With four of our Dragonflies, we always had someone on the perch if they took groundfire. One of their troops would throw out a flare, and we could drop some CBU or shoot a few rockets near the smoke. Of course, if we could see where thefire was coming from, then that sucker wouldn't shoot at another C-123 again.
One of their birds was supposedly very "clean", and it would fly over Bien Hoa once a week or so and spray for mosquitos. We weren't too worried about the chemicals, as most of the leaks happenedwhen they loaded the stuff on their planes for a mission. That being said, they prolly had a few serious spills in their storage area.
Gums recalls....