Well, without going into things in too much detail, yes we're fairly convinced there are some 50's era survivors around somewhere in VN. If you understand the Vietnamese, you'll also a) understand they know these things will have value and, the longer they remain 'undiscovered' the more valuable they become and b) it's surprisingly easy to keep things quite here. If we had an airbase or location where they were last seen, we'd know which unit was there around the Fall. And then we can start asking hard questions. Simple.
BarbiesBoyfriend: No, you were at Tan Son
NHAT. We won, so our spelling please
. If you were there as a tourist you're quite observant. Yes, there are quite a few gaps, but I'll leave it to you to return and fill them in. We need your tourist dollars.
SASless and others: American airframes - both rotary and fixed wing - deteriorate surprisingly quickly in our climate. I've seen the internals of most American airframes (though never a 105... what happened to those, did they disintegrate into a million pieces on impact?) on disassembly and, compared with Russian equipment stored in much the same way i.e. outdoors with no maintenance, corrosion is rampant. I wonder why? Grades of metal or something? The one exception is the F-5. It seems incredibly well built and hardly corrodes. Northrop, the Yankee Mig.
Geezers of Nazareth: Now that's interesting. I have never seen a Bearcat in VN, far less one around Tan Son Nhat (Nhut). Was this in the 60's? Where precisely? Photos?
And my tales of the Thais and Thailand would fill a book. Not a very interesting book though...
Thanks all.