TDY To NKP In 1964

Photo’s can be viewed by clicking on the Jim B NKP TDY 64 link.

My first arrival at NKP (photo #4) on a typical hot & humid tropical day, in June 1964 was loud, as the once a week C-123 “shuttle” slammed its tires onto the PSP runway, it seemed that each plank clanked as the wheel rolled to a stop.

There were only three or four buildings (photo #5) at the South end of the ramp and one small building near the “gate". We then taxied in to the PSP parking ramp and swung around and dropped the rear ramp. I helped the C-123 crew roll off some large fuel bladders (photo #6) full of JP-4 and then stepped off onto the ramp for the first time. I also helped load some of the empty fuel bladders onto the C-123 and she taxied out and was gone. This was definitely not the typical base that I was used to.

As I scanned the “base” I saw three HH-43B helicopters (photo #7), three or four shacks (photo #8), some 55 gallon drums, more empty and full fuel bladders (photo #9) scattered around the edge of the ramp, some large diesel generators (photo #10), three or four trucks, an outhouse (photo #11) and about twenty GI’s.

I began to introduce myself and meet the “base” all twenty or so of them. The HH-43B’s and most of the guys had been there about a week before I got there. I arrived in mid-afternoon and after a short time I was told we had been released from alert standby for the day and we would be going into town where we were staying. We all piled into the trucks (as I remember it these were Dodge 6 pac’s) and headed down a bumpy dirt road into town, about 10 miles or so the East, to our hotel, leaving the base and helicopters guarded by the two Thai guards who lived in a small shack near the “front gate”, with their wife’s and families.

The trip into town was like a parade, with all the kids and villagers along the way lining the edges of the road and waving to us like they had never seen a GI before. It was like this for the whole four months I was there, both mornings and afternoons. We arrived at the Civilize Hotel (photo #12), about a block west of the main street (photo #13), where I was assigned a room in the two-story part of the hotel (photo #14). The two-story part had either six or eight rooms and the rest of the rooms were in a one-story motel style building (photo #15) next to the two-story part. We bunked two to a room (I can’t remember my room mates name {for that matter I can’t remember the names of most of the others either}) and had GI beds in the rooms. These beds sagged so damn bad that after the first night, I had mine replaced with a Thai bed. It was hard as a board (as a matter of fact it was a board) with a thin cotton mattress (photo #16) on it. It slept like a dream.

We would get up each day and head out to the base to stand rescue alert for the Navy photo reconnaissance and other fighters flying into Laos and N. Vietnam.

I was told that the HH-43B’s were brought into Udorn on C-124’s and re-assembled there for the flight to NKP. I understand the birds arrived in all their splendor, with their bright “day glow orange” nose and tails. When the Air America types saw this they volunteered to paint out the bright orange colors. By the next morning it was done and the birds were flown to NKP where they began standing alert.

The clam shell doors had been removed, from the HH-43B’s, as un-necessary for our mission, and I seem to remember that we “tweaked” the flaps a little bit, to the point that when it was brought up to full power it only took a very, very small pull on the collective and it was flying. I guess we thought we had more power and could get out of an area faster.

Somewhere we had “traded” some rations or something to some Army group that had came through and obtained two BAR’s with ammunition, which we mounted from bungee cords (photo #17) in the rear cabin door opening. Now, I suppose we thought we were flying AH-43B’s.

As I remember, one of the Rescue squadron commanders dropped in on a HU-16 one day to pay us a visit and got really upset that we had “armed” our helicopters. As a result of his visit, not wanting to upset any other ‘big wigs’, we solved his concern by making sure we hid the BAR’s any time one of the HU-16’s or HC-54’s showed up.

As I remember it, we did not have any over the fence rescue missions while I was there, but I think we went over a few times to practice pickups. I also seem to remember pre-positioning some 55 gal. drums of JP-4 at some of the Air America sites in Laos so we could extend our range for rescue pickups.

We were also making plans for refueling, in flight, from 55 gallon drums (You know, right now I can’t remember for sure if we really did this while I was there, or if we only talked about doing it – CRS again).

We extend our hoist pickup height by adding a 100’ rope to the hoist cable, so that if we had a pickup in deep forest we could attach one end of the rope to the hoist cable, throw out the 100’ of rope and lower the cable to its max length. We could then raise the survivor to within 100’ of the bird, hover up to clear the trees and then fly him to a clear area where we could let him down to the ground and either get him on the regular cable length or land and pick him up.

I remember having to do an engine change on one of the birds and we didn’t have a hoist (we did have an engine cart) so we used a large limb on a tree and raised the engine with a come-a-long or ropes or something. Then we pulled the bird out from under the tree, lowered the bad engine, picked up the new engine, raised it back up and pulled the bird back under the tree to lower the new engine in place. Worked like a charm.

I don’t know if any one remembers the problem of the fabric peeling off the blades on the HH-43B’s, if you flew in the rain. One day we made a flight to Udorn for something, and on the way over we got caught in a rain shower, right away you could hear the change in the sound of the blades as the fabric peeled back. Once on the ground, I used duct tape to tape the fabric back down and wrapped the blade with it. Probably not according to the book, but we had a successful flight back to NKP. Once back at NKP we changed the blades.

Most of our flights were only training flights during my TDY; we did a few PJ jumps, to keep up their proficiency, at the NKP civilian airport (photo #18). We did not have any fire fighters on our crews at this time, as local base rescue was not our mission. We flew with two pilots, one flight mechanic and one or two PJ’s.

We also had a few “ugly American” flights, where we would catch some poor, unsuspecting Thai out in the middle of the field or rice paddy and buzz the hell out of them. I remember once we had two Thai women penned in one of the big fish trap rigs, with the nose of the bird almost touching the entrance with them inside (photo #19). I bet that made a lot of points with the local citizens.

Once we were released from alert each day, we would head to our hotel, The Civilize, and spent the rest of the day in town as tourist or sit around the hotel and tell war stories and listen to Hanoi Hanna (she played American music).

We were put on a higher alert status on Aug. 2, 1964, but did not know the reason for a couple of days. However we still would get released from alert and head back to the hotel just like before, except that some of us now had to stay on the base at night to help guard our birds.

Once we found out the reason for the higher alert status (Gulf of Tonkin incident), I realized that we were not really getting any news from the “world”. So I would scrounge around in every plane that landed looking for newspapers, and occasionally I would find one, usually a few days old, and devour it from front to back.

One afternoon in town I saw a bus pull up to one of the local merchants and toss off a small bundle of the Bangkok newspaper in English. I tried to buy one but was told that they were special ordered and were all spoken for. So, I put in my special order for a copy and within three or four days I was getting my own newspaper (so what if it was two days old by the time it got to NKP by bus). Now I felt I had a reasonably reliable source of news (we didn’t consider Hanoi Hanna’s news and BS as reliable, but we did like her music).

While I was at NKP my wife, back in Springfield, MO. was giving birth to our first baby, a girl, on Aug. 6, 1964. I would sometimes get messages relayed to me from Clark AB, when some of the 31st ARRS HU-16’s were flying duckbutt missions.

We had already been released from alert and most of us had headed back to town, except for some of the comm guys. A few of us were setting out on the balcony of the hotel (photo #20) having a few beers and listing to Hanoi Hanna’s music. After one of the songs finished she came on and said “We want to congratulate Airman First Class James W. Burns, at Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, with the HH-43B helicopter unit, on the birth of your baby daughter. She was born on Aug. 6th, (she gave the exact weight and length) your wife Ann and the baby are doing fine”. Well I nearly fell off the balcony, and decided I had already had too much to drink. Of course we did not believe that she could possibly have know all this and been correct.

A short time later the comm guys came in from the base with a note that had been relayed from the Red Cross in Clark by one of the HU-16’s to us at NKP. The note read “two birds, both o.k.” Well, twins run in my wife’s family and although I didn’t think we were expecting twins, I was not sure from the message they had brought me. So at the time I didn’t know what to think, except that the “Big Secret” that we were at NKP was sure out of the bag.

As it turned out, when I finally got a letter from my wife about two weeks later (all my mail had to be relayed to me from Clark), Hanoi Hanna had it exactly correct, right down to the oz. The note that was sent to me from Clark was supposed to read “to Burns, a baby girl, mother and baby both o.k.”

One day we were in town and some Dutch and English guys showed up at our hotel. We got to talking with them and discovered that they worked for a Dutch road construction company (I think the name of it was Grove Jones Construction or something like that) and their crew was building roads in Laos.

The Patho Lao had got to close to where they were working and they had to evacuate across the Mekong until things cooled down some. They came in from their construction area, down the rivers to the Mekong, by speedboats and were loaded down with booze. You could get almost any kind of booze you wanted in Laos, but on the Thai economy we could only get the Thai booze.

Anyway, while they were temporally run out of Laos, they had nothing to do but party. One day when we came back in from the base, they had dug a pit in the open area of the hotel and had a pig roasting in it. Even though they had a good head start, we were working had to catch up with them on the drinks.

As we all approached a state of high “pollution” one of them decided that he wanted to go water skiing. They had the speedboats and ropes; the problem was they had no water skis. Being in construction, one of them came up with the bright idea of taking some boards (1” x 6”’s or there a bout’s) and nailing shower clogs to them and that would make a great set of skis. I think the whole town was standing by the Mekong, laughing their heads off, watching this bunch of drunken foreigners trying to water ski on 1” x 6” shower clog skis. One of them almost got up on the skis when the toe piece pulled out of the shower clog and he went tumbling head over heels into the river. After this circus was over, we all made our way back to the hotel, by now the pig was done and we had a hell of a good meal.

On another day we were again drinking with the road construction crew and created our own little bit of mischief at the hotel. The hotel owner (Mr. Wandee, I don’t know if that is spelled correct or not) had a small zoo at the back of his house in the hotel complex. He had some mania birds, which we had taught to cuss like a good GI, a couple of pigmy deer and a couple of monkeys.

One of the monkeys was very tame and we would lead it around on its leash, feed and water it and play with it. The entrance to Mr. Wandee’s house had a little arch way on the path leading in, and the monkey spent most of it’s time setting on top of the arch (his leash was attached to a wire so he could move around a little ways).

This one evening someone began giving the monkey gin or vodka (photo #21) as we partied. I guess they got a little carried away and got the monkey plastered. The next morning, when I was leaving for the base, I saw the monkey sitting in a tight ball, on top of the arch, with his arms wrapped around and over his head. I went over and shook the post of the arch to get his attention. I could not get him to move a hair. When I got back in that evening from the base, the monkey was still sitting in the same position. So, I again went over and shook the post to see if he was all right. After a bit of shaking, he finally lifted his arms and opened his eyes and looked at me. He had the worst set of “red road map” eyeballs I think I have ever seen; this was one sick, hung over monkey.

The next day he had began to move around some (photo #22), but it was about three or four days before he seemed to get back to normal. Can you believe it, from that day of the party until the time I left NKP; he never would take anything (not even water) from any of us GI’s to drink. I guess he did have some smarts after all.

One weekend I rented a motorcycle (photo #23) and took Mr. Wandee’s 14 or 15 year old son (who spoke great English) with me and went riding up the road along the Mekong to the North. We spent the night in one of the villages and had a great time (photo #24).

When the Det. Cmdr. found out about my little trip, I got a butt chewing and was told that most of the area I had went into was considered communist and that I was damn lucky I didn’t get killed. They all seem like real nice folks to me and I had a great time. But to prevent another chewing out for the same reason, we went down the other way to Ubon the next weekend and visited with some Aussies there at Ubon RTAFB (photo #25). I really did have a great time while on this TDY and meet a lot of fine Thai’s while I was there.

Most of the time, while I was there, we ate our evening meal on the local economy. We had been eating at the restaurant just behind the Ho Chi Minh clock (photo #26) and testing our way through the food slections (I found that I liked “kow pot gunt” (sp) [shrimp fried rice] a lot).

One evening we are setting there eating, facing the street so we wouldn’t see the chickens and pigs walking around in the “kitchen”, when we saw two white round eye women walking down the street. Being the gentlemen that we were we hopped up and introduced ourselfs. They were with the Peace Corps and were assigned as teachers in one of the schools in NKP. They were not what you would call good looking, but they were nice girls and it was nice to talk with some American women.

They also shared their knowledge about Thai food and steered us to some really good dinning delights. One that I remember was the “Lottie” (sp), the little pancake thing that was sold off of a cart in the street. We found another little restaurant (photo #27) across the street from the Civilize hotel that had signs painted on the wall advertising “Hamburgers and French Fries”. We ask the owner about the sign and he said that he used to make them for the “Seabees” crews that were building the base in 1962 & 1963. We convinced him to start making them again (o.k, so the “beef” was waster buffalo) they still were pretty good.

He also had the motorcycle rental business where I had rented my “rides”. Then someone opened a little restaurant (photo #28) at the entrance to the Civilize Hotel and we were able to sample the delights there as well. Then Mr. Wandee (the hotel owner) found out about our dinning habits and being the ever-smart businessman that he was, not being able to stand our money being spent anywhere but with him. He hired a North Vietnamese cook that was trained as a French chef and opened his own restaurant at the hotel (photo #29). This guy could really cook and made some fine meals.

The businessman in Mr. Wandee took over after he had us “hooked” on the great French cooking and he started raising the prices on the meals. In retaliation to this move we went back to the hamburgers, French fries and Thai food. He got the hint and lowered his prices, however this little game went on several times while I was there.

Once we were relieved of alert duty, we all scrambled to be on the first truck to leave for town. There was a practical reason for this; if you got back to the hotel first you got to take a shower with the water that had been in the small water tower, which had been heating all day in the sun. If you missed the first truck, the hot water would be used up and you were stuck with a cold shower. Burr!

We used to play basketball with the local town team a lot, and they would whip our butts. They would run us to death and we always had to send in subs. But we had a lot of fun and I think the Thais enjoyed whipping up on us as much as we enjoyed the fun of the game.

Had one experience where we got our samlor driver drunk, along with us, and we decided he was to drunk to pedal so we threw him in the back and I hopped on to pedal. Did you know those things are tough to pedal and they don’t turn worth a damn. Net result was that I turned us over in the ditch full of water (or sewer from the way it smelled) beside the road and had to pull the samlor driver out to keep him from drowning.

One of the events that occurred at the base while I was there involved a C-124 from the unit at Hickam AFB. When it came in they landed long and ran off the overrun at the South end of the runway (photo #30). This bird belonged to a unit that had flown a God-awful number of hour’s accident free and some how they managed to classify it as an incident instead of an accident.

As I remember, it broke the nose gear scissors and it bent up a couple of props (photo #31) and was stuck in the mud on the overrun. We had to hire a couple of local Caterpillars to drag him out of the mud and back on to the parking ramp. We tired to convince them to write it off and let us keep it for a “club”, but instead they decided to repair it (no since of adventure I guess). I think it was still setting there when I left in Oct. (Note: See earlier Blog post for related story and picture).

Another time we were sending one of the trucks, one of the big ones, I think they call it a duece and half, which had broken down and would not run, out by a C-130. The C-130 had lowered its ramp and we were pushing the duece and half (which would not run) with one of the other trucks and got it up to a pretty good speed to try and roll it up the ramp into the C-130. As this thing was lined up and headed for the ramp, whoever was steering realized that when it was not running it didn’t have any breaks. He swerved just in time to miss going up the ramp, and it was a good thing to, because as fast as we had it going it most likely would have came through the nose of the C-130 and out the front. This would not have been a good thing. Anyway he rolled around in a few circles and finally came to a stop. We then slowly pushed him to the rear of the plane and the loadmaster winched it inside.

I don’t believe any other aircraft were ever stationed there while I was on this TDY (not counting the stuck in the mud C-124 of course). We did have a few types stop by for visits and would have the Thud’s (F-105’s) buzz us on their way back after missions.

We had no control tower, so the comm guys controlled everything. The Thud’s liked to come at us with out warning, low level, from all directions. They would clear in with the comm guys, but the comm guys wouldn’t tell us they were coming. All of the sudden here would be Thud’s coming from all four directions, right on the deck, and what seemed like 500 or 600 miles per hour, and scare the hell out of us.

I remember one day, I was working on the rotor head and they came over and almost scared the pants off of me. Then they made another pass, and I saw them coming this time, with one of them coming up the runway and across the ramp right at my bird. He was so low that he had to raise up to miss me, he caused me to jump off the top of the bird to the ramp and as he “mushed” over me he hit a tree at the edge of the ramp and knocked a limb onto the roof of the new mess hall that was being constructed. He climbed on out and I guess he made it home o.k. Don’t know how he explained any tree strike damage he may have done to the Thud, but I’m sure, him being a fighter pilot, he had a good tale to tell.

An item that might be of interest concerns some heavy earth moving equipment that was apparently abandoned by the Seabees in 1963. The whole time I was there in 1964 there were several Thai locals digging in a big pit at the South end of the field (behind our shacks). I was told that there were a couple of Caterpillars (D-10’s or D-8’s or something like that) and a large earth scrapper that was buried by the Seabees before they left. I seem to remember seeing part of one of the Caterpillars before I left. When I came back to NKP in 1969, I was told that the Thais had dug them all out and had them running in town.

Sometime in October 64, my first experience at NKP came to an end. I departed and headed back to Clark where my wife and new baby daughter joined me in November 64, where we lived off base until I rotated in January 66. This TDY had been a great experience for me and I enjoyed my TDY time in 64 at NKP greatly.

As I have re-read this little tale, it kinda sounds like we were drunk all the time. That is not the case, as I remember it we were mission ready every day I was there, but we did take a few occasions to do a little partying; O.K, O.K, a lot of partying. (Jim Burns, SMSgt, USAF ((retired)) NKP 64 & 69-70)