December 4, 1970
Whatever else, it's the GI's inalienable right to complain.
It was the last day of my in-country shuttle and my airplane had been
given the 67/2 configuration--67 passenger seats and 2 baggage
pallets. It was a bad configuration for Vietnam because
passengers brought little baggage and really only one baggage pallet
was
needed. 67/2 also packed the passengers more tightly together,
eliminated rear ladders for passenger entry, moved the center of
gravity too far forward, and reduced our capacity to 67 pax.
Departing
Tan Son Nhut our pax
were Vietnamese and it took a half hour
to explain that we were going to take only 67 of their 70 troops to Cam
Ranh Bay.
At
Cam Ranh Bay,
passenger service couldn't find our scheduled
passengers for Bien Hoa (!), so they gave us some space-available pax
whose destination was Tan Son Nhut. Our
onboard radar died as we taxied out, so we taxied back in to get it
fixed. While the radar man began his work, pax service found our
scheduled troops! They were
packed in like sardines and it was so uncomfortable that after an hour
two passengers got off.
Our radar wasn't fixable, so I checked the weather closely and decided
to press on.
Departing
Cam Ranh Bay IFR in
the soup, departure control told us we
had traffic at 12 o'clock, 2 miles, and converging. Then he said
he couldn't vector us clear because we had not yet reached his minimum
vectoring altitude! We were on course for a mid-air collision,
needed a little advice on which way to turn, and his rule book said not
to give any!! So I made a sharp 45-degree-bank turn and hoped for
the best. I evaded the traffic, the controller, and the
artillery, and climbed up to 14,000' to be above the weather.
Then the air conditioning crapped out, so we swam in our sweat for a
while.
Descending into Bien Hoa there
was more artillery to avoid and more bad
weather. The copilot saw some perimeter lights and told approach
control that we had the field in sight. To approach control that
meant we were in visual conditions and didn't need their services
anymore, so they handed us off to the tower. Unfortunately the
lights he saw were not Bien Hoa's so we didn't really have the field
in sight. I spiraled down, spotted Bien Hoa through a hole in the
clouds and sneaked in underneath them. But on
base
leg the
overcast was too low to fly under. To stay out of the
clouds I had to turn onto
final
approach prematurely. I cut the
power to idle, but we still
crossed the runway threshold hot and high. Since
Bien Hoa
had a 10,000' runway, I landed 5,000' long with plenty of runway
left over. I think 5,000' long was my personal record. ;-)