Last Show from LZ Bunker – Talkin’ NAM

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Infantryman Ronny Ymbras teams up with Dustoff pilot Phil Marshall and M60 Gunner John Fratangelo to discuss the audience’s answers to the questions we posted in the Vietnam Veterans Photo Club

Subjects include:
How YOUNG were you when on your first tour?
Did you ever make it to Saigon?
Sound of the Huey
Engraved Zippos from Nam
Describe Monsoon season

“Last Show from LZ Bunker – Talkin’ NAM

Watch the Veterans Live Show on YouTube

TRANSCRIPT – Transcript and Subtitles are generated automatically by YouTube and may contain errors.

okay here we go good evening vietnam live from lc bunker this is veterans
live show i’m your host ronnie ambrose i serve with hundred first airborne division in vietnam from 19 december 67 to
december 68. on this episode of veterans live show we’ll be talking nam with our favorite
dust-off pilot phil marshall and our top end 16 machine gunner john frantangelo
okay we’ll be discussing the questions and answers that were posted in the vietnam veterans
photo club on facebook but don’t forget after the show we’ll have a live q a
uh so write your questions in the comment section at the bottom of the screen
tonight is actually tonight is actually the last show from lz bunker we’re moving locations
we push the front forward so uh we want to get into the action so we got to move up our lz
we’re not quite sure so maybe you guys want to drop some names like lz foxhole lz
grenade lz whatever you know okay uh so let’s get right to it i’m going to
put a question on the screen and phil and john will discuss it then we’ll see how our audience answers the question to
discuss what they have to say go ahead matt take it away
how young were you when you arrived in vietnam okay nice question go ahead john you’ll go
first okay yeah i was 19. you did me too 19.
yeah i was uh i was 21 i had two years of college and what i’ve come to find out is that most of the
warren officer helicopter pilots in vietnam were either high school graduates that went right to flight school or
college dropouts i was one of those college dropouts okay wow so when i became 20 guys were still coming in at
19 and i was older than the pilots yeah yeah yeah you know you think about
it you graduate high school at 18 a year later you graduate basic training and flight school you’re 19 and you’re
flying helicopters in vietnam wow that’s crazy good for that phil i was yeah college dropout too i sat in the audi i
sat in the auditorium ready to fill out papers to go to college from the community and i said this isn’t for me man i just took off
yeah yeah before i even started goodbye i thought
college was for me but i was too concerned about where the parties were not concerned about where the library was i don’t think i ever did go to the
library oh a bunch of wise guys here
not why he’s not smart wise okay next question what’s here robert pate
pepe maybe 19. first trip second trip 21 well
so you went 19 to 20 and then 21 to 22. what do you do between that one year
robert okay bobby he was probably training
other guys to go to vietnam there you go you’re right bobby the end on the end 19 but he did a tour of korea before
vietnam wow good for you i made a trip when i was 19
and i made another one when i was 20. when i brought my cousin back home but i had to go back i remember that yeah you’ve talked about that before it’s sad
okay lloyd summers first trip i was 22. second trip i was he thinks he was 27.
didn’t pay too much attention to it i just wanted to get through got lucky have just had my 81st birthday
well god bless you brother yeah good job boyd you got it lloyd thank you
okay buddy copenhagen nearly 19 and ready to roll yeah
full of piece of vinegar right there you go yeah yeah oh my god i got a letter here actually
it says uh from the 80s i was in the 82nd and i wanted to go to the 173rd and i wrote
the commander and i i said i want to vote he says don’t worry
uh specialist you you you we’ll be going to vietnam pretty soon so wait don’t
worry about it we got you lined up and he was like i wanted to go with the 173rd i was in the 82nd back home on our
first had a brigade over there so it was like but then sure enough four or five months later i got shipped
to campbell and we went over in december so okay here we go when in combat was there a better sound
than that of a ue oh this is a tough one between you two guys yeah john john go ahead dude yeah i tell
you what was a better sound the rockets coming in from the jets
that was that was a bolt of lightning from heaven man well i could say there was three things the ue blades
the m60 and the jets excuse me yeah we should talk sounds
about vietnam my gosh yes there was some crap on some animals in
the woods too yeah they make a noise all right what do you got here daryl mills
the sound was better than good it was great yeah we we call it the sound of hope now
there you go man i i try i try to explain to people that you know you’re
you’re out of beans or bullets or you’re bleeding or out of water and you hear those blades
coming you know your day’s going to get just a little bit better yeah god bless them pilots man
yeah we knew you guys were depending on us that’s why we did some of the 19 20 20 year old 21 year old stuff that we
did yeah but like giving a kid a new corvette he’s going to find out what it can do
and uh yeah but again we knew you guys were dependent on us that’s that’s why we took a lot of the chances we did yeah
it’s just amazing the amount of stuff that they brought in reinforcements replacements medevac food
water ammo mail uh also those pack with the care packages once in a while right yeah once
a while we could do that yeah anything else that i forgot there a change of uniforms oh yeah dry socks
yeah then we put them on and they make you walk through the freaking rice paddy half hour later anyway
[Laughter] yeah what a plan thanks yeah okay
yeah michael campbell that same sound today causes chills yeah
yeah well we we’ve got our restored hueys and uh we’re out there making some noise with them that’s for sure
okay phil don’t forget at the end of the show phil’s got a show in indiana coming up in a couple of weeks right
yeah well we’ll talk about that later thank you yeah please do no problem robert hughes
no sweat sounds sweeter to a marine zia yeah oh the marines used helicopters
well yeah the 46 was the twin rotor they they had uh they had a few hueys but uh
mostly they had the uh the 46s laid in the war and the yeah yeah
uh the 34 choctaws uh early in the war see i was only teasing but like we’ve
got an education on a helicopter field over here that’s great all right billy priest
euis what’s a yui huh we wrote in battle in the old uh 34d
yeah that’s the choctaw the corp were a little slowly replacing their choppers 65 66-67
well good for you billy thank you okay what do you got next then it’s plank
it depends if you’re going on a ca or a going back to the rear that’s a
combat assault so it depends if you’re going to well i guess
yeah combat is also good if you got to carry out the mission right so there you go
back to the rear you never know there was no rear in vietnam was there no then i didn’t think so
next time think about it right it’s not like the lines of battle were drawn that’s right okay sound off did
you ever make it out to saigon what was your reason to be there you weren’t good john
okay the only the only time i went to saigon is when i was chosen to be an escort for
my cousin to bring him home i had to pass through saigon to get the flight out of out of uh
nam that was my only experience otherwise it was just jungle yeah all right i never went there uh we
were my unit was as far north as you could get we were the northernmost dust off unit um
i never went to town did not want to go to town i never left the base except
flying the aircraft and that was fine with me yes um i i agree with you there yeah
yeah i i i was there i’ll you know i supported the uh the civilians when when it was
needed uh we risked the aircraft and the crew uh when the civilians needed our help
but that was as far as it went for me i had no need to uh to go visit them in town shall we say yeah towns i had two
towns one in town and up in high court these little times you go into the place and you’d get a drink or you
you know whatever at the bar and the girls and the you know to have a down time
i was snitching outside when i got out of the hospital the second time uh they made me see cq at division headquarters
ria in benoit meanwhile was about 20 25 miles north
east what east i believe of uh yeah gucci was west of saigon so every
once in a while i’d have to go down take the jeep and go down to tanzania or to the embassy or to wherever and
pick up a colonel general this big weak civilian and and bring them back to uh
so i spent uh at the end a certain amount of time uh in saigon
but it was only like daily it was never overnight so i always tried to meet the plane early
and stop around see the place you know i i never i never liked to go into bars to
this day i don’t like it i never did like right but this is what i mentioned one thing i mentioned in the book is that
one day i was i was sparring with a good friend of mine my ammo bear he was a guy from philly was he was the
uh golden gov champion at the time right and when we were back in our base camp you
know we go out with the gloves and he and he showed me a few pointers this and that so one day the rest of the platoon the recon but they went to went to the
town in the bar right so there’s one guy from charlie come who didn’t like our sergeant santos okay a platoon leader
right so they go into town they get into a fight and hope it ended up being a barber all
right so they come back and santos santos had a little black eye puffy you know no it
was no big deal but i’m saying i’m saying look at this i said here we are
fighting a common enemy and we come back to our base camp and we fight each other and i said how
screwed up is the human being man i’m telling you well i can tell you why that happens though but you know
you still love each other at the end of the day oh absolutely yeah there you go right
all right what do we got next jimmy cansolero coming back from a three-day r r in vangtal nice place
two of my hometown buddies yeah oh that’s nice it was our fourth day on a seven day pass we were told saigon was off limits
to us because we weren’t stationed there we were also told that if we wavered from our trip we would be
see more we would see more okay which one three more
i don’t know what limits huh i never heard that saigon was off limits well i had
different kind of operations yeah yeah i’m lost on that one i hear you
did you ever make it out to saigon okay saigon never been there my ao was the dmz 6669 marine grunt thank you robin
mace i appreciate that service thank you semper fi brother ian johnson on my way back from leave in
australia met up with two yanks had a great night oh okay i got you
yeah australia was nice i went there and went to singapore too and a lot of the
guys from australia went to singapore on their r r’s because
it’s like one of their resort areas that’s quite obviously exotic it’s not australia in southeast asia that was you
know easy to go to uh before the war that kind of thing or ronald height our height resupply for
our company beer and other stuff 173rd quite a few times and to take a few things from the docks lol
let me get this five finger discounts five fingers yeah 24 company beer another
quite a few times i got you okay hey airborne buddy thank you for the
173rd next okay tim carney was at macv repo repo
depot a guy on his third tour and i snuck out on an arvind truck this meant the wild night there got it
right back with an mp man thank god for this what they call that when something expires
uh your your common sense yeah but no no i agree with that but but there’s a
certain amount of limits uh statutory status statutory limitations oh yeah yeah
yeah you’re lucky they can’t get you out there now still arrest you okay
clint karen sukja i took a gi prisoner down to lbj was in saigon for a week the
most wildest craziest and dangerous place i’ve seen in my life oh so you must have been an mp and he took a
gi an army prisoner uh got it the criminal like down to lbj
was a saigon for a week this is the most deciphering i’ve ever done in my life uh
the most one of those craziest days yeah saigon you had to watch out man let me tell you they had those lamb bros and
they had those little the lambrettas and he had those little guests operated
psyclos then it was it was it was crazy no traffic lights you know just
go where you wanted to go and you had to watch out you had to watch it back man sound off describe this monsoon season
in just five words or less [Laughter]
what what what yeah i’ll give you the other two
we had we had two 30 gallon trash cans to do our laundry
in one to wash and one to rents okay and i finished my laundry just before the monsoons hit and so i emptied
the buckets and then just set them up you know next to the hooch three days later those buckets were full
yeah yep trash cans whatever 30 gallon trash
okay yeah right okay yeah yeah and i’m not talking the runoff off the roof of the house it was they were out in the open right yeah okay
yeah it’s nuts yeah it was rough man especially when you you you get your poncho out and you think
you’re wrapped up in it then you move in the middle of the night and that [ __ ] that was done
oh my gosh all right next question bring out your clothes and wear again very good jones very good
appreciate that walter thank you guy hackney guy w hackney sweating inside your poncho
bummer yeah right yeah it was still a little uh warm
never having dry socks amen to that man no the only dry sacks i had was over my shoulder with my sea ration cans in it
tied in there are they stretched you couldn’t wear them after that that’s right all right where you got next
gary godly wet squishy rotted stink stinky socks amen
jungle rat yeah right that’s what they called it yeah walking around the bathtub i like that
there you go yeah we didn’t see the sun it didn’t rain every day but i kept the diary i
actually had my diary right here let me show you this baby where’s my camera there it is let’s go
something back to march march 29th let me see here no there we go
there was a bad day that was a bit there was friendly fire incidents i won’t talk about that now
uh yeah rain wet rain look at look at my look at the
where the hell is it here’s my camera there you go see how it it bled all the uh ink yeah
yeah and i kept it on the plastic bag too he was really trying to not not to do that
here we go uh seven weeks it was
no six weeks 42 days that we didn’t rain every day sometimes it was just foggy low-hanging clouds and
uh or just a little drizzle but it rained most of the time yeah next question
mud from the red clay you remember red clay i don’t remember red clay ladder right here or ladder
case on that very red clay okay yeah i actually had to uh
we had to go to you know my platoon how to guard a mountain on village there was a lot of right for some i
don’t even know why we had to guard it but the funny thing about it papasan was coming around selling us coca-cola for 50 50
ice cold coca-cola there you go ice cold too yeah all right thank you joe mac for that
okay sound off did you have a zippo and as we call many brothers had them and many had them inscribed what did yours
say okay zippo boys let’s get them what do you got some well school me what a zippo is
cigarette lighter a lot i don’t smoke so no back then though yeah there you go
hey perfect look at that put that one back up
hold on a minute what did that mean 73rd sax slaw jonathan or chip boyd there
gary west mine would describe the eighth where i work here yeah i walk through the valley of death
i fear no evil because i am the evil son of a [ __ ] in the valley all right i’ve seen that
okay next my nickname was zippo the great very good maddox
barton excellent thank you okay
chipboard there’s mine thank you chip yeah what is that uh
73rd sack looks like uh it looks like it wasn’t that it looks like a warthog right
a little sec right i can’t see the uh sack of strategic air command but that’s
not i yeah i can’t see the i can’t see the lighter well enough
yeah no it looks like a warthog but they didn’t have them back then did they
they had eight times uh not in vietnam what do we have over there we had some kind of crazy gun machine
yeah well we had a1 e sandy’s and yeah there you go good to have a
platform yeah that was that was propeller driven but there you go
yeah look we got we got we got a machine gunner we got a pilot and we got an infantry guy in the middle who did some
clerk work we’ll figure it out we’ll figure it out
bob harrell you have never really lived until you have nearly died that’s right
yeah amen brother yep yeah and then you kind of like live go
to the fullest here we go here’s your zippo i like that man that’s right they call this a zippo
yeah the flamethrower tanks whatever they were oh my god we wrote with those guys down in kuchi uh 11th armored cab
that was our first operation out of there the only thing i didn’t like about that would be on the apc going through some
places they hit these trees these little trees they knocked right over and all the red ants would fall on the freaking
thing oh man it was like time it was whoever got naked the first
fastest one because things went down in your belt in your socks everywhere yeah
you had them on your on your choppers phil do you have them on
on a helicopter what zippo’s no the red ants oh no oh heavens no oh okay no no
never never had to deal with that john you have a deal with them red ants absolutely
yeah they were the worst all right what do you got next
he was a richard roy hacker i was the lead member of the zippo squad i said a few hooches of blaze oh i see with those
pictures there thank you just following orders yes that’s a great thing yeah
the only zippo that i’m familiar with uh the the oh six the little bird
the kaios okay the very first one in the vietnam a first lieutenant jumped in they came
over on carriers and uh first lieutenant uh s1 jumped in one through his uh briefcase up on the
other seat and he was gonna fly the first oh six in country uh so he picked it up in the back of the tech of carrier
and he was gonna do a show off and and dive it towards the water and then do a
cyclic climb well when he drove it towards the water uh his briefcase fell forward he never attached it to the seat
and wedged the cyclic full forward and flew it right into the water that was the very first oh-six in
country well when hughes aircraft which found out about it when they found out about
that was the first loss then they uh they engraved a zip lighter and sent it to that first lieutenant to commemorate
the loss of the first loach in vietnam wow it was because he was stupid and flew it
into the water i could imagine yeah gotta back down the hatches right
say again you got to batten down the hatches yeah yeah yeah well you gotta use a little sense and fasten down yeah
pass down all the equipment yeah exactly what do you got next uh matt
i tried my in my most humble way to recreate some of vietnam hippos by painting him on stones oh good for you
here man stephen bradford thank you yeah very nice when i die bury me face up so the whole
world could kiss my ass the middle finger’s always handy and the
campaign ribbon commendation riddle sorry art karma and the uh vietnam zippos very nice stephen stephen yep
thank you [Music] try to read that on top
i did read the thought yeah next
all right we’re going to go to q a all right q a is coming up get ready to answer these questions guys
them to remind them to send in more questions and comments yeah hey uh anybody out there you want to send a comment or a question in
do you write the you could send it at the bottom of the page sounds like uh with that guy
i’ll ask john a question how much does the m60 weigh i know it’s heavy actually weighs between 23 and 27 pounds
okay and then plus whatever ammo you carried that’s as you’re gonna say it depends on how much ammo you got on you
on your on your side pocket that clips on to the side of the gun yeah
normally it holds 100 pound uh 100 100 rounds okay i like to overflow it
so so you and your ammo bear how many rounds would you take out in the field well guys
if you have two ammo bears with you they each got two two cans with 200 rounds in each in each can
that’s eight that’s 800 rounds right there plus whatever i was carrying you know all right yeah
did did you always have a tripod on the m60 no i know in my truck
i didn’t think so i didn’t know my my tripod was in the in barracks in focus i never took it with me the only the only
time mostly only time you use it out in the field is in your foxhole with the foot with a tripod we’re in a
bunker in a bunker yeah okay normally i even my bipods i took off because they get caught on the bush they
would pull out they were annoying so i just took them right off i carried it like an m16
okay john i got a question from ralph narcisco okay he would like you to explain how you carried that gun
i carried it on my hip never on my shoulder i i told you on one of your shows why i
never carried it on my shoulder right only because you could in the jungle you see from the waist up
you and the two you got your gun on your shoulder takes a while to load it which jeopardizes you and your platoon
and and if the if it’s on your shoulder and the enemy’s looking at your potent your patrol he he sees that machine gun
on your shoulder he’s going to go at you first he’s going to take out the hot the fire power first
yeah that’s a great point and that i never even used the strap i didn’t want no kind of uh you know interference with
any or just anything to slow me down i i think was ready to go in in a split second yeah
good that’s smart thank you ralph for that question nikki fran tangelo bharati this sounds like uh somebody’s relative
here that’s my daughter he says god bless you all right good for you good day nicki how you
doing you know that little person okay paul goodwin airborne all right thank you
paul next looking well cousin phil
nigel watten as somebody comments phil he takes off
right phil are you there he’s looking well
all right thank you nigel next one maybe matt maybe you can get phil back on the screen
yeah no problem uh what do you got rick leaps welcome home a job well done vietnam
veteran thank you rick thanks rick thank you john thank you phil
it’s some kind of brotherhood we have it don’t we john yeah we sure do really crazy i can’t wait to get back to fort
bragg we got a reunion down here in uh august all right good never served but my
appreciation for veterans run deeps thank you thank you ralph robinson yep
my cousin okay mark four a6 intruder
and what’s that there for did i ask a question about it oh yeah you go right a6
so the h6 now it’s the a10 warthog okay thank you very much mark
mark iv appreciate that look we got a bunch of smart people out
there ralph narcisco 73rd surveillance aviation company they flew the
ov-1 mohawk i’ll wait for phil to get back in here and tell him let me write that down in case we don’t get that back
ov 1-10 right obi-wan dash mohawk one dash one more
one okay
what’s the ov-1-1 mohawk obi-wan mohawk uh twin turbine uh prop driven
uh uh we have a mature audience here right yes
the uh the army flew the mohawks uh the air force didn’t fly the mohawk because
with those three pieces of the tail the only army pilots could handle three pieces of tail that close together
okay thank you very much next no problem that’s why you have me here right you need that we need we need the
facts you’re right you need that information that’s right gotta fill in the blanks yeah all right thank you
ralph appreciate that next one you guys are sorry james boyle thank you phil
now thank you james james who you served with and when give us some background thank you very
much okay next nicky again nicky fran tangelo beretti
phil was you’re playing every shout out no uh yeah uh this is the mayor as the mayor catholic
the the bad guys as we understood it got a cash reward for shooting down any
american helicopter even if it was an unarmed dust off they also got to wear a medal for
shooting down the american helicopter uh yeah they’re uh i i don’t think there’s any helicopters in vietnam that
didn’t have bullet holes in them um and sometimes uh sometimes they missed at night you see the tracers go
flying by um as it turned out uh 40 of our dust-off
missions were at night and uh and of course you’re flying with your position lights on because uh and
you’re rotating beacons you don’t want to have a mid-air with another aircraft but um
usually uh there weren’t very many helicopters flying at night in vietnam hey phil i gotta
go i got a question for you go ahead remember puff remember puff puff the matches dragon puff
right okay what kind of a aircraft was that that was a uh
c uh c-47 what was it yeah yeah c-47 uh world war
ii plane okay yeah um guys you know just uh you know like the
the same plane that you saw in the berlin airlift um
but uh yeah that was an air force c-47 if i’m not mistaken yeah somebody can
correct me no you got it the uh it’s the general general information
there were over twelve thousand helicopters shot down in the vietnam war wow
uh that seems a little higher annie yeah well so am i well okay there you go
not really i think no i’m gonna look that up 12 000 i think yeah i yeah i think that’s a little high but uh you
know i’ve seen different numbers maybe not maybe not crashed and died but well yeah
but the the numbers that i that i uh have seen is uh probably 12 000
helicopters served in vietnam and about half didn’t come back they you either crashed or was shot down oh i
have okay i have a good i have a good friend of mine was one of my platoon members so his name was corky smith he
he went each he’s he’s after the uh after he left the platoon he took a flight and he was a
chop pilot he got shot down and he was lost for a month okay and actually he became the pilot
the personal pilot for richard nixon when he got out of the service that’s pretty cool yeah
yeah okay one second zach google uh how many helicopters were down there should be enough shut down the vietnam war
put your light on a bit in there yeah a number that i heard which was easy to
remember was three thousand four hundred four thousand three hundred and twenty go backwards helicopter gloss yeah four
three two one okay we have to look that up saxophone over uh research
yeah and again it’s gonna depend on your source yes it’s gonna vary a little bit this is
just a google search according to vietnam more fiftieth dot com so it’s probably not that reliable it says eight
thousand eleven thousand eight hundred eleven thousand eight hundred google okay that’s what served
oh no he said shut down really
war 50. that’s the organization yeah yeah okay that’s a lot higher than what i ever
heard but yeah we’ll get it straight down no problem okay it’s interesting that so many
uh helicopters got shut down how many pilots were lost there must have been 5 000
pilots i i’ll give you the answer there one one out of every 12 and a half names on the wall in dc is either helicopter
pilot or crewman really yup 40 450 give or take 4 450 pilots and
crewman uh yeah yep so that’s that’s one about every 12
and a half names on the wall john your first combat assault you were scared right oh yeah
especially when you’re recon going in first yeah you got to secure the area oh man oh yeah
yeah like those pictures uh scared on everyone we were scared on everyone but the first one exactly right
we didn’t know what to expect and i tell you what before we before we when we when we
retreat top level the gunners started off started giving grazing fire which we didn’t know i didn’t i mean i didn’t
know that was green me and my buddy and uh we didn’t know that they were giving us protection fire so before we land you
know what i mean we thought we had incoming i put my leg right in real fast ready to cop that gun ready to go man but it was
they said well hold on it’s you know it’s us you know she’s still shooting yeah i guess you had to learn a lot of
stuff very fast okay what else we got here anymore we’re coming down we’re coming out to the answer what does it feel like what being
shot like feel like yeah and what ultimately led to writing your book from from gianna
yeah uh well i wouldn’t go bring it up but yeah nikki i was i was wounded in the arm one
night uh picking up uh three really badly wounded
airborne troops and and that was the bad news the good news was that it severed a nerve on my arm so
it was never painful but uh but i was flying the aircraft and we almost uh we came extremely close to
crashing uh by the time my co-pilot got on the controls froze on the controls and then i got
back on the controls with no feeling in my hand so uh yeah it uh it could be uh an
interesting experience but uh i knew we were all gonna die because we we almost crashed literally wow so
yeah all right and that was just that was just one bullet one bullet almost brought us down
you want me to answer that too please all right well what what it feels like to being shot is like somebody hit you
with a two by four as hard as they could swing it and it burns
it no it gets numb and and it says and what ultimately led you
to writing of your book at least my book the last goodbye okay yeah well the ultimate writing a book of
course is my cousin and my friends dying and getting killed that’s why i wanted them to be remembered so i wrote the
book the last goodbye it’s no fun i mean it knocked you right
down i went right down yeah the first part of this film shot being
shot at we were a coochie on this trail and we sort of take some stuff from the
point and we started to run back up the trail and there’s two sounds you hear there’s only one sound you hear
it’s the one that misses you and they’re whizzing by
you’d be surprised how fast how fast you could run in a low crawl position
oh my god that was like the crazy we and we had to go out and and pick up the bodies from a chopper that went down
outside of coochie within our first two weeks it was crazy that was gonna be nuts yep
and you can’t unsee stuff like that either yeah and nikki i wrote a book too it’s called dan phil has a couple of
books we got the book library here loaded up yeah i just did mine as a as a dedication to
uh 13 guys who got killed and 22 wounded from our own friendly fire
incident in march 26 1968. nine mortar rounds fell short and decimated our
company okay next what do you got
francisco i came online phil can you tell me where in mom you served in what position
uh well i was a warrant officer dust off pilot huey pilot and uh
as i mentioned earlier we were the northernmost dust-off unit in vietnam we had
everything from the dmz down to way and everything from the south china sea to laos which i
never went into at 10 o’clock at night on october 13th you never did
we weren’t allowed to be there that’s right no we’re allowed to be there i totally
understand i saw that mark the little red line that says this is new jersey and that’s cambodia yeah well
one of my medics said there was no billboard that said welcome to laos so you know
we just went to the coordinates they gave us and there they were i got you brother thank you yeah i i think it was
real close i think it was real close to laos hey phil
yeah did that gunshot wound end your pilot career no luckily it did not uh the there was
repaired but it didn’t take but i still have uh grip i could still grip the control and uh i’m trying to get ronnie to come
to uh our gathering uh the second weekend of august at uh john
you come with me yeah uh we’re building the only huey museum in the world the national american huey history museum
and uh i still get to fly vietnam huge today yeah where where is it at kokomo
yeah just north of kokomo indiana okay yeah and right across
right across from grissom air force base or now air reserve base uh the museum is under construction but
we’ll still have the gathering there we still do a reenactment with the blues
and uh we give membership flights uh you can you can still uh uh take a flight on a vietnam huey i’m
ready oh yeah john you want to go i can’t i can’t won’t be able to man
but actually all right said no i wrote your doctor’s note dr ron john was sick today
maybe you could maybe you could virtue me or something on your neck yeah you got it john you said in your book last
goodbye i believe that you were a gunner on a jeep with a 50 caliber can you tell
us some experiences on that yeah i was a gunner on a jeep we had we had five jeeps assigned to us when we went on the
road or if we had to outpost uh a convoy but it wasn’t a 50 cal it was it was a
60. you can’t you can’t use the 50 cals on the jeep first of all the amount that’s strong enough and you
want it you want to be able to take that gun off real fast in case you get a you get a an attack and you got you got to
evacuate your jeep real fast i know it’s an old weapon but did they
use any 30s 30 cows over there i never seen one okay no i just wondered
because i know they had them in world war ii in korea so i figured maybe they moved it up okay
next question nikki fran tangelo bharati they were about okay
eleven thousand eight hundred thirty five eleven thousand eight thirty five helicopters that served in vietnam
showing that 5600 with losses yeah that’s that’s a lot closer to the numbers i’ve heard maybe the twelve
thousand i had was total confused yeah shot down in that yeah yeah
yeah yeah and the number of three thousand or four thousand three hundred twenty one was huey’s yes
wow yeah so not many chinooks shot down couldn’t tell you but uh those are
pretty well protected really they’re they’re yeah they’re not they’re not a cheap helicopter
okay i flew on them once one time i flew on one okay yeah what else we got here
coming up matt zach anything else that’s it
all right gentlemen hopefully maybe this would be some questions and answers let’s go to the uh that’s it i said we got this that’s it
so any questions yet coming up that’s about it brothers thank you very
much john phil talk to you soon phil i’m gonna i’m coming out there i’m gonna grab john and make him play hooky to
come after yeah all right you know all right um yeah give give john my contact info yes
i was going to say that and uh i’ll give you mine yes okay and uh we’ll go from there thank you brothers take care god
bless you all right gentlemen all right welcome home right