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From: John Burch To: My Family Subject: Gunfighter - Part 7 - Bangkok, Thailand The country of Thailand, only about as big as the states of Utah and Arizona put together, was formerly the fabled land of Siam. Throughout my year in DaNang, I visited Thailand a number of times, going primarily to Bangkok at the northern tip of the Gulf of Siam, but also to Udorn in the north and Ubon in the east. South Vietnam, in the region around DaNang, was only about 50 miles wide and it was less than 75 miles south of the so-called "demilitarized zone" separating North and South Vietnam. A flight from DaNang to Bangkok went almost due west across 100 miles of Laos. While most of the fighting in the news was in South Vietnam (and air strikes in the north), the North Vietnamese used the parallel length of Laos as a "superhighway" of sorts for all kinds of war materials sent south to the Viet Cong. While these "highways" were only mountain trails, they moved an enormous amount of supplies and reinforcements. While it was not published in those early days, there was a sizeable bombing campaign in Laos to interdict those shipments. The one time I can remember seeing a long arc of tracers rising from the ground toward me in the air was over Laos. As Winston Churchill once said, "Nothing is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result!" We flew at least monthly to the B-52 base at Utapao Field in Bangkok. Though I was always watchful at that particular spot in the jungle, it never happened again. I will say that we always flew at 10,000 feet or above, well out of range of the normal 50 caliber machine gun. (That WAS well WITHIN the range of the larger 20 millimeter gun found farther north, but fortunately never brought that far south.) It was always a sight to go in to Utapao Field. The B-52's flew around the clock, as we did at DaNang, and it was impressive to see the big birds lumber into the air with their full load of munitions for targets in both North and South Vietnam. These were the older B-52-D's and they were specifically modified to carry huge loads of 500 pound and 1,000 pound bombs. (We called them "iron bombs" to differentiate from the nuclear bombs carried on their normal wartime mission.) In the early days of the war, all such missions went to targets in South Vietnam. There were many jungle areas where North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units were known to position and hide large amounts of munitions for war in the South. The B-52's would come in very high, unseen and unheard, then carpet an area with bombs so devastating that it would destroy even deeply buried stocks. I once talked to a "spotter" pilot, one of the people who flew little Cessna aircraft low and slow over the jungle to spot enemy positions, then mark them with smoke rockets for the attack aircraft to destroy. This guy had missed the operations briefing that normally warned of a B-52 target zone for the day. His first warning of it was as he flew low over the jungle and suddenly spotted "these large shadows on the trees." It was the shadows of a flight of B-52's just starting to drop their full load of bombs... and they were directly overhead!! He very narrowly escaped with his life. I don't think he ever missed another briefing! In the later days of the war, the B-52's went to targets in the North, including Hanoi and Hai-Phong. While they had a few early casualties to enemy Surface to Air Missiles (SAM), they wrecked such havoc in the North that they could fly anywhere they wanted without resistence after the first week of each offensive. In addition to my frequent trips to Bangkok with Gunfighter Airlines for supplies, I had several occasions to fly to Udorn Air Base and to Ubon Air Base, Thailand. Udorn was an F-4 base in the North which was "home" to such Ace Pilots as Robin Olds and Chappie James. |
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