On Mar 31, 9:26 pm, Roger wrote:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 03:04:37 -0400, "Dudley Henriques"



wrote:

"Roger" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:41:10 -0400, "Dudley Henriques"
wrote:

Which reminds me. I wonder if that person would consider the guys
flying for "Air America" back in the 60's and 70's as not real pilots
flying toys.

A Commercial Pilot friend of mine, Kenny Verdon, went over to fly with Air
America. We never heard from him again. He's still over there somewhere in
Laos under some wreckage in the mountains. We heard he was missing, but
little else came back down through the AA grape vine.
Tough work!
Dudley

I don't think the movie "Air America" missed the mark by a lot.



Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)www.rogerhalstead.com

Dudley, what year was Kenny flying over Laos?

As I mentioned before, I think, I did a lot of flying in Laos in a
AC119K out of NKP in 1972. Some SAR stuff, and we actually flew
support for that mysterious "Laotian General" mentioned in the movie
Air America. By my count I flew 195 combat missions during my tour
there, but according to the Air Force I flew 159.

Not sure what happened to the 36 I "thought" I flew.

I'll have to say that we were kind of frustrated when we were flying
over Laos at the same time Air America was. There was no
communication, although we were basically doing the same kind of
support.

Ah, well. Like I said, Air America had a great bar in Udorn. Some
time, when I'm really drunk, I'll tell the story about when we had a
couple of days off and "rented" a taxi, filled the trunk full of beer,
and drove the damn thing from Nakhon Phanom to Udorn. 90 miles, took
us two days, but it was a hell of a road trip.

OKAY, I digress. Long story short, I flew a number of SAR missions in
Laos, but those were all military-related. I have a feeling the Air
America guys were on their own. We never really heard from them.

--Walt
Bozeman