"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 11:40:12 -0400, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:

Ever do Palmerola (now referred to as Soto Cano, IIRC)? Flew in and out
of
there a few times via C-141 when we did a road construction project over
in
Yorro Province of Honduras. When I was there (late 87 and early 88), the
Army MI folks were using it to operate RC-12's doing their usual
hush-hush
stuff.

I don't recall ever seeing a USAF OV-10 in operation (which IIRC ended in
the early eighties), but I do remember seeing USMC variants flying out of
Biggs AAF at Fort Bliss, TX while I was TDY down there in early 87 (I
think
they were participating in the JTF 6 counterdrug effort); interesting
aircraft. The last one I saw was serving with the USFS up in Alaska,
doing
fire-fighting control work and I think also working with the smoke
jumpers
out of Fairbanks.

The USAF was still training FAC's in both the OV-10 and O-2A in 1984
at Patrick AFB. I deployed with a half-dozen AT-38s for a great two
weeks of flying--playing fast-mover fighters for the FAC students to
control. Since we had done the fighter orientation for the FAC
students about a month earlier at Holloman, teaching them high-threat
and low-threat tactics and basic bomb dropping, it was a lot of fun to
see the guys moving into their real assignment.

The air-FACs were deactivated about two years later and several of the
FACs that I had trained at Holloman were doing the attached ground-FAC
mission with battalions in the brigade that I was assigned to as ALO
out of Fort Carson. They weren't very happy about the ground job and
were all counting the days until their tour was up and they could
cross-train into another aircraft.

I worked with a lot of Broncos in '72/'73 where they were doing both
day and night work throughout SVN, southern Laos and Cambodia. A close
friend of mine has the dubious distinction of being one of only two
OV-10 drivers who was shot down and captured by the NVN. He spent
about seven months in the Hilton and Plantation.

During the Honduran operation I mentioned above, one of the maintenance
CWO's for the task force was a former aviator type who had later lost his
flight ticket due to medical reasons (he had flown both helos and C-12's
before that happened). He was one of the few Army aviators (if not the only
one) to have spent time as a PW in Vietnam; he had gone down way up in I
Corps, near the DMZ, when his OH-6 Loach took ground fire (this would also
have been around 1972, IIRC). The "small world" theory comes into play ehre,
because one of the units that went out looking for him was my bother's
dustoff unit, the 571st (he was there from early 71 to early 72).

Brooks



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
"Phantom Flights, Bangkok Nights"
Both from Smithsonian Books
***www.thunderchief.org