Fred, I didn't know you stuttered. (^-^)))

George Z.

* * Chas wrote:
"Fred the Red Shirt" wrote in
message
om...
"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
...
snip

... This was at a time
when the Marines were so hard pressed for pilots that they
had to send men to Army and Air Force Flight Schools.

It seems to me that if the Marines had to send pilots to the
Army and AF for training then the Marines must have had a SURPLUS
of pilots (e.g. too many to for the USMC to train on its own)
rather than being hard pressed for them.

DOH! we were loosing them at an extremely high rate. The
life expectancy for USMC Huey crews was about 3 months! I
have a quote from a current Marine fighter pilot "I'm a
riffleman and I fly a jet fighter!" The Marines develoved
the concept of close air support in "bannana Wars' of the
late 20's and early 30's!

Hmmm...one wonders why those same archaic fighters were sent to Thailand and
Vietnam throughout the major part of the war, and as we have already seen in
another thread, why a couple of them were lost in combat operations.


If indeed they were archaic that does help to explain why some
were lost in combat, does it not?

They flew anything that they could get off of the ground
down at the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Airbase outside of
Tucson, AZ.

We had 2 R4Ds at Danang in 1964-65 (C47 also known as DC3).
The seats were removed and they were used to ferry ARVN
troops and their families and all of their pigs and chickens
around. They were full of patches from bullet holes.

The Air Force flew WWII era Douglas A26/B26 Invaders up
until Feb 1964. They carried 6,000 bomb loads and had up to
16 .50 Cal MGs. Then there were the B57 Canberras which the
Aussies also flew.

The mainstay of the USAF close air support effort were the
old ex Navy/USMC propjob AD-6 and AD-7 Skyraiders renamed
A-1E through A-1J. The Marines retired the last Skyraider
squadron out of NAS Memphis in the early 60's. The Navy
still flew them off of carriers in the Tonkin Gulf until
late 1965???

And of course, the spooks had a slew of C-47 and C-23 cargo
haulers.