For those interested. There's a lot of emotion about bringing home and accounting for those we left behind in Vietnam. Here's a short story on what that entails and the level of commitment.
For a year i was the detachment commander in Vietnam for what was then called DET2 JTF-FA in Hanoi Vietnam. Somewhat ironically to me at least--as a student of history--our detachment in Hanoi occupied the old Cuban advisory compound from the American War.
Lots of stories i can tell to illustrate the point but i will focus on one. About mid tour (one year un-accompanied for me) i got a call from my Hq in Pearl Harbor to investigate a potential recovery site down in a big mangrove swamp off of Vung Tau. I flew down to Saigon, drove down the Vung Tau and rented a series of fishing boats and local canoes to get to the projected recovery site and confirm/deny viability of future recovery ops to account for those we'd lost in this particular incident.
Series of boat rides and canoe rides hired from locals and was able to localise the loss site.
long leech filled trek into the impact area--which because of the av gas associated with this particular aircraft there was still
a pretty well defined impact site in the middle of this mangrove swamp in the middle of bum fuck no where.
Ultimately I ended up negotiating with the local shrimp fishing head mafia dude and hired all the local shrimp fisher guys and gals. What i wanted was for them to build a helicopter landing pad and a series of dikes around the loss site. My Dad was a civil engineer and worked on the Tenn/Tom waterway (plus i have this chinzy fly by night engineer degree from West Point) so i had an idea about how to work recovery in this particular environment.
Umm nice shrimps
We'd localized the loss site for the OV-10 and negotiated the labor for local fishermen to come in and work the site for us. I had them build a exterior series of dams around the loss site. We flew in some mud pumps from our supporting detachment down in Thailand and thru my engineering genius--and sheer brute force--we got the site isolated and drained dry enough to begin recovery work.
Here's some perspective of what this looked like from the air. I had to fly recovery teams into work each day--hotel bills. i had to pay for Viet work crews to show up to work each day (they paddled in on canoes).
Eventually we got down to the cockpit area of this OV-10. I had some pretty intense conversations with the lead anthropologist about just what the fuck we were doing out here and how much of the American taxpayers money we were spending
So here's the deal. It was a GREAT honor to be associated with the recovery/accountability
effort of JPAC (then JTF-FA). You just don't know who you've 'accounted for' during your tour
due to the processes involved in DNA forensic accounting. I gather that so far during my one
year in Hanoi associated with this endeavor we've accounted for 12?
Yes we brought this aviator home. It was done after i left and my good friend Ty Smith closed the
loop on this particular case but we even got his Aggie Class Ring out of the loss site.
/r
Steve
For a year i was the detachment commander in Vietnam for what was then called DET2 JTF-FA in Hanoi Vietnam. Somewhat ironically to me at least--as a student of history--our detachment in Hanoi occupied the old Cuban advisory compound from the American War.
Lots of stories i can tell to illustrate the point but i will focus on one. About mid tour (one year un-accompanied for me) i got a call from my Hq in Pearl Harbor to investigate a potential recovery site down in a big mangrove swamp off of Vung Tau. I flew down to Saigon, drove down the Vung Tau and rented a series of fishing boats and local canoes to get to the projected recovery site and confirm/deny viability of future recovery ops to account for those we'd lost in this particular incident.
Series of boat rides and canoe rides hired from locals and was able to localise the loss site.
long leech filled trek into the impact area--which because of the av gas associated with this particular aircraft there was still
a pretty well defined impact site in the middle of this mangrove swamp in the middle of bum fuck no where.
Ultimately I ended up negotiating with the local shrimp fishing head mafia dude and hired all the local shrimp fisher guys and gals. What i wanted was for them to build a helicopter landing pad and a series of dikes around the loss site. My Dad was a civil engineer and worked on the Tenn/Tom waterway (plus i have this chinzy fly by night engineer degree from West Point) so i had an idea about how to work recovery in this particular environment.
Umm nice shrimps
We'd localized the loss site for the OV-10 and negotiated the labor for local fishermen to come in and work the site for us. I had them build a exterior series of dams around the loss site. We flew in some mud pumps from our supporting detachment down in Thailand and thru my engineering genius--and sheer brute force--we got the site isolated and drained dry enough to begin recovery work.
Here's some perspective of what this looked like from the air. I had to fly recovery teams into work each day--hotel bills. i had to pay for Viet work crews to show up to work each day (they paddled in on canoes).
Eventually we got down to the cockpit area of this OV-10. I had some pretty intense conversations with the lead anthropologist about just what the fuck we were doing out here and how much of the American taxpayers money we were spending
So here's the deal. It was a GREAT honor to be associated with the recovery/accountability
effort of JPAC (then JTF-FA). You just don't know who you've 'accounted for' during your tour
due to the processes involved in DNA forensic accounting. I gather that so far during my one
year in Hanoi associated with this endeavor we've accounted for 12?
Yes we brought this aviator home. It was done after i left and my good friend Ty Smith closed the
loop on this particular case but we even got his Aggie Class Ring out of the loss site.
/r
Steve
