Qui Nhon City

These pictures are from my year in Vietnam. They don't offer any particular story other than to document my travels. I was stationed in Cam Ranh Bay in the 485th GEEIA Sq. USAF. I was TDY most of the time, mainly at Phu Cat Air Base. The first thing I bought in Vietnam was a camera, a Minolta SRT-101. It was my first camera and these picture's are from it. An article in the Sunday paper about Vietnam web sites got me thinking about displaying my pictures. Over the last 35 years not many people have asked me about my tour in Vietnam, or even cared about it. I've always felt a little bit guilty about my year in Vietnam, being in the Air Force I didn't endure the hardships most soldiers did incountry. From all the web sites I've been to, I don't feel like I need to add anymore to what  has already been written. Hope you enjoy these pictures.

This is me with the Buddha outside of Qui Nhon on the road to Phu Cat. It's amazing how a sign of peace became the sign for the most horrendous act in all of mankind.

The results of the Tet Offensive in Qui Nhon.

A local barber shop on the road to Binh Dinh.

A perfect back street parking place for your Austin Healey. A store front in Qui Nhon.

Shrines in every direction. This one viewed from Phu Cat Air Base.

Main street in Binh Dinh.

Grave sites just outside the perimeter at Phu Cat A.B.

Time stood still at this church in Qui Nhon, Vietnam.

This picture is from a taxi in Saigon, on a weekend trip. Through the front window.  A taxi only for the brave.

Two girls who were at our Christmas party at Phu Cat.

The son of a bar owner friend in Qui Nhon. The street in front of the bar, and Qui Nhon from the air.

A guard tower on the perimeter of Phu Cat A.B. The boxes in each corner are receivers for the perimeter defense system we were installing. There were two concentric circles, one pressure sensitive, one magnetically sensitive, which sent out signals to the tower to alert the guards to intrusion. It never worked. This transmit antenna supposedly looked like a grave marker to fool the VC.

I'm holding a piece of shrapnel from a bomb that fell off an F-4 Phantom jet that was taking off. We had been working here just minutes before, but had forgotten some equipment and returned to base to pick it up. The hole behind me is what a 500lb. bomb does. This is the bomb dump that the bomb came from.

Christmas Day 1968. The Bob Hope show with Ann-Margaret and Les Brown and his band of renown. This was also the day I quit smoking.

Puff the Magic Dragon,  a C-47 twin engine cargo plane with a gatling gun mounted in the doorway. Every tenth bullet is a tracer which makes the vertical red lines that appear between the red flares. The conical shape is caused by the plane flying in a circle around the target. This picture is without the flares, just the tracers.
  MPC (Military Payment Certificate) this example is of the folding Nickel with a picture from the space program. Another item everyone brought back was the inscribed Zippo lighter.
 
 

More of my Vietnam pictures here.

  To view a map of South Vietnam click here, Qui Nhon, Cam Ranh Bay.
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