JB: This was in the very early days of the Vietnam War and the Secret War going on in Laos. The Un

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Jim Burns flew search and rescue helicopters with the 20 th and 21 st SOS Squadrons during sylvania aquastar the Vietnam War, frequently flying sylvania aquastar into Laos, North Vietnam sylvania aquastar and Cambodia under heavy fire to rescue sylvania aquastar shot-down airmen, or to insert and extract Special Forces units, some of whom were under intense attack by North Vietnamese forces during the Secret Wars in Laos and Cambodia.
In this first interview sylvania aquastar Jim talks about his time in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, sylvania aquastar in 1964, during the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and explains that North Vietnamese intelligence and propaganda networks were going strong even at such an early stage in the war.
PAL: Your first Vietnam-related tour of duty was in 1964 when you spent a few months at Nakhon Phanom airbase ( NKP ) in Eastern Thailand, just across the Mekong river from Laos. How did you come to be sent there?
JB: sylvania aquastar I was an Airman First Class assigned to the 31st Air Rescue Squadron, Clark Air Base in the Philippines, as a HH-43B Helicopter Crew Chief/Flight Mechanic. sylvania aquastar I was called into the squadron commander s office one day, to be informed of a classified mission which I had been recommended for. I told him I d be happy to go.
He indicated that it would be approximately four months in length, but that was all he could tell me, except that I should be ready to leave for Saigon the next day where I would received a full briefing about the location and mission I was being sent on.
JB: This was in the very early days of the Vietnam War and the Secret War going on in Laos. The United sylvania aquastar States had signed a treaty making Laos a neutral country as had most of the other nations in Indochina. The U.S. had become secretly involved in fighting communist forces that were warring sylvania aquastar with the governments of Laos and the Republic of Vietnam sylvania aquastar and themselves sylvania aquastar using neutral Laos as a base of operations, and as a route of access around the DMZ into South Vietnam.
In Saigon I was briefed that the unit I was being sent to, at NKP, was to provide Air Rescue support, if necessary, for the increasing sylvania aquastar number of reconnaissance flights U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy aircraft were carrying out over Laos and North Vietnam. The enemy forces were developing better air defenses and the U.S. did not want any U.S. aircrews taken prisoner to be used as propaganda about U.S. violations of the neutrality of Laos.
JB: I was a fully qualified HH-43B Husky helicopter flight mechanic trained to work on and fly rescue sylvania aquastar missions. The three helicopters we had at NKP during my tour of duty had come from Air Rescue Detachments in Japan and Korea as had all the other helicopter guys. I was sent to NKP to augment the manning strength of the assigned flight crews with the unit who were qualified to fly air rescue missions.
JB: When I first arrived, I immediately realized NKP was not the type of base I was used to. The runway sylvania aquastar and parking ramp were made of PSP (porous steel planking) which rattled and clanged as aircraft wheels rolled over it. I saw three HH-43B helicopters, three or four shacks, some fuel bladders scattered around the edge of the ramp, some large diesel generators, three or four trucks, an outhouse and about twenty GI s – and that was it.
Each afternoon we d leave the base and the three helicopters there to be guarded by two Thai guards who lived in a small shack near the front gate , with their wives and families, as we headed into the town of Nakhon Phanom to stay at a hotel.
We were put on a higher alert status on Aug. 2 (which was the day of the Gulf of Tonkin incident) but we didn t know the reason for a couple of days. Even after that we d still head back to the hotel for the evening, just like before, except that some of us now had to stay on the base at night to help guard our birds.
PAL: it s interesting that NKP itself was so poorly secured at first. At the time was the Thai Communist insurgency in that part of the count