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From: Bob Patton, LCDR, USN (Ret)
Date: 3/27/2002
Time: 9:07:20 PM
Remote Name: 24.167.119.158
Trying to locate the guy using that callsign in June 1969.
See note below:
I have been looking for Swampfox One Niner for many years. I don't know if it's the same guy, but after reading your description of his flying I believe it is. On June 25th, 1969 I was on a Ruff Puff operation with Advisory Team 64 in the An Phu subsector of Chau Doc Province. We were doing a sweep of the Cambodian border north of An Phu when we were ambushed by an unknown number of enemy. We were attacked at noon and we were chagrined to find that our Arty and air support were literally out to lunch. The only air component we could raise was, you guessed it, Swampfox 19. He went into a climb over the treeline (I used to remember the grid coordinates like by birthday) and appeared to stall into a dive during which he fired his spotting rockets at the enemy position. As he recovered from the dive (not very quickly), the Birddog was engulfed in automatic weapons fire - the tracers looked like the fourth of July. Needless to say, he did repeated the attack until he was out of spotting rounds. Shortly, thereafter, a covey of Army Huey gunships showed up and did some major damage. We were regrouping to attack the area about 5PM, when the Ruff Puff commander called the operation since it was quitting time. No s--t, read kidding.
Anyway, Swampfox 19 was a gutsy SOB and has my respect. I was a Navy Corpsman at the time assigned to an Army Advisory Team. War makes strange bedfellows. If you ever heard anything about who and where Swampfox 19 is - please let me know.
Best regards, Bob
Robert L. Patton Lieutenant Commander, USN (Ret)