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From: Terry Hopkins 68-69
Date: 8/30/2004
Time: 3:24:33 PM
Remote Name: 137.80.60.254
John,
Lot of those tail numbers sound familiar. 378 and 724 are both very familiar. Like you, I spent many a day and sometimes nights, in the tails of those things pulling out and putting in ARC-54s and ARC-51BXs, along with C12 gyro compass gyros and VOR receivers. Fortunately we transferred the RU8Ds we had to the 156th about half way through my tour so we didn't have to deal with those antennas.
I'm not sure why I had not heard of the accident before. Our detachment at Huachuca (moved from Devens airfield in Sep 70) was training ARDF pilots up until June of 73 and we got regular reports from the 224th in Davis Station. Our ops section may have gotten the news but it never filtered out to the airfield where the maintenance was located.
I have some pictures of one of the beavers that was shot down in late '68 or early '69 by ground fire. Small caliber round hit one of the cylinders and the engine lost oil pressure. It did an emergency landing in a rice paddy and the crew was rescued as Charlie was closing in. Cobras "demilled" the bird on site and a Chinook brought back what was left.
Thanks foir the note John....later
Terry