Found this in The Billings Gazette a few years ago! About 50 years ago.

I'll bet the pay was far higher than our troops were getting for the same work.

I wonder if this was like the contractors in Kosovo and the ones in Afganistan these days, or was this for the CIA fun in Cambodia.

Thanks for posting that!

MALE HELP WANTED!



Be fun to run that today, just to watch it fly!

Yep, I answered an ad like that, about that same era. I wouldn't mention the name of the company(ies) but all I can say that the pay was great and at that time in my life it was great experience. Good money, fast cars & motorcycles and more money that a young man could spend - all I had to do was live through it (which I did obviously).

drover

I was hoping I would find somebody that had done that. When I cut that ad out of the paper, I was on leave from Taiwan and was a C-130 crew chief. I spent most of 33 months in Viet Nam, and was seriously considering turning around and going back after I got out in 71. I went home after I got out and fell in love and forgot about the new job waiting for me.
Still married to the same woman so I guess I did the right thing!
How long did you stay over there drover?

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Ken

My father in law was plucked out of Alaska flying bush flights and dropped off in Vietnam to fly for Air America. I was going through his papers the other day and came across a bunch of stuff from his time there. When he signed on in 1968 he was making a base pay of $880 per month. They provided him with a stipend for his housing and domestic staff too. After the evacuation in 1975 he was reimbursed for all his possessions that he had to leave behind which totaled about $2,100. It was the single best decision he ever made considering he married the love of his life there and a couple years later my wife was born in a MASH hospital in Saigon.

Man, that's a neat story! He beat the odds staying that many years in a war zone.
Have you and your wife ever gone back to Viet Nam?
Thanks for replying


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Ken

"Have own hand tools"? They really wanted you to bring your Craftsman 100 piece socket set to Saigon?

I considered a similar offer to supervise power grid reconstruction projects in Iraq. By then, the gross pay was up to the $200K per year range, tax-free if I would agree not to return to the USA for at least one year. It would have meant leaving a tenured position with a big high school and forfeiting a retirement I'd worked toward for close to 20 years. I'm glad I didn't decide to go for the big bucks for a short time!
Jerry

Local dude here, think of one of the guys Slumlord describes, quit a pretty darn good civil service job to go to Iraq on one of those 1 year contract jobs. He was about 50 at the time and had it all planned out. “This is it”, he says, “one year over there and I’m done, retired and set for life”. Think it was like $125k tax free.

Upon his return he promptly bought a big assed Winnebango and a new Dodge pickup,....... And went to looking for a job since he was out of money.

Ken, We haven’t although we will eventually. We really wanted to go back with her mom and dad when they went back several years ago but the timing was off. We were busy raising young children and by the time we were able to entertain the idea dad had Alzheimer’s. We’re headed to eastern Washington tomorrow to visit him but there’s no more stories for me to listen to since his memory is gone. We celebrate the little things now, having my FIL remember his daughter is what I continue to pray for. We’ve been lucky because he remembers my wife and I even when he’s forgotten everyone else.

I have listened intently over the years and I know many of his stories but I miss not being regaled by the true tales of his early life. Being shot down many times.....surrounded by NVA on one occasion after crash landing post shoot down he was unloading the small children, orphans, to put on another aircraft that he told the NVA that they could kill him or help him save those children but those were their only choices. He said he couldn’t believe it when those NVA set down their weapons to help him load those children because he was sure that he was done for. He carried a Swedish K as his flying gun but said he doesn’t know why he carried it because he never intended to pull or use it. 😁. He is and always was a very sweet man that didn’t need to corrupt himself with killing. He was the youngest pilot Air America had and subsequently the youngest operations supervisor at Ton Suh Nhut (?). He came home and continued working for the government flying and being shot down in Mexico during an opium eradication job he had.

Back when my wife and I began dating the ATF stopped by his house when I was there. He went outside with them and 20 minutes came back inside. I asked him if everything was ok and he said that the ATF had the Swedish K that he flew with and the paperwork for him to keep it but he thought that was too much trouble and he “didn’t have a need for that gun anymore”. I could’ve swallowed my tongue knowing what he just passed up on but I was a newcomer and kept my mouth shut. I got the girl so I don’t care about “that gun anymore”. 😁

I did it twice. The first time was almost 2 years, a couple of years later I went back for another 6 month tour. The first time was great, by the second tour things had changed too much. Although the money was better things were getting dicey enough that it wasn't worth it and I also had a new bride in the states that I was missing. I was there a few years prior to your getting out

Yep, we had to supply my own tools, depending on your speciality the company gave a list of a minimum set of tool that you had to provide for yourself, and a lot of mine were Craftsman which was about as good of a tool that was available at that time.

I'll bet that most folks didn't realize that there was an EC-47, that was what my second tour was about.

drover

I was also stationed in Ubon Thailand for Blind Bat missions. We had EC on a few of our C-130's- We were kind of testing them. Is that the EC 0n your Gooney Birds you are talking about? I think EC was also installed on the AC-119's.
Were you working in Thailand or Viet Nam?
When at Ubon we were always told that when we got out we could probably get on with Air America. Some their planes were at Ubon.
When I found that old ad a few days ago, I didn't really expect to get many replies when I posted it.

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Ken

That type of ad has been used many times historically. Back in the early 1820's, a similar ad was placed in a national newspaper asking for "enterprising young men" to enter the fur trade. That 1 ad attracted a bevy of men who later became famous: Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, William Sublette, and others.

Are any of you former spooks familiar with the AWADS cargo drop system? The C-130's we maintained at a small facility near the end of the runway at U-Tapao only had a small tail number stenciled on them, and no other identifying marks. The crew members didn't wear uniforms with any rank or other ID on them.
Jerry

I think you may be referring to E-Flight aircraft out of the 21st Tactical Airlift Squadron stationed at Naha Okinawa.
I had a good friend that got moved to E Flight mostly because he was an experienced crew chief and had a top-secret security clearance. He would never tell us where he went or what he did, and he always took civilian clothes . Even several years later, he wouldn't tell me anything.
The one thing different about the E-Flight birds was that they were not painted camouflage, but they were silver as original. . The markings were like you describe.
Does that sound like what you saw at U-Tapao?

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Ken

It has been so many years that a lot of details have become intertwined / forgotten. This has been a real trip down memory lane.

I was not involved with the electronics operations end of things on the EC-47 my primary job for wiring mods and rack installation modifications on the aircraft for the equipment. My title was Senior Mechanic/Electronics Technician which essentially meant that I was supposedly qualified to work any system on the aircraft but what it really meant was that wherever was needed done I could be assigned to it, lots of OJT at times.

My permanent station assignment was in Japan. the EC-47 I was involved with was a test-bed aircraft, we had our own little section of the field for it at Tachikawa AFB, Japan, the aircraft was under almost constant modifications and upgrades, that was in the early 60's which makes it a few years prior to when you were in SEA. In the mid-60's I was assigned to the C-130 outfit at Naha, Okinawa in the doing similar work there. Seeing the mention of Top Secret clearance reminded me that I initially had Secret but it had to be upgraded to Top Secret for the EC-47 project and carried it until my retirement a few years ago, I had forgotten about that.

As civilian contractors we lived off-base but had full base privileges to the Clubs, BX, Commissary, etc. I can't remember how it was worded on our orders but we had the rank privileges of a Major. Most folks have no idea how many civilian contractors there were working in Japan/Okinawa/SEA from the early 60's onward until the end of the Vietnam war. The pay rate was definitely better in SEA but I was ok with being in Japan although there were a couple of times I almost succumbed to the lure of more money in SEA.
I had a couple of co-worker acquaintances who did that were in the wrong place at the wrong time during the TET offensive and they never made it back to the US.

Just for the heck of it I typed in the 800 number on the want ad and it came up as LSI (Lear Seigler Inc), it led to a link that has similar ads from different cities in the US. There is lots of info about funding, etc of projects in SEA. I haven't read it yet because it is many pages long but it does look interesting - perhaps one of these winter days when I am bored.

drover

Just an anecdotal fact for a very cool thread.....the Thai guy that was the “pusher” in the beginning of the Air America movie with Mel Gibson is my wife’s Godfather and was a pusher for my father in law. His name is Chatterong (sp?) and one hell of a good guy.

Cool thread. 👍

Ken, the AWADS ("All-Weather Air Drop System") birds were hard to miss, at least from the inside- - - - -the whole floor of the cargo compartment was covered with big ball bearings in cup-shaped holders, and there was a big aluminum push bar that was on a chain drive that stretched all the way across. With the ramp down, palletized cargo could be pushed out the back quickly. Supposedly, the system was able to track an angled beam projected by a portable transmitter on the ground and hit a 100 yard diameter drop zone - - - -even through an undercast. It was basically a Bomb-Nav system for cargo.

When it worked, apparently it was very accurate. Unfortunately, it had a few gremlins that popped up on occasion, and the load landed WAY out of the drop zone. We usually dropped one pallet of rice, and 3 or more pallets of ammo. (7.62X39- - - - -nobody fired 5.56 where this stuff was supposedly going!) On occasion, it was necessary to call in some air support to keep the wrong side from getting the ammo! On one memorable occasion, as soon as the plane rolled in on the final heading, the cargo punched out the back and splashed down 5 miles offshore. The guys on the beach with their backs to the water were not happy campers!

30-something years later I was telling an Army vet friend about those planes. He said he was manning the ground station that transmitted the tracking beam for us!
Jerry

My friend just retired from the Army as a helicopter crew chief. He said his favorite jobs were ones where they only wore the blood tag on their uniforms. Said it got you out of listening to NCO's with a power trip. I forget the term he used "Blood Stripe Only" or something. He never was specific about where he was or what he was doing but he was in and out of countrys all the time with his unit.

Drover, I was at Naha from Sept 67 until March 69. When I was at Ubon it was a 90 day TDY on Blind Bat 130's. After Naha, I went straight to CCK Taiwan for 15 more months ( Vietnam every month).
At Ubon, we were considered a test bed for EC and what ever they could think of. Was Dyna Electron at Naha when you were there? Do you remember the silver C-130's?
They were E-Flight birds.
About 20 years after I got out , I met and became friends with a guy that was working at DynaElectron when I was there. Did you have a hanger of your own right next to the Squadron offices?

The world is getting smaller. Did you stay out of Naminoue?

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Ken

I left Naha in mid-'65.

I can't say that I cared much for Okinawa itself, if I hadn't previously been in Japan it would have probably been okay but it was pretty low-end in comparison to Japan. Although I did do quite a bit of snorkeling in Okinawa and really enjoyed that.

Yes, Dynalectron was there when I was there, I am very familiar with Dynalectron, they had a lot of people in that part of the world then.
Other contractor companies I recall from that era - Air Mod Corp, Land-Air Corp, LSI (Lear Siegler Inc), Raytheon, most aircraft manufacturers had some Tech Reps of course, and quite a few others that I can't think of right now.

I do remember the silver C-130's, it has been a lot of years but I seem to remember doing some modifications on them - not 100% sure though. I can't recall the hangar location I worked out of either. That has was 55 years ago, Wow!! - It is hard to believe that it was that long ago. At least until I see a picture from back then and look in a mirror - it sure makes me wonder who that young guy was and how this old guy replaced him.

Wasn't Namainoue where all the bars and short-time girls were? There again just too many years ago and a lot of places and water under the bridge since then.

I am not sure that the EC-47 program really went on very long, I suspect that the EC-130's made it obsolete pretty quickly, the C-130 was far the superior platform and to this day is still one of my favorite aircraft.

A couple of more C-47 stories from Japan - I worked one that was a "listening post" aircraft, it was out of S. Korea and it flew a race-track course just south of the DMZ, it had turbo-prop engines, and I want to remember it as having extended wings but I would't swear to the extended wings though, it had so many atennas on it that it looked like a porcupine. From a distance at a casual glance it looked like a regular C-47 but with something that was just not right about - the longer you would look the more noticable it became that there was something different about it.

We did some mods and upgrades to the C-47 that was used by Ambassador to Japan Douglas McArthur ll, that was without a doubt the most plush C-47 I have ever seen.

Yes, the internet has made the world a very small place indeed.

Thanks for helping me dredge up a lot of old forgotten memories.

drover