Around the base

[ikar]

U-Tapao:

From the East gate looking toward opening of the B-52 reventments

What's left of a barracks built for the police. It sat just a couple hundred feet from the farthest runway and even less from the on base jungle. Outside of the K-9 section's kennels, and the ammo dump, towers and bunkers, there's nothing for miles. Just to get to the dinning hall or the armory would be a good 15 minute drive.I got the feeling they didn't want us around.

They went out one morning to start getting things ready for the electrical connections and found they had lost a entire floor. The ground was unstable for the weight and the project was abandoned.

Part of the river that cut the base in two. If you fell into it you had to take a shower, possibly a long one and throw your uniform away. When the tide went out and the level dropped, it left a black stain.

What's left of two mountains they had to take dirt from to build the base. They located P.O.L. where a fuel truck sand in the dirt. One complete mountain and part of this one were needed to fix the ground.

Buddah Mountain right outside the East gate and Alpha sector. Sometimes there would be a fog covering the lower half and it looked like King Kong would be at home standing on the two tops. They were constantly finding mortor pits dug up there and somebody would have to fill them in. Pedro kept an eye on things just outside the perimeter.

Slap flares and weapons training during the early days of the 1972 Easter Offensive. About this time we started to bring out the heavy weapons.

[Stefan buysse]

Hi,

So you were at U Tapao...Somehow I was reading your stories thinking they were about Korat. I should have realised it was U Tapao when you told of the B-52 diverting with combat damage.

I love that shot of the M-113. That camo really breaks up the shape of the vehicle.

I don't recall seeing a picture of a starlight scope mounted on a .50 cal before. I wonder what the view was after the first couple of shots. Maybe the procedure was to look out, spot, fix the .50, shut down the starlight scope and then fire.

Cheers, Stefan.

[ikar]

Actually, I was at Korat on my second tour.

There were certain things we were not supposed to have, H.E. rounds for our mortors, claymores, .50 cals, and a few other things. We did have the H.E. rounds and two .50s we kept out of sight though. We were allowed to let them be seen after an attack, but still kept it quiet.

With the night scopes we had at the time, N.O.D., starlight, and so on. you either didn't look through the eyepiece when you pulled the trigger, or shut that eye. You didn't dare look through the scope. If the light got too bright, the scope would shut down and sometimes restart, which only took a few seconds. If you looked through the eye piece at that time you would get the full intense effect. We had a helicopter pilot one night look through one and got hit by the flash of a lightning bolt near a distant mountain. He yelled and almost dropped the scope out of the aircraft. Lost his night vision and saw a bright light in that eye for some time.

Here's what a normal view was through a N.O.D. scope: