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In the mid fifties, the 38th Bomb Wing. at Laon Air
Base, France, had their old reliable B-26 Invaders replaced with
beautiful new B-57 Canberras.
As with most new equipment, our new birds would occasionally present us
with an unexpected malfunction. John Harris, a top notch pilot,
was faced with this dilemma one day when for no apparent reason his nose
gear failed to extend. John and our Martin Company Tech Rep tried
to
correct the problem but their combined expertise failed to come up with
anything to make the gear come down. It was finally decided to put
a strip of foam down the center of the runway so the B-57's nose could
scoot through the foam on landing rollout.
A major in wing opertions, upon hearing of Johns emergency, called the
tower and requested they ask John to please hold off his landing for a
little while. The major wanted time to go get his movie camera so
he could film this unusual event.
John, being a hell of a nice guy
as well as a hell of a good pilot, agreed to do so. The Major
returned with his camera and John turned final.
John did exactly what everyone knew he would do. He made a picture
perfect landing. When the aircraft came to a stop, the only
visible damage, aside from a little scraped paint, was the
UHF antenna which had snapped off. Well done.
The major also felt he had done well. He believed
he had captured on film something that had never been photographed
before and very possibly may never be again. As the major was
putting away his camera, his
euphoria abruptly dissipated. To his horror, he noticed he had not
removed the cameras lens cap. Sometimes grown men do cry.
Stan Murphy
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Photo by John Harris
Click to enlarge the photo
During my tour at Laon AB, France 1955-1958, I flew
B-57s in the 38th Bomb Wing. After about two years in the 71st
Bomb Squadron as a line pilot, I was assigned to wing training as an
instructor pilot. There, we gave initial training to new arrivals, some
already B-57 qualified and some not. We trained some pilots for other
units in Europe.
One of our routine duties was to administer
“standardization flight checks” to the pilots of the 38th
Bomb Wing. There was a need for this, because the last training for most
of them was at Randolph AFB.
I was scheduled to fly with “Mac” McClellan to
administer a standardization flight check. This was in the very early
stages of attempting any standardization, and was our first opportunity to
take a look at the pilots. We climbed to 15,000 feet in VFR conditions and
did some basic air work such as stalls and steep turns. We needed to burn
off some fuel to get the weight down for instrument approaches and landing
practice. To kill some of the time, I asked that he extend the gear with
the emergency “T”-handle. I had found that almost none had ever tried
it. I had briefed it before flight to be sure the wrong “T” handle
(canopy jettison) wasn’t pulled. When Mac pulled the “T” handle, the
right main and the nose gear extended properly and the left main remained
up and locked as indicated by the instrument. My first thought was that
the indicator was stuck and the gear was really OK. There was a slight but
noticeable yaw to the airplane that indicated otherwise. We made a pass by
the tower and got the bad news. There was no emergency procedure in the
Dash 1 for this condition.
With most of our fuel still on board, we had a lot of time before landing.
I noticed as things progressed, more and more heads appeared in the tower,
until the row was solid from one side to the other. There was plenty of
help and suggestions for things to try, none of which worked. I think the
Dash 1 at the time suggested jettisoning the canopy before touch down. I
didn’t like the idea because the windblast would probably blind me in
the back and make things too different for the pilot in front. There was
also, the remote possibility of crew incapacitation and aircraft damage
from the canopy. Besides, we knew of B-57 previous experiences that
indicated a low possibility of anything but a safe, smooth touch down with
the wheels retracted.
After trying about everything we - and the crowd -
could think of, we realized it was time to get set for the landing. Every
move we could think of was discussed and agreed upon. We were told to burn
the fuel to minimum. But no one wanted to say how minimum. I think we
settled at about 2000 pounds. We got several delays from people on the
ground for reasons I can’t remember. Probably getting the foam ready. It
came out of our 2000 thousand pounds. Meanwhile, the weather started
deteriorating. The wind, which was straight down the runway at 5-10 knots,
started swinging around to a right crosswind of near 90 degrees. Switching
runways would ordinarily be no great problem, but they were well along
laying down a foam strip for our touchdown. It also started to rain.
Mac set up a good approach and touched down
approximately where he should. Grinding B-57 is not a pleasant sound, but
it was very smooth. I could feel the small imperfections in the pavement,
but there were no big bumps. The airplane slid much farther than we
expected. It couldn’t be that we were anxious (?)
The airplane stopped to the left of the foam track and angled to
the right about ten degrees. That was probably because of the wind from
the right. Both tip tanks were still clear of the ground and engines still
running. Mac was supposed to open the canopy when the airplane slowed. He
got it about half open, and stopped. It was enough for him, but not for
me. As the airplane stopped, he started scrambling out. I caught his leg
and held on until he realized the canopy wasn’t fully opened. He opened
it and cut the engines, gave me a grin, and departed at high speed. I
wasn’t too far behind.
The airplane was flying again in about two weeks.
Most of the damage was to the bomb bay door. Removed and replaced! Some
sheet metal work was needed at the fuselage bulkheads at each end. They
had flat spots from the belly slide.
Maj. Howie Moore had a 16 mm movie camera and
photographed the landing. Months later, he finally admitted there was no
film in the camera!
The cause of the problem was a ninety-degree bell
crank in the gear door lock linkage. Remember those rods on the door? The
crank had cracked in the middle, with the crack running to the pivot. When
the rod was pushed, the crack would open and the bell crank would not push
so that the lock pin would be withdrawn. Later in my tour, I found another
one on an airplane that I was supposed to fly. Many years later, I was
reading some old accident reports and found the problem was not unusual.
Made me wonder why they didn’t fix it!
John W.
Harris
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Sometime in late February of 65, the VC blew up something, so we
were going to retaliate. In early March the Air Force came up with a
strike on a supply depot in the southern part of North Vietnam.
The B-57’s were included in this strike. (Yippee) At that
time, the 57’s were operating out of Bien Hoa. There were two
squadrons (8th & 13th) stationed at Clark AFB. Both squadrons
were rotating crews on an individual basis, so we had mixture of both
squadrons at Bien Hoa. As far as I can remember this was the first time
the B-57’s had taken part in an operation like this. There were to be
four or five different types of aircraft taking part in the
mission.
As the luck of
the draw would happen, I was at Bien Hoa when this took place.
This means I was fortunate to be a part of this historic event. ( Yeah
– Right.)
The briefing was
pretty straightforward and we headed for the aircraft. The aircraft were
full of fuel; bombs loaded and gun cans were full. What more could
you have asked for? Steel plating around the cockpit comes to
mind. We were putting 12, 16, or 20 aircraft on the mission. I
don’t remember the exact number but it was a whole passel of
aircrafts. (It’s that memory thing) Needless to say the “pucker
factor” was pretty high. We were to be the last of the aircraft
to hit the target. What we weren’t told was that the higher ups
had calculated that the Big, Slow, B-57s would experience a 50% loss.
Had this tidbit of info been passed down, the pucker factor would have
been off the scale.
Take off, climb
and cruise were normal. Except the take off roll was a little long
(an understatement). But that’s another story. North of
Danang, we started our descent down to the tree tops. Just north
of the DMZ, we switched over to the strike frequency. Much to our
consternation, rescue operations were already in full swing and we
hadn’t even gotten to the target. Remember that pucker factor,
it really shot up at that moment. Now we were at the point of
getting all the switches in the right positions for the bomb drop.
Rotate the selector switch to “bombs internal”- fly formation;
arm the bombs - fly formation; bomb bay switches on - fly
formation; get gun sight set - fly formation; rotate bomb
door - fly formation; and watch out for the trees. OK –
the last bit is an exaggeration – BUT WE WERE LOW. (Aircrew
member were multi-tasking long before it was a business buzz word)
Planned attack
was to use what I call the “Thunderbird Reversal”. Pop up from
the deck, do sort of a wing–over, establish the dive bomb angle, drop
the bombs and get “The hell out of Dodge”. This maneuver makes it a
little more difficult for the gunners on the ground to track you.
Altitude, airspeed and heading are all being changed at the same time.
Being #4, there wasn’t anything on the ground to aim at because of all
the smoke, so I just aimed for the middle of the smoke. There was
some AAA because I’m sure I felt the tail of the aircraft lift-up a
couple of times as I was coming over the top. After bomb release,
it was full throttle and head for the deck and Oh-Yeah, close the bomb
door.
Leveling
off I picked up #3 and fell in behind, about one to two miles back.
After a couple miles, I realized that I was not gaining on
anybody and that was because they also had their throttles bent around
the wide-open position. Down the road, lead backed off a little on the
power, we joined up and started the climb out.
Now, in the pilot’s handbook (Dash One), there is a little
obscure note that says, “ If the beak of the aileron comes in contact
with the wing, a vibration will occur through-out the aircraft.
(or something to that effect)”. About the only way this can
happen, is to come off the hot jungle floor and make a rapid climb to
altitude, which results in the metal of the aircraft to contract at
different rates. Going through about 35,000 feet, guess what, the airplane
starts vibrating. Since we
had encountered some triple A, I just knew I had taken some hits. The
other members of the flight checked me out and said everything looked
good. Since the engines
were running good and the aircraft was controllable, I stayed with
formation. That way if anything bad had happened, they could at least
mark the spot. Passing through 40,000 the vibrations eased off and
shortly after level off it went away.
Fortunately,
the remainder of the flight was uneventful with recovery at Bien Hoa.
No aircraft had been lost and only a couple of aircraft had
damage. Earlier I had mentioned that the higher ups had calculated that
we would lose a bunch of airplanes. Since we had not, each aircrew had to write a narrative of
what we had done, to avoid being shot down.
So ended
the first strike, that is if you don’t include a trip to the bar.
Chuck Ramsey
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If you could discount
the separation from families; the loss of friends; the heat; the living
conditions; the food; and being at Bien Hoa the morning the ramp blew
up, (-loudest G/D noise
I’ve ever heard-). Well,
if you could discount all of that, the flying, from my viewpoint, was
interesting, challenging and sometimes extraordinaire.
We were doing things that had never even been thought of, until
then.
But before we could do all this flying, we had to get the birds off the
ground. Prior to this time,
the old 57 had never really been fully loaded down.
Well, maybe for a firepower demo, but even then, nothing like we
were doing. It seems that
the higher ups realized they had an airplane that could carry almost as
much as an A-1 but much faster. And as bonus, unlike the fighters, we
were always full of fuel, because we did not have to remove any tanks to
be able to carry a full armament load.
But when you hang 4 –2.75 rocket smiley pods; (each pod carried
7 rockets), 4-1,000 bombs under the wings and then add a bomb bay full
of 500 hundred pounders, not to mention full ammo cans for the guns, the
aircraft gets to be a tad bit heavy. As a result, we were at the upper
end of the takeoff charts. Actually
in some cases we were beyond the charts.
We knew we could get the aircraft off the ground, but we
weren’t exactly sure how much runway we were going to use. Some
creative interpretation of the charts gave us a pretty good idea what
the takeoff roll would be for that day. Because of the warm
temperatures, (was there anything but warm/hot temperatures) this made
for some long take-off rolls. Seven
and eight thousand-foot take-off rolls were common.
One nice “warm” day at DaNang, I picked the nose wheel up
with only 1,000 feet of runway left.
For many aircraft in the inventory, this was not unusual, but for
the 57, it was new.
Now,
the B-57 had this one little nasty flight characteristic. The safe
single-engine speed was always higher than take off speed. The rudder
just wasn’t large enough to control full power on one engine at the
slower speeds. This meant that there was a twilight zone that you had to
get through on every take-off. If
one engine hiccupped right after liftoff, you would have to be awfully
fast hitting the master jettison button, awfully lucky with the rudder
control, or you would be awfully dead. Fortunately the J-65 engine was
very reliable and to the best of my knowledge, an engine loss at that
critical time, never happened.
One of the best things that happened to me was being crewed with Charles
McLaughlin. He kept me
straight and since he was also an Electronic Warfare Officer (EWO), he
could tell me when I should start getting excited about the radar
tracking guns. We did not
have any radar jamming equipment, but at least we knew when to get excited.
Now
for the fun part of flying in Vietnam. Was it interesting, challenging,
etc, - take your pick. Early
on we began flying sorties, at night, over the southern part of North
Vietnam. Basically, we were
just looking for targets. (Night - recce)
This really was not that productive since all we had to look
with, were our eyeballs. So they (the ones higher up on the food chain)
teamed us up with a C-130 (Blind Bat), which would drop flares on a
briefed target or anything else we might come across.
At this point in my flying career, I had never even been close to
a C-130, in the daytime, and here I was, joining up with one – AT
NIGHT! Because of dissimilar aircraft, this became one of those
challenging and interesting part of flying in Vietnam.
On
one sortie, my wingman and I had to fly, NIGHT – WEATHER – FORMATION
with the C-130. Dissimilar
aircraft - at night - in the weather?
This type of flying was definitely challenging, interesting,
extraordinaire, and probably a little idiotic. It was this or separate
with the idea that we could rejoin after clearing the weather. Since we
were fairly well north, I figured the C-130 would be a little reluctant
to turn his lights on. So, we hung in there. The C-130 did have some bug
lights across the top of the wing, so we could see him by riding just
above and fairly close to him, where we needed to be to see him at night
in the first place. Another aspect of flying formation in the B-57 was
that, it had - NO, repeat No hydraulic flight controls, not even some
sort of boost. It was all
manual, and all in the arms to keep the machine in position. In order to
keep those bug lights in view, in the weather, you had to fly pretty
tight formation. As a result, night-weather-formation was quite a bit of
effort. But as it worked out, it was all for naught.
The weather never broke, so it ended up being an aborted mission
anyway. BUT, you gotta
admit, it was different.
Another wrinkle of matching up dissimilar aircraft to get a job done was
utilizing the Nav/Bomb system of the EB-66.
The plan was to meet up with the EB-66, fly formation, at 20,000
feet and by using a tone, know when to release the bomb load. But here
again, it was, what else – at night.
It seemed somebody up the line, took the name - B-57 Night
Intruder - to mean just that- night. As with the C-130, I had never even
been close to an EB-66 and here I was ready to fly formation with it. On
my first attempt at this, I discovered the B-66 could flat outrun the
B-57. After we were in
position, I told the 66 to “push it up”.
The next words were –“slow down”. This meant we had to go
through all that bit of joining up again. On the bomb run, I tried to
stay in fairly close to the 66, otherwise we would have just bracketed
whatever target he had in his crosshairs. As a bonus, the B-66, being an
ECM aircraft, could jam the radar-controlled guns. Actually, the mission
with the EB-66 were probably the easiest ones that we flew. Take-off;
cruise to rendezvous; join up; fly formation for 10 to 15 minutes; and
go home.
As with take-offs, landings sometime presented an interesting situation
that would never have happened in a training/peace time situation.
DaNang, at the time the B-57s relocated there, had only one
runway and it was busy. Without
a major, major catastrophe, there was no way to close the runway.
There was just too much traffic of all types of aircraft and
there was nowhere else to go. In retrospect, my hat goes off to the guys
in the tower. It really was
amazing how well they kept the traffic moving.
But things did happen:
Situation:
Aircraft with collapsed gear at the 1,500-foot marker of the landing
runway.
Instructions: Land long
________________
Situation: C-123 off the left side of runway at mid-field, with the tail
sticking out over the runway.
Instructions: Keep it to the right on landing roll.
________________
Situation: Night mission - needing all the runway for take-off.
Instructions: Keep to the left on take-off roll.
Repairs being made to runway between 2 and 3 thousand foot
markers. Be careful of the
floodlights.
_________________
Situation: During engine shutdown and rotating of the bomb door, a
500-pound bomb rolls out and up against the right main gear.
Instructions: Run like hell!
________________
I know, I know, the last situation has nothing to do with flying,
but it does illustrate some of the “stuff” that happed during that
time period.
Ok, flying in Vietnam, --- interesting, challenging. extraordinairy,
difficult or idiotic? You
choose.
A
tip of the hat to the maintainers, better known as crew chiefs,
armament, avionics, electrical and all the rest for keeping the
airplanes in the air, under difficult conditions. Actually, I think a
better word would be lousy conditions. You would think that in
all the time I was there I would have gotten at least one maintenance
abort so that I would get an extra day off.
But Nooooo, you had to keep them flying. That’s my way of
saying – Good Job.
Finally I would like to
take this opportunity to acknowledge 3 fine gentlemen, that it was my
honor and pleasure to have been crewed with:
Gayle P. Johnson; Robert A.
Manns: and Charles McLaughlin
Thanks guys for keeping me pointed in the right direction.
Ferrying to the Philippines
Charles
(Chuck) Ramsey
In the fall of 1964, some
of the B-57s stationed at Clark AFB in the Philippines were deployed to
Bien Hoa, South Vietnam. Through various incidents, several aircraft
were lost. So a decision was
made to replace them. One problem came to light.
I don’t know when the decision was made, but aircrews were not
selected until the end of December or the first of January 1965, so as
not to screw up the Christmas holidays. (Wasn’t that considerate of
them?) The Problem:
We had to be in Louisville, KY, by the middle of January 1965.
Needless to say there was a wild scramble getting orders; getting
the kids out of school; making arrangements to get household goods
packed up; clearing the base; and then getting the family to a place to
live. In my case, that meant
a cross-country trip from Biggs AFB at El Paso to South Carolina. (Sound
familiar to anyone?)
Nine crews from the three DSES squadrons showed up at the
National Guard outfit to pick up the aircraft and start out on the ferry
trip. I had been crewed with
Mike Chalout, who was also from Biggs and we had flown together many
times making the trip much easier. When
asked of the Aircraft Delivery Group where we were headed, all we got
was that their job was to get us to the next stop and that General Lemay
was watching this deployment. Now I have no way of knowing if General
Lemay, himself, was watching this trip but in retrospect, somebody way
up the “Food Chain” was definitely keeping an eye on this operation.
We had a pretty good group of highly intelligent people making this
trip, so we thought we would try to figure out ourselves where we might
be heading. First, we were
ferrying B-57s. Our initial
stop was to be the west coast. Second,
the aircraft were fitted with ferry tanks, which generally meant long
over-water flight. Third, there was only one outfit with B-57s in the
Pacific and it was in the Philippines.
By George, I think we got it. We were headed to Clark AFB in the
Philippines.
Then we hit our first glitch.
The Air National Guard was either using or had requisitioned back
type parachutes and a seat survival kit. Since the aircraft seat was not
designed for back type chutes, a long flight with the chute hanging from
your shoulders can be quite tiring.
All of us had been flying the machine for quite some time and
preferred the seat type parachute with a life raft on the back.
So the Delivery Group asked where we could get these type chutes
already put together. For whatever reason, the consensus was the 4758th
at Biggs AFB at El Paso. (Right
back to where we had started from.)
A phone call and they said go.
Somebody was watching.
Normally, the base Transient Alert would be responsible for
servicing the aircraft at Biggs, but not this time.
Now can you imagine the phone call that the Commander, Col.
Young, received? Something
to the effect "You have nine B-57s due there in a couple of hours.
You are to “turn them around as fast as possible” and by the
way, they will be taking 18 of your seat type chutes with life rafts”.
Somebody was watching.
Normally the jumping off point for trips across the Pacific had
been McClelland AFB. For
whatever reason we were diverted to (as best I can remember) Moffitt
Naval Air Base. This did
knock off a few miles for the trip to Hawaii. The weather was pretty
much at minimums when we landed and it didn’t get any better the next
morning. Ferry Minimums for
take off was suppose to be 800 ft and 2 miles.
When we reached the flight line the next morning,
you could not see the top of the hangers.
But the weather people assured us that at our departure time, the
weather report would read 800 feet and 2 miles.
Somebody was watching.
Next we found out that the headwind component from San Francisco
to Hawaii, at 40,000 ft, exceeded our capabilities.
But the winds from Los Angeles were acceptable. So based on that
we headed for Hawaii. Estimated
time enroute – 6 hours. Estimated
time to dry tanks – 6 hr – 30 min.
Somebody was watching.
For those not familiar with B-57’s, there is no autopilot. So
we had 6 hours of hand flying the aircraft. (I know – poor us).
After leveling off at initial cruise altitude, there was not much
for Mike to do except keep track of the fuel.
(Nothing to navigate from or with). Since Mike didn’t bring any
reading material, he started reading the Aircraft Delivery Manuel.
A short time later Mike informs me that he wants to go home.
Naturally I asked why because it might be an excuse for me to go
home. He said that the
delivery manual clearly stated that a fully qualified navigator was
required for a ferry mission. Mike,
having been trained as an EWO, had only an entry-level navigator rating.
It sounded good to me but I don’t think anyone else would have
bought it. Anyway, by the time we reached the Philippines, I can
guarantee that Mike was a fully qualified Nav and then some.
In order for us to reach Hawaii without running out of fuel, it
was necessary to climb as high as possible.
Most of us stopped at 48 to 49 thousand feet.
One aircraft running a little bit low of fuel, went on up to
51,000 ft. One thing that
did for us was to eliminate any thoughts of conflicting traffic. (Unless
there happened to have been a U-2 aircraft in the area)
No one ran out of fuel, but one aircraft turned final with 800
pounds of fuel remaining. (By
any measurement – that ain’t a whole lot of fuel).
The next morning everyone was ready for the long haul to Wake
Island except me. One of the
boost pumps in the forward fuselage had quit.
This tank feeds the engines and I definitely did not want to
tempt fate by attempting the flight.
Now with some aircraft, operating with one pump is no big deal,
but losing the remaining pump at 48,000, and having a tank that will not
gravity feed, it becomes a real big deal.
At first, we thought Hickam maintenance would be able to take
care of the problem, but were informed that since we had a support
aircraft, (I had not seen anything that looked like a support aircraft)
that we would sit until the support aircraft came back though Hickam.
Apparently whoever had been watching us, had no time for one
aircraft. Which meant we were stuck in Hawaii for at least a week.
(Nasty break.) We thought a
long time on what we might do for a week (about 5 minutes), then we
grabbed our bags and headed for Fort Derusy and Waikiki Beach.
I knew one person stationed at Hickham, he offered us the use of
a car and you bet, we accepted. We did the normal tourist things but
then another little problem came up.
Since we were between assignments, pay had not been
re-established and there were families back home, Mike and I began to
run low on money. As anyone
who has been to Honolulu will tell you, it is not the cheapest place to
stay. Housing was not a
problem but food was. But we
did find a small restaurant about two blocks from the beach where we
could get all the spaghetti and meatballs we wanted for a buck fifty.
After about a week, we were told the aircraft was ready, so we
headed back to the base for a departure the next morning.
As Mike was working on the flight plan at Base Ops, a navigator
from a transport aircraft asked him how he liked that particular Loran
chart compared to another. Mike
replied that we didn’t have Loran and he was just using that chart
because it had both Hawaii and Wake Island on it. Then the conversation
then went something like this.
Nav: What are you flying?
Mike: B-57
Nav: Ever been to Wake Island?
Mike: No
Nav: You’ll be able to get some good radar fixes on the way out
to get on course.
Mike: We don’t have radar,
Nav: How about Doppler?
Mike: No
Nav: Can you do Celestial?
Mike: No
Nav: Just what do you have?
Mike: Tacan and a Bird Dog (ADF)
Nav: Well, if you miss Wake Island, you can go on to Guam.
Mike: Noooo, the way
I have it figured right now, we’ll have 20 minutes of fuel left at
Wake.
At this point, the transport navigator just shook his head in
total disbelief and walked away.
So after filing the flight, we were off to Wake Island.
One little tidbit that Mike didn’t tell the guy was that after
a couple hundred miles out from Hawaii, we would not be able to talk to
anyone. We had only one UHF radio. Had
this been passed onto the transport Nav, he probably would have wondered
what type of idiots were these guys.
As it turned out, we were able to talk to someone.
About halfway between Hawaii and Wake, we get a call from a C-130
on UHF saying that Honolulu Air Traffic Control (ATC) was looking for
us. We told him to pass
along that we were still chugging along and hope to be at Wake at our
original estimated time of arrival.
We then asked the C-130 what his position was.
He gave us some coordinates and Mike said that was about where we
were supposed to be. I ask
the C-130 to look around and see if could see a contrail.
He said there was one to the south of him.
I told him I would make a turn to verify.
He comes back says, “ Yeah, that’s you”.
I said, “ great, tell me where I’m at”.
He read off some more coordinates and Mike said “outstanding”
(or words to that effect), “we are on course and on time. (See, I told
you that Mike would become a fully qualified Navigator) We thanked the
C-130 and continued onto Wake Island.
By the way, Mike had miscalculated the amount of fuel remaining;
we had 25 minutes of fuel remaining.
The remaining two legs from Wake to Guam and on to the
Philippines were relatively short and thankfully uneventful.
The following month, the fun started in Vietnam.
(Yeah – right)
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