Flight suits and parachute knives
I
didn't fare so well on getting a new flight suit at supply. When
I
took in my old decrepit one to exchange it they informed me that in TAC
you're only authorized 3 flight suits (in MAC I had 4). So they
took my old one and didn't give me a new one!
Also I picked
up a switchblade knife (it goes in that long thin leg pocket on a
flight suit). It's designed for cutting parachute shroud lines
but is equally (and more frequently) usable on peanut butter.
"WARNING: This knife may
be
issued only to the armed forces and
is intended solely for use in emergency survival conditions.
Unauthorized possession of this knife may constitute serious criminal
offense against federal, state, and local law."
The New Haven Nine, May 2-3, 1970
On May 1, President Nixon authorized the invasion of Cambodia.
This set off protests at college campuses across the US.
Some 20,000 people assembled in New Haven, Connecticut for a May Day
rally
protesting
the
trial of Black Panther Bobby Seale. The governor feared that
the Connecticut National Guard could not contain the situation so he
asked
U.S.
Attorney
General
John
Mitchell to send in
backup federal troops. Every crew at Pope was put on alert,
including us RTU students.
Pope AFB is next door to Ft. Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne, so Pope
C-130
crews
flew
2,000
paratroopers
and marines to
New
England using 46 of Pope's 50 C-130's.
There weren't enough PCS crews at Pope to fly all those C-130's,
so
some crews were filled in with RTU students.
The news of this protest was soon eclipsed by the massacre at Kent
State May 4th.
Jane Fonda May 16, 1970
There
was
an
anti-war
demonstration
in
Fayetteville
today
with
Jane
Fonda
as
the
principle.
There
was
an
announcement
earlier
in
the
week
that
a
group
was
going
to
stage a demonstration on Pope. This
apparently scared the military powers that be to the point that they
cancelled the scheduled Armed Forces Day displays.
Jane Fonda was arrested at nearby Ft. Bragg for distributing
leaflets. This was two years before her infamous
trip
to
Hanoi.
Exercises
The drop zones and landing zones at Ft. Bragg were used for many joint
military exercises. Some of the techniques we demonstated
were impressive but rarely used in Vietnam.
Rocket-assisted takeoffs were mostly
for show. The pilot's takeoff charts showed no actual performance
improvement, but it looked good.
Low-Altitude Parachute Extraction System (LAPES) was much more
"interesting" to the pilot. Instead of dropping the load from
1000' or so we dropped from about 8'. The interesting part was
avoiding a crash after the load went out.
The loadmaster unlocked the rails and deployed the drag chute.
The load accelerated so quickly that the
rollers
in
the
floor
smoked. As the airplane became more tail-heavy, I kept
it
in level flight by pushing the nose farther
down. By the time the load reached the ramp, the yoke was full
forward to the stop.
Suddenly the load was gone, the airplane was no longer tail-heavy, and
it was ready to dive into the ground. I had to
immediately pull the yoke back to the opposite stop to keep
flying. It all happened in a few seconds and more
than a few C-130's hit the ground doing this maneuver.
But more usually we landed and
offloaded
heavy equipment.
