I was in the Marine Corps only four years 1965 to 1969. Went from VMCJ 2, At Cherry Pt. N.C.to VMCJ 1, Danang So. Vietnam, to VMCJ 3 at El Toro, Cal. to Camp Pendleton Brig, Oceanside Cal. Jet Aircraft Metalsmith. except the last 6 months when they changed my MOS to a mortar man. While in Danang our squadron had four jet aircraft An F10, nicknamed willie the whale for its top speed when new of 300 mph,F8 Crusader top speed when new of 450 mph, A6 intruder,high wing jet top speed 5 to 600 mph, and last but best F4 Phantom in excess of mach 3 is all theyed tell us. This particular day I was working on an A6 patching holes in the fuselage above the wings. Its takes a ladder to get up there. I'm in the squadron area so its all concrete as far as the eye can see I start hearing a sound that still swear was lawnmower, but it ended up being one of the Army's spotter planes , small as a cessna or smaller . He puttered under the wing I was working on and asked where the HYMM's squadron was at. I pointed it out to him, thinking at the time that he could drive it through the man door , but about this time he said no wisecracks Marine, and I said yes sir. This plane he was piloting had a place for a copilot where the copilots knees came just past the hips of the pilot. When he drove out from under the wing and turned toward the squad bay there was a hole through the whole plane just behind the copilot. If that plane was 4 feet top to bottom there was a 16 inch diameter hole inches from the back of the copilot's seat. I figured they might need some other cleaning up besides patching there aircraft. But they flew it and landed it and taxied it after getting hit . so that was a pretty good little plane also. A little more information about our squadron is that it was a photo recon and at one time we had the air wing title for most photos taken in a one month, one million pictures. Also at one time we decided to have a squadron picture taken with the men on the ground in the foreground of the four jet types parked on the tarmac and the four aircraft types flying together overhead. They worked on this quite a while. Because the Phantom wouldn't fly level at Willie the whales top speed of 300 mph. and they wern't going to have a tale dragging Phantom with the other three flying level. So they tried the three flying level and the Phantom coming in and snapping the picture at the precise time when they were all inline. Didn't work, the Phantom always came out blurred or timing was off. So the photo guys gave up and decided to doctor the photo and patched the Phantom into the formation. We all thought that was a good idea so we were all a little suprised when we got our pictures of the event. In the air flying over were four planes, #34 was the Phantom. On the ground behind the squadron were four planes, the Phantom was # 34 good trick, flying over us and setting on the tarmac at the same time. We didn't let photo guys live that down for a long time.
Thanks more to come L/Cpl Dan Rawstern