Category: Marine Corps Stories

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. read more

My  squadron was VMCJ 1 in Danang Vietnam but our particular group was from Cherry Pt. N. C. This happened right  after the tet of 1966 or 1967. We hadn't been at the beach very long when the 1st Marine Division came through our area on the way to the ocean with full gear on.  They had lost a lot of men going through the Aschua Valley trying to clean charley out of it . I  mean we were there just as they finished the cleanup and went by us on there way  to the ocean. They dropped there gear on the beach and walked into the ocean  clothes and all. We watched them go by and we all just quieted down as a sign of respect for what they had just done.  Well about this time an m.p. cruised up on the beach in front of 1st  and headed toward red beach . He hadn't went but a little ways when we noticed he stopped in front of a group of several hundred toward a thousand or better  Black sailors which had decided to demonstrate  there frustrations at the Navy then and there not knowing the 1st was there ahead of them on the beach. By the time the M.P. had stopped talking to the front 25 or 50 black sailors or so. The 1st didn't know what was going on for sure but quite a few of them came back out of the water and started setting there machine guns and mortars and every thing they had with them and started laying down behind them  with all weaponry pointed down beach toward the black sailors. By this time the ones of us that had witnessed this had taken our beers over to tables to watch what happened next . The M.P. finished his talk with those in the front ranks  and came over to where we were to also see what happened next. Well those boys in back didn't know what had happened up front  so they were shoving the  front forward and there eyes were getting pretty large facing the 1st. Word finally got to the boys in back  and they quietly dispersed and went back the way they had come back down  the beach .  Probably for the best.  Thanks for listening to something that could have been pretty serious but turned out pretty funny, at least for us spectators. read more