Chuck Anderson
Saigon
Saigon looked like any other city at night and the lights at Ton Son Nhut Air Base just another runway. Once on the ground, normalcy disappeared. There were airplanes parked everywhere. We parked in between two C124s and in front of a C133. All dwarfed our C97. Ground time was limited to 3 hours so the loadmasters were untying the cargo while we were taxiing in. The flight engineers were busy refueling and servicing the plane while the Aircraft Commander went to base operations to file the flight plan back to Cebu. The Navigators had completed all their work for the return trip before leaving Clark so they sacked out in the cockpit. My station was at the nose wheel to be sure no Vietnamese approached the plane.
The ramp was a fascinating place. There were numerous civilian cargo aircraft of various makes, a number of C124s and one gigantic C133 parked right behind us. It was a moonless night and off to the west scattered tracer fire could be seen streaking skyward while a C47 flew back and forth west of the field dropping flares. As the night wore on, the tracer fire increased and the C47 began dropping flares closer to the base. The C130s parked on the other side of the runway were now clearly visible in the light from the flares. Finally the flares were falling on the C130 ramp across the runway. The parachutes on the flares did not always open and burning flares were bouncing off C130 wings.
Behind us, the C133 was starting engines when he suddenly shut down all four engines as two C47s raced by at high speed on the taxi way with the tail off the ground. The C47s swung around on the runway and took off without an engine run up. I decided the C47s must be Puff gun ships. A jeep raced up and the driver shouted "Everybody in the bunkers! The base is under attack!" He ran over to the plane, stuck his head inside the hatch, and repeated the message. The senior loadmaster was up front completing the weight and balance form. When he heard the base was under attack, he flipped the aluminum weight and balance notebook over his shoulder and evacuated the plane. The notebook landed with a loud clatter near the rudely awakened navigators and they proceeded to rapidly evacuate the plane. I had walked about half way to the bunker when the navigators passed me at high speed and ran right past the bunker.
The bunker appeared to be constructed of sandbags with a sand floor. There were a number of people in the bunker and the two errant navigators soon joined us. After a few minutes, it became apparent that we were not the only occupants of the bunker. The air was soon filled with the buzz of mosquitoes. One of the local airmen had a bug bomb but all it did was force us out of the bunker. We spent the rest of the attack outside sitting against the bunker watching the fireworks as C47 Puff gun ships hosing down the area to the west of the field with streams of fire.
After a couple of hours, the tracer fire died down and the Puffs stopped firing. The runway also reopened as two Skyraiders landed. Finally, our Aircraft Commander came back from wherever he had been during the attack and said that we were cleared to leave.
As we got on the airplane, the Aircraft Commander ask the load master how much time he needed to finish tying down the cargo. He said that the cargo would be tied down by the time we got to the runway. As I leaned out the right cockpit side window to monitor engine start, I noticed that the C133 was also starting engines. We finished starting and were ready to taxi before the C133 so we would be the first off. As we rolled down the taxiway to the runway, the tower advised us to expedite our engine run up because there were reports of sniper fire near that end of the runway. The Aircraft Commander ask the flight engineer how much engine run up he needed. The engineer replied, "Just take the throttles up slow."
We wheeled on the runway without stopping and the Aircraft Commander slowly advanced the throttles. I noticed the flight engineer doing a quick mag check as I punched the stop watch to starte the takeoff acceleration check.. We had not had time to calculate takeoff speeds or acceleration checks so I used the ones we had calculated for the takeoff back at Clark. I figured that, under the circumstances, it was close enough for government work.
Takeoff was normal and we climbed out without incident. We landed at Cebu 27 hours after we had left Clark.
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