H-43 Pedro

I have a mock up in wood of one of these Kaman Huskies. It's one of those rotary wing oddities. You have a very rare piece is this the Testors early 70's model?

Nice  --  Very well done on the exhaust

Yeah, what kit is that? That's been one on my grail list for a while. Haven't had a chance to pick one up yet. Yours looks good.

Chris

It's the old Testor/Hawk kit from the late 60s.  I used the Cobra set for the cockpit and passenger/cargo section. You have to make the rear cargo net from masking tape. It's a job but for the Vietnam area it's necessary. You couldn't operate with the clam-shell doors on.  The M-60 came from a Tamiya M-113.  I thought that since it was almost never armed I'd show how it was for a couple days after a attempted base penetration.  We put the 60 on and had to take it off shortly after that because of a disagreement between our squadron and the helicopter crew.  They weren't qualified to use the weapon and they didn't trust our squadron to be able to keep the angle of fire out of the path of the wooden blades.

As far as I know there are no photos of this except for the one I took the following morning when they flew over my bunker.  Unfortunately during an incident I got involved in, my local marine assistant stole my camera.

Now, those are some cool pictures!! You flew in these in Vietnam?

Very cool!  I have this kit, if anyone is interested, pm me.

Went to evilbay yesterday looking to see if a kit was up there, and found an ad for the old hawk kit from back in the day for about 6 bucks or so.  Was under search of Kamen Huskey.  No kits though.

Man, that BUFF in hugging the ground.  Well, keeps him out of SAM II envelope.........

Every so often we would have to make a recon flight around the local area and I got to go once in a while.  One night we got into a light fight with someone in the jungle set up with a portable spotlight.Our underside lights against his one.  Later the pilot used them against a gun runner by flying low right behind him and blinding him.  He crashed into the trees.

This was a very dangerous aircraft to be around when on the ground and its engines running.  The only safe way to approach it was from the front and staying as close to the fuselage as possible.  If you came in from the back you ran into the exhaust, and from the sides the blades would get you.

That B-52 was part of a cell on its way to whatever area it was going to rip up.  We would normally launch at least three plus whatever tankers every hour, non stop.  Except at Christmas and during Bob Hope's show.

Very nice model, and thanks for all the background and photos.

Testors re-released the kit in the late 90's early 2000 period, kit no. 7206.

Great pics and back story! Thank you!

Chris

There are couple that still exist in Ft Lewis Wa the other is in Tumwater Museum  Kaman stood the test of time with the new Kmax.

Very nice!  Keep up the good work!!!

Curious as to where the photos were shot at--maybe Utapao?

Hello!

Great info here! I plan to build a model of this machine in 1:72 - there's a kit made by Mach 2 - but it needs a lot of work.

I even got to see one of them babies with my own eyes - there's a preserved example in Buckeburg, Germany - they have a very interesting helicopter museum there.

Thanks for sharing ikar01, and have a nice day

Paweł

God hammer, The shot with the B-52 was taken at Utapao with the 635th Security Police Squadron.  I got it while I was watching the gate at Utapao Village   near the beach.  The others I took while assigned to the 388th S.P.S. at Korat  

How do you  know about U-T?

Was sure that was the only place they flew out of besides Guam, and was through Guam on my way to Thailand and it didn't look much like that hunk of rock.   The countryside around in your shots kind of reminded me of up-country as well as the structures.

Was at Udorn "73/74 with 432 AMS. (ECM).   Had Ritche's F4D with the kill stars on it still before they did a paint job on it.

Since you were at Korat, take a look at Tom Wilson's books (three of them I think) were novels on 105's based out of Korat.  The one I have is "Lucky's Bridge"  Think he flew out of there, IIRC

They had me as SP augmentee until they said until charles comes through the wire he can shoot at you, but you can't shoot back.  My reply was "wanna bet?, I start ducking lead, lead is going back downrange"  Reply----you're excused, don't require your services.  They took a random ending number every week on the new arrivals and if your service number was that one that week, you were SP augmentee.  Was set up as what regular SP couldn't handle, we were the middle ground till a full base call out.

I remember the augmentees.  Air Base Defense used them to fill in at the more unimportant areas that still had to be manned.  Sometimes I'd see them riding as the 3rd man on the S.A.T. Jeeps.  One time during an alert I was at the armory loading ammo into my armored car and saw a S.A.T. jeep go by.  His aug was a SR Master who did not look happy at all.  Not only was he thinking that he shouldn't be there in the first place, he had to take orders from a A1C and a Thai Guard.  Deffinately not a happy camper.  I stopped loading and just watched them go by, wondering what he did to end up there.

Our rules of engagement were flaky.  You could almost literally have them set up right outside the fence and unless they fired or the barrel was over the fence, all you could do was call it in.  Before you chased someone you had to yell at him three times in English and Thai.  Take it from me, it didn't work well.

We knew what would happen to us if we shot anyone.  We would be immediately releaved of duty and escorted to the first outbound aircraft not going into battle.  It didn't matter where as long as we were gone.  Our things would be sent later.

My Primary job was Law Enforcement but I followed a suggestion from a Chech in A.B.D. and learned to drive the armored vehicles we had.

Since you wee at Udorn , maybe you can explain something that I have been trying to find out for some time.

i213.photobucket.com/.../scan0168-1.jpg

Why does 463 have a firebee drone kill marking on its splitter vane?

My guess would be it was a result of a live fire exercise, and a squadron/wing "loose" marking policy.  BTW, that is Ritchie's bird, he got 3 in her, the others are from other crews.  Don't remember seeing it on her when I got there.  I'll ask on my old post and see what turns up.

 Love the collection of pics.  Especially the C47 on floats, and the SR.  Surprised got pics on one that close.  Only time I saw that happen was at a show at Beale in 73 when T-Birds were there in the F4's.  And she was buttoned up tight and you couldn't get within 50-75 feet of her in the roped off section.

The close shots of the Habu I got at Kadena  during their annual charity air show.  Since we had three assigned, it wasn't hard to get one for display, although I was a bit surprised to see them do it.

At the inland end of the runway an Okiwan had a stand set up where he would sell photos of anything that flew in.  He also had a large mound of dirt people would set up on that got you over the level of the chain link fence so you could get some decent shots.  Of course you had to rent your space from him.

We had a club meeting last night and during the show&tell section one memberp ointed out some old Hawk kits that he got form a vendor at a militaria show.  Several different kits about Vietnam including an old Hawk H-43 kit.  Later he turned it over to me because I used to fly on them occasionally.