In August 1965, I left McConnell AFB, Kansas, for temporary duty (TDY) to Takhli Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand, as a maintenance officer with the 562 TFS. The squadron replaced the 563 TFS which had been there during the previous four months. We continued flying and supporting the F-105s used by the 563rd. This was my second TDY as a result of the war in Southeast Asia. A year earlier I had accompanied the 357 TFS that departed McConnell with only eight hour's notice. The 357th's deployment on 5 August 1964 was in response to the "Gulf of Tonkin Crisis," the first major escalation of the air war in Vietnam. This F-105 squadron found itself in Japan replacing a squadron from Yokota that had "gone South" - the term used at that time to refer to the war. At that point it was a PACAF war: TDY TAC squadrons were assigned to backup duties. We spent four months filling in for Yokota's missing squadron, rotating planes and pilots to Osan AB, Korea to support the Yokota wing's nuclear alert commitment.

The 1964 deployment of the 357th and other fighter squadrons from the U. S. started an 18-month period of F-105 rotations into Japan and Okinawa and ultimately directly into Thailand. By August 1965, when the 562nd replaced the 563rd at Takhli, the air war had escalated sufficiently that PACAF could no longer restrict the TAC squadrons to backup duties. The war was bigger than they could handle and stateside squadrons rotated directly to combat bases. The 562nd was one of the last three F- 105 squadrons assigned to TDY at Takhli before the 355 TFW moved from McConnell to take over the base in December 1965. These months were a period of turmoil and explosive growth at Takhli. Two hundred people were there when I arrived in August. When I left in December, there were 2,000. Within the next year, the base became fully established with modern, air-conditioned buildings. With Korat, it was one of the two F- 105 bases that carried out 75 percent of the bombing of North Vietnam.

However, through 1965, it was a primitive camp in the jungle, little more developed than when it was a Japanese base in WWII. During my stay at Takhli, I kept a record of my experiences as an F-105 "ground pounder." This record also described some of the events in the development of Takhli as a combat base in the war over North Vietnam.

Wednesday 11 August 1965
I arrived at Takhli five days ago. Everyone on base met our plane with greeting signs - a big welcoming committee to the Land of the King Cobra. For someone just arrived from the States, this is really some place. Bombs and rockets are stacked all over the parking ramp. Every plane taking off has six or eight bombs under it. They fly two missions a day every day. Operations start at 4:00 in the morning and last until 6:00 pm. There's no such thing as a weekend. We don't know how long we'll be here. This morning's missions from Takhli weren't too successful. Five of the 12 planes got hit and one of those shot down. The pilot bailed out, but was rescued quickly. Our pilots are flying with pilots from the 563rd to learn the ropes. For his first mission, Captain "Nasty Ned" Miller put on all the survival gear he could carry. He wore a flak vest, carried a pistol in a holster, and slung a coil of rope over his chest. He was so laden with gear he could barely climb into the cockpit. Capt. Miller doesn't fit the image of a fighter pilot. He's tall and thin and wears orthodontic braces. His funny stories and constant high jinks keep the people around him in stitches.

Saturday 14 August 1965
Three of the five C-135s carrying the people on our rotation have arrived. The fourth plane is due in tonight at 11:00 and the fifth one tomorrow sometime. So after tomorrow all 83 of us in the 562nd will be here and the 563rd will be completely gone. I've settled into a small hooch with six beds, metal wall lockers, and tables with a lamp. We've got two ceiling fans, fluorescent lights, and a tin roof that the rain bangs on nearly every night. Most other hooches are a lot larger (120 beds) and have no tables or lockers. The hooches we sleep and work in are screened wood shacks on stilts with palm-frond shutters propped up with a stick that we knock down when it rains. The base living facilities are all in one small area that has a dusty dirt road running through it. Little clumps of buildings are separated by large areas of tall grass, jungle undergrowth, and bamboo groves. The large main building houses base headquarters, the dispensary, the post office, the mess hall where everyone eats, and a library. There is a movie theater with screened open-air walls, a swimming pool, and a small officers' club that has a pool table and bar. The rows of hooches and latrines are connected by board walks running over mud and large puddles of water. That's the extent of the place. Actually the base is fairly large, but most of it is used by the Thais for training military recruits. The Thais also have a few T-6s they keep in a dilapidated hanger. The work area along the flight line consists of a row of hooches on stilts sitting on a ditch bank above the aircraft parking area. Our electronic repair shop is a shed with a leaky roof attached to the side of the Thai hanger. When we arrived, most of the mockups left by the 563rd were sitting in puddles of water and didn't work. I assigned Sergeant Kaminski to clean the place up and keep it running. He's doing a great job. I've only seen two snakes so far. Some troops caught a large boa constrictor yesterday - and put it in a cage. Today they put a squirrel in with it as food. So all day today there were bunches of guys hanging around the cage waiting for the snake to gobble up the poor squirrel. Most of us went to the Thai tailor shop to get the long sleeves on our fatigue shirts cut off and to buy a Thai campaign hat made from cut-off sleeves.

Wednesday 18 August 1965
Life has settled into a routine. The planes wake me up each morning before dawn. I read at night with a light under the mosquito netting draped over my bed. The netting is fairly effective and provides a bit of sport in between pages. I snap off large insects crawling around the outside of the netting and try to hit the whirling fan.
Some of the pilots have been telling us about their missions, showing us the maps and photographs they use to identify their targets. They explain how they come into a target and point out on their photographs where their bombs hit and what buildings they destroyed. All the strikes they've made are in North Vietnam, with an occasional raid on a bridge or truck convoy in Laos. They've sunk a number of boats along the coast of North Vietnam. Each day usually brings at least one plane shot up or damaged in some way. Yesterday a pilot was pulling up from a bomb run when his left wing fuel tank broke loose. The tank tore off a Sidewinder missile on the same wing, and, to balance the plane, the pilot had to jettison the right wing tank. The missions must be very harrowing. When he parked on the ramp after returning from one mission. Major Flowers stayed in the cockpit for 20 minutes. He refused help in getting out of the plane and just sat collecting himself before he finally crawled down the ladder.

The base's sewer system is hopelessly inadequate. Twelve 20- man hooches are served by three buildings that house latrines and showers . There is a large concrete cesspool next to each latrine behind the hooches. These cesspools are always filled and running over. There are putrid puddles on the ground and the stuff backs up into the shower drains. At night the cool breezes waft the foul odors all over the camp so that every breath you take smells horrible. I try putting my pillow over my head, but its mildew smell is just as bad. Each week we take a large quinine pill to prevent us from getting malaria from the mosquitoes that breed in the green slime on the cesspool puddles. I'm traveling to Yokota tomorrow. There are three pieces of test equipment the 563rd sent there for repair that haven't returned and I want to track them down. We also have another piece of equipment I want to take up for repair.

Monday 30 August 1965
I returned yesterday from Yokota and saw F-105D 24355 crash this morning. A terrible, frightful sight! About 10:15 am I was in our squadron's operations hooch near the flightline listening to the radio calls from pilots lining their planes up for takeoff. We heard the tower clear the first two planes. A second or so later they appeared roaring down the runway - one behind the other. Then came the radio call. "Lead's taking the barrier". Each drag chute of the two planes popped out, but the first plane's 'chute didn't blossom and he kept on going without slowing down. We watched for his tail hook to slam down, but when he reached the barrier cable, nothing happened. He slid through the mud into the jungle at the end of the runway and exploded with a "whumph" into a ball of flame and black smoke. The orbiting HH-43B rescue helicopter immediately swooped in among the flames and smoke. Fire trucks and ambulances screamed down the runway but, on reaching the end of the concrete, had to turn back because of the mud. A short time later, the helicopter lifted up from the fire and everyone started clearing out of the area when we heard the plane's 20 mm ammunition cooking off. It had been carrying two 750-pound bombs with delayed time fuses that could go off at any time. We moved all the planes parked on the flightline to the other end of the runway and were told to stay away for at least 18 hours or until the bombs blew up. Later I went by the medical office in the main building and learned that the helicopter crew rescued the pilot. He had only an injured back and was flown to Korat where there are better medical facilities than at Takhli. Everyone considers his escape miraculous. The pilot was Lt. Col. Hendricks, the commander of the 36 TFS from Yokota. So now the runway is closed with over 30 planes sitting at one end and two bombs waiting to explode at the other.
We've been hearing of squadron transfers. The 357 TFS at Korat (the one I deployed with last year to Yokota) moved to Kadena to replace the 421 TFS and a squadron of F-4Cs from George AFB replaced the 357th. Also we've gotten the word that Seymour Johnson AFB in North Carolina is to send an F-105 squadron to Takhli. So with us and the one here from Yokota, that'll make three F-105 squadrons on this base. Added to the KC-135s and the EB-66s it'll be even more crowded than it already is. Every day Thai workers are pouring concrete to fill in spaces between aircraft parking areas on the flightline. They're building a 20 man hooch a day and most of the hooches are getting double bunks to hold 40 people. The mess hall has put in more tables, and the Yokota squadron is to park their planes in another area to make more room for Seymour's F-105s.

Wednesday 1 September 1965
At 5:00 this morning one of the bombs on the wreck at the end of the runway exploded. It rattled the screens in the hooch and woke me up. Earlier, EOD crews had defused the other bomb. So things are back to normal.

Friday 3 September 1965
The squadron from Seymour Johnson arrived yesterday. I guess they stopped at McConnell to pick up most of their planes. We now have more F-105s here than any other base in the world. The people from Seymour were TDY to Homestead in Florida when they got a week's notice to move to Takhli. They went from one TDY to another without getting home and are to be here for four months.
Base-wide power outages are occurring every day. They knock our electronics shop for a loop and cause backlogs in repairing our fire control and Doppler boxes. The air conditioners go off and within 30 minutes the building is hot enough for the mockups running on back up generators to cut out. About 80 percent of our shop work is to support the Yokota squadron due to their practice of pulling all the Doppler and fire control units for bench check whenever the systems malfunction. They lack experienced technicians who can troubleshoot on the aircraft.
Our gun camera film processing hasn't been too successful so far. The major problem has been with the portable film processing machine. It develops the film satisfactorily but leaves a stick residue on the emulsion side. The film then jams in the projector. We have a number of reels of combat film left by the 563rd that have never been seen because they won't go through the projector. We also have a bureaucratic snafu in that our one gun camera technician, Airman Rhoden, doesn't have the security clearance needed to see the film he processes. Some pilots have taken to strapping their own 8 mm movie camera on top of the instrument panel, aiming it through the gun sight. I keep forgetting that what we are doing here is classified. Yesterday's Bangkok World newspaper had a front page article in which the Thai Interior Minister denied that American planes flying punitive missions against North Vietnam and Laos were taking off from bases in this country. He called our bases "stopover stations."

Monday 6 September 1965
The water supply for the base was shut off for most of yesterday. People were getting buckets of water from the swimming pool to shave and wash. The toilets wouldn't flush and by mid-afternoon were full and foul-smelling. We lost another plane today, F-105D 24400. According to pilots on the mission, it was taking on fuel from a tanker plane when a wingman spotted fuel pouring out of its bomb bay. The pilot disconnected from the tanker and a fire broke out. The pilot ejected and about 15 seconds later the plane exploded in a ball of fire. A helicopter picked up the pilot. It seems that an F 105 is lost somewhere in this area on the average of about once a day.
There are a couple of combat photographers flying with our squadron. They carry cameras with them in the back seat of an F-model and, on some sorties, install camera pods on one of the outboard pylons of the plane. One of our pilots, Captain Williams, wears a chrome-plated helmet from his days with the Thunderbirds. The photographers are filming him for an "Air Force Now" segment. "The dashing pilot with a silver helmet."

Wednesday 8 September 1965
Captain Barnhill, the pilot who ejected on Monday is back flying again as if nothing had happened. Today for the first time, we loaded 3,000 pound bombs. They're monsters. Three MJ-1 bomb lifts burst their hydraulic seals before the crews got the bombs loaded. Our normal configuration has been six 750 pound bombs on a centerline rack, two more bombs on the outboard pylons, and two 450 gallon tanks on the inboard pylons. With this new frag, the 3,000 pound bombs go on the inboard pylons and a 650 gallon tank on the centerline. Reconfiguring from one load to the next is a lot of work, particularly if the frag changes from morning to afternoon missions.

Capt. Barnhill returning from a mission

Wednesday 15 September 1965
There's a KC-135 tanker squadron moving in and to make room for it, the F-105 squadron here from Yokota is supposedly moving to Korat. Our working areas are getting more crowded every day.
We've gotten word that the whole 355th Wing is coming here permanently - in November. I guess we'll be here until the 355th arrives. There does not seem to be any single long range plan for this base. Everything is just growing haphazardly. We have an efficient, well-organized outfit the way we operate now. We've made all our scheduled missions since we've been here. But the people who run this place are continually trying to reorganize the operation so that all three squadrons here will be run by a single wing unit. We all know this is a terribly inefficient way of running an F-105 flying program. These planes require the closer control and supervision of a small squadron organization as we now have.

Friday 17 September 1965
This place can get pretty weird, someone has a life-size inflatable rubber girl that appears in the strangest places. The measurements on the creature are close to 40-25-40. It is nude and startlingly realistic at a quick glance. You'll walk into a hooch and there she is lying on a bed. One morning she was found swinging from the tall TV antenna outside the officers' club. The base commander was sort of peeved at the spectacle and had her cut down. With all the new people around here, interest in the doll has dropped. I last saw her lying deflated in the mud in the back of a latrine.
All yesterday afternoon and this morning our pilots flew sorties searching for two pilots from Korat who were shot down yesterday. They were the squadron commander and assistant operations officer of a squadron TDY from Kadena. The commander, Lt. Col. Robinson Risner, was on the cover of Time magazine last year. He was shot down and rescued earlier. The day before yesterday he had his canopy shot away, but managed to get his plane back safely. Our pilots say he parachuted yesterday, but no one can locate him.

Thursday 23 September 1965
This afternoon I rode into town with the medics in their "meat wagon." They were on their weekly anti-VD mission to shoot the local bar girls with penicillin "silver bullets." In addition to giving the shots, the medics take each new girl's picture for the mug book in the base dispensary in hopes that any GI who contracts the clap can recognize the girl who gave it to him. About 100 girls showed up at the local health clinic. It seems to be a festive occasion for them.
Another one of our planes was shot down a few days ago. Capt. Greenwood was in the jungle for over two hours before he was rescued. He sprained both ankles and is in the hospital at Korat.

Sunday 26 September 1965
This afternoon our squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Syester, flew a bunch of us to Korat in the base Gooney Bird to visit Capt. Greenwood before he went home. He was in bed with both legs in casts up to his knees. He told us what happened to him. He had just dropped his bombs on the target and was pulling up when he felt his plane getting hit by ground fire. He headed toward the sea, but his wing man radioed him that he was on fire and to get out. So he did. As he was floating down under his 'chute he watched his plane crash off to his left and then concentrated on trying to land on a ridge below him. He got hung up in a tree about 20 feet from the ground and sprained his ankles getting down. He could see soldiers on the opposite ridge coming toward him, so he headed up the hill to a clearer area to give the rescue planes a chance to see him. Over his emergency radio he asked one of the planes to strafe the opposite hill which they did three or four times. After about two hours, a helicopter spotted him and dropped a sling. He climbed through the loop and the chopper flew up with him dangling over the jungle. The ground troops were firing at the helicopter and the helicopter crew was firing back. They finally hoisted Capt. Greenwood inside and flew away.

Tuesday 28 September 1965
We lost our fourth plane today, F-105D 24404, the second crash due to mechanical problems. A couple of days ago the plane came back from a mission with its right wing tank torn off and a big hole in the wing caused by the tank breaking away This is the second time this happened to one of our planes, both times with the same pilot. The repair work required a test flight before the plane could be released for a mission. During today's test, the plane caught fire and the pilot punched out. He's back with a few minor scratches.

Thursday 30 September 1965
The commander of the squadron TDY here from Seymour Johnson (Melvin J. Kilian) was shot down and killed today by a SAM near Hanoi. He was a lieutenant colonel with eight kids.

Tuesday 5 October 1965
Today the squadron TDY here from Yokota lost two planes and pilots. They just disappeared. No one saw them and no one can find them. One of the pilots was Major Pogreba who had been stationed at McConnell and shot down once before. Also today, three of our planes landed at Da Nang - two with battle damage. They were hitting targets near the Chinese border. Each plane carried two 3,000 pound bombs. We're not sure when the pilots will return or how the planes will get repaired. I'm directing the building of the base photo hobby shop. They've had a lot of photo equipment in storage waiting for the civil engineers to find time to modify the room in the main building that was set aside for the shop. With all the projects they've got going, I knew they'd never get to a photo hobby shop, so I offered to get the job done for them. They accepted and for the last week some of my troops have volunteered to build tables, cabinets, and shelves to make the place into a darkroom. The work is coming along well and in a week or so, Takhli will have its first photo hobby shop.

Thursday 7 October 1965
The pilots who landed the other day at Da Nang returned yesterday. They had to leave one plane there, it was shot up so badly. Captain Miller was hit as he pulled up off his target, the Lang Met bridge in North Vietnam. His plane pitched up and he got several fire warning lights. His wingman, Major Flowers, told him to get as close to the sea as he could before ejecting. On the way to the coast, the fire blew out and Captain Miller got the plane under control. He decided to head toward Da Nang where he landed despite another episode of pitching when he lowered his gear. His plane had a large hole on the underside of the fuselage behind the wing. Electrical wiring and control cables were also burned away. Major Flowers said he didn't have the heart to tell Captain Miller how bad the plane looked, as long as it kept flying. They're both being nominated for the Distinguished Flying Cross. They were on the same raid as the two missing pilots from the Yokota squadron. It was a costly mission, but I guess they got the bridge.

Wednesday 13 October 1965
We lost another plane today, F-105D 10180. Major Randall, our operations officer, was shot down near Dien Bien Phu. He was picked up by helicopter and has a sprained ankle. So far all of our pilots who have been shot down have gotten back alive. The photo hobby shop is almost finished. We've installed electrical outlets, built tables and storage shelves, a light trap around the door, and a loading room for film. We've even got the place air conditioned.
Practically all the TDY squadrons in Thailand and Vietnam are being replaced by PCS units. They're coming from all over the US, and most of the moves will take place from November 1965 to January 1966. The word is our squadron will be leaving here November 29th.

Saturday 23 October 1965
This place is getting to be a mess. It's apparent no one has ever really planned the expansion taking place and there's a lot of wasted work and money. There's a new area being built off the end of the runway for the permanent wing a couple of miles away from our present base area. I can see the concrete structures rising above the jungle. Plans for the new base call for a living area with a BX and Officers' Club, swimming pool, dormitories, mess halls, etc. People are saying it will be a show place. Yet in our area they're building a bath house for the swimming pool, an addition to the officers' club, and a brick office building for the Navy construction engineer. All the facilities being built here will be abandoned when the new area is finished.
I've been checking into the designs for the new maintenance buildings. Whoever planned them didn't know the first thing about an F-105 maintenance organization and what it requires in the way of facilities. I spent most of today talking with the base civil engineer recommending improvements in their designs. I didn't accomplish much. Some of the buildings have already been started and it's too late to make any major changes. At least our photo hobby shop is finished and is becoming very Popular. lt's one of the few areas on base that is air conditioned where you can escape the suffocating humidity if only for a few hours.

Wednesday 27 October 1965
Yesterday Mr. Thal, an American civilian electrical engineer Working for the military in Bangkok returned to Takhli to iron out some details of the new avionics shop that will soon be built on base. During his first visit last week, I pointed out numerous problems in the shop's final design based on drawings he brought. It was very obvious the building wasn't designed as an F-105 electronics repair shop. The plans called for a couple of rooms for equipment the F-105 doesn't have and the layout and power distribution in other areas were not good. However. No one on the base or in Mr. Thal's office in Bangkok has been able to tell us if the shop is supposed to support anything other than F-105s. So yesterday, Sergeant Kaminski and Sergeant Kielek and I worked all day with Mr. Thal to rework the plans to make the building into a proper F-105 avionics repair shop. If they build it to our redesign, this one building at least will be a good maintenance shop.

Saturday 30 October 1965
We're getting orders on people coming here from McConnell with the 355th Wing. I'm wondering who will be left there. There's still no word on exactly when our squadron will leave here. I'm catching a C-47 to Chang Mai tomorrow for six days R & R.

Saturday 6 November 1965
I returned from Chang Mai early this morning after a 14-hour train ride through central Thailand. The squadron lost its first pilot while I was gone. Capt. Bowles was dropping bombs on a bridge and failed to pull out of the bombing pass. Our squadron commander grounded Captain Miller for a week for buzzing the base at low altitude when he returned from his latest mission. This has been his usual way to let us all know he's back. "Here comes Nasty Miller!" Also, the day I left, one of our planes came back extensively shot up with a third of its tail missing and numerous holes in the wings and fuselage. A repair team from Formosa is here putting the plane back in shape for us.

Friday 12 November 1965
Captain Miller was killed today when his plane blew up. He was lead in a flight of four. They were getting their formation set up to come in on a tanker. Captain Miller radioed Major Flowers that he was approaching him from his left. Major Flowers glanced over his shoulder and just then Captain Miller's plane exploded with no warning or any indication that anything was wrong. Major Flowers circled and watched the pieces fall and saw a parachute. This set up some hope that Captain Miller had come out alive. However, when a helicopter went in to pick him up he was dead. Nobody really knows what happened. They suspect one of his bombs exploded prematurely.
Everybody is depressed. He was the most popular pilot in the squadron.

Sunday 14 November 1965
I spent most of today - preparing the load list for returning our people and equipment home. We still don't know exactly when we're going, but we're now organized to get there. This place continues growing at a fantastic rate. There have been six large luxury mobile homes moved into the field in front of my hooch. They're pretty nice and, once the plumbing and air conditioning get hooked up, will be quarters for the colonels moving here. The bath house for the swimming pool has its roof and the kitchen and dining room addition to the officers' club is nearly finished. The club has hired about a dozen Thai women to work as waitresses when the addition opens. They attend a daily English class. However, the club has only one latrine for both women and men. A few days ago someone installed a sign that said, "First 2 toilets for females only." Today there was a new sign: "This urinal for ladies only."

Tuesday 16 November 1965 We spent the day relocating people and equipment from our flight line hooch to make way for a new drainage ditch. We had to cram everybody into a hooch about half the size of our old one. I tried without success to get the construction crew to hold off since we should be gone in about two weeks. However, once I gave the word, the troops pitched in and got everything relocated. When I have a crew who responds the way these guys do, I feel there's nothing we can't accomplish. An extremely positive attitude works wonders in situations like this.

Sunday 21 November 1965
I was saddened today to read in last Thursday's Stars and Stripes that Lieutenant Colonel McCleary was listed as missing. He was the commander of the 357th I was with at Yokota last year. Major Flowers told me that it happened while I was in Chang Mai. He was flying from Korat and was hit by a SAM and disappeared in a cloud. Nobody saw him crash or bail out so they're carrying him as missing. Every squadron commander I know except our Lieutenant Colonel Syester has been shot down or has crashed. The same Stars and Stripes also listed Captain Miller as having died from other than hostile causes.

Tuesday 23 November 1965
We're down to within a week of going home. Every day more people are trickling in from McConnell.

Thursday 25 November 1965
The dining hall outdid themselves for the Thanksgiving meal. Normally the food is barely edible. Today, however, it was one of the best meals I've ever eaten. Everyone is getting excited about leaving. New people arriving have replaced many of us. Captain Betz is going home tomorrow with 85 missions over North Vietnam, the most of any of our pilots. Replacements for other pilots arrived today and so they flew their last mission (today). Before they took off, Capt. Williams, who used to fly with the Thunderbirds, passed the word...to watch for their return as they had something special to show us. About 11:30, four F-105s in a close diamond formation flew over the field and swung around for a low-level approach from the other direction. On their return pass, they pulled smoothly up into a tight formation roll. A beautiful end to the flight's final mission.

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