The way it was at Tigers

       Some more experiences at Da Nang. I worked with Jack Arnowitz and he was a very resourceful fellow in deed. We had a 

cochran loader, power unit, belt loader and about 20 igloo dollies to maintain at the same time work the airplanes. Their was only the two of us. Just like at Cam Rahn Bay and Bien Wa we worked on every airline that flu DC-8's into each station.  Pan Am had 10 mechanics and they had an agreement to rent our equipment from us and every time it broke they would come running to get it fixed.       Jack would send them to the Air Force and make them use the K-Loaders the G.I.'s would operate and the G.I.'s didn't care when the flight left. It was an ongoing battle to keep the equipment up to speed for our own flights. 

    I remember one night I had a flight come in at 2:00 a.m. and the field was under Yellow alert which meant imminent attack. After I had parked the aircraft and pushed the stairs up to gain access to the cockpit the crew asked how long they were going to be on the ground. I said that it wouldn't be very long. I just needed to squirt some gas and offload a few pallets and some belly mail. Well the crew said they were going to eat their meals. I said maybe you should eat them on the way back to Tokyo, that the base was under yellow alert. They insisted that they were going to eat them their. Well when the flight was ready to go I closed up the airplane and hooked up the air start unit to the front of the aircraft and positioned myself off to the side with a headset on. In about 5 minutes the sappers were overrunning the base heading for the ammo dump. Dropping mortar rounds from across the field. Looked like 4th of July. All I heard on the head set was Air Up, Air Up were ready too go. I thought to myself should I let them stu a bit, but they were making things worse by flashing their landing lights making another target. So I dispatched the flight as quick as a could. The next few flights that came in the crews were very agreeable to anything we had to say. More latter......... Cheers, Larry