Text 14269, 60 rader
Skriven 2011-02-20 07:10:00 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
  Kommentar till text 14229 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
Ärende: The Smolensk crash on April 10, 2010
============================================
Replying to a message of Roy Witt to Bob Ackley:

 RW> 16 Feb 11 07:02, Bob Ackley wrote to Roy Witt:

 BA>>>>>> The backenders (who ran the equipment) were assigned to the
 BA>>>>>> 6994th Security Squadron or one of its detachments.  When I was
 BA>>>>>> in it (1971-2) the 6994th was at Saigon, Det 2 was at Da Nang and
 BA>>>>>> Det 3 was at Nakhon Phanom.  Don't remember where Det 1 was,
 BA>>>>>> maybe Nha Trang.

 RW>>>>> Ahhh. These frontenders don't say that on their site.

 BA>>>> The frontenders were all officers, the backenders were all enlisted
 BA>>>> swine.

 RW>>> And why they don't mention you guys.

 BA>> I can't speak for their web site, I've never seen it.  www.ec47.com
 BA>> does mention the 6994th and has a roster of most if not all of the
 BA>> personnel assigned - including me.  Or at least it did, I haven't
 BA>> checked it in years.

 RW> www.ec47.com does mention 6994th and does have a few photos of
 RW> officers and non-coms. You might want to log onto the site, as
 RW> they're having a reunion in Branson, Mo., in September of this year
 RW> (oddly, they have a marque' that says its now going to be in San
 RW> Antonio). BTW, update your address while you're there, it's still
 RW> listed as Plattsmouth, NE.

 RW>>> Electronic survelence?

 BA>> Of a sort.  EC-47s were airborne HF direction-finding platforms, the
 BA>> mission was to locate the bad guys' transmitters.

 RW> I gathered as much from the site.

 BA>> Dunno if anything ever came of the material we collected (well, there
 BA>> was ONE item we came up with that caused some excitement). IIRC
 BA>> given perfect conditions we could locate a transmitter (antenna)
 BA>> within a couple of hundred meters, which was close enough to have
 BA>> somebody go over and have a look. I don't know of any air strikes
 BA>> that occurred based only on our material - note that we - the
 BA>> back-enders - rarely communicated with the airborne command post, I
 BA>> don't think I did it more than twice in the hundred-plus missions I
 BA>> flew..

 RW> Unless you were getting shot at, this sounds like a lot of fun to me.
 RW> OTH, I don't fly, so it may not have been for me.

One of our birds did take some flak while I was there.  Fortunately I wasn't on
it.

The one from my outfit that was lost was on a night mission and was most likely
downed by a North Vietnamese SA-2 missile.  They got a Spectre (AC-130) with
one of those shortly before the peace treaty was signed (but everybody got out
of
that one).

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)