photo USAF Museum)

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A USAF Rescue and Recovery H-53 "Super Jolly Green"  outbound over the north perimeter of DaNang.  These units extracted downed pilots, often under fire while hovering above the jungle, and were armed with three 7.62 caliber mini-guns, with M-60 machineguns for backup.

If I recall correctly this was during the "Linebacker II" operations in 1972 and a B-52, heavily damaged by SAM's on it's ride "Downtown [Hanoi]," is off picture to the right.  

A USAF Security Alert Team (SAT) on duty at the off-base bomb dump (ASP) at DaNang Air Base in 1972. The vehicle is the M-715 Weapons Carrier, used when more capacity was needed than could be provided by the M-151 "Jeeps." This has an M-60 Machinegun mounted on a pedestal mount.

SAT's provided the immediate response to any threat to USAF resources; in this case for the bomb dump and in support of the bunker and tower line that surrounded it. The team also carried an M-16 per member; the team leader's was equipped with an XM-148 Grenade Launcher, a forerunner of the M-203.   Airman Liddell (standing) is wearing the traditional steel pot, and flak vest that was haute couture that year.

Airman Liddell and Team Leader SSgt Sullivan

Sergeant Liddell (reclining) propping up his helmet, which is propping up his rucksack at the ASP-1 the entry control point after pulling the bunker line sentries in the pre-dawn hours. 

At DaNang machine gunners carried the MG and a rifle rather than a sidearm. There is a spare barrel attached to the ruck, along with a couple hundred ready rounds.  A 1500 round can was always in the bunker so ammo was plentiful on post.

I still have that coffee cup attached to the rucksack, as I "liberated" it from the chow hall.

The morning ride on the "Duce and a Half"  from ASP, the off base bomb dump, back to the main base at DaNang. 

The Vietnamese running after the truck are scrambling to get the C-Rats (cans of food) that some of the guys on the truck have tossed out as we drove through "dogpatch;" which was the name for the village of shacks on the west perimeter.

The paranoid one with the rifle is me.

The strip of black tape was my way to mark a magazine with tracer rounds versus one that's all ball ammo.  Security Police M-16 doctrine was to fire aimed three round bursts when in full-auto.   With a 1 in 3 tracer to ball ratio, that meant each burst contained one tracer round.

Yummy! Yummy!  Everybody's favorite food:  C-Rations!!!  From the looks of "Dutch" Cassidy's face he must have gotten something other than the "Green Eggs and Spam."

On the sandbags are an M-60, and standing on it's butt is a "CAR-15" which is what the USAF called the XM-177E1.

This was a cut down version of the M16 and was used by K-9 handlers, QRT members and some supervisors. Today that would be an M-4.  

This was the bomb delivery entrance on the  South end of the flight line.  It was sand filled plywood, tin roof, with no overhead cover.  Yuuck.

Concrete revetments for alert CAP aircraft are seen in background.

There were two F-106's in there in '72.

I experienced my first rocket attack while manning this post.