Đà Nàng Air Base
ROCKET CITY
South Vietnam!

Photos by William Liddell
1972

Đà Nẵng, A-37 - 1
1) This 1972 shot is NEARLY at the same perspective as Jordan's.
Perhaps a little to the North of his point. The shack is still in
the open topped revetment. And an A-37 is there on the ramp.

Đà Nẵng, A-37 - 2
2) In 1972, the 366th SPS was moved from the old Marine area on the west side of the runways, to a set of two story barracks on the east side near Bravo area in 1972 and that is where that photo was taken. [If the barracks were near the theatre, they are the original barracks for the 6252nd APS, in late 1964, and pre tent-city. Don Poss]

Đà Nẵng,

entry control point ASP-1 at off base bomb
3) The entry control point ASP-1 at the off base bomb
dump: ASP. SSgt Sullivan, A1C Martinez, and others.  

Đà Nẵng, Dog Patch
4) The morning ride on the "Duce and a Half" from ASP, the off base
bomb dump, back to the main base at Đà Nàng. The Vietnamese running
after the truck are scrambling to get the C-Rats 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 some of the west perimeter.

Đà Nẵng, SP Relief Truck
5) The paranoid one with the rifle is me.

Đà Nẵng, French Bunker
6) One of our sandbag emplacements on top of an old French
concrete bunker located on the south end of the base.

Đà Nẵng, SP Hut and rocket damage
7) A Security Police barracks which suffered a near miss from a 122 during the night. The rocket impacted near the bottom right corner of the photo. An SP inside was wounded by shrapnel that passed through the armholebof the flak vest he had pulled over him.

Đà Nẵng, SP Hut damage close up
8) Close up.

Đà Nẵng, SP M113
9) Another vehicle used in Vietnam by USAF Security Police was the M-113A1 Armored Personnel Carrier, or "track." These Quick Reaction Team (QRT) M-113's were patrolling Đà Nàng Air Base in 1972.

Đà Nẵng, SAT
10) SSgt McCarroll and I as the ASP SAT (Security Alert Team). He replaced SSgt Sullivan when Sully went to QRF leader. My M16 is sitting magazine up. On Mac's you can see the muzzle of the XM-148 grenade launcher. The strip of black tape was my way to mark a magazine with tracer rounds versus one that's all ball ammo. Security Police M16 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.

Đà Nẵng, Sgt Bill Liddell    Đà Nẵng, SSgt McCarroll
11) Photo: Left, Sgt Bill Liddell, and Right, SSgt McCarroll.

Đà Nẵng, Sergeant Liddell
12) Sergeant Liddell (reclining) propping up his helmet, which is propping up his rucksack at the ASP entry control point after pulling the bunker line sentries in the pre-dawn hours. At Đà Nàng 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 left in the bunker so ammo was plentiful on post.

Music & © 1998, by J. Eshleman, ll BMI
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