Mostly retired, but still accept some consulting assignments periodically.
Other Comments:
After leaving the Air Force and receiving my B.S. in Industrial Technology at SIU-Carbondale, I started my 40-year-career in Fire Protection-Property Loss Control-Consulting in the commercial/industrial property insurance business. I started with Factory Mutual Engineering in Chicago with stops in Miami, Nashville, and ended up working for two of the world's major insurance brokers, Marsh & McLennan and finally AON (who bought Schirmer Engineering in 2001, my employer at the time), in Atlanta.
1969-1970, 32551, 604th Military Airlift Support Squadron
Brand-new 63d MAW C-141As on the ramp at Norton AFB, 1967. Serial 66-0177 is in foreground. This aircraft will become the famous "Hanoi Taxi" which flew Bob Hope to USO shows in South Vietnam, and, in 1973, during the final days of the Vietnam War, repatriated American POWs from North Vietnam. Arizona Senator John McCain was one of the POWs who flew home on the Hanoi Taxi. 66-0177 was the last C-141 to be withdrawn from Air Force service after a career of almost 40 years, as the last of the fleet was retired in 2006. Today, 66-0177 is on permanent display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force
Established at the height of the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, MAC provided long-range strategic airlift from the United States to Military Airlift Support Squadrons (MASS) located on Pacific Air Forces bases in the Pacific AOR. These were:[3]
By 1968, MAC military and contract transports were hauling 150,000 passengers and 45,000 tons of cargo monthly to and from Southeast Asia. At first, MAC transports to Vietnam landed regularly only at Tan Son Nhut AB, necessitating considerable transshipment within Vietnam by the Common Service Airlift System. New air bases opened at Da Nang AB and Cam Ranh AB in January 1966, and later at Pleiku AB, Bien Hoa AB, and Phu Cat AB, reducing the need for redistribution.[4]
Major unit movements by MAC aircraft from the United States usually required further airlifts to operating areas by in-country transports. Introduction of the C-5 Galaxy transport in the summer of 1970 created new problems of in-country distribution, since C-5 deliveries were massive, and, initially the planes could land only at Cam Ranh Bay. Eventually, however, C-5s could unload at Tan Son Nhut and elsewhere.[4] Primarily, MAC transports carried high-value cargo such as aircraft and equipment parts, while MAC civilian-contract flights transported passengers to and from the combat zone.[1][2]
Undoubtedly the most important development of MAC during the Vietnam War was the use of the LockheedC-141 Starlifteras an airborne ambulance evacuating casualties out of South Vietnam to hospitals in Japan, the Philippines and the United States. Generally, patients requiring hospitalization for thirty days or more were moved to offshore hospitals; others were sometimes evacuated to keep an empty-bed reserve of fifty percent in Vietnam. Military Airlift Command transports carried the more serious cases from Clark AB to the United States, and, in 1966, began making patient pickups in Vietnam.[2][4]
