Ammo Dump, Part 1, transcript
notes: "--" indicates unintelligible words in a sentence.
"-" indicates a short pause.
statements inside [] indicates editor's note. [?] indicates a guess on my part.
statements inside () refer to what's happening on the audio.
=====================================
[Ernie]
Hello, everyone, I've got a little news for you today, this is just the day after I finished the last tape and we've had some action already. I came on shift at, ah, 10:30 no 8:30 we're supposed to work 8:30 to 10:30 and just about, uh, let me see it's 9:15 now so just before nine o'clock, it was busy as hell, you know, I had uh, 3 C130s sitting on the south ramp that were parked and uh, unloading. I had one C130 comin in and uh, he'd just landed. And I had the south ramp all full of UH1's and, you know, they were all over the field just like always.
All of a sudden we started receiving mortar rounds again. We received a few of 'em over here on the north side of the field, and all of a sudden they started zeroing in right here on the south ramp. And we must have gotten ten or twelve mortar rounds in the space of a couple of minutes. And, uh, they caught two C130s on fire. And these two C130s right now are burning to high heaven. I think they're going to blow up any minute now because one of them is full of munitions and stuff.
I'm sitting up here in the tower and we're trying to control what aircraft are left, you know, on bombing runs and strafing runs. We're trying to look for the enemy but we can't find him. Which is kind of neat. So, what we're doing right now is we have gunships up there in the hills - Whoop - that was another mortar hitting right there in the south ramp.
We have jets in here now and - Whoop - there's another one.
God, hope you can hear all this stuff. It's kinda hard - there's another mortar. I think I better get down a little.
There's this one C130 and he's burning. His wings have fallen off already and he's, I think he's the one that's full of ammunition, he's going to blow up most any second.
We have, uh, gunships just pounding the heck out of these hills right to the south of us, trying to find out where they're coming from. And, uh, we had one C130, one of three, wasn't, didn't catch on fire but he's all full of holes and he can't fly.
So, anyway, it's kinda big thing. I just wish I had my camera. Boy that really gets me mad. I ran out of film just about a week or two ago - here comes a jet in on a bombing run - nah, he just strafed that time.
Anyway, about a week or two ago I ran out of film and I haven't been able to get any film anywhere, mainly because I don't have any money on me. Ah! the pictures I could get right now, fantastic! There's a great big cloud of smoke going something like four or five hundred feet straight up in the air. Great big black smoke, because the, uh, wing fuel tank, that one that fell off, they're burning fierce. And there's a great big cloud of smoke coming off the second one, they're both right next to each other.
I don't know if we've got anybody hurt or not, but we had a whole mess of 'em land over here by the 15th aerial port squadron. They're the people who unload the planes and everything. I hope they got in the bunkers fast enough.
I think I'm going to put this thing on 1 7/8 so it'll last a bit longer. At this rate it'll only be 14 minutes before this tape is gone, ok? So I'm switching over right now...
Whoee, there went the aircraft. It's a gigantic pillar of flame going just about a hundred feet up in the air now. That was the one that was on fire before and he already exploded once, one explosion came directly from the plane.
So, I don't know, We're sitting on top of the tower. We just sandbagged this thing about a couple days ago so I'm going to get down as low as I can because if the ammunition in that thing goes off - what was that? That was an engine blew up. No that was one of the uh, uh, tanks that sits under the engine, you know, in a pod, it just blew apart.
So anyway, if the ammunition in that thing goes up, boy, it's going to be scattered all over this field.
It just goes to show how exciting a life we lead out here, huh?
And right now we have - uh, I don't know what they are, they look like F4Cs or something, they're some high-performance jets and they're making real low passes just to the south of the field, and they're strafing the heck out of those hills. And we're still, uh, we haven't started artillery fire out there yet because we haven't found them.
We have machine guns firing from these helicopters out there and stuff. I think I'll just leave this - nah there's nothing going right now, nothing but that burning aircraft. I think we'll listen in on the, uh, tower controller. I let someone else take over for me for a minute while I take pictures for him. So I'll see if there's anything exciting going on in the, uh, over the air.
Here we've got tanks and everything moved out on the south ramp to hit back at anything that tries to fire in. See the problem is now we still have to locate him. We have, uh, Oscar 1s and everybody up there lookin' and just waiting for the next time they open fire, hoping we can see muzzle flashes or something.
Here goes an F100 on a strafing run.
(long silence)
(garbled radio)
(long silence)
(faint question)
No, I got a couple of pictures.
(faint question)
No, with the other camera.
(silence)
(unintelligible)
Gee, I sure hope this thing will pick up some of these sounds at this slow speed. I kind of doubt it though. If you can't have one thing, you have to have another.
(garbled radio)
We have tanks scurrying around on the south ramp and we have, uh, looks like a fuel truck, yeah we do have a, uh, fuel truck and a, uh, mobile pumper. I don't know what they're gonna do, maybe they're gonna try and fill up that, uh, - oh, listen to this - no I guess you can't hear it. We have a, uh, - we have a machine gun sitting way down there at the south perimeter, about a hundred, no about, uh, three hundred yards from us, and he's firing full-tilt into those hills. You can see the, uh, tracers comin' from here.
There.
(garbled radio)
We had a jet just drop a nice little, uh, 500 pound bomb right out in the hills out there. I don't know if they found him or not. I guess they haven't.
But anyway we're strafing those hills and what they call it is "recon by fire". We just fire everywhere, you know, where we suspect he might be, and if they're there, we figure they'll stop firing, or else we'll get a secondary explosion when their ammo blows up.
[voice on radio]
one on, uh, guard, come up UHF
[Ernie]
So right now things have quieted down, boy, things have just, 15 minutes ago this place was really busy, really jumpin' where I was - it was an awful lot faster than it was in that last tape I sent, you know when, when I was controlling traffic, and in a matter of a couple minutes, man, everybody just took off. Everybody sitting here -- and took off. Too bad those guys in the C130s weren't able to make it too.
I had that one C130. He'd just landed and he was just about ready to taxi to the south ramp. And as soon as I told him mortars were hitting, he just made a quick one-eighty and taxied right back down again and took off; he wasn't about to stay around. I had, uh, two other C130s inbound but they all took off home.
That one C130 that was sittin' there and burnin' is now a just a, just a burned out hulk, the wings are still burnin' real fierce 'cause they have fuel tanks in 'em. They've both fallen off the aircraft, and its all humped over in the center, everything just layin' on the ground and smokin'. The other one, has, stopped smokin' a lot, its smokin' just a little bit from its wings. But its all bent over and looks like somebody broke its back too. The tail, you know the upright on the tail, the stabilizer, has a great big chunk just chewed right out of it where a mortar went and hit right there, hit it right in the tail.
Boy, it's a really pitiful sight, man, that's a awful lot of a.. of money going up in flames right there. I think one of those things cost close to, uh, half a million apiece.
[calls out]
Hey! You know how much one of those aircraft costs?
[reply]
about half a million dollars.
Ha, I was right. They do cost about a half million apiece so that's a million dollars worth of aircraft plus all the stuff they had inside.
Oh, now our jets are really going to work on those hills. They're going right on the first ridge line up there.
I was wrong about that truck that I thought was full of fuel for that C130. Full of water. He's making a great big circle and wetting down the, uh, apron all around and making sure he doesn't catch fire.
The only one we have saved out of this thing, it's going to be a long time before we can get him off the ground, we've got to patch up those holes. An awful lot of pieces of shrapnel went and cut him up. I can - I can see holes all through him.
[pilot on radio]
POL available at this time at Dak To?
[person audible]
Yeah on north side
[controller on radio]
roger - north side and POL is available.
[pilot on radio]
Ah, roger, thank you.
(long silence)
[voice on radio]
Tailpipe Bravo Dak To tower
[controller]
Dak To this is Bravo, correction Bravo Dak To.
[voice on radio]
Tower, this is Sierra[?] Hotel trying to get ahold of Bravo, over. Correct.
Tailpipe Bravo Dak To.
(pause)
Dak To Tower, do you know whether he's on, uh, Fox Mike or UHF radio over.
[controller on radio]
uh, current at, uh, Tailpipe India on 149 point 15.
[other controller]
That's VHF
[voice on radio]
Would you get ahold of him and see how much ammo's on these birds that are burnin'?
[controller on radio]
Roger, will do.
(pause)
[controller to another controller]
What? 14915, VHF.
(long static while tuning radio?)
[controller]
OK. Now your all --
[controller on radio]
Tailpipe India, Tailpipe India, Dak To tower.
(pause)
Tailpipe India, Tailpipe India, Dak To tower.
[Ernie ]
I doubt if they're monitoring right now.
[voice on radio]
Dal To, this is, uh, 935 going around
(pause)
[voice on radio]
Dak To Tower, this is Sierra[?] Hotel. Disregard. I don't guess he's on monitoring this freqs, over.
[controller]
uh, Roger.
Yeah.
What?
(garbled)
I didn't see an explosion come from it.
(pause)
Another explosion from that C130. Now it's nothing but a great big twin columns of black smoke. -- not going to be living too much longer.
[other controller]
Second one's burning inside.
[Ernie]
Yeah, the second one is burning on the inside. It'll be a while before the -- breaks out.
These jets up here are dropping napalm on the hills now. Maybe they have found them. I don't know. We haven't been monitoring the right frequencies. I'm going to see if I can find the frequency where these people are on.
[controller on radio]
The winds are 090 degrees at six knots.
[pilot on radio]
(unintelligible)
[another pilot on radio - faint]
Caribou 1717 November -- in the area -- you were cut out both times, over. [note: not sure 'caribou' is correct]
[responding on radio]
Caribou 17 roger. Grid is one niner zero six eight over.
[Ernie]
Fox Mike 1, turn it off.
[other controller]
It's off
[Ernie]
OK. No, No, not that -- switch. Been up there on the key[?] pedal. Still want to hear it, just put it on monitor.
(faint background talking)
[Ernie]
OK.
(pause with some static)
Ah, there's nothing happening on the radios right now.
(pause)
What was that? I think that was another explosion from the ship.
(pause with some faint radio traffic and external noise)
Another mortar, we just took three extra mortars.
(pause)
(faint radio, pilot calling in to Dak To)
Dak to, this is -- seven.
[controller]
-- seven, Dak to.
[pilot]
-- seven is five miles to the west. We want to land a med-evac at the 4th med. Is it safe to land down there?
[Ernie]
yeah
[controller]
-- seven, ah, roger med evac. I believe we're still taking mortars in on the north, on the south ramp.
[pilot]
Roger.
[Ernie]
Oh, how about that, they haven't given up firing at us.
(explosions)
(tape ends)
"-" indicates a short pause.
statements inside [] indicates editor's note. [?] indicates a guess on my part.
statements inside () refer to what's happening on the audio.
=====================================
[Ernie]
Hello, everyone, I've got a little news for you today, this is just the day after I finished the last tape and we've had some action already. I came on shift at, ah, 10:30 no 8:30 we're supposed to work 8:30 to 10:30 and just about, uh, let me see it's 9:15 now so just before nine o'clock, it was busy as hell, you know, I had uh, 3 C130s sitting on the south ramp that were parked and uh, unloading. I had one C130 comin in and uh, he'd just landed. And I had the south ramp all full of UH1's and, you know, they were all over the field just like always.
All of a sudden we started receiving mortar rounds again. We received a few of 'em over here on the north side of the field, and all of a sudden they started zeroing in right here on the south ramp. And we must have gotten ten or twelve mortar rounds in the space of a couple of minutes. And, uh, they caught two C130s on fire. And these two C130s right now are burning to high heaven. I think they're going to blow up any minute now because one of them is full of munitions and stuff.
I'm sitting up here in the tower and we're trying to control what aircraft are left, you know, on bombing runs and strafing runs. We're trying to look for the enemy but we can't find him. Which is kind of neat. So, what we're doing right now is we have gunships up there in the hills - Whoop - that was another mortar hitting right there in the south ramp.
We have jets in here now and - Whoop - there's another one.
God, hope you can hear all this stuff. It's kinda hard - there's another mortar. I think I better get down a little.
There's this one C130 and he's burning. His wings have fallen off already and he's, I think he's the one that's full of ammunition, he's going to blow up most any second.
We have, uh, gunships just pounding the heck out of these hills right to the south of us, trying to find out where they're coming from. And, uh, we had one C130, one of three, wasn't, didn't catch on fire but he's all full of holes and he can't fly.
So, anyway, it's kinda big thing. I just wish I had my camera. Boy that really gets me mad. I ran out of film just about a week or two ago - here comes a jet in on a bombing run - nah, he just strafed that time.
Anyway, about a week or two ago I ran out of film and I haven't been able to get any film anywhere, mainly because I don't have any money on me. Ah! the pictures I could get right now, fantastic! There's a great big cloud of smoke going something like four or five hundred feet straight up in the air. Great big black smoke, because the, uh, wing fuel tank, that one that fell off, they're burning fierce. And there's a great big cloud of smoke coming off the second one, they're both right next to each other.
I don't know if we've got anybody hurt or not, but we had a whole mess of 'em land over here by the 15th aerial port squadron. They're the people who unload the planes and everything. I hope they got in the bunkers fast enough.
I think I'm going to put this thing on 1 7/8 so it'll last a bit longer. At this rate it'll only be 14 minutes before this tape is gone, ok? So I'm switching over right now...
Whoee, there went the aircraft. It's a gigantic pillar of flame going just about a hundred feet up in the air now. That was the one that was on fire before and he already exploded once, one explosion came directly from the plane.
So, I don't know, We're sitting on top of the tower. We just sandbagged this thing about a couple days ago so I'm going to get down as low as I can because if the ammunition in that thing goes off - what was that? That was an engine blew up. No that was one of the uh, uh, tanks that sits under the engine, you know, in a pod, it just blew apart.
So anyway, if the ammunition in that thing goes up, boy, it's going to be scattered all over this field.
It just goes to show how exciting a life we lead out here, huh?
And right now we have - uh, I don't know what they are, they look like F4Cs or something, they're some high-performance jets and they're making real low passes just to the south of the field, and they're strafing the heck out of those hills. And we're still, uh, we haven't started artillery fire out there yet because we haven't found them.
We have machine guns firing from these helicopters out there and stuff. I think I'll just leave this - nah there's nothing going right now, nothing but that burning aircraft. I think we'll listen in on the, uh, tower controller. I let someone else take over for me for a minute while I take pictures for him. So I'll see if there's anything exciting going on in the, uh, over the air.
Here we've got tanks and everything moved out on the south ramp to hit back at anything that tries to fire in. See the problem is now we still have to locate him. We have, uh, Oscar 1s and everybody up there lookin' and just waiting for the next time they open fire, hoping we can see muzzle flashes or something.
Here goes an F100 on a strafing run.
(long silence)
(garbled radio)
(long silence)
(faint question)
No, I got a couple of pictures.
(faint question)
No, with the other camera.
(silence)
(unintelligible)
Gee, I sure hope this thing will pick up some of these sounds at this slow speed. I kind of doubt it though. If you can't have one thing, you have to have another.
(garbled radio)
We have tanks scurrying around on the south ramp and we have, uh, looks like a fuel truck, yeah we do have a, uh, fuel truck and a, uh, mobile pumper. I don't know what they're gonna do, maybe they're gonna try and fill up that, uh, - oh, listen to this - no I guess you can't hear it. We have a, uh, - we have a machine gun sitting way down there at the south perimeter, about a hundred, no about, uh, three hundred yards from us, and he's firing full-tilt into those hills. You can see the, uh, tracers comin' from here.
There.
(garbled radio)
We had a jet just drop a nice little, uh, 500 pound bomb right out in the hills out there. I don't know if they found him or not. I guess they haven't.
But anyway we're strafing those hills and what they call it is "recon by fire". We just fire everywhere, you know, where we suspect he might be, and if they're there, we figure they'll stop firing, or else we'll get a secondary explosion when their ammo blows up.
[voice on radio]
one on, uh, guard, come up UHF
[Ernie]
So right now things have quieted down, boy, things have just, 15 minutes ago this place was really busy, really jumpin' where I was - it was an awful lot faster than it was in that last tape I sent, you know when, when I was controlling traffic, and in a matter of a couple minutes, man, everybody just took off. Everybody sitting here -- and took off. Too bad those guys in the C130s weren't able to make it too.
I had that one C130. He'd just landed and he was just about ready to taxi to the south ramp. And as soon as I told him mortars were hitting, he just made a quick one-eighty and taxied right back down again and took off; he wasn't about to stay around. I had, uh, two other C130s inbound but they all took off home.
That one C130 that was sittin' there and burnin' is now a just a, just a burned out hulk, the wings are still burnin' real fierce 'cause they have fuel tanks in 'em. They've both fallen off the aircraft, and its all humped over in the center, everything just layin' on the ground and smokin'. The other one, has, stopped smokin' a lot, its smokin' just a little bit from its wings. But its all bent over and looks like somebody broke its back too. The tail, you know the upright on the tail, the stabilizer, has a great big chunk just chewed right out of it where a mortar went and hit right there, hit it right in the tail.
Boy, it's a really pitiful sight, man, that's a awful lot of a.. of money going up in flames right there. I think one of those things cost close to, uh, half a million apiece.
[calls out]
Hey! You know how much one of those aircraft costs?
[reply]
about half a million dollars.
Ha, I was right. They do cost about a half million apiece so that's a million dollars worth of aircraft plus all the stuff they had inside.
Oh, now our jets are really going to work on those hills. They're going right on the first ridge line up there.
I was wrong about that truck that I thought was full of fuel for that C130. Full of water. He's making a great big circle and wetting down the, uh, apron all around and making sure he doesn't catch fire.
The only one we have saved out of this thing, it's going to be a long time before we can get him off the ground, we've got to patch up those holes. An awful lot of pieces of shrapnel went and cut him up. I can - I can see holes all through him.
[pilot on radio]
POL available at this time at Dak To?
[person audible]
Yeah on north side
[controller on radio]
roger - north side and POL is available.
[pilot on radio]
Ah, roger, thank you.
(long silence)
[voice on radio]
Tailpipe Bravo Dak To tower
[controller]
Dak To this is Bravo, correction Bravo Dak To.
[voice on radio]
Tower, this is Sierra[?] Hotel trying to get ahold of Bravo, over. Correct.
Tailpipe Bravo Dak To.
(pause)
Dak To Tower, do you know whether he's on, uh, Fox Mike or UHF radio over.
[controller on radio]
uh, current at, uh, Tailpipe India on 149 point 15.
[other controller]
That's VHF
[voice on radio]
Would you get ahold of him and see how much ammo's on these birds that are burnin'?
[controller on radio]
Roger, will do.
(pause)
[controller to another controller]
What? 14915, VHF.
(long static while tuning radio?)
[controller]
OK. Now your all --
[controller on radio]
Tailpipe India, Tailpipe India, Dak To tower.
(pause)
Tailpipe India, Tailpipe India, Dak To tower.
[Ernie ]
I doubt if they're monitoring right now.
[voice on radio]
Dal To, this is, uh, 935 going around
(pause)
[voice on radio]
Dak To Tower, this is Sierra[?] Hotel. Disregard. I don't guess he's on monitoring this freqs, over.
[controller]
uh, Roger.
Yeah.
What?
(garbled)
I didn't see an explosion come from it.
(pause)
Another explosion from that C130. Now it's nothing but a great big twin columns of black smoke. -- not going to be living too much longer.
[other controller]
Second one's burning inside.
[Ernie]
Yeah, the second one is burning on the inside. It'll be a while before the -- breaks out.
These jets up here are dropping napalm on the hills now. Maybe they have found them. I don't know. We haven't been monitoring the right frequencies. I'm going to see if I can find the frequency where these people are on.
[controller on radio]
The winds are 090 degrees at six knots.
[pilot on radio]
(unintelligible)
[another pilot on radio - faint]
Caribou 1717 November -- in the area -- you were cut out both times, over. [note: not sure 'caribou' is correct]
[responding on radio]
Caribou 17 roger. Grid is one niner zero six eight over.
[Ernie]
Fox Mike 1, turn it off.
[other controller]
It's off
[Ernie]
OK. No, No, not that -- switch. Been up there on the key[?] pedal. Still want to hear it, just put it on monitor.
(faint background talking)
[Ernie]
OK.
(pause with some static)
Ah, there's nothing happening on the radios right now.
(pause)
What was that? I think that was another explosion from the ship.
(pause with some faint radio traffic and external noise)
Another mortar, we just took three extra mortars.
(pause)
(faint radio, pilot calling in to Dak To)
Dak to, this is -- seven.
[controller]
-- seven, Dak to.
[pilot]
-- seven is five miles to the west. We want to land a med-evac at the 4th med. Is it safe to land down there?
[Ernie]
yeah
[controller]
-- seven, ah, roger med evac. I believe we're still taking mortars in on the north, on the south ramp.
[pilot]
Roger.
[Ernie]
Oh, how about that, they haven't given up firing at us.
(explosions)
(tape ends)