Since I was Nav-Aids maintenance, my primary responsibility was the TACAN installations. There were two of us Nav-Aids types (Flight Facilities Repairmen) and we had to supply 24 X 7 coverage. That led to strange work schedules, but since we had a vehicle, phones and our own Motorola portable radios it worked out fine. The first several months I was teamed with SSgt. Richard Lloyd. When he rotated back to the states, his replacement was Frank ‘Tex’ Huseby. We also helped out a civilian Tech Rep, named Harry Raye, who was there to train Thai Air Force enlisted guys in electronics and Nav-Aids. As such, we could be found pretty much anywhere on either the Thai or US side of the base, at any time. (Not to mention frequent trips into town….the radios had a LONG range). For some strange reason we were also welcome at the Thai Officers Club. Anybody remember drinking ‘Mekong’ whiskey?
Since I had two TACAN trailers and all the other bases in Thailand had only one, the rule was that if their site was down and they couldn’t the major subunit causing it within 8 hours, they pulled the unit and exchanged it with my backup. I then got to fix the problem and keep the unit as part of my site. Fortunately, I never ran into anything I couldn’t fix.
For much of the time that I was there, the US government officially said that “we weren’t there”. That changed once the press showed up and started taking photos through the fences. It’s hard to hide a bunch of fighters taking off and landing. There were only F-105s, no F4s stationed at Korat during the time I was there.
Of course, we all had our strange experiences. You could periodically count on a Cobra nesting in the sandbags around the Rapcon. Fortunately, between the CO2 fire extinguishers (to cool/slow them down) and the ‘invisible’ knives (we weren’t ‘allowed’ to carry them) or souvenir swords that guys had, the Radar guys kept them under control. We’d occasionally meet a snake walking from the hooches to the showers, at night. Fortunately, we didn’t bother to hide our knives on those trips so we always won.
One of my weirdest nights came when I was driving down the taxiway, during a light rain, toward the control tower from the TACAN trailers that were located between the taxiway and runway (Camp Friendship end of the runway). I saw what looked like a bare tree branch stretched all the way across the taxiway. Then….it moved. It was the biggest snake I’ve EVER seen. I called the guys in the tower on the radio and they watched as I ran it over three times. It could have could have cared less. Eventually it went off into the grass. Since we had underground cable tunnels, etc., it was a matter of concern for the telephone/cable guys for a couple days. Then, one of the tractors pulling the huge circular mowers found it. Lets just say…. No more problem.