Capital Wing to fly Vietnam veteran at Culpeper on April 10
Published Monday, Apr. 5, 2021, 9:53 am
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Front Page » Local/State » Capital Wing to fly Vietnam veteran at Culpeper on April 10
The Capital Wing of the Commemorative Air Force is flying an Army Vietnam veteran at the Warbird Showcase event at the Culpeper Regional Airport in Culpeper on Saturday.
“We’re honored to be able to fly Ray Dodson in our Stinson L-5 Sentinel airplane at our first Warbird Showcase of the year,” said Pete Ballard, assistant adjutant of the Capital Wing.
Counter Invader : Meet the Vietnam War s Douglas B-26K Bomber nationalinterest.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nationalinterest.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Counterinsurgency aircraft was a concept that the United States began to employ during the conflict in Vietnam.
As the U.S. military became more deeply involved in Vietnam in the early 1960s, there arose a need for a counterinsurgency (COIN) aircraft something that could fly low to the ground and provide armed reconnaissance and even air escort for ground forces. It was a concept that had been pioneered during the colonial wars in Ethiopia and Iraq, but it was during the conflict in Vietnam that the United States began to employ a variety of small aircraft in similar roles.
One of those planes was the T-37A “Tweet” trainer, a twin-engine jet used for training undergraduate pilots, as well as undergraduate navigator and tactical navigator students in the fundaments of aircraft handling and night flying. The U.S. Air Force evaluated two modified T-37 trainers, which were designated YAT-37Ds, to determine how they could fill the role of a COIN attack/reconnaissance aircraft. Du
by Dana Melius
Anh-Tuan is a first-generation Vietnamese American, the son of Vietnam War refugees. His father is a veteran of the South Vietnamese Air Force and a political refugee; his mother fled the communist regime, a boat refugee.
His father, great uncle, and grandfather all served for the South Vietnamese military during the war, and their flight out of a turbulent Vietnam was a harrowing journey.
“They fled the day before Saigon fell,” Anh-Tuan said. “And every one of those on my mom’s side fled by boat.”
Three Tong family groups eventually arrived in Camp Pendleton, California, finally settling in Hutchinson as Minnesota was “the only state that would take all of them,” according to Anh-Tuan. In the 1990s, Anh-Tuan’s father moved to the Twin Cities area, where he and his mother met and were married.