I am pleased to tell you that while the Arizona Rocket Car story is untrue, that
the DaNang Rocket Jeep story is... well, yet another probable embellishment that
predates the Arizona Rocket Car story by about two years...
...Maybe...
I will NOT attest to the validity of the actual incident, but this is what
happened:
In 1974 my father packed up the entire family and took us, Beverly Hillbilly
style, to the Ship Repair Facility, Subic Bay. There we enjoyed a carefree life
in the tropic sun, snorkling off of the end of the Cubi Point runway, and off of
the end of Grande Island (before it became a relocation point for the S.
Vietnamese refugees.)
One day, I remarked to a friend that the Cubi Runway would be the perfect place
for a rocket car, say, the Blue Flame, which, I think, was in the midst of
breaking landspeed records at the time... We were talking about a legitimate
vehicle doing documented things.
My father overheard us talking, and interjected that there had been an attempt
to break this record at a place called Da Nang...
Here's what I remember:
A group of bored airmen had commandered a jeep (had to be an M151), and a JATO
bottle, strapped the thing together, positioned it down the runway, and lit the
thing off.
Dad didn't elaborate on the results beyond the fact that the flight crew didn't
make it.
Of course, that made for great story telling until I began to apprciate the cost
of human life, and then, somehow, the story shifted to the tale that, while the
JATO bottle was indeed strapped to the jeep, it was sent down the runway
unmanned.
Three years after I had told that story at a Mess Night in Camp Lejuene, it was
told back to me during the pause of a fieldEX in Okinawa, Japan.
I'm waiting for the HummVee version to show up...
Now we all know, with a solumn salute to all who served in Southeast Asia, that
dang near anything found in the files of the paranormal will have an associated
story with some connection to Vietnam, or the jungles of same. I mean, there
wasn't just the documentable stories of the Battle of Hue and the Siege of Khe
Sahn, as well as the fighting in the A Shau Valley, but there has been accounts
of alien abduction, the colony of Black Syph survivors that is maintained by the
CIA/KGB. There's the mind control and HAARP projects, and even sighting of
Bigfoot and Elvis jamming together in the Central Highlands. All of it very
much X-files stuff.
There only one problem with my attempt to poo-poo the JATO jeep story...
In Da Nang, there were Marine squadrons. Where there are Marine birds, there
are Marines, and a bored Marine is the most dangerous and destructive creature
in the world...
You see, I can picture it happening...
The furtive Lance Corporal roaring up to a hootch on an M274A5 mule with a large
object wrapped in tent canvas. He parks the beast and ducks under the hootch to
his mates, "Hey, guys! Guess what I found!"
The small group flows out of the tent and the LCpl looks around, and then throws
back the canvas to expose a JATO bottle...
The group looks at the JATO unit wide eyed, and then look past it to the jeep
parked next to the Battalion Commander's hootch, the jeep with the sliver oak
leaf stenciled to the scarlet placard safety-wired to the front grill. Slowly,
the eyes narrow, and the mouths curl up into evil grins.
"Get a wrench..."
I can SEE it!
Have a great day!
Bill
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 01 2000 - 21:37:47 PST