Rick Ransdell's and Tom Koza's Photos

These photos were supplied by Tom Koza, but here is his description:

"Back in 1971 when I got back from Vietnam and wound up in KC-135 school at Castle AFB in Merced, CA, I ran into Bob Smith (he was in the 536^th).  He and I had gone through pilot training together and went to Vietnam together in Caribous.  He got an assignment to Vung Tau and I went up to the 537^th at Phu Cat.   When we went through Castle together, I hung out with him and, occasionally, a few of his friends.  One of these guys was having a party and we went through a bunch of slides he had taken while in Vietnam.  (All of us were ex-Caribou drivers.)  The purpose of the slide show was to go through his mountain of slides and eliminate duplicates, bad shots etc. Being that I had lost all my pictures (including my camera) in Vietnam, I asked him for his rejects.  What I'm sending you are those.  They were sitting in a drawer for 28 years.  I broke them out and scanned them into my machine.  They required a lot of cleanup (Adobe to the rescue).

My guess is that they were taken in Vung Tau.  When I was in Vietnam I got in there only once — most of my flying was in I Corps.  Later, somewhere around January 1971 (I'm guessing), they closed down the Caribou operation there and moved all the planes to Cam Ranh Bay with many TDYs to Bien Hoa - so they had 4 squadrons in Cam Ranh with just ours (the 537^th) up in Phu Cat.  The guy who gave me the pictures was in that Vung Tau group.  His name was Rick Ransdell.  He was buddies with Bob Smith and Joe Spooner."

Rick and Tom's Photos