Ran across this story on another forum so sorry if its been posted here before, I searched but didn't see it. Was a fun read, I'll C&P the start here but it was too long to copy and paste the whole thing. If you want to finish reading it just click the link. I love some of these crazy things that have happened in the aviation world.
How The O-2s Really Got There
by Richard H. Wood, Colonel, USAF (Ret)
It's 1967 or maybe early 1968, I forget, and the Air Force has bought a mess of Cessna Super Skymasters and called them O-2s. The Cessna factory at Wichita, Kansas is pumping them out at a pretty good clip and your problem is to figure out how to get them to Vietnam where they are needed. Your choices are:
1. Fly them to the West coast and turn them over to the Army for transport by cargo ship.
2. Take the wings off them and stuff them three at a time into the belly of C-124s and fly them over.
3. Fly them over under their own power with no C-124 attached.
Question: Which method was used? Right! Every single one of those puppies was hand-flown across the Big P to Vietnam. That sounds like it might have been a Mickey Mouse operation. Believe me, it wasn't that good.
Click on the link for the rest of the story, I tried to copy and paste it but there is 10,000 character limit on posts so just click here, its not really that long but over the limit evidently
http://www.nightrustics.org/Delivery.htm
How The O-2s Really Got There
by Richard H. Wood, Colonel, USAF (Ret)
It's 1967 or maybe early 1968, I forget, and the Air Force has bought a mess of Cessna Super Skymasters and called them O-2s. The Cessna factory at Wichita, Kansas is pumping them out at a pretty good clip and your problem is to figure out how to get them to Vietnam where they are needed. Your choices are:
1. Fly them to the West coast and turn them over to the Army for transport by cargo ship.
2. Take the wings off them and stuff them three at a time into the belly of C-124s and fly them over.
3. Fly them over under their own power with no C-124 attached.
Question: Which method was used? Right! Every single one of those puppies was hand-flown across the Big P to Vietnam. That sounds like it might have been a Mickey Mouse operation. Believe me, it wasn't that good.
Click on the link for the rest of the story, I tried to copy and paste it but there is 10,000 character limit on posts so just click here, its not really that long but over the limit evidently
http://www.nightrustics.org/Delivery.htm
