My First Detachment: by Jon Sampson

Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One

CJ, I love to read your blog. The first time I visited, I was deeply moved by your story and have been reading Memoirs From Nam ever since. 

My First Detachment

“Dad, I got my orders today.” I had joined the Navy just eight months before and was about to complete my Aviation Electronics ‘A’ school at NAS Memphis at Millington, Tennessee.

“I’m going to aircrew duty with VQ-1 out of NAS Atsugi, Japan.” There was a moment of silence.

“You’re aware that they have a detachment in Da Nang, Vietnam, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir!” I replied.

Dad knew about the squadron, because he was stationed at Da Nang for a year, himself, in 1968.

“I’ll let your mother know.”

I finished ‘A’ school and went to San Diego for another two months of training, before departing for Japan on November 22, 1970.

My first trip to Da Nang was March 1971, at the tender age of nineteen. Over the next two years, I made many more excursions to our "time-share in that seaside resort" with my flight crew, as well as for one ground-pounder det.

I don’t recall which night it was—only that the night sky was clear and the temperature tolerable, as I lay in my rack, trying to get some sleep, before our mission the next day. 

Sound asleep, I was suddenly jolted awake by explosions and sirens wailing. As I thrust my now wide awake body out of the rack, I heard someone yelling, “Rockets!”

In the dim red light, I quickly grabbed my utility trousers and tried to put them on while running to the bunker just outside the center hatch of the barracks. [Running is an inaccurate description of what we were doing.]  

What we were actually doing was more like an ordered panic—run, crawl, trip-and-fall, roll, jump—we got out to the bunker by any means and all of it without trampling anyone, either. If anyone had been watching from the sidelines, we might have appeared to be a company of Keystone Cops.

After that, I either slept in my trousers, or left them hanging on the rack -- they were just not that important.

Experience truly is the best teacher ...

Jon Sampson

VQ-1
Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One (FAIRECONRON-1)

AT-3 (Aviation Electronics Technician Third Class)
Vietnam 1970-1973


“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do, and by the grace of God, I will.” ~Everett Hale


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