In his reply message (#7) regarding awards of the DFC, John Shepardson, Blue Ghost 6x, writes about the Que Son Valley where the Blue Ghosts were often in contact with the NVA and VC in 1968.
The Que Son Valley was located to the northwest of Hawk Hill in our area of operations. In this valley, Mike Chambers and crew were shot down May 16, 1968 and Sgt. Louis Bradley, a door gunner, died in the crash. Chambers and crew had to crawl frantically away from their crashed C -Model gunship while under fire before they were spotted and picked up. I don’t remember the exact grid square but it was in the southern part of the valley in a large rice field along the grid line of 0030 to 0430. It’s on this map of the Que Son Valley. http://www.rjsmith.com/Hiep_Duc_Que_Son.html
Jack Shanahan and crew in a C-Model gunship were shot down in this valley on March 16, 1968. Dan Buckley, Blue Ghost Blue, describes in detail the insertion of the Blues and the rescue of the injured crew. http://hometown.aol.com/blueghosrd/page15.html On the same map at grid coordinates 955308 was where James Phipps, Ranier Ramos, Fred Secrist and Warren Newton were shot down on January 9, 1968. All four apparently died in the crash. Their C-Model gunship, #66-00745, was crashed and burning on top of the small hill at this grid and this is where the lift platoon with the Blues attempted an approach but turned off because of the tremendous volume of automatic weapons fire coming up from all around the hill and the high ground to the west. We came back there about two weeks later after the NVA had left and put a recovery team on the ground. They were nervous and did not stay very long but recovered some human remains and a 38-caliber pistol belonging to Phipps. I wonder if anyone has ever been back there to look for them? I have never heard nor read of any further attempts to recover the remains of this crew. Three of them are still listed as MIA. With the exact coordinates of the crash site available and eyewitnesses to the crash, it would seem a rather straightforward endeavor to go and excavate this site.
Can anyone provide the name and address of the agency that is doing excavation and recovery in Vietnam? They should go to this site. It’s long past time for these men to be brought home.
The file attached to this message is a Placemark on Google Earth for the crash site in the Que Son Valley. You can install Google Earth at http://earth.google.com./ After you have Google Earth installed, double click the Placemark and you will see the crash site as it looks today.
The latitude and longitude coordinates of the crash site are 15.38’29.10”N, 108.09’28.72”E. The lift platoon attempted an approach to the site on approximately a 270-degree heading at 500’ altitude and at about one quarter mile from the hill aborted and turned to the right. The C-Model was sitting and burning on top of the north part of the hill. It later slid down the north slope toward the ravine. According to Google Earth, these satellite images are no more than three years old. The valley looks the same to me as it did in 1968.
