Lion and the Base
 The Kiwi |
 Ubon Terminal |
 Lion Headquarters |
 Lion Operations |
 The Guts of Lion |
 Lion During Rolling Thunder |
 New Ops Office |
 Raising the New Antenna |
 The Ubon AFB BX |
 Mess Hall |
 Ubon Officers Club |
 Ubon Officers Club |
 Yours Truly and Bambi Hut |
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If you had to travel around the country, say from Bangkok to Ubon, you took the "Kiwi," a Bristol Freighter flown on a regular schedule by the New Zealand Air Force. The Bristol Freighter had passenger seats along the length of the fuselage, and big clamshell doors in its nose. After the passengers were seated, a fork lift would put a pallet of vegetables into the front of the airplane below the cockpit. Since the clamshell wasn't altogether air tight you could savor the aroma of not quite fresh vegetables all the way from Bangkok to Korat to Ubon.
Once Rolling Thunder started, top secret frag orders would come in each night. The old headquarters tent wasn't secure enough for the route plotting that had to be done, so a new, wholly enclosed ops office quickly was thrown up. You can see it on the right in the "Lion During Rolling Thunder" picture above.
The Ubon NCO club was pretty big, but since we had only about a dozen officers the officers club was just another bambi hut turned into a lounge.
When fighter squadron echelons started to arrive the base went into an orgy of frantic construction. There was only one mess hall and it had to operate around the clock to feed everyone -- a far cry from the laid-back meal shown in the picture above.