Da Nang Air Base - 1965 & 1966
This will be my first shot at posting photos I took while assigned to Da Nang AB, South Viet Nam during the 1965-1966 time frame.
I hope that there are other Vietnam veterans, perhaps even from Da Nang, who might still be interested in reading a few of my anecdotes and/or viewing some of the multitude of photographs that I took while there.
I was not a photographer, but rather an aircraft electrician in the USAF who just happened to have caught the photography "bug" during the time I was in Vietnam.
If you are interested, these photos were all taken with 3 cameras that I owned during that period. I went to Vietnam with only a little Minolta 16mm "Spy" camera. The poorest quality photos in this blog were all taken on that camera. Then, courtesy of the Navy Exchange just outside the base's main gate, I upgraded to a Mamiya C3 twin-lens reflex camera. All of the photos from that camera can be identified by their square format. Finally, after many months of saving up my meager script money (Military Pay Certificates), I was able to order a Nikon F Photomic T 35mm single lens reflex camera. All of the best rectangular format photos came out of that camera.
These photos have endured the past 50+ years, but not without some noticeable suffering. Most of them were stored in either Asian lacquered hard wood cover albums, photos of which will be included in this blog, or in Kodak Carousel slide trays. A few years ago, I digitized (scanned) everything on a CanoScan 9000F.
Other than normal, natural fading, some of the photos exhibit bad scratches, fingerprints and other blemishes. In most cases, these are not the result of 50+ years in storage, but instead are evidence of rough handling and processing by the inexperienced film developers in downtown Da Nang city. Where possible, if I still had the negatives, I replaced the poorer print scans with re-scans of those negatives. I also edited many of the worst cases with free photo editing software, primarily MS Photo Gallery and Retouch Pilot Lite.
I plan to organize the photos by category, I.E. aircraft type, off-base scenes, fellow airmen, etc. I will start posting these images as soon as I have completed this process.
I hope that you will find this blog to be interesting. Possibly for some, it will also refresh your memories of that time, hopefully, not all bad!
Is this a worthwhile project? Please let me know your thoughts about whether or not I should continue, and/or how I might improve it.
A nice aerial view of Da Nang AB as it appeared during the time I was there. Permanently assigned Air Force personnel were housed in the formerly French cantonment area in the 4 long, 2 story buildings seen in the background above the rear of the closest hangar. Many different types of aircraft are visible on the flight line. How many can you identify? (Credit for this photo: Thang - Nguyen Xuan - Arch Collection)
Here are the 3 Japanese made, lacquered, photo albums in which I stored the majority of the prints that I took at Da Nang Air Base, Da Nang city, the surrounding villages and China Beach.
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This is a clip from the Pacific Stars & Stripe newspaper, circa 1965. |
