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Penn
03-20-2011, 19:34
This was sent to me by a friend. Watch out for the flight crew.

MARBLE MOUNTAIN....VIET NAM 1969
Those of us in country in 1969 will remember this incident well. This DC-8 charter was cleared to land at DaNang International at night. The crew mis-identified Marble Mountain Army airfield as DaNang which is way too short for large aircraft. Getting that loaded slug down and stopped at nite must have made that pilots seat cushion disppear forever!! All recommendations were to disassemble the aircraft and ship it home but as you see this behemoth got off the ground in 2800 feet with very little fuel aboard and landed at DaNang International a few scant miles away. This from a guy that worked at Trans International Airlines. Names have been removed ... My sister is the little blonde flight attendant in this Super 8MM footage shot by a GI in 1969. This event is pretty well known history among the "Non Sked" flight crews flying the MAC charters in and out of Viet Nam but I had no idea it had been filmed. Marcia found it recently. What's interesting is, once Seaboard World Flight Operations got the word on what happened, they contacted Douglas Aircraft Corp for advice...Douglas said "take it apart and ship it home". FAA said the same thing..........you can see from this footage how the flight crew handled the matter.

Who flew it out, it appears that the captain is standing there watching.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bvK6enoQDg

JJ_BPK
03-20-2011, 20:55
Awesome,,
Thanks Penn..

:lifter

MK262MOD1
03-20-2011, 21:31
Great Video!!

Requiem
03-20-2011, 22:01
Thank you, Penn. I enjoyed that.

There's another film clip of the take-off here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mId1WK6sYuk&feature=related).

And from the comment section: "I was working in the Danang RAPCON and accepted control of the A/C from Center.

Weather was clear, vis 30+. The DC-8 was cleared for a "visual Approach". No conflicting traffic at the time, cleared to land, runway in sight. Got concerned waiting for him to land when Marble Mountain called saying a stretch 8 landed there and he could see nothing but windows the length of the runway." Roy Constantineau 7/68 to 7/69.

mark46th
03-20-2011, 23:13
Way cool. I hated those stretched DC-8's. I'm 6'4" and they crammed those seats in close. Thank God, I smuggled a quart of vodka aboard to anesthetize myself....

Texas_Shooter
03-21-2011, 00:28
Very impressive.