OSHKOSH Wis. — The C-47 carved out its best-known niche in history transporting troops and supplies around the world during the Second World War.
But its role in combat extended into Vietnam, something Rick Rice and the American Flight Museum highlight with their aircraft.
“The are so many C-47s, if you go to airshows that are painted up in the World War II D-Day scheme. They served there, but this is a little different wrinkle on the whole thing,” he said. “We try to educate people about the history of Vietnam. What these airplanes did. The ground (troops) these guys saved and the aircrews who worked on them, flew them, and took care of them.”
The AC-47 — a variant of the C-47 — used multi-barrel side firing miniguns to provide support to troops on the ground.
“They flew at night. If they were over a hamlet or one of our outposts, they were never overrun when the gunship was above them,” Rice said. “It saved a lot of people’s lives.”
The aircraft and people of the Vietnam War are among the highlights at this year’s EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh.
It’s where John Fester spent a little time cleaning oil from the nooks and crannies of his T-28B Trojan.
Many Vietnam-era pilots got their training in this type of plane. It also flew in combat in Vietnam.
“To me, it’s so important to take the airplanes where people can see them, hear them, feel them, and touch them. You’ll say, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know it was that big. Or I didn’t know they had that much oil, how can they still fly?’” Fester said. “If you just see them in a museum, it’s not the same.”
He runs into pilots who flew these aircraft or trained with the squadron carried on his plane.
“I love hearing those stories, the first-hand accounts. The guys tell me more about the airplane than I know already. ‘We flew it this way, how do you fly it?’ Or power settings,” he said. “Just the trivia of it.”
Rice said he frequently talks with Vietnam veterans who were directly helped by the presence of an AC-47 overhead.
“Every airshow we always have at least a couple veterans who will come up and say, ‘This airplane saved my life.’ You say, ‘Tell me the story.’ They’ll tell us what happened. Where they were at, what year it happened and all the circumstances,” he said. “We carry a logbook on the airplane, and we ask them to sign the logbook. It’s just a way of keeping that history alive to pass it on to the future generations.”