Hauling Trash

HAULING TRASH is Sam McGowan's account of his experiences as a US Air Force aircrew member in the Vietnam Era. It starts with an account of his boyhood on a West Tennessee cotton farm, then moves into his military experiences, beginning in July 1963. Over the next twelve years he not only saw a good part of the world, he saw combat in Southeast Asia as a C-130 crewmember. During his first overseas tour at Naha, Okinawa he flew dangerous forward air controller/flare missions over North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos.After an eighteen month sojurn as a C-141 crewmember in Military Airlift Command, he returned to combat operations in Southeast Asia, this time with a unit based at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. In addition to combat airlift missions into forward airfields in South Vietnam, he flew COMMANDO VAULT bombing missions dropping massive ten and fifteen thousand bombs from C-130s.In 1970 he returned to the US to the first operational squadron flying the gigantic C-5 Galaxy, and was involved with the huge airplane during the years as it experienced growing pains. In October 1973 he was a crewmember on one of the first C-5As to land at Lod Airport at Tel Aviv during the Yom Kipper War. In addition to his experiences as an Air Force crewmember, both in the air and on the ground, he also relates his experiences as he progresses from civilian private pilot to a commercial pilot with instrument rating and flight instructor certificate, and how he learned aerobatics on his own. This is a book for anyone who is interested in military aviation, particularly during the Vietnam War, but it also includes much about the author's experiences flying light airplanes, and would appeal to aviation enthusiasts as well as those with an interest in the military.