Thanks to Bill Neely for this amazing take-off video:
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 .....(Gloria)
My sister is the little blonde flight attendant in this Super 8MM footage shot by a GI in 1969.
This event is pretty well know 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.
Enjoy a little history in this Super8 mm movie converted to YouTube video.
Click on: DC-8 lands at Marble Mountain Vietnam
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I'm reminded of another tale about contract airliners and Danang. It seems that a charter was inbound for Danang and tower told them to make a right 720 for timing. The captain told Danang, "Each 360 costs $1,000." Tower's response: "Charter, make a $2,000 turn to the right for timing."
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