Chinook ZK561 Lee on Solent airport this afternoon 17th Jan 2024. Having taken the Photographs of the Starlings in a car park on the seafront at Lee on Solent and watched a Chinook heading down Southampton Water to wards the airport I decided to pop into the car park on the way home to see if I could get a closer look at the helicopter as I got out of the van it was taking off but managed to get some quick pictures.
Continued Reflections from my World. 
My older brother received a Vietnamese Air Medal when the Chinook he was on was shot down near Bien Hoa.
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Lucky escape then David must have been scary.
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Lucky x’s two. My brother wore a flight jacket that the chopper pilot had given him. He was wearing it when he later got shot in a firefight across the border in Cambodia. The jacket saved his life. Although, while recovering in a Saigon hospital, he contracted malaria.
The family was completely in the dark about these events. President Nixon and Henry Kissinger emphatically denied that American troops were operating in Cambodia.
Viet Cong would strike inside Vietnam, then retreat to the safety of neutral Cambodia. So Nixon authorized a covert offensive to root out the enemy enclaves. It was a violation of international law that was dealt with by conducting a secret war.
My brother was awarded a bronze star and sent home with instructions to speak of none of this.
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Thanks for sharing David. As well as wildlife I have a great intrest in 20 c military history.
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My brother was stationed at Bien Hoa (in the Saigon sector) which had been a military air base since the French occupation. He was there during the hellish Tet offensive in 1968.
He kept a diary but most of the photographs were missing or the text was censored.
Bien Hoa was the site of what was described as the worst disaster in U.S. Air Force history. The base was under siege by nightly mortar attacks. The surrounding jungle had been defoliated by dropping tons of Agent Orange.
Planes approaching the runway had to execute a “death dive” to avoid being shot down by enemy ground fire. I learned about this from reading Bob Hope’s biography where he wrote about his U.S.O. troupe visit on Christmas Eve 1964. Hope said the pilots had to basically “blindfold” the plane to avoid getting shot down.
It was a harrowing experience. Hope said he had never been more afraid. The performance stage was in sight of enemy snipers but Hope was determined to bring some joy and laughter to the beleaguered troops.
He opened his two-hour show by joking, “It’s a thrill to be here in Sniper Valley. When we landed we got a 40 gun salute. Three of them were ours.”
The irony, if you could call it that, was that my brother was not a draftee. He enlisted based on the promise that enlistees could choose their assignment. He chose Japan or Germany.
He boarded a flight in San Francisco for overseas deployment. Expecting to land at Yokota air base, he was both shocked and surprised when his Air Force transport touched down at Bien Hoa.
Nobody wanted to go to Vietnam. Young men of draft age could receive a deferment if they were in college or had a family. Many others evaded the draft by moving to Canada.
My brother did the honorable thing and enlisted. Whether the Defense Department reciprocated is debatable.
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Thanks David.
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I think that word “Chinook” comes from this area. It’s what we call one of the 5 salmon species.
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From the Chinookan tribe of Native Americans who dwelt in the Northwest (Oregon and Washington).
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yes, what I find funny is that the word originates from the States but the Americans do not call the salmon Chinook, they call it a King salmon
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I think due to the fact that the Chinook salmon are the largest of the Pacific species.
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It’s also known as a Tyee. If a Chinook is very large (over 30 lbs) It’s called a Tyee. A Native name. I do remember old timers telling me that a Tyee was originally any salmon over 50 lbs but because the stock is being fished out quicker then It can self restock, the salmon are much smaller.
https://rockypointcharters.ca/chinook-salmon/
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Intresting link.
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