Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
4:02 | The night missions on the Ho Chi Minh Trail drew a lot of anti-aircraft fire, but the Marine Aircraft Group Richard Hawes was in only lost one plane during his first tour of Vietnam. He was based at Chu Lai, which he felt could be a beautiful resort area, if not for the war. The rations slowly improved at the expeditionary air field, which eventually became a target of infiltrators.
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His father was career Navy, but Richard Hawes, after a two year stint in the Navy himself, went for the Marine Corps after being prodded by a colleague of his father's. The Korean War caught the Corps with a lack of junior officers, so an Officer Candidate Course was begun and he was in the first class. The Drill Instructors were specially chosen to deal with college graduates instead of the usual mix.
They were freezing immediately, and filthy in a matter of days, after arriving in Korea. The Marines were entering a stalemate situation in deep winter conditions. Richard Hawes enjoyed serving with the Turks and the South Korean Marines, although he was unsure of the South Koreans' interrogation tactics.
He was a platoon leader in Korea but after his tour, Richard Hawes became a Marine Aviator. He was part of the first qualified Marine nuclear delivery squadron, training to drop early weapons from fighter planes. He was headed to deployment in Japan when the flight made an abrupt left turn. The new destination? Vietnam.
Richard Hawes was busy in Vietnam. The Marine Pilot flew nearly every day on a variety of attack missions in the A-4 Skyhawk. The missions varied from boring to nightmarish, the latter being the night missions on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The plane could carry a wide assortment of ordnance, depending on the mission.
It was a startling discovery only two miles from the air field at Chu Lai, where Marine pilot Richard Hawes was based. A vast underground bunker facility dug by the Viet Cong, which required large bombs with delayed fuses to destroy. In the air, most of his missions were short, sometimes within sight of the air field.
After his first tour of Vietnam, Marine pilot Richard Hawes was assigned first to Corpus Christi and then to the Mediterranean. His second Vietnam tour took him to Thailand, where he was chief of Staff for Task Force Delta, a group operating over North Vietnam. His job was to run all operations and "keep the General happy."
