"Mayday! Mayday!"

"Mayday! Mayday!"
Submitted by - 1LT Eugene Kobes, Headhunter 26

Late one afternoon in early 1969 I was to fly a troop from Kontum to the airbase in Plieku to catch a hop to Saigon.  He was going on emergency leave back to the states.  I had not flown into the airbase before and it was kind of neat with the ground control instructing me to taxi up to the C-130.  It was waiting on me with props turning.  Anyway, after my pax debarked I have clearance to taxi and takeoff.  Only issue is that darkness is settling in and I know Kontum does not have runway lights.  Oh well, maybe I will have sufficient moonlight I thought.  Poor decision, for now as I approach Kontum it is really dark as I call our mobile  GCA for landing.  I had not used it before since from memory we did not launch at night that often.

The GCA operator picked me up and gave me a glide path and I thought, this isn’t so bad and I am proceeding with letdown.  Well, when I turn on my landing light all I saw were bunkers.  The operator had me in heading on glide path from what I remember.  Anyway, I radioed,  go around and began my climb for traffic pattern altitude.  Everything was still okay except that on downwind my engine sputtered as I was still added more power.  Now, I am at full power and losing altitude as my call went out, “Mayday, Mayday partial engine failure!!  GCA operator, “What do you want me to do? (Pause) Shoot a flare?”  Yes, yes, yes I radioed back a bit excitedly as I see the lights of Kontum coming up just beneath me.

I do not remember how close I was to the ground or the obstacles I had to clear before touchdown but my roll out was not far from our ramp.  With a sputtering engine I just made it back to our ramp for shut down.

That was my only Mayday in a flight career that went along with a few fuel emergency landings