A 346th TAS Diary

This diary documents the time that I spent as a Lockheed C-130E Hercules pilot in the 346th Tactical Airlift Squadron (TAS) during the Vietnam War. I was commissioned through the United States Air Force (USAF) Officer Training School (OTS) in the first part of 1966, then spent a year in USAF Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT). I reported to the 346th TAS at Dyess Air Force Base (AFB) in Abilene, Texas, in mid-1967, to fly the C-130E Hercules tactical transport. The squadron was moved from a deployment (rotation) in England to Clark Air Base (AB) in the Philippines in response to the 31 January 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. We operated in Vietnam for several months then returned to Dyess.

We rotated again to Southeast Asia operations for a couple of months that winter, based out of Tachikawa AB in Japan. We came home to Dyess and prepared the squadron for a unit move from USAF's Tactical Air Command (TAC) to USAF's Pacific Air Forces (PACAF). Our new home was at Ching Chuan Kang (CCK) AB in Taiwan. I operated from there for 15 months. During the years 1968 through 1970 I flew 689 combat sorties and almost 700 combat hours in Vietnam as a copilot, an aircraft commander, and then instructor pilot. I compiled this diary from notes that I kept, combined with retrospective research.

Auteur

I conducted 45 years of applied research and development concerning human cognitive performance and fatigue. I focused mainly on the measurement and analysis of human physical and cognitive performance in military and civil aviation; highway, rail and maritime transportation; and night and shift work. Operator fatigue was at the center of my interests after my days as an Air Force pilot in the C-130E Hercules tactical transport in Vietnam. I'm also the author of "Fatigue" in McGraw-Hill's Controlling Pilot Error series (2001), and the ASIS CRISP report "Fatigue Effects and Countermeasures in 24/7 Security Operations" (2010). In 2018-2021 I taught Physiology as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Life Sciences, Texas &M University-Corpus Christi.