French Statue in Vietnam; circa 1960's

[Starguard]

@coop

As I said above. If you want to start an arguement about how many black americans were killed in Vietnam, please start your own thread - don’t hijack mine which has nothing to do with that topic.

Slithy, I will try and attach a link later with the slide in question.

Coop - To you I offer my apologies. The statements I submitted were only made in an attempt to help you find what you were looking for. They were not meant to either hijack your post or lead everyone on a tangent.

[Xgemina]

coop have you thought of emailing the Vietman Embassy (canberra@au.vnembassy.org) in Australia for information? FWIW, their website is http://members.iinet.net.au/~vembassy/

I would simply say that you were interested in information concerning Vietnam’s history as a French colony—the statue being a representation–and wanting to know if it still stands or what happened to it.

[coop]

I have finally managed to get the slide in question.

Here is the link to the slide:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~cparkes/statue.html

The top one is the photo taken from the cockpit of a DC3 at altitude (my father cannot remember how high he was) and the bottom one is a close up of the same photo.

Hopefully this will jog someones memory.

[Jimminy]

Nice pic Coop. Wonder if its still there

[askeptic]

What exactly indicates that the picture you posted is a statue of a Legionaire? The FFL did suffer many defeats, not through any fault of theirs, but because they were treated as expendable. They were almost always outnumbered and out gunned.

The reason for my question is that I cannot imagine the North Vietnamese would have allowed it to remain. I do not think it could be located near Dien Bien Phu, the site of the worst Legion defeat in Vietnam. Later to be the site of the longest siege of an American Base.

Is there some information I missed, while wading through all the extraneous hijacks, that indicates that the statue is of a Legionaire?

[coop]

My Father told me what it was. He was the one that took the photo. Also, his 2nd Joe agreed with him.

I also then said:

I rang my father and put your questions to him. He said that he thinks the statue was North of Nha Trang, a bit in from the coast. The photo was most likely taken when he was flying from Nha Trang to Danang, feet wet, but seeing that it was 40 years ago, his memory is a bit vague about the exact position. He agrees that it would have been erected by the French Government and then says that it would have more than likely been destroyed by the VC and the rubble used for building purposes.

He also said that it could have been destroyed by a USAF pilot returning to base with an unused bomb…

He took the photo in 1963, his 1st tour of Vietnam, flying Dakotas. When he did his second tour in 1965, flying Caribous, the statue no longer existed.

As you can see from the photo, the statue was in a very hilly area. There would have been nowhere to land, even for a STOL aircraft such as a Caribou.