The following story is reprinted from a burst my Father wrote for a local Vietnam Veteran’s magazine. He has kindly let me reprint it and add a few of the 1500 odd slides that he took whilst serving his 25 or so years in the RAAF. The slides are all around 40 years old and as such, the quality is not the best.
Enjoy 
In 1964, I was posted from Butterworth Air Base to 38 SQN Richmond in time to witness the arrival from Canada of the first three Caribous for the RAAF.
Eventually to replace the [Dakota](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=3657.jpg), the Caribou carried about the same payload over a shorter distance at a slower speed and in greater discomfort.
About two weeks later I was one of five pilots - two captains and three co-pilots - doing the first Caribou conversion course in Australia.
Fortunately, the Empire that was eventually to be established to run these courses was only "a gleam in the eye" at that time and after three weeks and 18 hours flying [I](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=3de4.jpg) was a fully qualified Cat.B green card, route check Caribou Captain.
After two weeks leave our three crews for the [third Caribou ferry](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=178f.jpg) arrived in [Toronto, Canada](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=31c6.jpg) (the third captain had been on the first ferry.)
Great news. The 500 gallon rubber tanks (of which we carried two strapped down in the cabin) for the ferry flights had been rejected by the RAAF and were sitting down in the States somewhere awaiting a decision on their future use.
As the ones used on the first two ferry flights tended to leak fairly badly, [we](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=b963.jpg) were quite happy not to have to fly aircraft with loose AVGAS floating around the main cabin.
Eventually we were told that we could take the aircraft if we could find some way of getting out of Canada without long range tanks. July 1st saw us heading off into the wild blue via [Greenland](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=ca27.jpg), Iceland, Northern Ireland, [Nice](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=65c0.jpg), etc.
We weren't really sure where we were going to end up, as before we left [Toronto](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=d8d1.jpg), we saw a newspaper report that the first three Caribous for Vietnam were about to leave Canada. As it was pretty obvious that this was us, we did have some doubts as to our eventual destination.
It wasn't until we got to New Delhi that we were officially told by the Australian Defence Adviser that we would be handing over the aircraft at Butterworth to crews from Australia for onward movement to Vietnam.
This worked out well, as without long-range tanks and the necessity to avoid Indonesia, due Confrontation, there was no way to fly the aircraft to Australia.
With thanks to Mr. Pratt and Mr. Whitney, we got through [Goose Bay](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=871b.jpg), Greenland and Iceland without incident - our request for Arctic survival equipment ended up in someone's "too hard" tray.
Refuelling arrangements in [Wadi Halfa](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=aeb3.jpg), Northern Sudan, were such that after filling one aircraft, the tanker had then to refill itself before doing the next. We eventually got airborne as No. 2 about 40 minutes behind the first aircraft and intercepted a rather frantic distress call.
A Yank in a Cessna 206 had a rough-running engine and was trying to reach the Nile before the engine quit. Well, quit it did and before he went down we promised to look for him.
The first aircraft was halfway to Khartoum by this time and didn't have the fuel to come back and search - or so he said! The third aircraft was more interested in a cold beer at Khartoum and wished us, "Good luck."
Eventually we [found](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=8582.jpg) [him](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=811a.jpg), dropped enough of our own survival equipment and rations to last about three weeks, and told just about everybody in North Africa where he was.
A party from [Wadi Halfa](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=55fc.jpg) picked him up 8 days later. I ran into him six years after in Laos flying for Air America - and believe me, that was some party.
In [Aden](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=8df8.jpg), the third aircraft went u/s and as he looked like being there some considerable time waiting for replacement fuel-tank cells, we left him behind and proceeded in the other two birds to Butterworth. Twenty-eight days from Toronto to Malaysia in a "modern" aircraft must be some sort of record.
The [next ferry](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=d96c.jpg) I did later that year, with long-range tanks this time, was fairly straight forward. One of the longest, and certainly the loneliest legs, was the 12 hours from Butterworth to Cocos Island, around the top end of Sumatra because of Confrontation.
Vietnam with RAAF Transport Flight (RTFV) in early 1965: we lived in the beautiful [Villa Anna](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=e18d.jpg) in delightful [Vung Tau](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=4f4f.jpg) on the shores of the glorious South China Sea. The Villa had no messing facilities, no hot water apart from a gas-fired shower that was more dangerous than the VC could ever be, and a fridge for the bar. For the privilege of being there, a grateful Government allowed us the same taxation concession as that applying to Butterworth and Darwin. They also gave us about US$25 a week and told us to find our own tucker.
We operated one aircraft from [Da Nang](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=fd09.jpg) with the US Special Forces on a weekly changeover, one from [Nha Trang](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=f1a7.jpg) on the same system, and two, six days a week from [Vung Tau](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=6ccf.jpg).
I was checked out by one of the local "old hands" just after I arrived. Landing a little short at Hai Yen on the Camau peninsula we [rediscovered](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=3e71.jpg) the principle that an under-carriage designed to retract forward causes considerable alteration to the airframe when it is forced to retract rear-wards.
Replacement engines for our aircraft were obtained from the US Army who had them overhauled in the States. As some of us found out, the power output from these particular engines bore out the truth of the old saying - "wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding."
After six in-flight engine shutdowns, four ground-fire incidents and the Hai Yen prang, I was quite happy to return to Australia just before Christmas 1965.
Back to 38 SQN at Richmond wasn't all that uninteresting. On an exercise in Rockhampton, we took a load of passengers up to The Plains one morning. Despite all the green lights, the nose wheel wasn't locked down and duly collapsed on [landing](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=331c.jpg). One of the [witnesses](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=7225.jpg) described the incident as, "[like an elephant bowing but a higher speed](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=66a1.jpg)."
A couple of months in New Guinea and then another short jolly in Vietnam. The whole world appeared to be there at this time - it was certainly different from what I had remembered. The word had got around that war service conditions prevailed and the place was full of Adminos, Equipos, Lawyers, Padres and assorted Senior Officers. RTFV had been re-named 35 SQN and after I finished what I was sent up to do, I was co-opted by them to go to Nha Trang for a week to upgrade a co-pilot to captaincy. A lot of the places we landed at on that trip had been drop zones the year before. Talk about the "Blind leading the Blind."
A quick run to Sale for a refresher on Dakotas and I parted company with the Caribou, hopefully for ever. The Empire struck back in 1974 and I was at Richmond again on Caribous. The conversion course was now three months and took about 100 hours flying. Some procedures had been changed but whether for the better or not is a matter of opinion, and of course, like all flying instruction, you were taught to drive an aircraft by the numbers, not how to fly it.
How to do it in New Guinea, how not to do it in Rockhampton, trips to the West and a couple of months survey in Sumatra and in June 1977 I was finally finished with the old Caribou.
With turbo-prop engines, a little more speed and performance, an auto-pilot and a radar set, the Caribou would be a nice aircraft - but then I guess we do have [C130s](http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cacooper67/detail?.dir=/269f&.dnm=e18b.jpg).
Sqn Ldr D. M. Cooper (retired)