Captain Richard Dixon Pt. 1
What was your life like before the war?
I wanted to be a pilot and an astronaut, so I’ve always wanted to do that. And I was a member of church of the open door for since I was 10 years old so I grew up in the downtown church and then went to UCLA and joined Air Force ROTC, Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps and yeah graduated in 1959 I think. Went into the Air Force after about 3 months of lay they activated me at 3 months so I got to take it easy for 3 months and then I went into the Air Force. Let’s see… By the way the wash out rate for the pilots from the very start to the end was like 80% and it wasn’t because they couldn’t fly a lot of them just kind of gave up they called it Self-Initiated Elimination , S.I.E. The stress of being in a different type of environment or something. Yeah so I actually became a combat crew member when I was 24 or 25 and then I was assigned to the B47 as a copilot. I flew that for say 2.5 years, and then about the same time length as a aircraft commander in the B47 and then they took that out of the inventory the B47 which did not get its… was not involved in Vietnam. In fact the B47 in my opinion was the very best weapon the Air Force had because it never went to war. It was the best deterrence weapon we’ve had. There was up to 1500 of those airplanes and each of em carried an H bomb. But we’ve never had to drop it. And I was assigned to the B52 as a aircraft commander and I was initially assigned to Columbus Air force base Mississippi. And I had previously met my wife in Mississippi during pilot training, Greenville Air Force base. So then I was assigned to the B52 and I was assigned to a crew that came in from another base without a aircraft commander so they put me on their crew. So I was very fortunate to have an experienced crew. That was very nice. The good news was I was always a combat crew member so I didn’t have to do extra duties. So pull alert duty with the H bombs that was all I did, which is a pretty serious thing ya know. I was one of those few pilots throughout those 10 years that if we went to war I would be one of those guys…
When were you in Vietnam?
1967, and 68, 6 months. We flew out of Guam, and out of Utapao, Thailand. Kinda, almost half and half. I never actually was in Vietnam I was over Vietnam. I flew airplanes, dropped bombs. Cause I didn’t interact, except flying combat missions. When I was at the base which was not in Vietnam those other guys were in Vietnam. But I flew out of Thailand and Guam, Guam being a part of the United States. So yeah, that’s all I can say about that. And Thailand we flew out of there and they have never been invaded during the Vietnam War they were not invaded by anybody. If I recall, they had not been at war with anybody for many decades maybe even 100 years. Although we flew combat missions out of Thailand.
What was your wartime schedule?
During that 6 months tour we had a 3 day cycle; when we were in Guam we had a 3 day cycle. We had one day off, where we could play tennis or anything and then one day of preparing another airplane for a flight, a combat mission. And then the third day we would actually fly an airplane that had been prepared by another crew. And then we would fly a 12 hour flight, come back, wind down at a little place called Gilligan’s Island, and then as I said the next day we would have off and then we would be another preflight crew and then the third day we would fly another mission and it just went on and on like that.
Did you go on R&R?
We all went on R&R. About twice, maybe. One time was in Australia. And then we had a few days off at a time in Bangkok, Thailand. And I bought some silverware, bronzeware.