During our trips to the Persian Gulf we tried to catch some R & R at Pataya Beach in the Gulf of Thailand, landing at U-Tapao Royal Thai Naval Air Base. This enormous base once served a wing of giant B-52s during the Vietnam War.  I had my first encounter with a real live double agent here, but, thankfully, had received appropriate warning just before landing.

LT Rick Cutting and I posing in front of an ex-American C-47 gunship at RTNAB U-Tapao, where it was soldiering on as a rain seeder, dispensing iodide droplets during drought periods!  Rick and I were the same age and we routinely worked out together.  He could lift more weights than me, but I could run faster than him!

One of the 572 emerald isles of the Nicobar and Andaman Islands, a chain of atolls, cays and islets 700 km long between Burma and Indonesia.  Soviet submarines occasionally made monkeys out of us in this area...

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E-mail Dr. J David Rogers at rogersda@mst.edu.