They Flew Low, Loud, and Overloaded
We first met Australian troops in Qui Nhon when diving with the Navy and Australian E.O.D. units searching vessels for explosives outside the harbor in support of Operation STABLE DOOR.
When we moved down to Vung Tau, they were all over the place. Their Forward Operation Base was 20 miles northwest of us, in Nui Dat. They were some hard drinking, hard fighting dudes.
The Delta Divers didn’t just move by truck or boat. In Vietnam, getting from one job to another often meant hitching rides on whatever aircraft had room — and for us, that sometimes meant flying with the Australians of “Wallaby Airlines.”
Their Caribou transports looked rough, sounded rougher, and could land in places that barely qualified as airstrips. The Aussies flew low, short, and into places most larger aircraft avoided altogether. Somewhere between cargo hauler, bush plane, and flying pickup truck, the Caribou became part of the rhythm of the war in places where roads, ports, and supply lines were unreliable — or simply didn’t exist.
For the Delta Divers, Wallaby Airlines became one more piece of the strange, improvised world that existed around the water side of Vietnam.
Suitable for Framing
