The post’s author initially came across this slide film in a thrift store in Wilson, North Carolina. Amazed by his findings, he developed the film, got it scanned, uploaded the final results, and shared them with multiple Reddit communities.
This caught Redditors’ attention quite quickly, and soon, many netizens were in on trying to find out all they could about these roughly half-a-century-old shots. It didn’t take long for more and more details to come to the light of day.
Many updates came through the comment sections of many posts featuring these pictures. Likely, the most significant update was from a Redditor whose dad served during that particular time and spent 18 months at the 30th NCR (National Capital Region) headquarters at Red Beach Base Area.
He informed the author that the scenery shots appear to be from Cam Rahn Bay and Phu Bai in Danang, Vietnam. The Americans in the pictures are most likely sailors from Sea Bee battalions, also known as Bees.
Another commenter proposed a theory that the pictures must’ve come from a combat photographer and were, in fact, test shots. According to them, at that time, soldiers were quite unlikely to have personal cameras or time to take photos and go sightseeing in a helicopter.
The OP himself later shared the link to the gallery containing all of the pictures found, as the ones he posted on Reddit were only a selection. And to top that off, one other Redditor shared a link to the online album featuring pictures and history of Camp Brooks, which is quite possibly part of the base where the original owner of the slide film was stationed.
One of the commenters also pointed out that the plane in the picture showing a crash site is an F-8, which crashed into Monkey Mountain on March 12th, 1968. This date lets us narrow the time of when the pictures were taken to somewhere between 1968 and 1973.
But there’s more exciting stuff to this story. According to the information posted on the Military Images forum, the plane was flown by Lt. Jerry Weber. Since the weather conditions were highly unforgiving, landing was necessary. However, the pilot’s radio and navigational systems were unfunctional, so, flying half-blindly, he had to follow his lead pilot Lt. Rick Harris’s plane.
Although working, Rick’s navigation wasn’t doing much better than Jerry’s, so he decided to let down through the cloud cover so that the pilot could make a visual approach. However, the situation proved to be more complex, and being forced down to around 800 feet, Rick decided to go up and try again.
Rick’s plane caught a major tree head-on as he was about to go back to above the cloud. While the damage was substantial, he could still fly, but when the pilot broke through the clouds, he realized that his comrade was no longer following him, which terrified him more than his very recent close encounter.
It turned out that while Rick was trying to survive the tree encounter, Jerry’s plane started losing power, and the pilot was forced to eject. He landed on the side of the mountain, managed to call for help via his survival radio, and was eventually rescued.
At the same time, another Air Force pilot guided Rick down for a landing approach, and when both men were safe and passed their medical exams, they were finally reunited. According to the article, seeing Jerry alive was one of the greatest moments of Rick’s life.
So, in the end, even if all that the picture reveals is a crash site, we know that the story behind it has a happy ending. While we don’t have a completely clear view behind all the other images on this slide film, this thrift shop find is still incredibly amazing. And who knows, maybe that very same store holds some more keys to unlocking the full story here.
What did you think of these pictures and the stories behind them? Have you ever had any similarly impressive thrift shop findings of your own? Share down below!
