Contental Airlines - Vietnam 1st Signal Brigade, 160th Signal Group, 40th Signal Battalion, cable Splicing School,

This was a bit of excitement for 2 guys that had been in country for about 2 or 3 days. We slept outside of the air terminal all night and made it to Long Binh the following day. On the flight to Tan Son Nhut AFB the C130 lost one engine so the plane landed at Cam Ranh Bay. I have added my home email address on the bottom of this article.Mike Massey and I flew from Qui Nhon to Long Binh to attend splicing school and earn the MOS 36E. I have heard from some of you and I thank you for the email. This is my 4th article on my experience in Vietnam.

He had retired from the Army and was a civilian splicer on that post. In 1977 I ran into him at Fort Gordon. I knew him for Fort Gordon. Sergeant Partain ran the school. Hurt and Raney, i remember two instructors. The Army was behind Ma Bell in current splicing techniques but the instructors did well with what they had. The splicing school was good for what it was.

I think the driver's name was Bennet from Detroit. I had a good time just looking around. I did go into Saigon with the duty driver for an afternoon. I still remember the color code. The school lasted three weeks and nothing too eventful happened.

More on this in future articles. The Soldiers who would pay for this failure were by and large the cable splicers. The Army had decided to install modern telephone switching offices but left in place an out of date outside plant doctrine. The Army would remain short of cable splicers for the entire war.

In Qui Nhon, 40th Signal Battalion, with splicing school over Mike Massey and I flew back to Company D.