Guestbook page for Norm Clark

10/15/2009: Norm contacted us via email. His email reminding us of one of HOGS crew chief Doug Olsen's exploits is seen below. Norm indicated that he is looking forward to visiting with the Centaurs he flew with in 1967. He will be attending his first Reunion in Tucson.

This is Norm Clark, a Hog Gunner on 513 with Doug Olsen as my Crew Chief. I put some of my favorite photos into a PowerPoint Show. Norm Clark's Photo Slideshow It's 45 mb so be patient but I promise it's worth the wait.

I have a good story to tell about Doug during the 1968 Tet Offensive: we were flying at night probably Feb. 1st or 2nd, in the Cu Chi area when everything on the ground was a target and every known and unknown gunship was swarming and the radio chatter was mostly unintelligible with its urgency. We received heavy auto weapons fire from a brick building that had a tall smokestack. We made a few gun runs trying to lob rockets into the window openings, with little success. This is where Doug came to the rescue when he told the pilot (Lt. Johnson?) that he had one of his homebrew bombs on board and would like to try it out.

You see, Doug liked to take a 7.62 ammo can, drill a hole in the side, then fill it with C4 and screw in the cap from a hand grenade. He asked the pilot to hover just to the right of the factory smokestack and the first reply was, "Olsen, we will be sitting ducks!" Didn't matter to Doug; the pilot finally agreed (took about 2 seconds because of the tracers streaming up all around us) maneuvered 513 into position, and Doug pulled the grenade pin, dropped the bomb down the stack and hollered, "Let's get the hell out of here!"

There was a huge explosion as we circled back around and this time there was no more enemy fire coming from that building, and all was quiet for a few moments...then, it was on to the next target, which wasn't far away and seemed to pick us rather than the other way around!

Please let me know if you have any problems downloading the PowerPoint (you will need to click your mouse or use your keyboard space bar to advance the text on each slide as you view it.) Well, all for now, welcome home everyone, and God Bless!