History
The airfield at Phan Rang was used by the Japanese during World War II. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the French Air Force used the same 3,500-foot runway, and abandoned the facility when French control over Indochina ended in 1954. To accommodate the expanding war in South Vietnam in 1965, the United States moved engineering and construction equipment to the abandoned French Colonial airfield located near Phan Rang in 1965.
Phan Rang Air Base was quickly expanded in 1965 to accommodate both United States and South Vietnamese Air Force fighter and helicopter units. The modernized airfield consisted of two 10,000-foot runways 04L/22R concrete and 04R/22L AM-2 planking with parallel taxiways and covered and open aircraft revetments along with several ramps and parking aprons on both sides of the runways. They were constructed with asphalt and AM-2 pierced steel aprons. In addition, a large support base was constructed with a large control tower, fire rescue units, maintenance facilities, supply warehouses, munitions storage, barracks and a wide variety of support buildings including service clubs and recreation facilities. The APO for Phan Rang Air Base was APO San Francisco, 96321
Read more about this topic: Phan Rang Air Base
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)