NKP Circa 1966
This photo was taken from over the road between the town of Nakhon Phanom and Sakon Nakorn, maybe 50 miles west. The camera is pointed north-northwest along the main road, which paralleled Runway 33 along the left side of the picture. In late 1966, a tiny cross-runway was bulldozed through the jungle in the foreground. This was to give the FACs someplace to try a landing when the crosswinds were out of limits. At the end of a mission, FACs in their O-1s couldn’t reach any other runway except the dirt runway on the western outskirts of the town of
NKP.
I made a few practice landings on that runway in February 1967. It was closed down soon thereafter because the rule-makers discovered it and discovered that it didn’t meet the safety requirements for real runways.
Someone in a safe, dry office somewhere thousands of miles away had
essentially made the decision that he would rather we crash a pair of O-1s (or
bailout) than land under a dire weather emergency on a runway that hadn't been
approved.
