Air Force Veteran Reminisces About Time in ‘Rocket City’ During the Vietnam War

ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. (WJHL) — When Ron Townsend graduated from high school in 1966, he couldn’t decide between the Air Force and the Marines.

“My dad was in the Air Force. He’s an Army [and] Air Force [veteran],” said Townsend. “He was in during WWII.”
“I was supposed to go to Tuy Hòa and then our orders changed from Tuy Hòa, Vietnam to Da Nang,” said Townsend. “Everybody knows about Da Nang…it’s “Rocket City” and it lived up to its name too because there were constantly rockets thrown in on us all the time.”

Vietnam wasn’t really a thought when he joined, but he eventually received orders for one of the most dangerous cities.

“You’re scared the whole time you’re there. I was afraid and everybody else there was afraid too…you’re always looking behind your back and you’re just looking up in the sky….just listening for the siren to go off,” Townsend said. “We didn’t know where they was coming from. That’s the thing because the Viet Cong, they’d set them in trees, grape vines, whatever they had to shoot at us.”

Townsend was a sheet metal welding mechanic.

“We built hangars for the helicopters and the F4 jets. The Air Force called them shelters, we called them hangars, but it’s like an igloo half-round metal building that we poured concrete on top of that to protect them from getting hit from the rockets,” he said. “They never did hit the fuel storage tanks, but luckily they didn’t because if they did, I wouldn’t be here I don’t think.”

The attacks on the base created a different set of challenges.

“We built base ops twice because a rocket hit it twice and we tore it down and rebuilt it twice. It was an ongoing job over there,” he said. “My kids would say, you know, ‘Talk about Vietnam.’ I’d say, ‘I wasn’t there on a vacation.’ There wasn’t nothing good really to talk about over there, except I got home.”

His time in the service has left him with health issues due to Agent Orange exposure.

“When we was building those hangars on the flight line there’s 55 gallon drums of chemicals. We didn’t know what it was but it was Agent Orange that we was sitting on. Some was full, some was empty. But we was sitting on them to take a break from the heat,” Townsend said. “I have breathing problems…I have a lot of problems. I have prostate problems.”

Townsend thinks about his time in Vietnam every day.

“It doesn’t leave your mind because of it and then the Agent Orange. I go to the VA a lot,” he said.