Yankee Air Pirates

Business as usual for François The next volume of Yankee Air Pirates is moving along well ! We received the galleys a few days ago, while Olivier was travelling in Vietnam and François was still working in Thailand. We both spent days tracking down the...

It was not infrequent to find in Vietnam veterans from WWII or Korea. This party suit was ordered from Maharajah in Udorn, by Col. Crow during his November 1970/71 tour. 7th ACCS party suit displaying U.S. and Thai flags, unit and call sign patches. Ranks...

C-7A Caribou "Santa Bou", 483rd Tactical Airlift Wing, Vietnam December 1968. Calm down, kids! Yankee Air Pirates Vol. 2 will not be available before October 2015! Meanwhile you can still buy Vol. 1 online or directly from us!

This new acquisition is echoing the party suit detailed on pages 84/85 of the first volume. Based at Nakhon Phanom under the 56th SOW, the 23rd TASS Nail FACs were flying missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail and Cambodia during the 1972/73 period. By December...

Maj. Michael was the Executive Officer of the squadron. The dusty local made cap had been packed with the uniform in a duffle bag since 1975. Here is yet another selection of items that arrived unfortunately too late for the first volume of Yankee Air...

At last! We just mailed the manuscript of volume 2 to Schiffer Publishing. And believe me, it was about time! We started working on this volume during summer 2012, but the last weeks were completely hectic. I came back from a movie shooting on July 14th,...

UXO Lao, Saravane Province. HQ. When you live in Thailand, travelling to Laos is very easy. With a friend, who incidentally is also a collector and a contributor to Yankee Air Pirates, we flew from Bangkok to Ubon, then took a bus to the Laotian border,...

Back in July 2009, I was very glad to buy a pair of K-2B coveralls that had belonged to Col. James C. Harding. The suit meant (and still means) a lot to me. Jim Harding is one of the most decorated U.S. military personnel of all time and his involvement...

Most patches are Vietnamese made: the shoulder rank insignia might be U.S. made though. This jungle jacket was acquired too late to be included in the Security Police chapter of Volume 1, so this blog seems to be the perfect place to share it. It is the...

Since Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, nothing had really changed at Tan Son Nhut until recently. The old airfield, built by the French in the 1920’s had seen the beginnings of civilian transport in Indochina. Then during WWII, French, Japanese and...