More detail on this person: Died in a Bell 47
crash in the Gulf of Mexico working from oil rigs
and burned as well. I remember Dennis Soper, he
was on his 2nd tour and wanted out of the army as
soon as possible and from VN. This did not prevent
him from flying the dangerous "Smokey" mission
with our beat up smoke ship. This huey was usually
ready for overhaul, I flew one later and it had a
lot of stuff not working. I understand Dennis died
in a Bell 47 crash in the Gulf of Mexico working
from oil rigs and burned as well. The caption on
the Smokey, from my photo collection was " Good
Save" from a tail rotor failure at Tan An VN south
of Saigon at a refueling point. Our smoke ship
carried a .50 cal/ 4 M-60's, 2 cases of smoke
grenades, besides smoke oil tanks, I had 2 on the
one I flew & much more junk of war. For the worn
out Hueys this was too much weight. I remember
learning as much as possible from my talks with
Dennis. We were in the 68th AHC at Bien Hoa.
This information was last updated 05/18/2016
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Date posted on this site:
03/10/2024
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Doug Decker