One morning during my second week at work, when our truck reach the gate of Tan Son Nhut Airbase, we discovered a squad of armed American soldiers in addition to the usual Vietnamese guards. They waved us through, saying that there had been some trouble during the night.
When we reached our building, the nearest airplane was surrounded by fire trucks and still smoldering. I noticed a fairly large number of bullet holes in the walls of my workplace, all from small arms, probably an AK-47. Many of the members of the night shift were outside and all were carrying M-16s. We newcomers soon got the whole story.
During the night, a suicide squad of ten VC and snuck into the airport. Once inside, they had separated and then simultaneously started shooting at ten different locations. The building where I worked was one of the targets but luckily no one was hurt, The VC shooter had hid under a nearby aircraft, a fighter of some kind, I was not in the Air Force so I did not know its name. He used the wheels as protection against return fire plus there was a certain amount of hesitation by the Americans about shooting at such an expensive airplane. Maybe the Army would take the cost out of the person's pay. When it had become apparent that the position had become untenable, the VC fighter, a young teen according to those who saw him, stood up and held an explosive against the plane until it exploded, killing him and destroying the multi-million dollar airplane.
After a half hour or so of gawking and talking, we went back inside and put paper over the holes in the walls so they would not effect the air conditioning. Then, got to work, in spite of all the excitement, there was still a war to fight.
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