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https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/2c6f0108d3a44c41a7f922cba4408970.pdf
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Military Oral History Interview Transcript
Ralph Lerch
Boone, North Carolina
15 October 2011
BC: Benjamin Chappell
RL: Ralph Lerch
BC: My name is Benjamin Chappell, and I'll be conducting this interview for Military History. I
am interviewing Mr. Ralph Lerch who is a Vietnam War veteran and pilot for the US Air Force.
We're at Boone airport. Today is October 15th at about 3:00 in the afternoon. He understands
that we're conducting this interview as part of my Military History class for a project I have to do
for that. So, Mr. Lerch, why don't you tell me a little bit about where you were born, how you
were raised...things like that.
RL: I Was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1935. I was raised during World War Two, matter of
fact it was...let's see, I was ten years old when it ended and when I was 15 the Korean War
started, but I was too young to get in that one. I went to a high school in Brooklyn, New York
where I where I studied aviation and aviation design or aircraft design and at some point during
that four years in high school, I decided instead I’d rather fly them than work on them.
So, at the age of, let's see I was 19...I took the test for the Aviation Cadets, which was a program
available in those days for people who did not have college or did not go to an academy. Passed
the exams, and in March of 1955 I joined the United States Air Force as an enlisted man because
I had been waiting and waiting for a call to get into the program but the Korean War was over
and I guess they didn't need people as much as they did a few years prior to that. So I thought by
joining up, I could get into the program quicker.
So I went through basic training and right after basic training they gave me an assignment to
Aviation Cadet Program. I got into the Aviation Cadet Program, went through the preflight.
Went to Marietta, Florida to start my flying training, and shortly after I started training I took off
one day in a T-6 and the engine quit. My flight career came to a sudden abrupt end around a tree.
So and after the next...year and a half...I went back to an enlisted status.
Primary reason that I couldn't get back in was that I had a pin in my leg and they wouldn't let me
back in the program till the pin was removed. It took a little over a year to get that out. After that
they made me take all of the exams again which I did. Passed them again, took a physical again,
and passed that again and then eventually got back into the Aviation Cadet Program.
This time I finished it and went through it graduated as, oh I forgot exactly what they call it. I
was at the top of my class basically and I was offered a regular commission in the United States
Air Force, which I took. And the rest of my career from that point on was kind of varied. I flew
large transports. I worked on Atlas missiles. I was in the radar business for a while, long-range
radar. Ended up flying helicopters and at the end of my career ended up at Andrews Air Force
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�Base and what was supposedly a weather wing...but I really think it was a branch of the CIA or
something cause they did an awful lot of wild stuff. So, that...is the short and dirty version.
BC: Okay, so you said that you got into flight school at a early age on, upon completion of high
school, you got into aviation. What made you first want to get into aviation? What made you first
want to join that with the military?
RL: Well, I was always intrigued by aircraft and during the war living on Long Island you would
see an awful lot of airplanes all the time, and I knew everyone of them, you would see the P-40s
and the P-38s and the P-47s go by and the B-25s and they were all going on their way over to
Europe.
So I always thought man, it would be really neat to be, be in one of them, but I never had the uh I
don’t self confidence I guess you could call it to think that I could end up being a flyer, uh but
anyway so I really didn't think about that so much later on and I was about 17 when this aviation
cadet program came to light and at that time, that was one of the primary methods of becoming a
flyer. Nowadays everything is through the academies or the ROTC programs in college. So...
BC: Okay.
RL: So in short I was one of the dumber ones cause I never did go to college.
BC: Well, you still got a commission, and you came out as a major?
RL: That’s correct. I made major.
BC: Okay. You said you were in the weather wing, was that during Vietnam?
RL: No.
BC: What kind of aircraft?
RL: In Vietnam I flew the C-124s.
BC: Okay.
RL: Large four-engine cargo aircraft.
BC: Okay.
RL: Primarily what we did in country was haul things that the C-130s couldn’t carry. Anything
that a C-130 couldn’t take, we would take.
BC: Okay.
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�RL: And it was the first time that we really used the aircraft for what it was designed to do. It
was big, big cargo, large pieces of cargo. That the airplane could go on very short fields. We
used to haul gun carriages, trucks, buses...all kinds of things that wouldn’t fit into a C-130.
BC: Okay, so was the mission set limited to bigger runways than what the C-130 could get into?
RL: No, we could go into anything a C-130 could go in to.
BC: Oh, okay.
RL: That was no problem.
BC: So you just had more horsepower?
RL: Well, it was just a bigger, a bigger envelope basically.
BC: Yes.
RL: The, the 130 had a lot more power than we had probably but, but we could carry the larger
items than would fit into a 130.
BC: Okay. I understand. So in Vietnam how much contact did you have with NVA (North
Vietnamese Army) or anything like that?
RL: To my knowledge I never saw one. They might have been around, you know. Might have
had contact but they, they never effected me any, because if you were to go on crew runs there
would be Vietnamese all around you but you didn't know whether they were good guys or bad
guys. So, in that respect I never did any actual combat as such. We weren’t gun soldiers you
know, we were just hauled the stuff.
BC: Right, but did you ever have any like fighter escorts from Phantoms or anything like that?
RL: No.
BC: Okay.
RL: Close as I ever got we were on one mission, which was just prior to the incursion into
Cambodia. Now we hauled large gun carriages up to a very small place up in what they called
the Parrots Beak, and we were loading these things and the Army guys were going with us. And
the Army fella said "You guys got any weapons?" We said, "No, we haven’t got any weapons."
So they said, "Man, you're crazy for going into that area that was VC (Viet Cong) controlled."
So that was the first and I think only time that the C-124 was armed and what the Army guys did
was they took the back doors, laid them sideways and they mounted Browning machine guns up
on top of them just in case we had…I don't know what they were thinking...in case somebody
was shooting at us...figured they could shoot back at least.
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�BC: All right.
RL: They figured they could shoot back at least. So that was about as close as I ever came to any
kind of armed conflict the stuff was all around you all the time and I'm sure they shot at us…but
I never got hit some of the guys in our outfit did, but I never did.
BC: Right. Okay, so in knowing you, I've heard you talk a little bit about the Distinguished
Flying Cross. The Distinguished Flying Cross is a metal for pilots in the Air Force and Army that
distinguished themselves; its pretty much like a silver cross for pilots, aviators...you know you
uh...distinguish yourself for a courageous act in combat aviation. Can you talk to me a little bit
about the difference between getting one then in 1960s-70s era and like getting one like today?
RL: Well, in Vietnam, here's a good example…that mission I just told you about where we went
up in there into the Parrot's Beak. We went up there and it was myself and that another guy, we
had two aircraft. We shuttled back and forth, flew in there a couple of times. We flew bulldozers
in and gun carriages in and the bulldozers were to dig the holes, and they'd put the gun carriages
in the holes.
About a week after that the whole 101st Airborne went up there and some of our headquarters
guys went in there and they got the DFC for getting in there. We never got squat. So they had
those things out, you know hap hazardless. And its really inflated I’ll give you a good example.
The guys that went on the Tokyo Raid in World War Two received it.
BC: Yes, that's right, Doolittle’s Raid.
RL: The Doolittle Raiders, Jimmy Doodle got the Congressional Medal of Honor and the rest of
the crews got the DFC. Now, if you want to compare that those DFC's were for what they did
compared to what they were handing them out for in Vietnam, there's no comparison. A lot of
guys in Vietnam got them just because they were there so long. Not because of anything they
really did. You know you get like 20 missions up north or something you'd get a DFC. Primarily
because you survived that long.
BC: Right.
RL: Look, it was kind of a stupid war, lets face it.
BC: Yeah, kind of a stupid war. And that's pretty much the sentiments among all of the guys in
your command?
RL: Well, I don't know about all of them, but it sure was mine.
BC: Okay.
RL: So, and I was pretty outspoken about it and its probably why I got passed over the first time.
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�BC: Right. Yes, it's a big problem. As you were growing up in Brooklyn, you said that you got
into a flight school, traversing back into your earlier years, you got into flight school but you said
you crashed a T-6 or something like that?
RL: That's right.
BC: So they kicked you off the flight list for crashing? What was the whole deal with that?
RL: They kept me on for three months...after the crash they hold you as a cadet. You know
paperwork wise for a period of time, but this injury took too long to heal. I broke my thigh.
Which is, you know a big bone so it took a long time to heal.
BC: Right.
RL: So well as long as that pin was in me, they call that a cruse and a nail, and they put it in
threw your hip and shove it down threw the middle of your bone…I think they put it into your
hip they shove it down into the middle of the bone. I think as long as that thing was in me they
were afraid that if I ever broke it again I would really get.
BC: Right.
RL: It would really mess the bone up bad so they wouldn’t let me back till that thing was
removed. So...that was why it took so long.
BC: Okay, and I had another question about your training. You said for the later part of your
career you were in what was supposed to be a “weather wing,” but you had a little bit of feeling
that it was something else going on…could you tell me anything?
RL: Oh yes...they were fooling around with urn. It was the first of the satellites in what we were
trying to do.
BC: What was that unit?
RL: It was the 6th Weather Wing.
BC: 6th Weather Wing.
BC: Okay.
RL: Had something like 28 PHDs in it or something, something really wild outfit. But they were
doing things like…primarily a lot of satellite work and what they were working on were…trying
to get an area. For example, Vietnam was over but if you wanted to look at a area real time, we
were starting to work with satellites...and the camera systems.
BC: Okay.
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�RL: Where they can actually...the field commanders could order up an area? For example, if
they wanted to target something the satellites would target a specific area and we would get
photographs of that real time. So these guys could actually look at what was there at the time that
they were going go prior to takeoff.
BC: What year was this?
RL: This was in 1974.
BC: Wow, I had no idea. Well, as a future Army aviator, on track as it is right now, what is the
one piece of advice that you would give me to carry forward in my career?
RL: Keep your opinions to yourself. If you don’t follow with the company line...don't shoot your
mouth off because it doesn’t pay off in the long run. In Vietnam there was a lot of guys that just
got really kind of outspoken against it...and I always thought it was stupid and said so. I thought
we would have been much better off if we'd dropped TV sets and bags of rice and Honda
motorcycles on them instead of bombs. They probably would have quit a long time ago. And as a
result of all that that we did we lost 58,000 guys and the end result was the same. They took over
the place though so…
BC: Right. Yes.
RL: What did we gain? We just spent 10 years over there beating our brains out. We lost
anyway, so...
BC: We were talking in class a couple a days ago about what keeps soldiers motivated. What do
you think was the implications of, you know, what you said was going on what you said the uh
the end result being the same. What do you think? How do you think that impacted your
squadron’s morale? How do you think that changed their will to fight? Was it more of like a
camaraderie?
RL: Camaraderie had a lot to do with it, and its mission accomplishment still, and I think that
goes true in any military unit. You end up wanting to do the job as best you can, even thought the
big overall picture you might not agree with it. If you’re told to…guys in Vietnam, I mean the
grunts, I always admired them. I mean they were told to take a stupid hill and they’d go take it.
Three days later they were told get off the hill and they’d go back off the hill this kind of thing
went on and on but still the morale was pretty high. They always tried their best. I don’t
know...from my personal view, I always enjoyed going in where the Marines were.
The Marines always seemed to have the highest degree of...oh, I don’t know what you would call
it, “gung ho-ness” or whatnot. But, like if you took a load into a Marine base they have you
unloaded and turned around in no time. But if you just you’d go in other places like where the
Air Force were, ground crews would take forever and they would goof off and there was...it was
just…it wasn't the same.
BC: Right.
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�RL: Plus, the whole system was screwy. I give you good example. I was in Saigon one night.
There was a C-133 sitting in front of me and they were getting ready to go to Clark Air Base.
BC: Which is where?
RL: In the Philippines. Four-hundred miles...no 800 miles across the pond. But anyway, the
traffic people came and said, "Hey can you take a load back to Clark?" I said "Sure." He said,
"Somebody made a mistake and we ended up with 200 and something desks." Somebody put a
decimal place in the wrong place I guess or something. So they was this huge pile of military, of
GI desks, metal desks in crates. So they started to load all these crates, as many as they could get
on me and they were loading the airplane up. And I said, "Hey, how come you don’t put desks
on that C-133 in front of me?
They're going to the same place, see there going to Clark too." And then they said, "Oh, because
they’re industrially funded.” And I said "What?!" He told me, “Well, your aircraft is not
industrially funded and they’re industrially funded.” Now, this is one of McNamara's little
puppets…was something to do with the way the military was funded and they was supposed to
be like we were working on a paying basis.
Since that aircraft in front of us would charge the Army or whoever it was that had the desks
they couldn’t do that, but since we were kind of an offshoot outfit or something, whatever you
want to call it we weren’t funded the same way they were. We could haul the desks back but they
couldn't. Now that just shows you the stupidity of the system. Now here we are fighting a war
and the fact that it was desks. It could have been anything. It could have been ammunition or
whatever but this kind of stuff went on all the time.
BC: Yes.
RL: Another example of the same stuff went back to Hawaii for what they called “block
training.” And every year we would have to go back and you go into the simulator and you go
through the simulator program and escape an evasion and all of this kind of thing. Well, it was
my time to go home, so I went down to the traffic office, and went to get a seat on a airplane, get
back to Japan and they said "Oh well, you'll have to wait for a transient reserve airplane to come
through. I said, "Why? "There's all kind of, you know there's Braniff going out of here, there's
Pan Aro going out of here...everybody and there, you know there is all kinds of airplanes
leaving."
"Well, your outfit is not industrially funded, and all these other airplanes are industrially funded
so I'll have to put you on an not industrially funded airplane." So I sat around in Hawaii for an
extra three days until a Reserve C-124 came through and I got on that and flew. Took another
day and a half to get back to where I was going.
BC: Right. Well, a lot of corruption in the system.
RL: It's just stupid.
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�BC: Yes.
RL: Like you said, you express yourself to somebody. And say you know, "What in the hell are
we doing?" Well, then you’re a bad boy.
BC: Yes.
RL: Your not with the program, you’re a trouble maker.
BC: Right.
RL: So...anyway.
BC: I can, I'm a four year enlisted and I can definitely understand what you're talking about, not
to that degree but I'm sure that anybody that’s been involved with the military at all can tell you
that there definitely some screwy stuff going on when it comes to money and allocations and
things like that. But, is there anything you’d like to add to the interview or anything you'd like to
talk about?
RL: You're asking the questions.
BC: Okay. Well, I think that’s about got it. Again, my name is Benjamin Chappell and this is
Ralph Lerch. I'm interviewing, former Major U.S. Air Force pilot. We're at Boone airport on
October 15th and this is going conclude my interview for Military History class. The year is
2011.
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project
Description
An account of the resource
Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers.
Copyright Notice:
Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC).
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Lerch, Ralph A.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Chappell, Benjamin
Interview Date
10/15/11
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
22:59 min
Copyright
Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used.
Tag
Air Force, pilot, Andrews Air Force Base, C-124, cargo plane, 6th Weather Wing, Clark Air Base
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ralph A. Lerch, 15 October 2011
Subject
The topic of the resource
Vietnam War, 1961-1975
Lerch, Ralph A.
Veterans
United States
Interviews
Personal narratives, American
Description
An account of the resource
Ralph A. Lerch talks about his experience as a Vietnam War veteran and pilot for the U.S. Air Force. He served in Vietnam transporting cargo, which he described as "kind of a stupid war." He entered the Aviation Cadet Program, but crashed during training and broke his thigh which took a long time to heal. After a year he was able to re-enter and he was eventually deployed. He never saw combat or came into contact with the NVA, but was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross Award.
Creator
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Lerch, Ralph A.
Chappell, Benjamin
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="UA.5018. American Military History Course Records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/167" target="_blank">UA.5018. American Military History Course Records</a>
Extent
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8 pages
Language
A language of the resource
English
Aviation Cadet Program
C-124
Distinguished Flying Cross
major
pilot
Ralph Lerch
US Air Force
Vietnam
weather wing