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We could shoot about 21 miles into Cambodia. After the roadblock was cleared and communications restored, Charlie Company continued toward its objective. We were ordered to go there and detain every male between the ages of 16 and 80. Set. Bravo Company was sent to protect the Long Binh ammunition dump and Charlie Company was ordered into downtown Bien Hoa, where the ARVN III Corps headquarters was in danger of being overrun. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. Rolling back through Bien Hoa, we were astounded to come upon the battalion S4, Captain Leroy Brown, in the middle of town with a 5,000-gallon fuel tanker and several ammunition trucks. Fighting our way to the scout platoon, we were stopped when we came upon two large churches, straddling Highway 1, each occupied by VC. I told him that I wanted to command a company. Big Boom! The combat around III Corps headquarters was intense. Some of the enemy had tunneled under the fence and exploded an on the water tower". Flames illuminated the clouds, forming an eerie glow; flares hung in the sky and helicopter gunships crossed back and forth firing red streams of tracers into the city. probably one of the best deals I had been Used for because the Artillery Other than temporarily disrupting operations at Bien Hoa AB for half a day and destroying ammunition at the Long Binh ammunition dump, the VC/PAVN inflicted minimal damage to the Bien Hoa-Long Binh complex. It knocked a dimple in the side of the track as I fired up the gunner., Later in the fighting, Casper and several 2nd Platoon troops were pinned down next to a building. The Commo track, C-007, nicknamed Abdula and the Rug Merchants, with then- Pfc (and current Vietnam editor) David Zabecki behind the .50-caliber, brought up the rear. [3]:218, The town of Ho Nai (105812N 1065335E / 10.970N 106.893E / 10.970; 106.893) was located on Highway 1 north of the Widow's Village and Long Binh Post. The North Vietnamese Army had circled wire on the top of LBJ (Long Binh Jail). (National Archives), On February 2, 12968, an APC passes buildings damaged by the Americans in the course of flushing out enemy troops from their hiding places in Bien Hoa. As I remember the Tet Offensive began in the early morning of ruary 1968 in support of Saigon and Long Binh Post during the TET Offen- Sive. The attacks on Bin Ha, Bien Hoa Air Base and Long Binh Post, occurred during the early hours of 31 January 1968 and continued until 2 February 1968. It When the Tet cease-fire period began on January 28, the battalion was called back to the vicinity of Bear Cat, a base camp near Long Thanh. It had been over two days and many of us had no sleep. We began detaining the well-dressed young men among the refugees. Bucks County Pennsylvania United States USA, Del Rio Texas Laughlin Air Force Base USA, Roxborough Pennsylvania United States USA, U-Tapao Royal Thai Air Force Base Thailand. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. He ignored me and proceeded to a nearby house where he and the deputy sheriff kicked in the front door. As the C-23 track Stormy, which was in the lead, turned into a side street, an RPG slammed into its front, smashing the radiator and wounding several soldiers. As we turned right onto Highway 15, an unbelievable spectacle stretched before us. I said again, "Who is there"? During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army used the base as a logistics and command center. We packed up our gear, rolled up our wire and waited. opened his mouth but, SGT Cuffee, the supply SGT. Aerial view of Long Binh Post in Vietnam. Refusing evacuation, neither reported his wound. APCs advance, firing 50 caliber machine guns. This fire was observed by the helicopter gunships that had been circling the area north of Long Binh and they quickly moved to attack the launch sites and were soon joined by an AC-47 Spooky gunship and their combined fire soon stopped the rocket/mortar fire. Dismounted troops of the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, stay close to their M-113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) as they clear Widows Village, near Long Binh Army Post, of Viet Cong who had overrun it during the Communist 1968 Tet Offensive (National Archives). Now someone pointed out that there were a lot of young men, all dressed in black pants and white shirts, walking among the refugees. 0.59 The progress was slow and ammunition was becoming a scarce, particularly grenades, which city fighting consumes at an enormous rate. I dismounted the platoons and placed them on line on each side of the road: the second on the left, or north, and the first on the right, or south. 118th during the Tet of 1968, also called the Defense of Bien Shoe of soldier on ground. The attacks were repulsed with the VC/PAVN suffering heavy losses, having inflicted minimal damage on the bases. Evan Ammo dump - VHFCN I was told to forget about them, which reinforced our feeling that this situation was different and that combat was certainly imminent. raffia 12th combat aviation group - sites.google.com As 1st Lt. Brice Barnes led his scouts into Ho Nai, he ran full speed into a hornets nest. I was the DistrictSenior Advisor (Army) in Vinh Kim, Long Dinh District, right across the canal from Dong Tam in 1968-1969. I then jacked a round into my M-16 and who would you believe The 2nd Platoon took on the one on the north side of the road, and the 1st Platoon attacked the other. It involved transfer of powder projectiles and fuses enough to keep The battle was significant, since Alphas leadership was seriously depleted during the days immediately prior to Tet. 4 Joseph Sugar Bear Dames returned to the tracks for more grenades. As the scouts escaped, the volume of enemy fire began to slacken, then died altogether. THE EXPLOSIONS RATTLED WINDOWS IN SAIGON, ABOUT 13 MILES (20 KILOMETERS) AWAY. At 3 a.m. on January 31, I received a call from Major Bill Jones, who had recently taken Ionoffs place as operations officer. His battalion was in heavy contact and he had several wounded rangers he needed to evacuate. AIR V..AMMUNITION DUMPS AND FIRES We threw grenades over the wall behind them, but hit nothing.. As we turned to head back, a tremendous blast shook the whole city of Bien Hoa. One A-37 and 1 F-100 were destroyed while a further 17 aircraft were damaged. [2]:349, At dawn several AH1 Cobra gunships from the 334th Assault Helicopter Company joined the defense spraying the VC with rockets and machine gun fire which started fires causing the VC assault to lose its impetus. 6 comments. the light dome that rose from the explosion. We never saw them again. I operated a heavy five carried on into that night with tracers flying everywhere. SV AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND EXPLOSION [2]:350, At approximately 16:45 F-100 Super Sabres of the 531st Tactical Fighter Squadron conducted a Napalm strike against a PAVN/VC company at the east end of the base runway. [3]:20, At 00:30 on 31 January, a patrol from Company E, 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment detected a company-size PAVN/VC force approximately 10km north of Bien Hoa, moving in the direction of Bien Hoa AB. the wrecker operator had to know how to weld. This article was originally published in the February 2006 issue of Vietnam Magazine. Photo Index It was The 2-47s scout platoon had just finished a brutal fight in Widows Village, and at 1600 hours, it was ordered to move to the junction of Highways 1 and 316, and to attack westward through the village of Ho Nai toward Charlie Company, in the hope of pinning the VC between us. That night, frightened bunker guards in the 199th compound shot into the darkness to their front. A force from Company C, 2/3rd Infantry mounted on ACAVs was sent north from Ho Nai and pinned the VC/PAVN in a crossfire. The VC attacks on Bien Hoa and the Long Binh complex were abject failures, due in part to the fact that on January 31, 1968, they had run into the Panthers of the 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry. Sergeant John Ax, squad leader of 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, recalls the fighting near III Corps: An RPG hit Shocker, the C-21 track, in the side; but it must have been a glancing blow, because it did not explode. ", "We mustered everyone we could 4. (Long Binh) ammunition dump. went off my first thought was that it was a nuclear explosion because of When I pointed out that the 101st Battalion had more than 500 troops and I had only two line platoons and fewer than 90 troops, he said, Youre mechanized, youre very strong., I told him we could not take the tracks off Highway 1 and into town because the streets and alleys were too narrow. The unit left their position at Firebase Concord north of Bin Ha and moved east proceeding along trails north of Ho Nai towards the LRRP position. I jumped down and ran from track to track, pounding on the sides and yelling, Check your handsets! As I ran back through the weapons platoon, I came upon an unbelievable sight. With the explosion of the entire ammunition dump imminent, and in the midst of exploding shells, fire and debris, the men of COMPANY B, . [3]:2015, At 04:00 a 60-man VC sapper team penetrated the northeastern perimeter of the base killing three MPs and entered the massive ammunition dump (105646N 1065436E / 10.946N 106.91E / 10.946; 106.91) where they planted eighteen Satchel charges before being forced to withdraw by the 720th Military Police Battalion. A few minutes later, a jeep drove up carrying two extremely frightened white-shirted policemen. They all blew up! When I pointed out that the 101st Battalion had more than 500 troops and I had only two line platoons and less than 90 troops, he said, Youre mechanized, youre very strong.. At the end of the previous day, Charlie Company had reported 38 VC killed, at the cost of only 11 U.S. wounded and three APCs damaged by RPGs. We closed within a few hundred meters of the scout platoon and watched as helicopter gunships destroyed a large yellow house from which the VC were pinning down Barnes troops. As our medics treated the wounded, I reported to the American lieutenant colonel who was the III Corps G3 adviser. front making it dangerous to return fire. Benny Toney, the 2nd Platoon sergeant, hooked a tow cable to Stormy. Company B, 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, which was placed under the operational control of the 2-47, made a combat air assault under fire into the middle of the Widows Village battle and fought bravely beside the Panthers all day long. Now someone pointed out that there were a lot of young men, all dressed in black pants and white shirts, among the refugees. Refine Your Search Long Binh Vietnam 1968 stock footage and images - Showing 1 to 6 of 5537 results Sort by: All All Search Results Decade 1890 - 1899 (3) 1900 - 1909 (18) 1910 - 1919 (136) 1920 - 1929 (83) more Location Aalen Germany (1) Aberdeen Proving Ground Maryland USA (1) Afghanistan (2) Africa (3) more Akron Ohio USA (3) We were in a cloud of disarray After the cemetery had been cleared Company B, 2/3rd Infantry joined Company C, 4/12th Infantry and they made a night defensive perimeter north of Ho Nai, while the 2/47th Infantry was withdrawn to Bin Ha. In a fight, the company had 22 .50-caliber machine guns, a 106mm and several 90mm recoilless rifles, and more radios and M-60 machine guns than a walking company could ever carry. 10. GV EXPLOSIONS AND FIRES History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. Some were complete projectiles weighing An accurate body count could never be compiled since so many VC bodies were dragged away or were burned in the many fires that ravaged the towns and villages. As the Hueys rockets smashed the VC strongpoint, the scouts fought their way out of the encirclement and evacuated their dead and wounded. I called battalion headquarters and was told to forget about them, which reinforced our sense that combat was imminent. August 1966 November 1966 December 1966. Barbed wire torn apart by Vietcong who infiltrated through Longbinh ammunition camp. According to the official history of the VC 5th Division, the 3rd Battalion, 5th VC Regiment, supported by the Bien Hoa Sapper Company, had the mission of overrunning the compound, which was defended by about 15 ARVN soldiers and a smattering of MACV advisers. agreement was that the stockade prisoners would pitch our sandbags, help Updated 7/26/2015. Waking Dead. He said his battalion was in heavy contact, and he had several wounded rangers he needed to evacuate. About a month earlier I had been loaned out to weld the razor (Vietnam War period). Another VC battalion infiltrated near the area of the 3rd Ordnance (Long Binh) ammunition dump [and] in a few moments, the huge dump became a fireball. My plan was to make captain and go to Vietnam as an experienced company commander. We were ordered to go to that church and detain every male between the ages of 16 and 80. In addition we detained more than 20 probable VC fighters dressed in civilian clothes. The platoons attacked by successive bounds through the village as the companys tracks, forming the base of the T on the highway, provided fire support from the .50s and resupplied the troops with ammunition. As we made the turn eastward on Highway 1, the lead platoon was ambushed. (Vietnam War period). Some VC crossed Route 316 and took up firing positions in bush at the southern perimeter of the Plantation. Meanwhile, Charlie Company was ordered back to III Corps. recoil of my M14. SP4 Lawrence Korteum The Vietnamese brigadier generalthe ranking man at III Corpsdrew circles on a map around two areas of downtown Bien Hoa. A slightly wounded soldier, lying on the ground, smiles as he points to his leg as another soldier helps him. Bravo Company (one member of which was Spc. I walked back to my track, thinking this was going to be a real nightmare. During the last week of January, the battalion patrolled the jungles east of Highway 15, near the Binh Son rubber plantation. Suddenly he came upon a VC RPG team drawing a bead on my command track, which was a prime target given the number of radio antennas jutting from it. When I arrived at 9th Division in June, I was shocked to learn that I was going to a mechanized battalion. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Smoke rises from surrounding area. Get under! After what seemed like 1.04 Dames walked down a side alley toward the highway. 6 External links modified. Troops opened their attacks with volleys of grenades, then went in shooting. In addition, we were tremendously flexible. Ive just been told you work for me again. Charlie Company quickly reinforced Alpha, and a daylong fight ensued. But no one would be leaving the country that day. At 08:00 the VC south of the Plantation withdrew into the Widows Village. As the 2nd Platoon began to run short, Spc. Specialist 4 Bill Rambo, assistant driver and .50-gunner on my command track, remembers my response to the firing as being absolutely irate. The II Field Force commander, Lt. Gen. Frederick C. Weyand, had correctly predicted a major attack during Tet, and his anticipation no doubt saved Long Binh and Saigon from being overrun. Rocket Attack on Dong Tam - Brownwater Vietnam Veterans Attacking Long During this time, the battalion made only sporadic contact and suffered few casualties. 90th Replacement Battalion | My Vietnam Experience The armed helicopter teams had a field day shooting guerrillas trying to flee into the jungle. Then things started falling out of the sky. When we arrived, we filed off the busses . [2]:349, The perimeter was strengthened by an ad hoc force of support personnel from the 145th Aviation Battalion and just before midday the ARVN 57th Regional Force Battalion moved through the base and counterattacked the VC forcing them to withdraw east into the rubber plantation leaving behind over 100 dead. As the Hueys rockets smashed the VC strongpoint, the scouts fought their way out of the encirclement and evacuated their dead and wounded. LV EXPLOSIONS During TET 1969 in front of Bunker Hill 17, VC sappers tried to penetrate our fence line. The two of them refused evacuation and neither reported his wound. The 2nd Platoon led the way under Lieutenant Fred Casper, followed by my track, then Lieutenant Howard Jones 1st Platoon and, finally, the weapons platoon under Lieutenant Don Muir. The bus ride to 90th Replacement was relatively short and everyone seemed exhausted from the long flight. from Bien Hoa City. [3]:220, When the Company F, 51st Infantry LRRP team reported VC/PAVN moving past their position a reaction force from Company C, 4/12th Infantry mounted on ACAVs was sent to investigate. 0.17 As we fought our way toward the scout platoon, we were blocked by two large churches that were directly across Highway 1 from each other, both occupied by the VC. it and only slightly pierced the skin a little. Lieutenant Barnes and one of his soldiers would be awarded Distinguished Service Crosses for their heroism that day. We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I was called to a meeting in the headquarters. As was our normal practice, each company had sent two ambush patrols into the jungle to our front. the barracks hall just as he stepped out of his room going to This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Army Center of Military History. However the ammunition storage bunkers prevented a chain reaction and the lost munitions were easily replaced with no impact on supply. The first explosion was In command for five months, I had been assured that I would be leading the company for one year, which suited me fine. Explosion at Long Binh ammunition storage facility. F-100 Super Sabre and F-4 Phantom II drop Mark 82 bombs in Vietnam during U.S. air strikes. They both hobbled through the rest of the days fighting. In April 1967, I was a first lieutenant commanding a rifle company in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. rockets at Bien Hoa AB and Long Binh Post. At about 6 a.m., Lt. Col. John Tower, the new battalion commander, called with orders. Summary - October 1966. What we came up with was a T formation. By the evening the 2/47th Infantry withdrew into the Long Binh perimeter. Long Binh, again (Feb. 1967). I dismounted the platoons and placed them on line on each side of the road: the second on the left, or north, and the first on the right, or south. Several soldiers gathered in front of the track to help the wounded, and Love climbed up to man the .50-caliber. When the G3 adviser told me to lend the rangers a track, I told the sergeant that the M-113 was not a tank and to be extremely careful with it. [5], USAF losses were 4 killed in action with another dying of a heart attack, while 26 were wounded. [3]:2289, The Tt ceasefire began on 29 January, but was cancelled on 30 January after the VC/PAVN prematurely launched attacks in II Corps and at 17:30 the 7th Air Force commander General William W. Momyer ordered all air bases in South Vietnam to security condition red. VC/PAVN losses were 527 dead. Sugar Bear Dames, as he was called by his many friends, walked down a side alley toward the highway. Ly's grandfather was a soldier stationed in Quang Binh during the war. danger and the probable best course of action. Charlie Company would get the mission. Since I was in an airborne unit, it seemed certain that I would go to the 173rd Airborne Brigade or the 101st Airborne Division. When I arrived at the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, nicknamed the Panthers, Lt. Col. Arthur Moreland, the commander, asked me what job I wanted. Unconfirmed reports reports said the blasts were . Zabecki remembers taking his place on the wall with his M-79. 1. Soldiers of the U.S. 2nd Battalion 47th Infantry (Mechanized) and 4th Battalion 39th Infantry clearing a hamlet during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Less has been written about the danger, turmoil, chaos, confusion, contradictions and outright lunacy that confronted individual units as they responded to VC attacks on the morning of January 31. 5 Explosion at Long Binh ammunition storage facility. Charlie Company slammed into the VC before they could get their attack organized. who was tossed into a sewage ditch by the explosion, remembers 'killing the jeep' with his M-16. He assigned one to the airborne battalion and the other to Charlie Company. In another sign that the situation was serious, the battalion commander himself gave map coordinates of company objectives in the clear. As he fell, a burst of automatic weapons fire stitched the wall right where he would have been had he not fallen. (Casper, one of the bravest of the brave, died during the May offensive in Saigon, leading from the front.). As I walked around the front of a track, the .50-caliber gunner accidentally hit the trigger and pumped five rounds into the ground about three feet in front of me. 3. Its predominantly Catholic population was made up of many Vietnamese who fled North Vietnam in 1954 after the Viet Minh victory. My Tower sent the battalion S3, Major Jones, to take command, and once Alpha got moving, it did a magnificent job. The 2nd Platoon pulled the damaged track out of the side street and towed it back to the III Corps compound. Bien Hoa Air Base was the largest air base in the country, home to over 500 United States Air Force (USAF) and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (RVNAF) aircraft, while Long Binh Post was the US Army's largest logistics base, headquarters of II Field Force, Vietnam, the 199th Light Infantry Brigade (199th LIB) and the 12th Aviation Group and home to over 20,000 US personnel. We all knew that these moves were more than just precautionary. I had no way of knowing who it was with no light in the A VC commander captured later in the battle revealed that his orders were only to start the attack after several hundred rockets had hit the Plantation, but as the rocket sites had been neutralized before the rocket threshold was reached, the ground assault on the Plantation never began. Hoa. Jeep parked along road. Long Binh Vietnam 1969 stock footage and images - CriticalPast The battalion made only sporadic contact and suffered few casualties. As the afternoon of January 30 drifted toward dusk, Charlie Company soldiers stripped to the waist and dug bunkers next to their M-113s. AIR V..EXPLOSION He said the first thing he could remember was the Tet offensive attacks on Bien Hoa and Long Binh - Wikipedia During the morning of January 30, the 2-47 Mech was notified that the Tet cease-fire was canceled, and the unit was deployed into a defensive line along the road that ran around the east side of the Long Binh base. We charged southeast down Highway 316 to the Highway 15 intersection, located on a small hill overlooking the 90th Replacement Company. The 1st Platoon of Bravo Company was made the II Field Force reaction force and was placed in the PX parking lot at Long Binh. He manned the .50 and, with a Charlie Company driver, headed down Highway 1. Charlie Company was ordered to a large open field across Highway 15 from the Long Thanh airfield. Incredibly, nobody in my company had been killed the day before. THE STORM BREAKS Part 1 In the late-night hours of 29 January 1968 sixteen guns stationed next to the western border of Vietnam. As the sun sank low, we closed within a few hundred meters of the scout platoon and watched as helicopter gunships destroyed a large yellow house from which the VC were pinning down Barnes troops. When the Tet cease-fire period began on January 28, the battalion was called back to the vicinity of Bear Cat, and Charlie Company was ordered to a large open field across Highway 15 from the Long Tan airfield. Since I was in an airborne unit, I was sure I would go to the 173rd Airborne Brigade or the 101st Airborne Division. Bin Ha Air Base: Memories of Bin Ha, TET 1969, by Larry - VSPA Sand bags near barbed wire fence. A few minutes later, a jeep drove up carrying two extremely frightened white-shirted policemen. However, Charlie Company slammed into the VC before they could organize their attack. known as Widows Village. secondary explosions. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. But no one would be leaving the country that day. By July 1969 we were finally off the boats and in Dong Tam processing to head home. They ordered us to clear the VC from the houses surrounding the corps headquarters. [2]:347, The VC 275th Regiment had taken up positions in a residential area known at the Widows' Village (105731N 1065237E / 10.9587N 106.877E / 10.9587; 106.877), which housed the wives and families of dead ARVN soldiers and was located across Route 316 from the Plantation Compound. Sappers had placed satchel charges on pallets of artillery ammunition, and the resulting mushroom cloud caused all its witnesses to think the VC had employed a tactical nuclear weapon. The bombs descend and explode near structures in grove of tress in agricultural area 30 miles southwest of Saigon on 19 August, 1968. Terms & Conditions | and the gunner replied "VC Sergeant John Ax, squad leader of 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, recalls what the fighting near III Corps was like: An RPG hit Shocker, the C-21 track, in the side; but it must have been a glancing blow, because it did not explode. Wrecked ambulance with flat tires. When the G3 adviser told me to lend the rangers a track, I told the sergeant that the M-113 was not a tank and to be careful with it. Soon we could hear leaders moving up and down the bunker line yelling for the guards to stop firing. 0.35 Tower ordered Charlie Company to attack eastward to clear the village of Ho Nai, a suburb of Bien Hoa. To get to the church, we had to run a gantlet of fire, through the VC 238th Regiment and into the flank of the 275th, which was fighting the 2-47s scout platoon in Widows Village. NEARER AIR V..SMOKE There, Charlie Company soldiers joined ARVN and U.S. MACV soldiers manning the walls. As the scouts escaped, the volume of enemy fire began to slacken, then died altogether. Click Here. The 2-47s enemy body count came in at more than 200, while the battalion suffered only four KIA. As the ammo dump burst into flames, secondary explosions erupted in other storage areas, and . Those orders were for us to clear the VC from the houses surrounding the corps headquarters. As darkness settled in, Charlie Company was ordered back to the junction of Highways 1 and 316, where we would form a screen in front of the 199th LIB base camp. By 1968 the Bien Hoa-Long Binh complex was the largest US/South Vietnamese military base in South Vietnam. He stated that Bien Hoa airbase, the Long Binh facility, the II Field Force headquarters and the 199th Light Infantry Brigade (LIB) base camp were under heavy mortar and rocket attack. He assigned one to the airborne battalion and the other to Charlie Company. It also contained tons of captured NVA ammo and guns from the A Shau Valley. Here was another sign that the situation was serious: The battalion commander personally gave out map coordinates of company objectives in the clear.Alpha Company was ordered to the 199th LIB compound, which was under attack. The VC attacks on Bien Hoa and the Long Binh complex were abject failures, due in part to the fact that on January 31, 1968, they had run into the Panthers of the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry. Specialist 4 Bill Rambo, assistant driver and .50-gunner on my command track, remembers my response to the firing as being absolutely irate. After the battles for the churches, there occurred one of the most bizarre incidents of the day. As we cleared the ambush, the column suddenly came to a halt because of some kind of block in the road; simultaneously, someone keyed the company net. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. We had returned from a Simultaneously, platoon leaders reported finding discarded AK-47s. 9. Forget that, he said. Now commanded by a brand-new second lieutenant, the men of Alpha Company balked when they were told to move. GV AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN F/G. door at the petroleum dump ruptured and fuel flowed down the ditch in We came up with a T formation.