• 53-7948 US Army #1489. L-20 No: 490. Command A-4. Delivered 17-Feb-1955. Built as L-20A and re-designated U-6A in 1962. Later converted to RU-6A.
• 53-7948 Operated with 224th Aviation Battalion, 156th Aviation Company, (Radio Research) from Jun-1966. Can Tho, South Vietnam.
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• Sent by Chuck Ross:
I cannot add anything regarding the disposition of this airplane but I can share a bit of damage history.
On 26 June 1968 I was flying Beaver # 766 as an RU-6A tail number 53-7948 with my roommate Gene Autry (no relation). An F-4 Phantom had been shot down in our area and I took Gene over to show him the crater. Well, Duh! Someone down there can shoot...
As we were climbing out a round struck the airplane. After a minute Gene noticed a little catch in the rudder. After another minute it had gotten worse. Eventually we had left rudder and it would fair to center but we had no right rudder at all. We decided it was time to take the plane to the barn. We landed on the PSP runway with no rudder control but it rolled out nice and straight. Beavers are very gentle on the rollout anyway. But it was clear there were further problems and we had to stop the airplane just clear of the runway. It took way too much power to taxi further.
A single 7.62mm armor piercing round had struck the rim of the tailwheel. It broke the rim, shredded the tire then the schrapnel from the shattered rim shotgunned up through the back end of the airplane. There was no exit hole, everything stopped somewhere in the tail cone. Not one fragment could we determine hit a single, simple piece of sheet metal, they all hit joints, seams, structures. One piece hit the rudder cable and broke nearly every strand. This strike was right near a fairlead where the cable passed through a bulkhead. The cable immediately began unraveling and the birds-nest created by the severed strands would no longer pass through that bulkhead, limiting rudder travel. We were told it was 800 man-hours to repair the damage which might just be some kind of record for a single round. Anyway the bullet came apart; Gene got the jacket and I got the armor piercing core which I still have.
So the airplane, wherever it is, has a Purple Heart coming.
If I was willing to spend that many hours in an airplane cabin I'd like to go back to Vietnam and see if I could locate any of the planes we apparently abandoned there.
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