Turning Final Qui Nhon

Over water turn from base leg onto final approach, intersecting runway centerline at Qui Nhon Airbase on east coast of central Vietnam – 1972. Qui Nhon was also an important base for the Navy. I believe navigator Joe snapped this photo. The dark object sticking up on the dashboard in the middle widow was a small orange screened radarscope mainly useful for painting thunderstorms and possibly other large aircraft … appears to be turned off here … as I recall there may have been some radiation hazard on the ground to anyone standing close to the operating radar (it was housed in the black nose cone of the aircraft). I was a C-130 copilot at the time; gracious Captain Ed pretty much shared all the flying with me equally … I was even flying left seat in this photo. This was by far the most competent we were as pilots because we flew as many as 10 missions every day, often bumping up against weekly and daily flying time maximums. In contrast after returning to USA, flight time including approaches, takeoffs, and landing was often scarce … often only just enough to satisfy minimum monthly requirements … enough to make me feel dangerous.