Here are George Hollis' comments concerning the Drill Press Mission in Vietnam in early-1967. Drill Press was an early, EC-47 airborne mission and was not an ARDF bird. George said they had two aircraft, the one pictured with him (No. 43-49680 and another, No. 43-16254). Georges' comments tell the story of mission operations at that time.

OK, here's the story: The project was Drill Press (later renamed Sentinel Sara) with two "NON-ARDF EC-47s" (you have the tail numbers: 680 and 254) The EC-47s were configured for three 292X1's and one 203. We took off and landed at Phu Bai and all mission "take" was processed by ASA's 509th Radio Research Unit (RRU) at Hue/Phu Bai.

We received tech support from the 509th Radio Research Unit (RRU). We provided direct support to the Marines along the DMZ via KY-8. The project was a bastard group from the 360th TEWS and the 6994th at TanSonNhut.

Most of the '94 guys were "permanent" TDYers and we flew damn near every day. The 360th flyers usually rotated every 30 days or so (they stayed just long enough to get one Air Medal). Since the '94th had no 203's we got them from the 6988th at Yokota and later the '90th at Kadena.

I arrived in country, cleared in, and three days later got TDY orders to Drill Press and was essentially TDY my whole tour. That was in June '67 and I stayed at sunny Phu Bai until Jan/Feb '68 after Tet '68.

We then relocated to Pleiku but made ops stops at Phu Bai to drop off the mission "take". While I was at Phu Bai one of the "old" USAFSS airborne radio maint guys happened to mention that the 2 EC-47s we were flying were the ones that flew "Bluesky" in Korea. I guess I stored that info in very deeeeeeep memory when I saw the picture of 680 in the History Book I dug through all my pictures and found the one taken with me & 680 in 1967... The rest you know.."

George Hollis, a Backender at Phu Bai in 1967. This aircraft was used in Bluesky in Korea in 1953.

This Photo copied from AIA Magazine, A Continuing Legacy 2002.