33624 Wing Commander (Wing Cdr) Vance Drummond, of Hamilton, New Zealand, and more recently of ...

33624 Wing Commander (Wing Cdr) Vance Drummond, of Hamilton, New Zealand, and more recently of Hackett, ACT, was snapped by the RAAF News Camera, sliding into the cockpit of his Cessna 01 'Bird Dog' nick named 'Snoopy' at Vung Tau airfield, South Vietnam. For the past eight months, Wing Cdr Drummond has been on exchange duty with the United States Air Force (USAF) in Vietnam. Wing Cdr Drummond's first months in Vietnam were at Tan Son Nhut Airfield, Saigon, with the Tactical Air Control Centre. Now Wing Cdr Drummond flies 'Snoopy', snooping along in the air just high enough to clear the tall Vietnamese trees growing out of the jungle, looking for Viet Cong (VC). He is the only RAAF officer in Vietnam flying a Forward Air Control (FAC) for the USAF. He only sees other RAAF members when he calls into the base at Vung Tau on a monthly basis to collect his mail and pay. His job as FAC is to search for columns of VC moving through the jungle and when spotted he calls up the strike aircraft and directs them to the target. When the strike aircraft is finished, Wing Cdr Drummond flies in and fires the four, two inch rockets carried on his wing pods. Wing Cdr Drummond has also been an interpreter in Japan; a fighter pilot in Korea, where he was shot down and held prisoner for 14 months; the leader of one of the RAAF's best known aerobatic teams 'The Black Diamonds' flying sabres a sub-sonic aircraft. In comparison his Cessna 01 'Bird Dog' buzzes along at only 90 miles an hour. Note the Snoopy nose art painted on the aircraft.