Hello Fellow Boxcars,

Talked to Bob Criswell today in Frankford, Delaware and he and I are looking forward to seeing you all at the reunion 17-19 September at the Nassau Motel in Ocean City, MD. Bob has a good program worked out for us and I am sure we'll all have a good time. We have a tentative agenda that includes a marshmellow roast on the beach Friday evening and briefings and videos of CH-47 operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. A couple of Boeing Representatives from the Washington DC area will be there Saturday afternoon to brief us on the latest developments for CH-47s. They will stay for our dinner at a local restaurant Saturday evening.

An article in the local paper was listing all the helicopter failures occuring in Iraq. Apparently weather and the type of fighting in the urban areas are downing a lot of helicopters.The Iraqis terrorists are laying in wait for the helicopters and ambushing them from fortified positions. I guess we have forgotten about the lessons we learned in Vietnam. Since the Comanche program was chancelled everyone is after that money. They say they will spend it on upgrading CH-47s, Apache gunships and Black Hawks. Thats the good news but the USAF wants a new fighter.

We never had good tactics, techniques and procedures for fighting helicopters in urban terrain. We will always go through a learning process until we get things together. Of course the U S Air Force thinks all you have to do is drop a 500 pound bomb. They never did understand about close air support for the Infantryman. As far as I can tell the CH-47 Helicopter logistics support is doing just great, especially in Afghanistan where there isn't any other way to support those units in the mountains.

We'll solve all those minor problems once we get to the reunion with all our expertise and Bull_____.

Hope you all come. Drive carefully.

Boxcar Six
Ken Sines

Reunion Information