Yokota History Part 5: Yokota and the Vietnam War, 1964-71

  • Published
  • By Dr. John Treiber
  • 374th Airlift Wing History Office
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan --  January 1964 was a significant month for Yokota Air Base for it marked the space in time when the base went from primarily hosting bombers to becoming a well-known fighter base. On 8 January the 3rd Bomb Wing, which had become the base operating unit for the second time in November 1960, departed Yokota for good. Interestingly, the wing's B-57 Canberra bombers remained on station for a couple more months before being released to the New York Air National Guard and Massachusetts Air National Guard, but this was the beginning of the end of Yokota's bomber period. Meanwhile, the 441st Combat Support Group and three fighter squadrons without any fighters activated at Yokota on that same day. It will require further research to determine why the change from bombers to fighters occurred, and why the fighters did not immediately join their squadrons (the F-105s arrived in May 1964). Regardless, the newly inherited mission ensured that Yokota would end up playing a substantial role in the growing Vietnam Conflict that made heavy use of fighter aircraft.

Eight months later on 6 August 1964, just days after Gulf of Tonkin Incident that is often considered the beginning of the Vietnam Conflict, the fate of Yokota took a sharp turn in the direction of Indochina. Yes, this was still the Cold War in which Yokota would continue to play its part - the SAC bomber rotations mentioned in the previous article continued for at least a couple of years after 1964 -- but in terms of operations much of the base's focus became increasingly directed at Southeast Asia. As such, on 6 August ten of the newly arrived F-105s, plus ten KC-50 tankers from Yokota's 421st Air Refueling Squadron were sent to Southeast Asia for combat operations. This was significant, for while fighters had been stationed at Yokota as far back as 1950, during most of the Cold War the base was heavy on bombers and reconnaissance. Now things had changed: Yokota had been transformed almost overnight into a fighter base, and its squadrons would regularly deploy to Southeast Asia for the next seven years. The base converted from F-105s to F-4Cs starting in October 1967, and the 441st Combat Support Group became the 347th Tactical Fighter Wing in January 1968, but overall the fighter mission was consistent through spring 1971.

That mission finally came to an end in May 1971 due to a combination of a declining war, local opposition to excessive noise produced by the jets, and large-scale changes planned for Yokota Air Base. When the F-4s departed Yokota the base was left without fighters or bombers for the first time in its history. Moreover, when the 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron and 56th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron also left Yokota in the early 1970s, two more important chapters of Yokota's flying history concluded.
While fighters have been our focus so far, of longer-lasting importance was strategic airlift operations between the US, Yokota, and Southeast Asia that were initiated during the Vietnam War. This change might be said to have begun in June 1965 when the first C-141 landed at the base. In April 1966 the Military Air Transport System (MATS, later called the Military Airlift Command or MAC, and now the Air Mobility Command or AMC) activated the 610th Military Airlift Support Squadron at Yokota for handling the massive influx of C-135s, C-141s, and contracted airliners going to and from Southeast Asia. The 65th Military Airlift Group was later activated here in August 1967, and testament to Yokota's heavily increased strategic airlift role by September 1967 ten-thousand C-141 landings and one million passengers had already been processed. This despite the fact that the main MAC terminal was still at nearby Tachikawa Air Base, whose short runway could not handle the Air Force's larger planes. Coinciding with the near end of flying operations at Tachikawa, Yokota's AMC Terminal opened in March 1969 in order to properly handle the huge amount of traffic between the US and Southeast Asia, and that was good timing since the first C-5 landed at Yokota in July 1970.

While the fighter mission came and went, it could be said that events related to the Vietnam War in part jump-started the Yokota that we know today. As noted above AMC's strategic airlift role has been at the base continuously ever the war, making it by far the longest-running operation in Yokota's history. Another long-running flying operation is the base's UH-1 helicopter mission which has changed little since the first UH-1P arrived via a C-133 "Cargomaster" in January 1971. Meanwhile the United Nations flag was first raised at Yokota in December 1969 to coincide with the move of a small Royal Thai Air Force contingent from Tachikawa Air Base to Yokota. Though the Thai airmen are gone the UN presence at Yokota continues into the present.

The 1960s and into the early 1970s was also a rich period for travelling entertainment thanks to the Vietnam War. This timeframe saw an influx of famous names to the base including John Wayne, Bob Hope, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett, Neil Sedaka, Nancy Sinatra, Johnny Cash, and various athletes such as Muhammad Ali and NFL quarterbacks Bart Starr and Joe Namath. While these people might not ring a bell with younger readers, at the time they were household names.

Of course the Vietnam War did not end in 1971, but the entrenchment of AMC operations and the departure of the fighters allowed for a completely new epoch in Yokota's history to begin, brought about by the Kanto Plain Consolidation Plan. That topic shall be discussed in the next article.