Ronald McKee and Carol Wolfe

[00:04] RONALD J. MCKEE: My name is Ronald J. McKee. I am 75 years old. Today's date is July 25, 2022. Location is Cheyenne, Wyoming. The name of my interview partner is Carol Wolf. She is my wife of 23 years.

[00:27] CAROL WOLF: Hi, my name is Carol Wolf. I am 72. Today is July 25, 2022. We're in Cheyenne, Wyoming. My interview partner is Ronald McKee, and he is my husband of 23 years, Ron. We met and married after you had been in the air force. So I don't know much about your military history. I know you were in Vietnam, but also were stationed in other places. When and why did you enlist?

[01:08] RONALD J. MCKEE: Enlisted out of high school, graduated in the spring of 1964, was hanging out at home in our little town of Minong, Wisconsin, in northern Wisconsin, not doing much of anything. And my parents finally, I think, got tired of me hanging around and gave me an option to either go to college or join the military. We came from a military family. My dad was in World War two. He was a mechanic in B 25. Flew out of Egypt against Rommel in the african desert, and then went to Italy. Was flying against the Italians and Germans out of Italy, and then went to India and was flying over the hump against the Japanese. On my mother's side, her two brothers, my uncle Chuck was stationed in Italy in supply, and my uncle Jim came across the channel, not on D Day, but came across the channel and marched across France to Berlin. So went along family, military history. So I decided I needed to go into the service. I wasn't ready for college at that time, so I enlisted. They drove me up to superior, Wisconsin, where I caught a train down to Minneapolis, stayed the night there. The next day, we went to get our physical for enlistment, passed the physical, took the oath of the military at that time, and got shipped off to Lackland Air force Base for basic training.

[02:57] CAROL WOLF: Where did you go from Lackland Air Force Base?

[03:01] RONALD J. MCKEE: After basic training, I had originally was told that I could go into electronics by my recruiter. However, during my physical, I found out that I was colorblind. And because of that, and not being able to tell the colors of wires, etcetera, they assigned me to something else I went into. Actually didn't know at the time, but they were doing a investigation into my background for a security clearance. So from Lackland, I got sent to Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, where I learned to copy Morse code. Didn't seem like it had much of a chance of getting a job after the military, but that's the way it was. You did what the military told you to do ended up getting a top secret clearance. The people who were in that group all got top secret code word clearances. They went back to my hometown. Whoever was doing the investigating talked to my parents, talked to my teachers, talked to old girlfriends to make sure I wasn't some kind of a russian spy or something. Spent a few months at Kiesler learning how to copy Morse code, which is my field of expertise in the military. From there, they sent me my first duty station with Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. Alaska was very interesting. We're in security service. We were assigned to the 69 81st security service up there, and we were involved in gathering intelligence. That's what a lot of countries at that time were still sending information, military information, messages via Morse code. It was cheaper than whatever electronic transmission things were available at that time. So a lot of the countries were still using this very rudimentary Morse code. My mission in Alaska was to copy a russian radar squadron in the eastern part of Russia, and they would transmit the aircraft identification number and its location and the time, and they would do that every few minutes for each of the aircraft that they were tracking. One of the things, interesting things about Alaska is we had a huge antenna there called the FLR nine. We called it the flare nine. It encompassed about 35 acres. So you know what our 40 acre pasture looks like. This antenna would have maybe fit just inside of our 40 acre pasture. It was huge. We could pick up signals almost all the way to Moscow with that antenna, and it was directional, so we knew which direction our signal was coming out of Russia. We also had antennas in the. In Shimya, a little island out in the aleutian chain, and then down in Japan. So if we picked up a signal or was copying somebody, we didn't know who it was or where they were at. We could do direction finding and figure out where that signal was coming from, where it was located. So it was fun being in Alaska. Got to do a lot of hunting and fishing up there, a lot of bird hunting, a lot of salmon fishing. It was kind of a neat assignment.

[07:07] CAROL WOLF: Did you get a code name? Were you issued a code name?

[07:13] RONALD J. MCKEE: No.

[07:15] CAROL WOLF: Why did you come back down from Alaska to the lower 48?

[07:21] RONALD J. MCKEE: My dad got sick. He ended up having throat cancer, and so he got operated on at the VA hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. So I was able to. My mother knew one of the governors of Wisconsin and was able to get me a humanitarian reassignment from Alaska back to. To the states. I think I had, like, 4 hours to pack up all my stuff out of Elmendorf and get on an airplane to come back to the states. It was interesting. It was a nine hour ride on a C 130 that had no cushioned seats and everything rattling on the inside of the airplane. We landed in Colorado and I got stationed at a small radar squadron, Osceola Air Force station in Osceola, Wisconsin, just across the river from St. Paul. So I got to spend a couple, well, a little less than two years there while my dad was sick. He had several surgeries and ended up dying there. It was kind of a nice duty station. I worked as a clerk in the commander's office and eventually got assigned as being the chief clerk. The commander, Colonel Kubrow, put me in for an air Force commendation medal, which I received while I was at Osceola.

[09:08] CAROL WOLF: Where did you go from there?

[09:10] RONALD J. MCKEE: Well, I knew I was going to go back to my primary duty, which was copying Morse code. And I had a couple options and I chose to go to San Vito de Normani air station in southern Italy. San Vito dei Normani, the city of the Normans. It was a place that was conquered by the Normans in ancient times. It was another interesting duty station. At the time, we lived in an apartment in Kasali, a little suburb of Brindisi, the main city there. My duty there was to copy the albanian navy, which at that time consisted of four submarines. So I got very familiar with the albanian navy and submarines. Interestingly, they didn't have any repair facilities or maintenance facilities in Albania, so they would bring their subs over across the adriatic ocean to Brindisi to get them worked on and repaired. I would copy these submarines coming across the sea, and when they got to Brindisi, I could sneak down to the harbor and look and see the submarines that were from Albania. It was very interesting, very lot of history there. You may not know Brindisi was the jumping off point for the appian way. That's how you jumping off point for Greece, where I, Cleopatra landed at the end of the appian way there and went to Rome to Canoodle with Mark Anthony. But a tremendous amount of history and very poor part of Italy. The northern Italians don't claim southern Italy as being in Italy. They say it's North Africa, but it was a fun duty station.

[11:19] CAROL WOLF: Did you go directly from Italy to Vietnam?

[11:23] RONALD J. MCKEE: I didn't. I knew that my next duty after, because of where the Vietnam war was and where I'd been stationed, that my next duty was going to be in Vietnam. Options would be to be in a ground station or on flying status. And I like to fly, and I didn't really want to be in a ground station in Vietnam, so I volunteered to go to Tan Son Nhut on flying status. I had to go through a flight physical to be able to do that. So they sent me up to Wiesbaden, Germany, for my flight physical again, because I was colorblind. I had a little trouble passing the flight physical because I couldn't tell green from redh at a distance. But there was a nice major there, the physician who was doing my physical. I convinced him that I wasn't going to be flying the airplane. I was just going to be riding in the back, and that I really didn't have to tell what red and green were from where I was. I was just going to be listening to a radio and copying Morse code with a typewriter. So he did a special examination for my color blindness and passed me. So I passed my flight physical to go to Vietnam.

[12:45] CAROL WOLF: What else was involved in going to Vietnam? For preparation.

[12:53] RONALD J. MCKEE: I had to make several stops in the United States, move the family at that time back to northern Wisconsin. She stayed with her parents, and we had two kids at the time, one who was born in a maternity clinic in southern Italy. But when I got back to the states, I went immediately to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida to do water survival school, learn about fish you don't want to eat and all that kind of stuff, and then get training in being on the water. If we should have to ditch an airplane out in the water, got to parachute down into the Atlantic Ocean and inflate my raft and spend a day out on my raft bobbing in the water. They eventually came out and picked all of us up in helicopters and jolly green giants. And so you would get out of your raft, and they would drop this extraction device out of the helicopter, and you would unfold the seat and get on and strap yourself in, and they would winch you up into the helicopter then to rescue you. They also did that in the mangrove swamps. Out in the mangrove swamps, you're able to direct the helicopter over the top of you, drop this extraction device down. You'd unfold the seats, strap yourself in. They drag you up out of the mangrove swamps. So it was good training. It was good training that if you ever needed help or needed to be extracted by a helicopter, you had that ability, had that capability of doing it. From there, I went to Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. That was a tech school for all the security services. A lot of the guys who were being trained in voice communications, foreign languages, went to tech school and San Angelo or Goodfellow. The reason we went there was that Morse code is international, and Ditz and Das all mean the same thing internationally. But transmitters sound different and people who are operating the transmitting key do it differently. It's almost like different language, almost. The Albanians were very different. The Russians were very good. They were very exact, had a lot of training. And of course, Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese or the VC were very different. And so we got to practice copying vietnamese transmissions that had been recorded while we were in San Angelo. Also learned how to operate all the equipment that was going to be on the airplane, the various radios, the direction finding equipment, communication equipment, to be able to talk to the pilots or other aircraft in the area. After going to San Angelo, went to McChord Air Force Base in Washington for basic survival school. It was getting late in the year now. This was, I think, either late September or early October, but there was a foot and a half to 2ft of snow up in the mountains where we were sent to, to learn basic survival skills. We got a couple panels of a parachute to make a tent out of, and that's where we lived for two or three days. We got to try to use snares to trap rabbits. There was a creek nearby that had some trout in it, so I was able to catch some trout, but that was all the food we had for those few days. And we were definitely in survival mode. We did a lot of just basic school training and survival while we were there. And then the end of the program, they had set up a POW camp that was based on information they had received from prisoners from Vietnam who had been in a POW camp there. And we did an exchange of prisoners, Vietnam prisoners, for american prisoners. And so they were able to develop this POW camp based on the information that they got from those prisoners that came back. So you spent all day in school, and then that night you went on an obstacle course over several hours. And at the end of the obstacle course, you got captured and spent another. Hard to realize how many time you spent in this POW camp. Initially, you were in isolation and then went into a group situation in the POW camp. It was just very hard psychologically, physically. They put you in little boxes. You're not allowed to sleep or lay down. When you're in isolation, guards will come and check on you. So it was very interesting, but good training. It was training that people in world War two and people in korean war never had. So the military did a good job at trying to prepare us should something happen while we were in Vietnam. Went back home for a few days and then shipped out to go to Vietnam. Stopped off in Clark Air base in the Philippines to do jungle survival school. Another great experience. A lot of book work about the jungle and what things to avoid or not avoid. And then we spent another two, three days up in the mountains. They put us on a helicopter and helicoptered us up into the mountain. Helicopter came over and dropped a skid on the side of the mountain. We all piled out and were met there by some of the philippine natives, who were the people doing the training. And they taught us how to do camouflage, how to get water out of vines, how to survive in the jungle, how to hide. Again, very good training. Finally, after all of that, I ended up in tonsinut, where I had been assigned in Saigon in November. I forget what day, November of, of 1971. It was an interesting place, to say the least. You have no idea what Saigon was like. I think the day after I landed, unpacked everything, and I and a friend went down to downtown Saigon. You could walk there from the base. Unbelievable, the number of people, black market stuff, the craziness that was going on in Saigon at that time. We stopped off at a little Uso place and got a soda and eventually got back on the base. When I got back on the base, there was a note waiting for me to go see the unit commander. I went and saw the commander, and I was told that I was being reassigned from Tan Son Nhut to beautiful Da Nang, Vietnam Rocket City. That was a little scary. I thought Tonsanut was going to be pretty safe. You could walk off base, go and visit Saigon. People weren't getting shot down and flying on a Tan Son Nhut But I packed all my gear and got loaded on a C 130 and, and shipped up to Da Nang, where I spent a year.

[21:30] CAROL WOLF: What was your mission at Da Nang?

[21:34] RONALD J. MCKEE: We were doing airborne radio direction fighting in an airplane called the c 47. It was designated an EC 47, meaning involved in electronic warfare. Initially, the mission early on in Vietnam in the 66 67 time period, was just a listening platform. They just had radios that would fly around and pick up transmissions, either Morse transmissions or voice transmissions, and copy them and take that information back to whoever was going to use. It. Wasn't long after they decided, well, if we're going to do that, why don't we put some direction finding equipment on the airplane? So it became an ARDF, an airborne radio direction finding mission. We were still copying and listening to communications and copying those communications. But we also now had the ability to do direction finding so we could fly past somebody we were listening to and get bearings on them. And if the bearings were good enough, we could identify exactly where that unit was. And then that information would be transferred upstream to whatever users needed it or wanted it. There were a lot of things going on in Da Nang. I think the biggest thing, of course, were the rocket attacks. That's why they called it rocket City in 1971. When I got there, I think we were averaging a rocket attack every four or five days. So at night, you would lay in your barracks and do rocket watch or go play poker until three in the morning. And by that time, if there weren't any rockets, you could go to sleep and rest for the rest of the night. The reason we never had rocket attacks during the day, they were always at night. And that's because the VC were embedded in a mountain range south of Da Nang, about 9 miles, 910 miles. And the range of these rockets, they were 122 millimeter rockets, and they had about 25 pounds of lead in them, only had a range of six or 7 miles. And so the VC would hide in the caves in this mountainous until night time. They would then come out and work their way to, within range, six, 7 miles of Danang air base. They would set their rockets up, and by that time, it was one 203:00 in the morning. They would light the rockets off and then be back in the caves by the time daylight came. So it was usually 203:00 in the morning. When we got rocket attacks, you would have your helmet and your flak vest. And when you got the warning, there was always somebody watching down south to see if the rockets were coming up out of the jungle. They would give you a warning, put your helmet and flak vest on and either hide under your bed or go jump in a bunker somewhere and hope that the rockets didn't land on top of you. I spent a year, November 71. November 72, got to do a lot of other things. We did the minor maintenance of our airplanes in Da Nang, but the major maintenance had to be out of country. So every few months, we got to take a mission over to Thailand, where they did major maintenance on the airplane, got to spend some time out of country, which was kind of nice. Everything was classified. And so initially, they didn't want the Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese and the DC to know what we were doing. So initially we had a bunch of leaflets that we would throw out of the back of the airplane, make it look like that was our mission, to pretend that we weren't really copying them with radios, etcetera. It didn't take long before they figured out that every time an EC 47 came by them, that the next day they got a bomb dropped on them, or later that day. So we stopped doing that. It didn't give us very much camouflage about what we were doing.

[26:16] CAROL WOLF: Could you go off base while you were at Danang?

[26:20] RONALD J. MCKEE: We couldn't. It was too dangerous, too many snipers. The VC were all around. Even when we were taken off in the airplane from the runways, we oftentimes take small arms fire shooting at us. But other than that, I mean, it was really not bad for being in a war because we were on flying status. We lived in air conditioned barracks, which is very nice. In Vietnam, we had a tv station, armed forces network, so we could watch tv. Very interesting commercials about getting stray dogs vaccinated, etcetera. And food wasn't bad. We also had, University of Maryland, had a college campus there, and they had college campuses all over the world in a lot of our units. So I was able to get some college credits while I was there. I started that in Italy and continued that while I was in Danang. I was in school four nights a week, taking two college classes every semester. So a lot of my evenings were spent going to school.

[27:50] CAROL WOLF: You were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. What was that for?

[27:59] RONALD J. MCKEE: March. The Tet festival is in April. And in March, 1 of our flights was coming back from over along the Vietnam Laos border and picked up some communications that sounded like it was tanks. And so we started flying some night missions along the border. And sure enough, what. What it was is that at night the tanks would get off the Ho Chi Minh trail and camouflage themselves, and then they would have some communications. At that time, we were able to pick that up. And then during the morning, well, at night they would be on the trail going down the Ho Chi Minh trail. And then during the morning, they would stop and they would camouflage their tanks. And so we were picking up those communications in the morning and late at night. So it was one of the missions I was flying. I was the airborne mission supervisor, and I tried to kept the pilot. I kept our mission in the area to make sure that we could get. We were getting some great communications at that time. And so we stayed in the area in spite of being shot at. The Ho Chi Minh trail was pretty heavily fortified with anti aircraft guns. So you could look out the window and you could see these tracers. About every fourth or fifth shots you could see a tracer coming up at you. So it was a little scary. And because of that, we flew with the lights off in the airplane, and so they could shoot at the sound of the airplane, but they couldn't see us because we had the lights off. And it was one of those missions that I recommend for the Distinguished Flying Cross.

[30:07] CAROL WOLF: You had a friend, Todd Melton. Tell me about Todd.

[30:12] RONALD J. MCKEE: When I got to Da Nang, Todd was there. He'd already served two terms at Danang. He was a voice specialist. He copied vietnamese language. And he was from Wisconsin. So he was the only other person there that was from Wisconsin. So we kind of hit it off because we were old Wisconsin boys. But Todd and I got to be somewhat friends when I left in November 72. Shortly afterwards, they closed Danang down and moved the people over to U-Tapao Thailand. So I left in November 72. In February of 1973, thai airplane was shot down. He was called Baron 52. That was their call number. They got overlay out. They were supposed to call in and check in every 30 minutes, and they missed a call in. They found the airplane two days later, upside down and burned. They were able to, at least initially identify the place was full of VCE, and they couldn't stay very long. So they initially identified that there were four dead bodies. We actually had 469 94th people, and there were four pilots and navigators on the flight. So eight people all told. So Todd was lost, along with three of our other 69 94th members. They have a common grave now in Arlington cemetery. And whenever we have a reunion, we usually do a wreath laying ceremony for Todd and the other seven members of baron 52 at Arlington.

[32:12] CAROL WOLF: What's your most memorable reunion? We've been to several over the last many years.

[32:18] RONALD J. MCKEE: I think the one at Fort Meade, where we were able to get on the NSA compound, and the 69 94th successor for our unit was there. We were the most decorated unit in the air force, and we were able to take Jane's and Callie son and their daughter and significant others there. And that was pretty special. So they suffered while I was in Vietnam. They were young kids at the time, but they, I think, at that reunion, got to learn a little bit about why their dad was away and what we did over there.

[33:02] CAROL WOLF: Why did you decide to tell your story?

[33:07] RONALD J. MCKEE: Because the kids are now interested. James has asked several times, and the grandson, Ryan, wants to learn more about what happened and the history of that. I wished I'd asked my dad more questions about his time in the service, but I didn't, and he died when I was a really young. I was only 21 at the time when my dad died.

[33:39] CAROL WOLF: Why did you decide to get out of the air force after eight and a half years?

[33:44] RONALD J. MCKEE: Well, I tell people because if they start shooting at you, it's time to get out and do something else. But really the main reason was, at the time, the Vietnam war was winding down, the upper ranks were staying in, and so I was looking at seven to eight years time and grade before I'd even be eligible for promotion. And so if you had any ambition at all, it was not the place to be. So I got out and went to college, finally graduated, doing fairly well from University of Stevens Point in Wisconsin, and got accepted into medical school, and then did a family practice residency in Cheyenne and got to meet you there. And we eventually got together. It's been a great 23 years.

[34:39] CAROL WOLF: How did you end up in medical school?

[34:43] RONALD J. MCKEE: Well, I originally went to Stevens Point because they had a good natural history program, and I thought I didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought maybe I could be a game warden in Wisconsin. I like to hunt and fish, and so I kind of zeroed in on that or some natural history, natural resource program. By the time I got my credits, it took another three years to get my credits for my biology degree and my chemistry degree, but I did fairly well. And so I had some other options, and I applied to medical school. I applied to dental school, and I applied to veterinary school. We didn't have a veterinary school in Wisconsin. They took seven of our Wisconsin natives to the vet school in Minneapolis in Minnesota. But I didn't get accepted into medical, into veterinary school. I did get accepted into dental school, which was supposed to be clean shaven at the time, and I wasn't sure I wanted to do that. But I got accepted into medical school, University of Wisconsin in Madison. So I accepted that and somehow ended up in medical school.

[36:14] CAROL WOLF: I've met one of your roommates from Danang, Mike Folz. Tell me about Mike.

[36:20] RONALD J. MCKEE: Mike and I were good buddies, and I got there. Mike had been there for six months already after we lived in one of the barracks on the bottom floor and got along really well. When I got an r and r back to the states, I came back from the states, and Mike had already left Vietnam. He got out early and ended up back in the states. Eventually found out that he lived in Arvada, just north of Denver, so not very far from us. And so we reconnected again and have been able to have several good meetings and go to dinner and he stopped by our house and visited on his way to visit some family in Casper. So that's been fun. I think the proudest thing about being in Vietnam was the mission. Everything was classified, and so we really knew very little about what happened to all, all of the information that we gave. But we're finding out now that with the information being declassified, that we were fairly important. That about 80% of the tactical missions, f four bombing missions, helicopter insertions, were based on the information that we were providing, and up to 95% of the B 52 missions were based on information that we obtained. So I think, all in all, we saved a lot of american lives. On the other side of that, we probably caused the death of a lot of vietnamese lives, too.

[38:08] CAROL WOLF: Am I right to understand that your mission, your security squadron, was the beginning of the NSI as it is today?

[38:18] RONALD J. MCKEE: No. NSA was our boss. NSA determined what we did and who we were listening to and all of that. And the air force kind of took care of us, gave us a place to sleep and set us food and gave us uniforms and promotions and that kind of stuff. A real end consumer was the NSA and the other security services at the time.

[38:51] CAROL WOLF: Have they declassified your mission?

[38:54] RONALD J. MCKEE: Yes, most of it has been declassified, but not all of it. And it's not because it's important information anymore. It's just that the process of doing that and finding people to read through the paperwork and declassify it is time consuming, and it costs money. And so it's just taking. There's some of us retired folks that are working on that and working with the service to get that information declassified. A lot of it has been, but it just takes money, and it takes time to do that.

[39:35] CAROL WOLF: I want to thank you for sharing your story with me. I know I've heard bits and pieces and parts, but I've not heard in the chronological order that I heard today. And I know all of the kids and grandkids are going to enjoy this. Thank you for your service.

[39:54] RONALD J. MCKEE: Well, thank you. Thank you for being in my life for the last 23 years. I have some follow up questions, if that's okay. I can ask them. Your friend Todd. I was wondering if you wanted to paint a little picture with words of Todd and what he was like. Todd was the old man of the group. He enjoyed being there. He was not married, so he had no other things to take him back to the States. He had his own mama San in Da Nang who cooked him meals and did his laundry. He had re upped. I think three times by that time I got there. And if you extended your time in Vietnam, you got to choose a 30 day r and r somewhere. So he had one r and R where he went to Australia, another one where he went to Thailand, and, I don't know, it's a couple other places. So Todd enjoyed being there. He enjoyed doing what he was doing, but it caught up to him. We had front enders and back enders on the airplane. The back enders were us enlisted guys who were doing Morse code and voice communications, and then the front enders were the pilots and the co pilots and the navigators. They were officers, but they were kind of taking orders from us e four enlisted people about where we were going to go on the mission. There was a little bit of friction, I think, between the officers and the enlisted people. They didn't like being ordered around by enlisted guys. But Todd enjoyed it. Todd would have stayed for forever. I was just curious because it sounded so fascinating when you were describing the sort of different ways that, you know, different countries sort of utilized Morse code. If there was just sort of any other details in there that you could describe. A lot of the third world countries, second world countries were still using Morse code. It was cheaper, the equipment was cheaper. And so we had units all over the world, Japan and Greece and Germany and anywhere where we could be able to reach and copy these communications. Of course, it's very different now. When we were on the NSA site in Fort Meade, Maryland, we got to visit the successor group there, and they're in a separate building, not the big glass building where NSA headquarters is, but they're all right there because communications nowadays, they're picking it up with satellites, and so they don't have to go anywhere. The satellite picks up the Morse transmission or voice transmission or whatever and sends it there to them. They still have some mobile units that are able to go around. When we visited, we no longer had our security clearances, but had to go through a process to get onto Fort Meade. And every time we'd go into a room, there were all these flashing red lights on the ceiling that indicated that non cleared personnel were there, and all the computers were covered up with sheets and all the equipment was covered up. They actually had a little museum in their building that looked at the 69 94th, and we have our unit awards kept there. So it's very different now. They're doing the same thing. They're gathering information. I think at the time we were there, Russia, Washington invading Crimea, so I'm sure they were pretty busy at the time, and they're probably very busy now with Ukraine being invaded. When you were gathering that information while you were in Vietnam, was there ever a moment where you felt like you really, you had gotten something super important? We didn't know. You know, most of the transmissions were coded, and so we typed it onto. We had just basic typewriters at the time, and it was typed onto paper, and those papers then were put back in the airborne mission supervisors case and brought into the unit and sent off to whoever the end user was with security clearances. We had the top security clearances the government had, the president gets, but it's on a need to know basis. So if there was some reason that we needed to know that information, we would get it. Now that a lot of that information beclassified, we're finding out things that we didn't know before. We didn't know that 95% of the B 52 missions coming out of the Philippines were based on the information that we had gathered. And so much of the other tactical missions were based on the information that we were gathered. We had big antennas in Saigon and Plecou and Danang, but they couldn't pick up the little guys out in the bush. And so that was our job, was to get those units out in the bush that had a five or ten mile range of transmission. I guess just last follow up question, did it ever feel odd to just be writing all this down and not knowing where it was going or if it was important or not? What was that like in the moment as a young man in the service? Well, we knew that NSA was our main source, that most of the information was going to the NSA. Secondary users from there, who knows, don't have that information. So it was sometimes they would give us little tidbits of information to keep us interested. And, you know, the units we were looking for in Vietnam, we kind of had an idea of who they were and where they were at, whether they were in the north vietnamese army or the Viet Cong, VC out in the jungles. But a lot of it was we didn't know. And we knew that unless we had the need to know, we may never know. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. Thank you.