J D

It may be Cu Lao Island, AKA "Paradise Island"

http://ngothelinh.150m.com/Paradise_Island.html

Been there

JD,
The link in George Curtis’ posting has the answers, but it takes a bit of poking around to get the details. One linked page has a letter from Master Sergeant Mancil, USA who, while attached to MACV-SOG, spent most of his tour on Cu Lao Cham, off the coast of Danang. He writes that South Vietnamese Navy Commandos carried out classified psyop & other covert missions against North Vietnam from the island (actually a small archipelago), using Swift boats. Their base was Camp Dodo – which was on the beach. They occasionally brought back prisoners from their missions, and they were kept at Camp Phoenix, “on another part of the island”.
I think that’s why I came to go out there.
It was not my brightest hour as a Deuce Driver. I have a copy of my “Pilot Mishap History Report”, and unfortunately am able to pin down the exact date that I visited Cu Lao Cham – 20 Sep 1966.
I My recollection of the event is pretty sketchy, but the picture helps tell the story. The H-37 detachment was fragged to carry a load of “construction material” out to the island. An Army major who was to go along on the trip said it was all classified, so he couldn’t tell us anything about the activities on the island. He was going to show us where the LZ was, etc. My co-pilot was Maj. Jack Nolan, who had just joined the Sub-Unit a few days before as our new OIC. I don’t recall if we loaded the stuff at MMAF, or picked it up somewhere else in the area. It turned out to be a whole bunch of very stout bamboo poles. That seemed odd at the time, but if you consider the remark above about Camp Phoenix, the type of “construction material” makes a bit more sense.
As we flew out to the island, the Major said there would be no one in the LZ so no smoke to pop, for wind direction. That turned out to be irrelevant, since he also told us we had to approach the island and the LZ in very specific directions, there were people on the island he didn’t want to see us. This must have been Camp Dodo, and I’m sure he didn’t want us to see it.
We made a pass over the LZ, and it wasn’t a pretty sight, being in a bit of a bowl, but my brain had already started to disengage, so I committed to an approach – a steep one, and committed is the operative word. At a few hundred feet or so, a thought went through my feeble mind – So this is what “power settling” is all about! Too late to wave off, all I could do was hold what I had and keep us pointed straight ahead. I knew from previous personal experience that the H-37’s main landing gear won’t put up with much sideways force.
We landed with a pretty good jolt, and the Army Major, who was standing on the ladder, got up close and personal with the overhead panel, which bloodied him a bit. Other than that all personnel were okay. The poor airplane, however, had a broken tail wheel yoke. Our people fixed that in the field. I don’t think it was another deuce that brought the parts out from MMAF, but I’ll stand corrected if anyone out there knows better. I flew the bird back to MMAF, a sadder but wiser pilot. The Army Major allowed as how they would take the rest of the bamboo out by boat, thank you.

That’s my experience on “Paradise Island”.

S/F, BobCarlson