Clark Air Base

Remember, the Philippines is a treaty ally, a defense treaty ally with the Americans.

In 1949, they gave basing rights to the Americans, Subic Bay and Clark Air Force Base.

Those were later, those were later withdrawn.

The Americans went back.

I was abroad, uh, this was when there was a coup attempt in the Philippines, and I was, I was on my own and quite concerned.

And I was in a little city Angeles, and I made my way up to the, uh, Clark Air Base with my passport, and the soldiers at the gate, um, basically, uh, told me, uh, "I- if things, uh, get worse, you're more than welcome.

We'll take care of you and fly you back home.

Uh, for the immediate present day, no, we're, we're just not gonna let you into the, uh, air base." But I gotta say, that's comforting when the US people or any other people step up for you when you're in a bad way.

Take the Flying Tiger Line Flight 739, for example, which disappeared on March 16, 1962.

It was carrying 93 American soldiers and in the blink of an eye disappeared off the radar on the way to the Philippines' Clark Air Base.

200,000 square miles were covered in just eight days in order to try and find the passengers, but they were never found.

Another aviation mystery that took a few years to solve was the Air France flight 447, which was scheduled to leave Rio de Janeiro on June 1, 2009.

The journey began on March 14th, 1962, at Travis Air Force Base in California.

The flight was bound for Saigon with scheduled refueling stops in Honolulu, Wake Island, Guam, Clark Air Base in the Philippines, and finally South Vietnam.

The first legs of the journey were largely uneventful, although minor engine maintenance delayed the aircraft during its stop in Honolu- Honolulu.

After continuing through Wake Island, the Super Constellation landed safely at Guam before departing once again at 12:57 GMT.

We're doing the American way and saying Greenwich.

Okay, so Greenwich Mountain Time.

On March 15th, the next leg to Clark Air Base.

[laughs] We're in America, so we pronounce it American.

My idea was to practice in my hometown at that time.

And I had my residency in a couple of places, at the university and another one at the Clark Air Base.

when i among the air forces united states air force because they were selective i was one of the lucky ones who were selected to have my internship and residency training i practiced for about four years at home mostly in general practice and i i was also a member of a of the attending staff in one of the local hospitals.

And it was a great honor to be honored because that same hospital that I was attending, I used to go over there during my school days and learn something primarily about medicine from a practical point of view.

I was finding other things to do.

But anyway, what it, my very, very first assignment was Clark Air Base, Republic of the Philippines.

Mm-hmm.

And my, my assignments kept bi- bringing me back around to this question that kept coming back to me, and this included all of those assignments you talked about of being a military attache, is why is China being so successful in this thing that we call the maritime gray zone, right? Why has their expansionism into the, the Paracel Islands, and the Spratly Islands, and all these different places, and yet we don't seem to really have a coherent strategy for how we're going to counteract this?

... against, uh, President Corazon Aquino.

Corazon Aquino, yes.

Yeah, and there was one in which, uh, F4 aircraft from Clark Air Base flew low over Manila to sort of keep the, the, the, the plotters, the, the, the military coup inside so that the, the, uh, the government could or- get organized.

So it's not like it's never happened.

This time went through 20,000, we lost it once again.

So Jeff and I decided, realized that it was a, a cold issue, and so he said to me, "Can we make it to Clark Air Base on one motor?" And I said, look, I did the calculations for the fuel, and I said, "Yep." He said, "Okay, we'll close down one motor.

Won't tell anybody." [laughs]

Yep.