VAH-21

Former VAH-21 aircraft on display at the Pima Air & Space Museum. These aircraft were used to attack Viet Cong road and river traffic. (Click the photo to enlarge it)

VAH-21, nicknamed the Roadrunners, was a short-lived Heavy Attack Squadron of the U.S. Navy, based at Naval Station Sangley Point, Philippines. The squadron flew the specialized AP-2H version of the Lockheed P-2 Neptune aircraft, of which four examples were converted from standard SP-2H airframes.^[1]

Operations

The squadron was established on 1 September 1968, as the first squadron in the Navy with a night interdiction mission using new electronic surveillance equipment. Its mission was to interdict logistics moving over land or sea. A detachment of VAH-21 was immediately established at a Navy facility associated with Cam Ranh Air Base, South Vietnam. The detachment had been a Naval Air Test Center Project TRIM Detachment (TRIM: Trails Roads Interdiction Multi-sensor) prior to becoming a VAH-21 detachment. VAH-21 was disestablished on 16 June 1969.^[1]

See also

• History of the United States Navy
• List of inactive United States Navy aircraft squadrons

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Aviation Squadrons.

1. Grossnick, Roy A. (1995). Dictionary of American Naval Aviation Squadrons, Volume 1, Chapter 3: Heavy Attack Squadron Histories (VAH) (PDF). Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy. Retrieved 2014-02-04.