Bien Hoa Is Taking Rockets

Timelines are strange. When you tell a story you have to decide whether to start and the beginning or the end or the middle. What makes the most sense is subjective. I think I have to tell you the middle part last. But in this case it seems to make sense.

 February 26th, 1969 a helicopter pilot from the 334th Armed Helicopter Company pressed record on a portable tape deck and captured an hour of live radio traffic during an attack at Bien Hoa in Vietnam.  A copy, possibly the original recording resides in the Michael Cook collection at the Vietnam Center & Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University. The audio is posted on line and available here. For that reason I believe that the person who made the recording is Michael Cook and that he was a member of the VHPA. It's a common enough name that which Michael Cook is hard to determine without more information. The recording on it's own merits is fascinating but it didn't come directly to me from that archive.

Fast forward to today. There is a zine and cassette of that recording for sale on eBay. It identifies the recording with additional location information and cites the recording as by the "3rd platoon 'Dragons' 334 AHC 145th Combat Aviation Battalion. The zine consists (purportedly) of a transcription of that recording along with related images and documents. But the zine was made in 1981 with a copyright is listed as "W.T. Boys" But that is 12 years after the recording was made.

The description states "These are not official U.S. Army tapes. They were recorded by Dragon 34 as a personal attempt to document the war. An inexpensive cassette recorder was carried in 34's aircraft for several weeks and was turned on whenever it looked like something was about to happen."  With that information I found the origin of the tape and zine. There was an advert in the classifieds of Solider of Fortune Magazine. This ad below is from the February 1982 issue, I also found it in the June issue. But for the zine to date to 1981 it had to have been advertised earlier as well.

The actual text is as follows:

"BIEN HOA IS TAKING ROCKETS. Cassette of TET offensive recorded by Cobra Pilot of 334th AHC as it happened. An hour of war "as it is." Includes 30 page transcript booklet with photos, just $15 postpaid. BIEN HOA PRODUCTIONS, Dept. SKS, Box 56, Fayetteville, AR 72702-0056."

That company, Bien Hoa Productions, sold other live military recordings, all advertised primarily in Solider of Fortune. It was an actual incorporated company, dissolved in 1990. [SOURCE] The agent name is "Tuckler Boys" a name that comes up often in this search. It surely wasn't their primary purpose but nonetheless, their duplication and distribution of the recordings is why they still exist today and appear in multiple university research libraries. Notes that were mailed with the tapes connect to a Tuck Boys. His name and address also appear with the PO box in the August 1989 issue of the Vietnam Newsletter. [SOURCE]. Is Tuck Boys also W.T. Boys or are they siblings? Perhaps but it looks like he also used that W.T. name in the SAAB club of American Newsletter in 1981.

The earliest I've found a classifieds ad was October 1981 in Solider of Fortune magazine. But there are still references to it in all sorts of chat rooms and corners of the internet. [SOURCE] I found it randomly in an issue of Counterparts [SOURCE], Popular Mechanics,  even an issue of Popular Communications from 1983 [SOURCE]. The tape even is cited as a source in the book Dark Laughter: War in Song and Popular Culture by Les Cleveland where the name "Tuck Boys" appears again. It was published in 1994. Once you start looking, he appears to be everywhere. I now think the connection between Cook and W.T. Boys is a red herring. He may have just been a customer who bought that tape. the connection is shaky as the same tape appears in multiple university collections. I am more confident that Tuck and W.T. are the same person and quite possibly also the person who made that tape.

Bien Hoa Productions 1990 catalog

The question remains: Who is Tucker Boys?