Welcome to Vietnam, Seaman Crane

In contrast to the rest of the Hampton Roads Naval Museum's gallery, the color scheme and lighting of The Ten-Thousand-Day War at Sea: The U.S. Navy in Vietnam, 1950-1975 exhibit appears somewhat muted, but the new exhibit, its entrance seen here, brings the Navy's role in the Vietnam War to light.  Note the painting at right entitled "Welcome to Sunny Saigon."  (M.C. Farrington)

By M.C. Farrington
HRNM Historian
Visitors entering the Hampton Roads Naval Museum's new exhibit, The Ten-Thousand-Day War at Sea: The U.S. Navy in Vietnam, 1950-1975, are greeted by a painting of an earnest bespectacled young man in a service dress blue Navy jumper uniform. It is one of forty paintings within the Navy Art Collection made in Vietnam by combat artist James Scott.

Navy Art Collection painting 88-160-EC, "Welcome to Sunny Saigon," mixed media on board by James Scott.  (M.C. Farrington)

The Sailor looks, no pun intended, like a fish out of water as he awaits transport clad in dark blue wool in the tropical sun in a country that only has warm-and-wet or hot-and-dry seasons. Less than a day earlier he was probably in Oahu, and a day before that in San Francisco. Behind him is what one veteran called “probably the most photographed billboard in all of Vietnam.” The artist definitely took some artistic license, creating a sense of foreboding with his burnt orange and purple color palette, considering what the billboard behind the Sailor actually looked like.

Note that the Church of Christ billboard to the right of the Pan Am sign does share more of the color scheme of the Pan Am billboard as depicted in Scott's painting. (Courtesy of Manhhai)

The billboard depicts an early model Boeing 707, the aircraft model generally credited with opening up global air travel to the masses, which was introduced by Pan Am in 1958.

The original 707 in Pan Am livery, 1958. (Courtesy of Jon Proctor/ JetPhotos.net)

The model featured on the billboard is shown powered by four Pratt & Whitney JT3C engines (the civilian version of the J-57 engines that also powered early model Boeing B-52 bombers and the F-8U Crusader fighter), equipped with distinctive noise compressor pipes. By the time Scott's painting was made, most 707s had been refitted with JT3D turbofans which did not require the elaborate 10-tube appendage.

Former Air Force meteorologist John Stevenson's photograph of the billboard from his tour in Vietnam from 1968-69. (Courtesy of John Stevenson)

Despite a roiling insurgency in the countryside, where the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and American allies generally held sway during the day, and the Viet Cong shadow government and other nefarious nocturnal forces ruled the night, there was a nervous normalcy in the daily comings and goings of commercial traffic in South Vietnam’s capital. This included regularly scheduled commercial air traffic to Tan Son Nhut air base, which was also Saigon’s commercial aviation hub.

Sign med detail with words, which correctly seem to reflect what was written on the actual billboard. (M.C. Farrington)

On the billboard is written, “công ty hàng không kinh nghiệm nhưt the giới,” which, roughly translated via algorithm, seems to be, “Airline companies experience as the world.” But a contemporaneous Pan Am tourist poster for Saigon probably reflects the message they conveyed to Vietnamese air travelers.

Saigon travel poster, undated but probably released during the early-1960s. (Courtesy of Manhhai)

It is not clear that the young Navy seaman in the painting arrived in the country via Pan Am (or, for that matter, was leaving through the airline).  He might not even be the primary subject of the painting.  Perhaps the Pan Am sign itself was Scott's real subject.  It is also possible that the artist was inspired by the billboard’s incongruity; a seemingly normal travel advertisement in what was then one of the world’s busiest airports.  Yet, it was also a war zone.

An aerial reconnaissance photograph from February 1968 shows the huge footprint of Tan Son Nhut, including the large rectangular building at the upper left, which is the headquarters building of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), also known as "Pentagon East." (Courtesy of Manhhai)

Even today, sharp-eyed airline passengers can spot Air National Guard military aircraft such as KC-135s (a long-serving cousin of the 707) at airports around the United States, denoting that many civilian airports have an ancillary military function, but Tan Son Nhut was a military airbase with an ancillary civilian function. Not only that, but Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) headquarters (known informally to many at the time as "Pentagon East") was adjacent to the airbase, so it was continually a prime target of Viet Cong sappers, mortars and rockets.

This wire service map, shown with true north-south orientation, is self-explanatory.  Note that MACV HQ is referred to as "Pentagon East." (Courtesy of Mannhai)

A Pan Am 707 (left) on the ramp of Tan Son Nhut airport, by 1970 the world's third busiest, shares space with a Chinese (Taiwanese) airliner and a bewildering array of civilian and Vietnamese military transport aircraft.  (Douglas Pike Photograph Collection/ Courtesy of Manhhai)

Little remains of a Republic of Vietnam Air Force C-47 transport after a Viet Cong attack in February 1968. (Courtesy of Manhhai)

“Even back then it was amazing to me that we were working commercial flights into a war zone,” said former Pan American flight attendant Suzanne Donovan in an interview for Pennsylvania public radio station WITF.

Seaman "L. Crane." (M.C. Farrington)

Aside from the question of where this seemingly out-of-place Sailor came from and where he might be going, the question remains, who is he?

(M.C. Farrington)

He could have been painted as a prop; an anonymous everyman, but he wasn't.  James Scott turned the luggage tags conspicuously towards the viewer with the name clearly visible, "L. Crane." Scott, a former naval aviator turned combat artist, was unavailable for comment, having died on May 8, 2014.

Crane's seabag (M.C. Farrington)

Two separate cruise books from vessels that performed missions off the coast of Vietnam during the latter-1960s each contained a junior enlisted individual with the name, "L. Crane."  One was clearly an airman (with a green rating badge) aboard USS Oriskany (CVA 34), which was deployed to the theater from July 1967 to January 1968, but he appears in the carrier's 1969 cruise book, which covered yet another deployment off Vietnam.  A Seaman Apprentice L. Crane served aboard USS Barry (DD 933), which completed a Western Pacific deployment to Vietnam from late 1965 to early 1966. Unfortunately the young sonar technician from the destroyer's Fox Division who made that cruise does not bear much of a physical resemblance to the young man depicted in the painting, so the subject's true identity remains a mystery.

From USS Barry's 1966 cruise book.

Pan Am's last flight from the Republic of Vietnam, a 747 packed with “adopted” Vietnamese company employees, occurred on April 24, 1975 during the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces, memorably depicted in the movie Last Flight Out (1990). United Airlines led the way in reestablishing American commercial air service once again to the airport, by then located near Ho Chi Minh City in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, in December 2004.

Captured for a moment in time by a Navy combat artist as the Vietnam War was rapidly heating up, the fate of his subjects, both the billboard and the Sailor, remain unknown.