In the January of 1973 we in Defense Attaché Office in the American Embassy, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, found ourselves in an unusual situation. President Nixon had declared his Southeast Asia policy of Vietnamization was succeeding. In Vietnam, all US forces were ordered to cease fighting and that included air assets as well as the ground troops. Yet we had authorized air support until August 15.

What did all this mean to me, the Air Attaché (AIRA) in the Embassy? First off, it meant I was in the loop to approve all B-52 strikes, secondly it meant, along with my co-workers, a daily briefing to the Ambassador and the Country Team about how things were going on the battlefield. Theoretically, we should have had no other involvement. But war always skews things in unforeseen ways.

 My office suddenly had the task of taking over where Blue Chip left off. Now, Blue Chip was the USAF 7^th Air Force command post at Tan Son Nhut AB, SVN whose job during those war years was to manage all air assets, i.e., approve and schedule all war-related missions. And that mission is what I found myself in charge of for a few weeks until a new CP was established at Nakhom Phanom (NKP), Thailand.