Serving Those Who Serve: Jim Gatz flew the C-130 to resupply Marines during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam

FAIRHOPE, Ala. (WKRG) — Jim Gatz of Fairhope earned his pilot’s license in his hometown of Milwaukee, shortly after graduating from Marquette University. Then he said he asked his father, “What do I do now?”

“He said, Go learn how to fly an airplane,” Gatz said.

And that’s what Gatz did, earning a private pilot’s license. Then he decided to join the Air Force. He trained in small jet trainers but after flight training, he was given a choice.

“They gave us a list of the aircraft that were available—and there were like 300 F-4s available. And there were like 6 C-130s,” he said.

Gatz said he chose the C-130—a beast of an aircraft that can haul cargo or troops. Knowing he was headed to the Vietnam War, he chose the C-130 over the fighter jet on the advice of an instructor.

“Before you upgrade to a pilot on one of those things (F-4) you’ll have to get a thousand hours and you’re not going to get a thousand hours in Vietnam—but if you take a C-130, you’ll get a thousand hours,” Gatz said. “They’ll have checked you out as an aircraft commander over there, and when you get back to the States, you’ll be flying the left seat.”

So Gatz completed the training and headed to Vietnam. He spent a year there between December 1967 and January 1969. Based in the Philipines, he flew his C-130 to resupply Marines pinned down during the Tet Offensive.

“With ammunition and food and whatever else they needed. And we tried to do that with airdrops, but the drop zone was too narrow,” he said.

Gatz said by the time the Marines got to their supplies, the enemy was already there. So they opted for using something called a “low altitude parachute extraction system.”

“A parachute would fly out of the backend and then pull whatever pallets were in that airplane out—now we had to get down to about 3 feet off the ground, of course, we had the gear down,” Gatz said.

Gatz said they couldn’t land because the Viet Cong would pepper the stopped aircraft with mortars.

“So it was an action-packed operation—we made it. We took care of the Marines,” Gatz said. “They had 20,000 North Vietnamese troops surrounding them in the area.”

Gatz went on to a 25-year career as a commercial pilot for Delta Airlines and also served in the Air Force Reserve based at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery.

And we’re proud to recognize him for Serving Those Who Serve .

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