Sentry Aircraft Cylinders

US Army Operates Floating Aircraft Engine Repair Depot in South Vietnam (Official Department of Defense motion picture film by the US Army under the direction of MACV Office of Information. Photography by SP-4 Lucas and SP-5 Lucero. Sound by SP-5 Lowe.) To keep up with highly specialized and sophisticated maintenance demands for the Army’s large numbers of aircraft and helicopters in South Vietnam, the US Army has gone to sea. The USNS Corpus Christi Bay, a 538-feet long US Navy vessel, operated by a civilian crew, but with an Army maintenance battalion living on board, has taken on major maintenance work normally done in the United States . Anchored in the South China Sea off the coast of Vung Tau, 40-miles southeast of Saigon, the Corpus Christi Bay has one of the most elaborate machine shops operating anywhere in South Vietnam. The dust and sand of Vietnam play havoc with the precision parts of a turbine helicopter engine. Engines in need of repair are carried to the Corpus Christi Bay in sealed metal containers. Once they are lowered into the repair shop, the engines are inspected, taken completely apart, repaired, parts manufactured in needed, rebuilt and tested–all on board ship. The 360 members of the Army’s 1st Transportation Corps Battalion work in two, eight-hour shifts to keep the helicopters flying. Since going on duty off the coast of Vietnam two years ago, the Corpus Christi Bay has substantially reduced the flow of engine parts between the US and South …