written by Todd DePastino
We continue to receive phone calls and emails from readers in response to John Barber’s story about elephants in Vietnam. In that post, I asked readers if they had ever seen elephants being used by the Viet Cong, the NVA, or ARVN during the Vietnam War. George Kniss, who served as an Air Force photographer in Vietnam in 1963-1964, sent me the wonderful reconnaissance photo he developed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in early 1964, with the following explanation.
I did not witness elephants being used in the war, but have reconnaissance photograph(s) taken by our RF-101C Voodoo low altitude reconnaissance aircraftat a very low altitude while on a mission in the Delta, I believe. I remember developing the roll film and then printing the recon run and seeing the elephants. They were running in a paddy and some in the high grass. It was a small herd. I had never before seen any elephants in Vietnam at this time in early 1964.