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2nd Flight Platoon, "Bandits"

bandit patch

The 2nd Flight Platoon was formed from from the 2/171st Aviation Company assets that were absorbed by the 281st Aviation Company (AML) (-) when it first arrived in Nha Trang.  The 2/171st was recently formed by combining the assets of the 145th and 6th Airlift Platoons.  Originally the 2nd Platoon was assigned the Special Operations mission supporting 5th SFG (ABN), Detachment B-52, Project Delta primary and other B Detachments and Special Projects as secondary.  Over the years this mission migrated to supporting the lettered companies of the 5th SFG (ABN), MACV-RECONDO, DSA II Corps, and other missions assigned from 10th CAB.

Our late second president of the association and tireless organizer, Bob Mitchell (Colonel, Aviation, TN ARNG) built a web page for the Bandits. He and the webmaster after him, Fred Mentzer, incorporated many of those pages into our 281st.com website. Unfortunately, they had not quite finished this project before both men joined our growing list of those Died After Tour. Each has a special memorial in the Remembrance pages.

[ The webmaster has removed the URL to the web archive of the original Bandit website formerly here. A link in Bob's page to the original WolfPack page which contained a dangerous phishing pop-up. ]