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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-05432 to 363-05435.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-05432 to 363-05435
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Title
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Article about Batman aviators
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Description
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Original title: "Batman", Keever's title: "Batman Fliers' Low-Level Television Zooms over South Vietnam Skies to Spot Infilatration", Article about Batman aviators, equipped with super sensitive surveillance equipment, published for North American Newspaper Alliance
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AI Usage Disclosure
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Draft transcripts were automatically generated via Google Document AI and are currently under review. Please report significant errors to Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.
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Transcript
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- Page 1
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Beverly Deepe
64A Hong Thap Tu
Saigon, Vietnam
August 20, 1966
Batmans-page 1
SAIGON, VIETNAM-Batman aviators, equipped with
super-sensitive
closed circuit television,
are swooping over the Vietnam skies to
spot Communist troop movements at night.
Five helicopter "Batmobiles" and seventeen pilots, gunners and
crew chiefs form a
highly-classified test team here to experiment with
multi-million-dollar "low light level television,"
commonly abbreviated
LLL-TV. The special test team arrived in Vietnam in March and by June
began flying its secret immm night missions.
Since the
group is
not a U. S. Army unit and has no numerical designations,
team members
"bats
k baptized the group "Batman," because, as one of them explained,
like our television can see at night." A "Bat Patch" WEB showing a
black batman inside a white television screen was designed and produced
at a dingy Saigon embroidery shop. It is worn daily by team members on
front of their fatigue shirts. The same emblon was painted on each of
the five specially-equipped ke helicopters. Children of the pilots sent
dime store decals of Batman to their fathers, who liberally pasted them on
doors and briefcases ("We call them Bat-cases"). A special jargon emerged.
("Our missions are called Batcaves").
go in the first thing in the morning?
So did Batman jokes.
The Batroon.).
("Where does Batma
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- Page 2
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Beverly Deepe
64A Hong Thap Tu
Saigon, Vietnam
August 20, 1966
Batman-page 2
"None of us have gone as far as getting Batman capes,"
one aviator
explained. "But one crewchief
scrounged a black flying suit,
which is not
regular Army issue. None of the other helicopter units know what LLL-TV means.
They just know us as 'one of the Batmen'."
The U. S. Army isn't especially eager to have anyone know about LLL-TV-
one of the most ambitious projects in night warfare experimentation for
combatting Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units who sleep in the daytime
and raise havoc in the countryside at night. The American military command
here. has clamped a high-level military classification on details, effectiveness
and tactical employment of the LLL-TV.
night,"
dooes
The TV camera is just like any other one-except it can see at
one of the test aviators explained. "Suppose I walk out and
it's as dark as the inside of a football. There is actually some moonlight or
So, the TV
starlight there, but it doesn't seem that way to the human eye.
camera picks up the little bit of available light, magnifies it, makes it
look like a normal picture on the TV screen--and I can see quite well
what's goingxx moving on the ground beneath me.
(More)
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- Page 3
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Beverly Deepe
64A Hong Thap Tu
Saigor, Vietnam
August 20, 1966
Batman-Page 3
Each of the five test helicopters--the standard
UH-1 Huey
The six
used in combat--is equipped with six black boxes totalling 129 pounds
in weight and worth US$5 million in research and development.
pieces aret a 45-pound, foot-long movable television camera "which sticks
out of the nose or the chin of the helicopter like a big black whisker,"
two nine-inch television monitor screens for black-and-white images,
a control unit, an electronic unit and a power supply.
"We look at the two television screens in each helicopter just
like the ones in our homes," one pilot explained.
"If I fly along
the Saigon river at night, I can see piers and ships-without the
television I might not see the ground. This is a new principle different
from radar or infra-red. The rest of the details are classified."
The Batman aviators have one of the most dangerous flying jobs
in the war for they fly far lower than most helicopters and 85 per cent
of their missions are at night. Every pilot has been shot at at least once;
most of them have been shot at mur almost every night mission they've flown;
The Batmen refused to discuss many
none have been shot down however.
of their missions,
since involved tactical employment of the LLL-TV.
But
one pilot described this missions
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- Page 4
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Beverly Deepe
64A Hong Thap Tu
Saigon, Vietnam
August 20, 1966
Batman--page 4
"Once two of our e choppers went down to the southernmost tip of
Vietnam for a night is test flight and I saw something I never saw or
heard of before in Vietnam. I saw a company-sized Viet Cong unit fire
on our chopper on command-that is, every Viet Cong fired simultaneously
on order. It looked like dozens and dozens of flashlight bulbs going off
in a second. The pilot pushed the mike button and me radio-ed that he was
being fired at. Before he finished talking, our escort gun ships were plastering
the area with rockets and machinegune fire. The Viet Cong didn't even hit
our Batmobile.
Like & bats, we fly without lights."
Craze
Ironically,
the Batmen in Vietnam don't know much about the Batman
"in the real world," GI jargon for the U. S. A. "We is no PLAINED
Batman is the rage in the United States, but we don't really know what it is A
We've never seen the TV program yet."
-30-
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Date
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1966, Aug. 20
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Subject
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Military surveillance; Aerial reconnaissance; Photographic reconnaissance systems; United States. Air Force
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Location
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Saigon, South Vietnam
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Coordinates
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10.8231; 106.6311
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Size
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20 x 26 cm
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Container
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B188, F6
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Format
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dispatches
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Collection Number
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MS 363
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Collection Title
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Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
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Creator
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Copyright Information
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These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
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Publisher
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Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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Language
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English
