Congratulations, Buckeye Wing on Your May 5-7 Reunion

Members of Ohio's Buckeye Wing are looking forward to a great reunion starting May 5 in Covington, Kentucky. Best wishes for good fellowship, restored memories of great flying events (or lies thereof) and service to one another!

(Don't forget to bring your challenge coin!)

Dayton Agent Orange Town Hall Meeting - November 14, 2015. Special C-123 Info Provided

By Holly Zachariah
The Columbus Dispatch  •  Saturday May 2, 2015

As a young man, Ralph DeSanto Jr. took apart the valves in front of him, valves that had come from C-123 aircraft that had repeatedly sprayed Agent Orange over Vietnam.

Each time he popped a rubber seal, he said, a tiny plume of red dust rose up. Inside each valve was the crystallized chemical from the herbicide that was widely deployed to kill the vegetation that concealed the enemy in the jungles and forests during the Vietnam War.

DeSanto never once thought that he should be worried, that he may be putting himself in danger, that with every touch of those airplane parts or with any swipe of residue he might have been increasing his risk for diseases.

But pressure is increasing by the day for the Veterans Administration to heed its own commissioned report released in January by the Institute of Medicine that said flight and maintenance crews such as the one that DeSanto was part of were exposed to high levels of dioxin. Advocates say the VA should expand the list of those eligible to receive benefits and care for Agent Orange-related claims to include them.

Until now, because those crew members were Air Force reservists and not classified as active-duty personnel, the VA has denied them veteran status and has not allowed their claims to any Agent Orange-related illnesses.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and six other senators last week sent a bipartisan letter to VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald, urging him to immediately use his executive authority to clear the way for the reservists’ claims.

“The VA’s position has been disappointing,” the letter reads. “It is our desire to see that C-123 veterans who suffer today because of service-related exposure to Agent Orange receive the help they need.”

Such a move could include as many as 2,100 former Air Force reservists from three bases, including perhaps as many as 1,200 who worked at Rickenbacker from 1972 to the mid-1980s, when the last C-123 that had been used to spray the chemical left the base.

VA Announces Another C-123 Announcement Delay

Reported today in the Pittsburgh Gazette:

By Torsten Ove / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A Department of Veterans Affairs announcement regarding new Agent Orange benefits for Air Force reservists who flew on C-123 transport planes in Pittsburgh and elsewhere has been delayed again until next week. (note: a subsequent email from VA further delayed the announcement and stated that no date has been set.)

The announcement by Allison Hickey, undersecretary of benefits for the VA, was supposed to be last week and then was moved to this week, but it's been pushed back once more because the details are still being worked out, a VA spokesperson said. A fleet of the giant C-123s was used in Vietnam to spray Agent Orange defoliant.

After the war, the Air Force removed their spray tanks removed and supposedly decontaminated the planes before returning them to duty in the U.S. at the 911th air base here and two other bases in Massachusetts and Ohio.

Some 2,100 crew members, flight nurses and mechanics who flew on the C-123s or serviced them from 1972 to 1982 have long suspected that the planes remained contaminated with dioxin, the toxic chemical in Agent Orange, and that their medical problems are the result of exposure. They say they should be eligible for the same Agent Orange benefits that all veterans who served on the ground in Vietnam receive, but the VA has denied most of their claims over the years.

A recent report by the Institute of Medicine, however, concluded that C-123 reservists were probably exposed to dioxin.

The VA is expected to announce that Agent Orange benefits will now be extended to all C-123 veterans who are eligible.

Ohio NPR Covers C-123 Exposure Issue

Ohio's NPR reporter, Lewis Wallace, does a complete and fair job reviewing the C-123 post-Vietnam Agent Orange exposures. He details how Patches came to be the lightening rod for veterans' attention, and the difficulties moving VA forward on acknowledging veterans' disability claims. Visit for text and audio.

NPR Seeks Ohio C-123 Veterans

A reporter has contacted our Association to discuss possible coverage of the C-123 Agent Orange issue, but needs some Rickenbacker/Wright-Patterson C-123 veterans with whom to speak.

Contact: lwallace@wyso.org or call 937-769-1380

A current Ohio-area resident is ideal but they'd also like input from others previously stationed there with the spray outfit, or who flew with Westover or Pittsburgh and moved to Ohio later.

Update: C-123 Agent Orange Exposure

The Army's Public Health Command has been asked to review the April Air Force C-123 Agent Orange report, in particular because of the Air Force disregard for the Army's TG312 publication. Elsewhere, we have been contacted by an independent, university-based toxicologist who is reviewing both the AF and the VA reports which he has already labeled "unscientific". Rumors are that a peer-reviewed article is coming - unlike the AF and VA reports which were internal papers without outside critical review (which they haven't survived!)
Here is an interesting question: the Air Force report dismisses the Army TG312 findings, mentioning that the Army meant TG312 for office workers, yet in that report (Chapter One, Page One), the Army states:

"Although this TG focuses on office worker exposures, the general method used to develop an exposure assessment may be adapted for other exposure scenarios by adjusting exposure fact."

Destruction of Toxic C-123, April 2010

Can you see the problem? Can you see what happens when reports are written with a pre-determined outcome and the researchers cherry-pick materials to reach that pre-determined conclusion? Both the VA and the AF needed to insure C-123 veterans were prevented from successful service-connected claims, and their reports were generated with the objective in mind. OSD must be proud!

Regarding our effort to get justice from the VA, here is where we can use some help:

Michael Turner, Ohio

1. Ohio's Congressional delegation (especially Rep. Mike Turner) should be informed re: the actions of USAFSAM's unscientific report. If the aircraft were indeed safe, why did the AF Museum spend over $50,000 to decontaminate an aircraft (Patches) which didn't need decontamination, and why did the AF spend $120,000 to quarantine the C-123s in Davis-Monthan's Boneyard. And why did the AF destroy the aircraft in 2010 if not contaminated? Answer: the planes were indeed contaminated per many tests, and only veterans' claims for service connection resulted in a political decision that we haven't been exposed!

2. We need more universities where we have our veterans (Harvard, BU, Northeastern, Amherst, Wellesley, Tufts, Dartmouth, Indiana, Carnegie-Mellon) to come on board (some already have) with challenges to the AF/VA reports - they need to decry such unscientific activities. We need our veterans (that means YOU!) to sit in front of the university experts and solicit more support - even their professional opinions in letter form are terrific support

3. We need results of our veterans' medical exams in which physicians, after examining the veteran and the medical record, find Agent Orange exposure "as likely to as not" to have caused the illness

4. We need the American Legion to seek influential experts from Johns Hopkins, NIH, Bethesda, or Howard to review the AF/VA reports

5. We need the American Legion and Vietnam Veterans of America to FOIA the entire AF background on their C-123 report or to seek it as a courtesy from USAFSAM & Colonel Benjamin, in keeping with DOD5400.7-R_AFMAN 33-302 which encourages release of information without the need to involve FOIA

6. We need Senator Patty Murray (WA), Chair of the Senate Veterans Committee, to be as involved as Senator Burr, the ranking member - they together have endorsed the Blue Water Navy so supporting us is possible. Can VVA and American Legion approach her or her staffer?

 7. We need support from the Army Aviation and Marine Corps Aviation Associations, but we won't get it is we can't get the Air Force Association behind us. Can American Legion and VVA help there?

8. We need professional societies such as the Society of Toxicology to weigh in; SOT was "sucker-punched" when T. Irons and W. Dick (VA Public Health) presented their poster display summarizing the VA's report

9. VA and AF have both constructed an argument new to toxicology - for the first time and contrary to earlier IOM reports, a suggestion is made that contamination does not result in exposure. They have dismissed inhalation as an exposure route without scientific justification. They have dismissed ingestion as an exposure route without scientific justification. And finally, by constructing a hypothesis of "dry dioxin transfer", they dismiss the dermal route of exposure. There is no science behind the VA's hypothesis that crews couldn't have been exposed via the dermal route aboard this "heavily contaminated' airplane which was "a danger to public health" (according to AF toxicologists)

10. We need the IOM back on board regarding the VA's proposed special project investigating the C-123 contamination - VA's promised Statement of Work should be submitted and publicly discussed

11. ideas?