Okay, I'll bite.
Kinmen Island ( Quemoy ), Republic of China. A small dog bone shaped island three kilometers from the Communist Chinese coast. The island is somewhat famous for their daily artillery duels with their neighbors across the water. It went on for so many years that somehow they decided that Kinmen would shell the commies three days of the week and the commies would shell Kinmen the other three, leaving Sunday as a day of rest. The big industry on the island was making knives out of spent shell casings. The island has an extensive series of undergound bunkers and once had a standing contigent of 100,000 men, being the front line of defense for an attack against the ROC.
The co military/civilian airfield has one runway that is parallel to the shore line on the east coast of the island. The runway has small hills to the west, higher ground on both ends, and big trees all around it. The runway was surrounded by machine gun and anti-aircraft batteries and usually had a tank sitting at the approach end of runway 06. Located in the Taiwan straight it was not unusual to have low clouds and fog along with fairly strong winds. The approach was usually an NDB circle to land. Since the approach came in at almost a 90 degree angle to the runway we just used the radar to fly to the southern tip of the island and then flew landmarks into the runway. One had to be careful not to overshoot the turn because not too far past the other side of the island became Communist Chinese airspace. It took a fair amount of skill to get in their and give the passengers a smooth ride as well.
On the way out for takeoff on runway 06 the crew on the tank would always stand at attention and salute. I always thought that was a nice touch.
Typhoonpilot
