Description
Vietnam War Medal, Vietnam Campaign Star, Flight Lieutenant A.L. Heiner, R.A.A.F.
Vietnam officially engraved: “014503 Heiner A.L.”
Vietnam Star engraved: “014503 Heiner A.L.”
Alan Loftus Heiner was born on 10th August 1931 in Ipswich, Queensland, Australia, he served in the Vietnam War with No. 2 Bomber Squadron as an Armament Engineer with the rank of Flight Lieutenant.
He served between 22nd June 1967 – 28th July 1967, followed by another tour from 2nd November 1967 to 4th December 1968.
He appears shortly in a video from the Australian War Memorial of Christmas Greetings during 1967 to family members of those serving in Vietnam.
No 2 Squadron in their Canberra Bombers were flying upwards of 8 sorties a day, they flew about 5% of the Wing’s sorties, but were credited with 16% of the bomb damage assessment.
As Armament Engineer, Lt Heiner was working with Ex WW2 bomb stocks initially, loads varied from 10x500lb bombs to 6x1000lb bombs, after 15 months they exhausted the war stocks, switching to the USAF M117 Bombs, which were much more reliable.
Their aircraft serviceability was high, they had 8 aircraft kept online and the maintenance personnel worked 2 x 12 hour shifts to meet the daily taking rate of eight sorties, the squadron achieved a 97% serviceability rate
