Rock Lobster
A group of pilots in Vietnam longs for good food from home. So one of them embarks on a daring search and recovery mission to find the main ingredient of an American favorite.

Serving in Vietnam in 1970 as an Air Force Forward Air Controller (FAC), I spent most of my time doing visual reconnaissance and controlling airstrikes. In order to be an integral part of their operations, FACs usually lived with the Army units they supported. The Army took good care of us. Their food was good, but it was also rather basic, bland, and predictable.

One day, during an unusual lull in combat operations, the conversation among our group of pilots turned to how much we missed the food from home. When I expressed a longing for Lobster Newburg, one of the other FACs said he used to make it at home — and could make it right there at Cao Lanh if he had the ingredients. We all salivated in unison.

Most of the recipe’s ingredients could be obtained or substituted easily, but we knew our Army chow hall had no lobsters — a major problem when making Lobster Newburg. I proposed a solution.

The next morning I hopped into my trusty 0-1 Birddog, in full combat gear, rockets and all, and flew about 45 minutes (at a dazzling 75 knots) to an even smaller Army outpost on the coast. There, I talked a young soldier into taking me to the waterfront so I could look for lobsters in the Vietnamese market. The closest thing I could find looked more like extremely large shrimp than lobsters, but they were fresh and had delicious-looking tails. I bought 10 of them, and the Vietnamese vendor packed them in seaweed and placed them in a cardboard box. Back at my airplane, I secured the box on the slick aluminum floor behind the seat and took off.

About 15 minutes into the flight, an odd movement caught my eye. There at my feet crawled one of my lobsters — with two more close behind! A quick glance behind me revealed that the cardboard box had essentially melted from the wet seaweed, and all 10 of my new crewmates were heading forward in the direction of the rudder pedals.

The 0-1 is a very stable aircraft, but it has no autopilot, and I couldn’t have reached the disintegrating box anyway. So I did the only thing I could think of: I pulled the nose of the Birddog up into a steep climb, whereupon all 10 crustaceans slid unwillingly to the back of the rear compartment. That pretty much describes the remainder of the flight home. Every five minutes or so the front floor would get crowded, I’d pull the nose up, and the creatures would disappear under my seat.

The airplane smelled a bit fishy for a few days, but the Lobster Newburg was delicious!

— Gary R. Stein is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. He lives in Universal City, Texas.