During World War II, when my father was a navigator in B-24s flying out of China, they went on a mission over Tonkin China, as Vietnam was known then--and lost one engine and had to throttle back another to half power. They threw everything out of the plane and limped back to their base, barely clearing the mountain range between Vietnam and China. In his written account, he said "The ancient imperial city of Hue is really very beautiful--especially at the altitude we were flying."
