Air Force Vietnam Fiftieth Commemoration
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Air Force Vietnam Fiftieth Commemoration THE U.S. AIR FORCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND THE VIETNAM WAR A NARRATIVE CHRONOLOGY VOLUME I: THE EARLY YEARS THROUGH 1959 KENNETH H. WILLIAMS COVER USAF airmen from the 483d Troop Carrier Wing repair a C–119 at Cat Bi airfield near Haiphong, Vietnam, May 1954. The aircraft, which was among those on loan to the French, had been damaged while delivering supplies to the besieged garrison at Dien Bien Phu, which fell on May 7. The USAF had hundreds of mechanics in Vietnam in 1953–54 servicing planes for the French. This photograph is a detail of the full image that appears on page 124. USAF. Vietnam Fiftieth Commemoration THE U.S. AIR FORCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND THE VIETNAM WAR A NARRATIVE CHRONOLOGY VOLUME I: THE EARLY YEARS THROUGH 1959 KENNETH H. WILLIAMS WASHINGTON, D.C. 2019 Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. All documents and publications quoted or cited have been declassified or originated as unclassified. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 ONE World War to Revolution: 1940–1945 5 TWO The Cold War Finds the Indochina War: 1946–1952 31 THREE U.S. and U.S. Air Force Involvement Deepens: 1953 65 FOUR The Siege of Dien Bien Phu: January–March 1954 93 FIVE The Fall of Dien Bien Phu: April–May 1954 125 SIX Armistice, Division, and Diem: June–December 1954 151 SEVEN Divisions Solidify, U.S. Commitment Grows: 1955–1956 191 EIGHT U.S. Training, Seeds of Revolt: 1957–1959 227 ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS 255 USAF C–119s taking off from Cat Bi airfield near Haiphong, Vietnam, in the spring of 1954. The United States had loaned these aircraft to the French, and they bore French markings. USAF mechanics maintained the planes, which French pilots flew, as did civilian American pilots from CIA-owned Civil Air Transport. USAF. INTRODUCTION Thunder from U.S. aircraft first rolled over Hanoi in 1942, two decades before most Americans date U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Japanese activities in Vietnam remained bombing targets for the rest of World War II. Just after the conclusion of the conflict, in September 1945, U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) P–38s buzzed aloft as Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence. USAAF planes had flown aid to Ho and his group of Viet Minh guerrillas and also carried French authorities who were intent on reestablishing France’s colonial claim on Indochina. The story of how the United States became entangled in Southeast Asia is a long and complicated one, and the U.S. Air Force (USAF) was a part of the equation at every step. The USAAF/USAF was flying in the region from 1942 through the collapse of the U.S.-supported government in Saigon in 1975. This chronology seeks to document, and to honor the service and sacrifice of, U.S. airmen for the full span of U.S. involvement. It ranges beyond strictly Air Force topics to provide a framework of context for why U.S. service members deployed to the region. Much of the context is not as far removed from the USAF as it might first appear, as any time senior leaders discussed potential U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia throughout the 1950s, nearly all scenarios prominently featured air assets of the USAF and/or carrier-based U.S. Navy (USN) aircraft. Although full-scale fighting broke out between the French and the indigenous, communist-affiliated Viet Minh by the end of 1946, the United States did not begin its more extensive engagement in the region until 1950, after China had fallen to the communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong. The USAF delivered the first military aid to the French in Vietnam in June 1950 during the same week hostilities erupted on the Korean Peninsula. Over the subsequent four years, the United States loaned France what became nearly its entire fleet of aircraft in Vietnam. By 1953, USAF mechanics were deploying to Vietnam to service these planes, in numbers that grew to nearly 500 airmen by the time Dien Bien Phu fell in May 1954. USAF officers and enlisted airmen served in-country through the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) from the 1 A USAF technician paints the French air force insignia on a USAF C–119 in preparation for delivery of the aircraft on loan to the French in early 1954. USAF. time of its establishment in 1950, as did air attachés assigned to the U.S. embassy in Saigon. One USAF officer who was ostensibly the assistant air attaché in the mid-1950s became one of the most significant Americans to serve in Vietnam during the decade. Col. Edward G. Lansdale was there on assignment with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), although he continued to wear the uniform of the USAF. In addition to his clandestine activities, which have been the subject of much comment and speculation, Lansdale became the most trusted U.S. advisor to Ngo Dinh Diem, the new prime minister of fledgling South Vietnam as of July 1954. Lansdale stood by Diem in the early months of 1955 as multiple issues threatened the viability of his government and many U.S. officials, in both Saigon and Washington, called for Diem to be replaced. In 1957, the USAF took over training the Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF), which the French had established in 1950 but never fully equipped or trained. The VNAF remained a small subset of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), and the U.S. Army-dominated leadership of the MAAG saw little role for the VNAF as it prepared the ARVN in almost exclusively conventional-force strategy and tactics. A nascent communist insurgency in South Vietnam, however, portended a much different kind 2 of conflict. By that time, the USAF was also flying covert operations in Laos, which was receiving more U.S. attention because of the rise of the communist Pathet Lao there. As the 1950s ended, U.S. attention had drifted from Southeast Asia to more pressing issues in Europe and the Middle East, but growing insurgen- cies in Vietnam and Laos would soon reclaim the focus. Decisions in this earlier period had planted the seeds for the expansive conflict in the 1960s, and for growing U.S. involvement. The story of U.S. engagement in the region in the 1940s and 1950s outlined in this book is essential to understanding U.S. escalation in the years that followed. The USAF was flying during every point of that time. * * * This study significantly expands the story of the USAF in Southeast Asia during the period covered and includes many details not found in previous books. It is also one of the few works that places the evolution of U.S. and French military involvement within the context of international and U.S. political affairs. The book draws heavily on documents and interviews in the Air Force archives, held by the Air Force Historical Research Agency, many of which have been recently declassified. It has also benefitted from the work of several scholars over the last couple of decades in Vietnamese, French, Chinese, and Russian archives that has greatly enlarged the inter- national context for developments in Southeast Asia. This book is a product of the Air Force Historical Support Division, under the direction of Dr. Richard Wolf, and owes much to the input of the staff. The depth of documentation is due in large part to the aid and research instincts of Ms. Yvonne Kinkaid, and to her extensive know- ledge of Air Force research materials. Ms. Patricia Engel’s systematic declassification efforts made a wider array of sources available for use in an unclassified study, while Ms. Terry Kiss tracked and retrieved inter- library books and articles with great alacrity. Dr. Priscilla Jones, Dr. Jean Mansavage, Mr. David Byrd, and Dr. John Smith, the now-retired senior historian, reviewed drafts of this work and provided feedback and encouragement, while Mr. Randy Richardson, Dr. Christopher Koontz, and Dr. Robert Oliver helped verify various details along the way. 3 Spector, Advice and Support. ONE World War to Revolution 1940–1945 As noted in the introduction, the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF)/U.S. Air Force (USAF) was involved in Southeast Asia from 1942 onward. This chapter briefly documents USAAF activities in the region during World War II, with particular focus on the later months of the conflict when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) became more directly involved with Ho Chi Minh. The U.S. military in the region was well aware of Ho by this time, as his organization, the Viet Minh, had been helping Americans locate and rescue downed airmen for almost a year. Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault met with Ho and arranged one of these operations. USAAF C–47s dropped arms and ammunition to Ho’s jungle encampment in July 1945, as well as OSS operatives who helped train the Viet Minh militia. The USAAF also inserted French officers in Vietnam in August 1945 who were intent on reestablishing colonial control of the region. As World War II ended, Ho and the Viet Minh took advantage of the power vacuum between the stand-down of the Japanese occupying forces in mid-August 1945 and Chinese/British transitional occupation in September to launch what became known as the August Revolution. French troops began arriving weeks later, with France’s leaders convinced that its prewar empire had to be reconstituted for France to remain a world power.