Air America

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Air America Curtiss C-46 , Oakland 1952

Air America was an American airline controlled by the CIA that conducted covert operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War . Outwardly, it appeared as a civil airline.

history

Air America pilot's hat

The airline emerged from Civil Air Transport (CAT), which was owned by Claire Lee Chennault and carried out supply flights to the Chinese front during World War II. When the company threatened bankruptcy in the post-war period, it was bought as a cover company by the CIA in 1949. The American Airdale Corporation was founded in Delaware for this purpose . On October 7, 1957, there was a reorganization, after which the Pacific Corporation, which operated other airlines, appeared as the parent company. The actual name change took place two years later.

From 1959 to 1962, Air America provided direct and indirect support to Operations Ambidextrous , Hotfoot and White Star (training for the Lao Armed Forces ). In addition, it had been supplying the rebellious Kuomintang in Burma with American weapons since 1950, some of which were supplied from Taiwan .

From 1962 to 1975, Air America used US personnel to provide logistical support for the Secret Army , transported refugees and even made reconnaissance flights . There were also SAR missions for downed fighter pilots in Indochina performed. Air America pilots were the first civilians to take part in combat operations.

The CIA hired Smoke Jumper of the US Forest Service , which had outside of the summer in the US idle. They were popular because they already worked in a quasi-military structure and were trained in parachuting and dropping air charges in difficult terrain.

In the summer of 1970, 24 twin-engine transport aircraft and 24 other STOL aircraft as well as 30 helicopters were used for operations in Burma , Cambodia , Thailand and Laos . During this time, more than 300 pilots, co-pilots, flight mechanics and load masters, all of whom were stationed in Laos and Thailand, worked for Air America. In 1970 Air America transported 20,000 tons of food to Laos. When North Vietnamese forces captured South Vietnam in 1975, Air America helicopters took the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon , their relatives and members of the South Vietnamese government to safety at the last minute .

After the withdrawal from Vietnam, there was a futile attempt to continue the airline at the Thai airport Udon Thani , the aviation hub and headquarters for Asia. As a result of the failure of this attempt, Air America was officially dissolved on June 30, 1976.

fleet

Air America's Helio U-10D in 1970 in Laos

During its existence, the airline (Air America) maintained various aircraft with STOL characteristics as well as some helicopters. There has been a large exchange of airplanes and helicopters between several different companies known collectively as Air Opium .

State-organized drug trafficking

Air America was involved in the drug trade on a large scale as a carrier . Allies (mostly informal) armies of American intelligence, as earlier by the French (at that time by the GCMa ), financed by these in their order of "mountain people" (especially the Hmong ) grown opium and refined from heroin with the help CIA was launched. A large part of the profits from this business went to pro-American politicians, such as Ouane Rattikone and the South Vietnamese air force chief and later Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky .

In this smuggling function, Air America was the successor organization to Air Laos Commerciale and other airlines known as " Air Opium ". The American history professor Alfred W. McCoy detailed these processes in his book The Politics of Heroin. CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (German: Die CIA und das Heroin ; Verlag Zweiausendeins, 2003). In 1972 the CIA tried unsuccessfully to censor the book "for national security reasons". The publication resulted in a number of investigative commissions in the United States, to which McCoy also testified, with all CIA witnesses denying any involvement in illegal activity. Robert Sproull, former DARPA director, suggested that parts of his agency were involved in Air America through Project AGILE (William Godel) .

Incidents

  • On June 5, 1972, an Air America Curtiss C-46 ( aircraft registration number ("EM-2") ) flew from Hue into a hill during a radar-based approach to Pleiku Airport after radio contact was lost. Mostly American and South Vietnamese soldiers were on board. All 32 occupants, 3 crew members and 29 passengers, were killed.

Trivia

Movies

See also

literature

  • Alfred W. McCoy: The CIA and Heroin. World politics through drug trafficking. Westend Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-86489-134-2 .
  • Curtis Peebles : Twilight warriors. Covert air operations against the USSR , Annapolis, Md. (Naval Institute Press) 2005. ISBN 1-59114-660-7

Web links

Commons : Air America  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James G. Lewis: James G. Lewis on Smokey Bear in Vietnam . In: Environmental History . tape 11 , no. 3 , July 2006, p. 598-603 , doi : 10.1093 / envhis / 11.3.598 .
  2. ↑ www.cia.gov CIA Air Operations in Laos, 1955-1974
  3. ^ William M. Leary: Air America History. (No longer available online.) In: air-america.org. Archived from the original on November 10, 2014 ; accessed on September 16, 2014 (English).
  4. ↑ US Department of Defense: Interview with Robert Sproull. (PDF) In: Executive Services Directorate. December 7, 2006, p. 81 , accessed on May 18, 2020 (English): “But we simply couldn't control our operation without knowing what Godel was up to. He may have been involved to some extent with an organization which I think was called Air America. "
  5. ^ Accident report C-46 "EM-2" , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on August 11, 2019.