Civil Air Transport

A CAT C-46 in Indochina in the early 1950s

Civil Air Transport ( CAT ) was a Chinese airline operated by former US pilots in Asia after World War II . The seat of the company was Taipei . The company was operated directly by the US intelligence services from 1950.

history

The Willauer Box

The company was built by the former commander of the Flying Tigers , Claire Chennault , mainly from veterans of this unit. Civil Air Transport took on support tasks for the national Chinese government under Chiang Kai-shek from 1946 to 1949 . After the defeat of the nationalists in the Chinese Civil War , the company tried rather unsuccessfully to open a market in Indochina. In August 1950 the company was established by the Central Intelligence Agencyacquired. Only Chennault himself was officially informed of this within the workforce. CAT officially acted as a civil airline and offered scheduled passenger flights, but at the same time also carried out secret operations to support anti-communist movements in the Indochina region , such as supply flights from Guomindong bases in Burma. From 1950 the airline took on numerous transport missions in the service of the French during the Indochina War . After the end of the war, CAT took over the repatriation of around 20,000 refugees from the communist north of the country. In 1959 the company was renamed Air America .

Incidents

From 1946 to the cessation of operations in 1968, Civil Air Transport suffered 16 total write-offs of aircraft, 8 of them with Curtiss C-46 Commando. 173 people were killed in 11 of them. Example:

• On June 20, 1964, a Curtiss C-46D ( aircraft registration number B-908 ) crashed shortly after take-off from Taichung Airport due to a loss of control after an engine failure. All 57 occupants, 5 crew members and 52 passengers, were killed. It was the accident with the most fatalities in a C-46 in civil service (see also Civil Air Transport Flight 106 ) .

reception

The DEFA - Movie squadron bat of Erich Engel in 1958 based on the eponymous play the West German author Rolf Honold , offering ideologically correct form of the use circumstances, under the conditions of the Cold War .

literature

• Albert Grandolini, Marc Koelich: The airlines of the CIA - Civil Air Transport . Part 1. In: Fliegerrevue Extra . No. 25 . Möller New Media, Berlin 2009, p. 90-113 .
• Albert Grandolini, Marc Koelich: The CIA Airlines - Between Korean War and ĐiĐn Biên Phủ . Part 2. In: Fliegerrevue Extra . No. 26 . Möller New Media, Berlin 2009, p. 88-111 .
• Albert Grandolini, Marc Koelich: The Airlines of the CIA - The fourth and last life of Civil Air Transport . Part 3. In: Fliegerrevue Extra . No. 27 . Möller New Media, Berlin 2009, p. 90-113 .
• Curtis Peebles : Twilight warriors. Covert air operations against the USSR , Annapolis, MD (Naval Institute Press) 2005. ISBN 1-59114-660-7

Web links

Commons : Civil Air Transport  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jacques Dalloz: Dictionnaire de La Guerre d'Indochine. Paris 2006, p. 54
2. ↑ Marc Koelich, Tom Cooper: Operation "Haik". The CIA's covert fight against Sukarno. In: Flieger Revue Extra No. 19, Möller Neue Medien, Berlin 2007, p. 86
3. ↑ Christopher E. Goscha : Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954) - An International and Interdisciplinary Approach. Copenhagen 2011, p. 105 f.
4. ↑ Civil Air Transport accident statistics , Aviation Safety Network , accessed on May 3, 2020.
5. ↑ Accident report C-46 B-908 , Aviation Safety Network , accessed on January 19, 2016 (English).