Air America, the now-famous “front company” airline of the CIA, flew WWII aircraft alongside modern types during the Vietnam War. By now Air America has already been thoroughly written on elsewhere. Less well-known is a similar setup in the same timeframe, also using WWII aircraft: Continental Air Services Incorporated.
(C-46 Commando during WWII.)
(C-46 Commando of CASI at Long Tieng, Laos during 1975.)
Many Americans of a certain age consider Panama only as the bisected nation on either side of the now-defunct Panama Canal Zone, while a younger generation only recalls it as one of the USA’s “regime change” operations.
Panama, the independent nation, once had its own small army which used WWII arms long after WWII.
(Panamanian soldier with WWII M1 pot helmet and M1 Garand rifle, in tear gas mask during a 1968 coup.) (photo via Bettmann images)
(Within this mountain of Panamanian weapons captured during 1989, is a WWII M1 carbine and M1928 Thompson submachine gun.)
(WWII American M1 pot helmet of the Panama Defense Force’s (PDF) military police captured in 1989. During the 1980s the PDF had reconditioned some of these old helmets with new suspensions, even as kevlar helmets entered the army.)
The use of man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS, against WWII-era aircraft was not totally unique to the 1986 story of the plane below; nor even against the particular plane involved, the C-47 Skytrain.
What sets this incident apart is that the plane and crew survived allowing the event to be fully documented after the fact, and also that another aircraft was able to photograph it in flight.
(The South African C-47 Skytrain which was hit by a SA-7 “Grail” in 1986 making an emergency landing with its tail blown off.)
(South African soldier with a captured SA-7 “Grail” during the 1981 “Protea” operation against SWAPO inside Angola.)
The fall of Saigon in 1975, and along with it the fall of South Vietnam and final end of the Vietnam War, is most remembered in the United States for the dramatic helicopter evacuation of the American embassy.
Less known is the final chapter to the “Frequent Wind” story: how the aircraft carrier USS Midway, built to fight the Imperial Japanese Navy during WWII, ended up retrieving the remnants of the defunct VNAF (South Vietnamese air force) during the summer of 1975.
(USS Midway (CV-41) at the end of WWII, prior to commissioning.)
(USS Midway with US Air Force helicopters staged prior to the start of “Frequent Wind” in 1975.)
(A most unusual scene as the flight deck of USS Midway is filled with land-based warplanes of the defunct South Vietnamese air force.)
Through remarkable circumstances, the last C-47 Skytrain built during WWII ended up in the Congo where it lingered on into the 21st Century.
(C-47 Skytrain. The stripes are an identification marking used during the 1944 “Overlord” D-Day landings.)
(The last C-47 Skytrain built during WWII, in Goma, D.R. Congo during December 2014. This had been Mobutu’s DC-3.) (photo by Abel Kavanagh)
As a background to the astonishing story and unfortunate fate of this one Skytrain, it is perhaps worthwhile to look at the very long and varied history of the C-47 / DC-3 in the country. The plane is somewhat unique in aviation in that it became almost symbolic of a new nation’s struggles.
Sadly the military history of Lebanon will, at least for the near future, be dominated by the horrible 1970s – 1980s civil war. The country did have military history prior to that, including WWII-era warplanes in its early air force.
(Lebanese air force Harvard, the RAF’s name for WWII lend-leased T-6 Texan trainers.)
(Lebanese air force SM.79 bomber. The country was the last in the world to fly this WWII Italian warplane.)
(part 1 of a 2-part series)
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet Union conducted regular nuclear weapons tests. One of these was unique in that it was not just a test detonation of a weapon, but a full-scale military exercise which involved a blend of WWII-vintage systems and their Cold War-era replacements.
(One of the two Tu-4 “Bull” strategic bombers involved in the 1954 exercise. There was a primary and alternate Tu-4 staged, of which only one dropped a bomb. The “Bull” was an unlicensed copy of the WWII American B-29 Superfortress.)
(An ex-Wehrmacht PaK 40 anti-tank gun smashed and radioactive following the 1954 Soviet atomic test.)
(A WWII Il-10 “Beast” burns after the exercise atomic detonation.)
France restarted domestic production of the Junkers Ju-52 transport after WWII. Although intended as a quick, cheap stop-gap solution, the AAC.1 Toucan fought in three post-WWII conflicts and quietly served as long after WWII as the famous original Junkers did before and during WWII.
(Junkers Ju-52s of the Luftwaffe training Fallschirmjäger during WWII.)
(A French air force AAC.1 Toucan – the post-WWII French copy of the Ju-52 – flies over a burning Vietnamese jungle during the Indochina War.)
(A French air force AAC.1 Toucan in Africa during the 1950s Algerian War.)
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Shanghai was famous as China’s international city, a busy trade port with notorious underworld . During the latter part of the 20th century, the city languished through Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, before once again becoming a world-class city leading in finance, technology, and culture at the turn of the millennium.
There was a very brief time after WWII, only four years, when the city was under the Kuomintang (KMT), or nationalist Chinese government. What makes this period interesting militarily, was the unusual combinations of WWII weaponry fielded there, and a now largely-forgotten American military presence in China.
(Officers of the Shanghai Police Department monitor a political protest in 1948. Equipment includes a stahlhelm M35 helmet and Arisaka Type 38 rifle.)
(An abandoned Mitsubishi Ki-21 “Sally” bomber sits opposite American C-46 Commando, C-54 Skymaster, and C-47 Skytrain transports at a former Japanese airbase near Shanghai after WWII.)
(Soviet-made T-26 and American-made M3/M5 Stuart tanks of the nationalist army together in Shanghai during 1949. An irony of this last battle is that the nationalists were partially equipped with Soviet gear and the communists were partially equipped with American gear.)
(part 2 of a 2-part series)
After achieving independence from the United States ten months after the end of WWII, the military of the Philippines was infused with a variety of WWII American weapons, some of which are still in use in 2018.
(Recruits train with a mix of M16s and M1 Garands in 2018.)
(Philippines army soldiers display weapons captured from Abu Sayyaf in 2017 including a pair of M1 Garands, one of which has been spray-painted glossy black.)
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