Commandos of CASI

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.

c46ww2

(C-46 Commando during WWII.)

longtieng

(C-46 Commando of CASI at Long Tieng, Laos during 1975.)

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the T-34 in Laos

The USSR’s most-produced tank of WWII, and most successful during that war, was the T-34. After WWII many nations received this tank, one of the more obscure ones being Laos.

1944

(Soviet soldiers with a T-34 during WWII.)

2010sb

(Lao T-34 during the 2010s.)

2020

(Ex-Lao T-34s in the Russian Federation during 2020.)

The path by which these T-34s came to Laos and then “returned” to Russia is quite winding and interesting.

For starters, they didn’t really “return home”, at least not in the strictest sense of the words. They are all Czechoslovak post-WWII production, having first gone through Vietnam.

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