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Air America C-130s


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MANY MANY Thanks for the find. :)

I had downloaded that a while back and packaged it as notes in my ipod so I could read it later. And when the packager finished it did not include info as to the source, and it left the last ten pages out.

I had been looking for the last ten pages. But I could not remember where I had found that pdf.

Thanks.

I was under the impression that the bulk of AA\'s fleet were c-123 provider\'s, until I had read that..well the first twenty pages. Now I can finish reading.

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The bulk of AA\'s aircraft were light planes, 123\'s and helo\'s.

They had only a few crews trained on Herks and never operated very many at one time.

One of the problems with the article is that Leeker went ahead and listed every A model that was at Naha and most never had anything to do with AA.

He handles the E model portion much better identifying correctly the 5 project aircraft.

Bob

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Bird Air and CASI Continental Air Service Inc were privately owned companies that supplied airlift in SEA under contract. Bird was owned by the Bird Family, CASI by Continental Airlines.

CASI had 2 L100\'s, 4101 & 4109 in 65-66 time frame but could not keep them busy enough and they were sold, both were later in Zambia hauling metal from mines. Bird operated Herks in 1975. They were USAF herks with civilian crews and were flown from U-Tapao to Phnom Phen to supply Cambodia when the pols and the AF wanted to say the USAF was not involved.

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Don\'t take everything on this site as verbatim because it isn\'t. Joe Leeker is a German researcher and he mixes up apples, oranges and grapes and tries to come up with applesauce. His main mistake is lumping the CIA C-130 mission in with the U-2 mission and the Naha HIGH GEAR mission which were entirely different missions and not at all related. The U-2 mission was supported by 322nd Air Division with crews from Evereux while the HIGH GEAR mission was Air Force, not CIA.

The C-130 mission over Tibet started in 1958 when Billie Mills, then a lieutenant and a brand new aircraft commander, went to Peterson Field, Colorado for what he thought was to take USAF Academy cadets on orientation flights. When he got there he was met by \"men in dark suits\" who told him he was there to work for them. After calling Sewart and talking to the wing commander, who told him to \"do what they tell you but don\'t let them kill you\" he went out and dropped Tibetans on drop zones in the Rockies at Camp Hale, Colorado. They flew at night and dropped on signal fires. The CIA men liked his work and had him and his crew sent to Japan where they trained civilian pilots from Civil Air Transport (CAT), an airline that Claire Chennault started after World War II and financed with US government loans, which eventually led to it be taking over directly by the CIA. At the time the 483rd wing at Ashyia was recieving its own C-130s, but the 21st TCS, which had been at Tachikawa, was also recieving it\'s own airplanes. The 21st had formerly been part of the 374th TCW and after the French Indo-China War had been responsible for providing aircraft and crews for classified missions along the lines of the C-119s \"loaned\" to France before they were ran out of Vietnam. Air America itself had nothing to do with the C-130 mission, which was operated through an Air Force/CIA office at Kadena with civilian pilots employed by CAT. CAT and Air America had a connection but were actually two different companies.

The C-123s that Air America operated came from Pope. Carl Wyrick told me a few weeks ago how he had taken the first one to Udorn, where the CIA had it\'s Southeast Asia covert operations office, and trained the pilots to fly them. This would have been around 1962, which is about the same time that E Flight was set up within the 21st at Naha. Previously, the C-130s had been used exclusively in support of the operation in Tibet but after the Laotian Civil War ended, JFK decided to continue supporting the Laotian government clandestinely. That\'s when Air America\'s role in SEA really took off.

Bird Air was a company set up by Bird and Sons to service an Air Force contract - not CIA - to operate USAF C-130s on missions into Cambodia. They hired recently retired C-130 crewmembers and reservists to fly airplanes provided by the (new) 374th Tactical Airlift Wing on missions into Phonh Penh, Cambodia after the US had officially pulled out of the Vietnam War except in the advisory role.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Mostly the C-130's that Air America were using were"BAILED" or lease from the USAF/21TAS at Naha then CCK then at Clark. We were not allowed to devulge any information on our mission or the places we went to. Until the Air Force came out with the information in the book"Airlift in South East Asia and also Air America on their web site talked about E-Flight and what we did that we were finally able to talk about this great job that the C-130's and the crews did.

Being a former member of E-Flight at CCK and Clark the info that Air America states in the section of C-130E 's of E-Flight is "TRUE" ,down to the 5 Gray aircraft that we had including Tail numbers.

The Bird Air section that was stated after in this section was mostly of an former Air Force and some former E-Flight personnel that were working for Cambodia relief and evac's.

I am very PROUD what E-Flight and the C-130's did in NorthEast,EastAsia,South and South East Asia.and I was happy to be part of this.

E-Flight Forever

Sincerely

Vince Acquaviva Jr ( E-Flight CCK and Clark )

Edited by EFLTatCCK
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Don't forget that the Cia was forced to "sell" Air America in the early 1970s after the Senate conducted an investigation of the CIA's ownership of a number of companies, particularly aviation companies. They were forced to divest themselves of ownership. The airline continued until the mid-seventies but much of the covert activities were taken over by the military after the special operations mission was officially established in 1968. Civil Air Transport, which employed the crews for the Air Force C-130s, shut down its commercial operations in 1968 after a 727 it purchased crashed. Air America was also a commercial airline that operated primarily in Southeast Asia.

Some people link Bird Air to Air America but there was no connection. Bird Air was set up by Bird and Sons, which was one of a number of US civilian contractors operating in Southeast Asia in various capacities (including Brown and Root.) Continental Airlines also operated government contracts.

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Do you have the link for "true stories"?

Those 5 gray aircraft wouldn't happen to be the "Super Es" that were known to have been at some of those same locations would they? Had removable stars/bars placards as well as tail # placards.

This so-called "Super E" stuff didn't come out until long after Vietnam was history. They were actually the first C-130Hs, which had been developed for the Air Force but were only purchased to be used as HC-130Hs although a number were sold overseas. The "gray" came about when PACAF started camouflaging all of its airplanes and the A-models assigned for CIA use were left unpainted so they wouldn't look like military airplanes. The markings were not removeable - they were the same as any other Air Force airplane with decals that had to be removed and replaced after each covert mission. Later on they were painted gray with anticorrosion paint. When Naha shut down and the 21st designation transferred to CCK, the CIA mission went with it and picked up Emodels.

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The bulk of AA\'s aircraft were light planes, 123\'s and helo\'s.

They had only a few crews trained on Herks and never operated very many at one time.

One of the problems with the article is that Leeker went ahead and listed every A model that was at Naha and most never had anything to do with AA.

He handles the E model portion much better identifying correctly the 5 project aircraft.

Bob

Actually, ALL of the A-models at Naha probably had something to do with the CIA at one time or another - although not with Air America since Air America was merely one of the Agency's properties. There was a lot of commingling between the CIA, Army Special Forces and other government agencies, civilian and military, in the Pacific in the 1950s and 1960s (for that matter, all over the entire world). The CIA ran the covert war in Laos. Each of the Naha squadrons had its own classified mission and each had some kind of involvement with the CIA even though it might have been through the Army. The "E Flight" mission has a special mystigue mainly because some maintenance personnel were assigned directly to the 21st's E Flight rather than to the 51st OMS and FMS where the other Naha maintenance personnel were assigned. But the 817th was running HALO missions all over Asia and the 35th was flying FACT SHEET and JILLI propaganda missions. The COMMANDO LAVA missions were CIA connected. For that matter, other PACAF and TAC C-130s were sometimes involved in CIA missions, although the crews may not have known it.

It was easier to identify the covert aircraft provided from E Flight after the C-130s were camouflaged. Leeker asserts that the E Flight airplanes were scheduled seperately but this is not true except for covert assignments. The first A-model I ever flew on was an E Flight airplane and we took it on a "conventional" airlift mission out of Cam Ranh in early 1966. There anything at all about it to distinguish it from any other airplane on the ramp - except that the crew chief wore an E Flight patch. The insignia were not screwed on, they were decals, and the markings were the same as the rest of the airplanes at Naha at the time. They were all unpainted and carried standard USAF markings with a PACAF patch on the tail.

A friend of mine was an E Flight loadmaster and he has told how that whenever they went on a mission, they flew the airplane up to Kadena where the maintenance crew removed the decals and other identifying markings and put a bogus number on the tail. They would be joined by the CAT crew which flew in commercial from Tokyo, then would fly with them to Taklhi where they would fly the mission and the military guys would wait for them.

My first experience with one of the Naha covert airplanes was at Taklhi in October 1965 when our crew was TDY to Bangkok from Mactan for the shuttle. We landed at Taklhi with a load of ammunition and were sent to the hot cargo ramp. The aerial port guys told me we would have to wait for our outbound load because they had to work another airplane. A few minutes later an Air Force flatbed drove up. It was loaded with airdrop bundles, but they were not of a type still in use. A few minutes later an unpainted A-model pulled in beside us. The only markings were a number on the tail. Some people in civilian clothes were there to meet it, but you could tell they were military because they were wearing combat boots and USAF issue sunglasses even though they had on shorts and T-shirts. The flight crew never got off of the airplane. As soon as they shut down engines the flatbed backed up to the ramp and they rolled the bundles on. As soon as the bundles were aboard, the crew cranked up and they taxied back out and left. One of the ground crew came over and talked to Don Sweet, the flight mechanic, and I while they were loading the airplane. I've found out since then that it was Ralph Krach. I never made the connection with that airplane and E Flight until after I got out of the Air Force and read Chris Robbins book AIR AMERICA.

Robbins book is one good source of info about Air America and the entire CIA aviation operation. Conron and Morrison's book about the Tibet operation is another. Heinie Aderholt devoted a chapter to it in his autobiography (actually, it's a biography written by an Air Force historian with Hienie's input.)

SEA was not the only place where the CIA used C-130s. Leeker mentions the Gary Powers mission, which was supported by A-model crews from the 317th TCW at Evreux. There were also some CIA operations in Pakistan that involved MATS C-130s from Charleston.

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The C-130E's that were at CCK were not Super"E" models. They were just plain "E" models. The tail numbers were 62-1859,63-7868,63-7879,64-0497,and 64-0515 that were mostly assigned and used by E-Flight for all Clandestine missions in Taiwan,Korea,Thailand, Laos and other places in Asia. All aircraft were painted anti-corrosion GRAY and had detachable Stars and Bars and Tail numbers held on with screws and rivet nuts. For the person that desputed the Air America WebSite Dr.Leeker's info,I would say that Dr. Leeker was "Mostly Right" in the Bio that he talked about.There are still many "Projects" that us E-Flight personnel can not tell the media even till this day.

There are many people that "assume" what E-Flight did and also have ideas coined up by non-E Flight USAF personnel. The only personnel that can vouch for OUR WORK are the Air America and E-Flight maintenance and flight crews that bravely flew and maintained these aircraft and helped many hundreds of thousands of of people in East ,South, and South East Asia .

The only people that understand this are the people that were with E-Flight special projects.

Sincerely

Vince Acquaviva Jr ( former CCK and Clark E-Flight)

Edited by EFLTatCCK
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  • 2 weeks later...

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/airamerica/best/

The above link is to an article on the Texas Tech site about the various contract aviation operators in Southeast Asia during the late unpleasantness. There is a lot of good information. It goes beyond Air America and also covers Bird Air and Continental Air Services. One thing I found interesting is that it shows that the two mysterious 64 E-models were on Air America's books when they were "written off" in February 1972. It is pretty definite based on time frame, modifications, etc. that those two airplanes were the ones used by the HEAVY CHAIN test project at Norton. Jerry Baird, who was the squadron ops officer, sent me a series of E Mails about what they did about ten years ago. (I may have printed them off and still have them but I'm not sure.) Jerry says that there is only one aspect of the operation that was never declassified. They were flying test missions developing new equipment, particularly terrain avoidance radar, that was later used on the MC-130s. They did have an airplane at Nha Trang for a time on a classified mission and that may be where the Air America connection comes in since they were also involved with the DUCK HOOK C-123s that operated out of Nha Trang with civilian crews. When those two airplanes were "written off" the first two C-130Es lost in Southeast Asia were mysteriously resurrected as MC-130Es.

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At the time that Heavy Chain released their four airplanes to be de-modified to a Combat Talon MC-130E equivilant, rumor has it that the question arose about resurrecting the original tail numbers for the two that had been changed; but the cost involved, and the potential "dirty laundry" drove the decision to leave the numbers as they are.

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As to the question about the Super E's, they were 1973 E models with -15 engines. After the SEA fun was over, PACAF got at least 3 of the "Super E's" These were painted gray and operated as E flight in PACAF until they were blessed and became H's and transfered to Dyess in 1997. The tails were 73-1582, 1597 and 1598. They are still at Dyess.

Bob

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I was on the all instructor E-Flight crew from 1971 to 1975. The information on the 374 SPO is mostly accurate, but I am unsure just how much has been declassified. We had to sign disclosure agreements when briefed out and, as I recall, we would receive written notice if our missions were ultimately declassified. I fondly recall telling my C5 squadron Security officer that I was told my TS clearance had to remain. He kindly told me there was no such thing as a permanent clearance. Several weeks later, he asked me what I used to do in SEA, because he had just been notified that my clearance was not downgradeable. Ultimately, that same clearance got me involved in some very special "things" and I eventually lived with a TS/SBI-SCI.

Some of the best years of my life were in E-Flight. The "contract" people we worked with were both courageous and scary, but seldom broke the airplanes. Running off runways was somewhat of a specialty, but only did serious damage a few times.

I remember being asked questions about our special birds but people who were not all that bright. One wing loadmaster talked to me at Utapao as we were transiting back to CCK. His aircraft was parked next to mine and we were smoking between them. He faced my bird and I faced his as we talked. He was asking me about our low profile special tires with the special groves and shape. They had been damned near shredded during the mission and we had not aired them up. He then called me a liar because I told him we did not have -15 engines. He said he had it from a reliable source. I just couldn't bear to say anything because I was looking at his #3 engine which was one of our gray ones.

I would love to hear from other E-Flight Cobras. Somewhere in my attic I still have my red baseball cap with our crew patch of two white rats in black bermuda shorts stabbing each other in the back. What a proud crest.

Jon Andrews

374 SPO

21st TAS/346 TAS

Ching Chuan Kang AB, ROC

Clark AB, PI

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While I was not in E Flight, I do have some orders from the 21st with my name near the bottom and that of a young A1C Jonathan R. Andrews near the top. Been a long time Jon.

I wonder which of those most astute wing guys you were referring to above?

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  • 2 weeks later...

it seems they may have used aircraft with the last 3 digits being; 0503. National A/c has an A model that was used by Air America and they moved an E model out of AMARG with the same last 3 digits. The "ship" number took a bit to confirm asit was carrying several different ones and the fin number had a 4 painted over a 5. It also had provisions for covering the insignia and numbers as does the A model.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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