History of the Armée de l'Air in the colonies (1939–1962)
This article deals with the history of the French air force in colonial territories from World War II to the post-colonial period.
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap.
About 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the war, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired.
Although the C-47s were not bombers, a lot of them were jury-rigged in order to fulfill bombing missions over the nine years which remained to the French empire in Indochina.
However, just as their RAF counterparts had experienced when stationed in Burma during World War II, the aircraft, dubbed the "Wooden Wonder" by the British, began to deteriorate as a result of their exposure to a climate that they were not designed to operate in at all.
The future capitals of North and South Vietnam would witness the presence of Armée de l'Air fighter units during the summer and autumn of 1949, as the situation began to deteriorate.
Units were relocated from North Africa to Indochina, including I/5 "Vendée" and II/5 "Ile de France" which were equipped with the Bell P-63 and would remain in theater until January 1951.
Firstly, they were stationed at Saigon's main military airbase at Tan Son Nhut before being relocated to the future North Vietnamese capital, where II/6, better known as the famous and highly decorated "Normandie-Niemen" fighter regiment from their stint in the Soviet Union between 1942 and 1945, joined them.
Communist expansion into what remained of "free" South-East Asia (apart from Japan, which was still under U.S. occupation at the time) seemed inevitable, and so the U.S. government under Harry S. Truman began to revise their position.
Jets were in service with the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy at this time, yet Hartmann believed that they were actually not up to the task of dealing with insurgents as opposed to fighting conventional armies on the ground.
Renewed fighting between the French and the insurgents (in the guise of the 308th and 312th Divisions, commanded by Võ Nguyên Giáp) broke out in January 1951 at Vĩnh Yên, located in the Tonkin region.
The Armée de l'Air, now under the command of Chassin, Hartmann's successor, managed to support the French army in repelling a new insurgency from late May to early June 1951, having at its disposal some 48 F8Fs and 23 P-63s in the fighter groups, yet its bomber arm was down to a mere eight B-26s.
Despite Chassin's call for substantial reinforcements for the Armée de l'Air, whose personnel in theater had been subject to the punishing pace of conducting operations for months, it was ignored.
Gatac-Laos, grouping fighters and bombers aircraft which had been requisitioned from various units, was created as a reaction to a Việt Minh offensive in Laos, launched in April 1953.
Three months later, 56 F8Fs and ten B-26s, as well as MS.500s and helicopters, participated in Operation Hirondelle ("Swallow"), whose objective was to destroy the matériel provided to the insurgents by Maoist China, yet the Việt Minh did not suffer significantly as a result.
The arms were being transported along what became famous as the so-called "Ho Chi Minh trail", and, in November 1953, to counter this, the French military decided to choose a site near the border with Laos, from which missions could be launched to strike against both Giap's insurgent army in order to eliminate it altogether.
U.S. President Eisenhower, fearing both domestic and international backlashes if he were to send in U.S. troops, sent an American mission to Indochina to determine the extent of help that the French needed.
Following a personal letter from the French prime minister, Joseph Laniel, Eisenhower authorized the loan of aircraft with French markings painted on them and flown by crews from Civil Air Transport (CAT), a commercial airline, which had been started in 1946 by then-retired Major General Chennault, the famous commander of the American Volunteer Group (AVG), better known as the "Flying Tigers", in China during World War II, and then purchased by the CIA in the year war broke out in Korea.
(In fact, Eisenhower was so concerned about their presence, which itself caused the Chinese government to label the American mechanics as "combatants", that he told U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that he wanted them withdrawn by the end of June 1954 no matter what the situation in Indochina was at that time.)
As a result, the 37 CAT pilots excelled at their duties, flying a total of 682 missions over Dien Bien Phu and earning the respect of the French.
(This respect was finally recognized half a century later when seven of the surviving CAT pilots were created Chevaliers de la Légion d'Honneur at a special ceremony at the French embassy in Washington, D.C., on February 24, 2005.)
Other Armée de l'Air units were meanwhile dedicating itself to the training of Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) technical and flight personnel at Nha-Trang.
Yet uprisings were on the rise in the 1950s, undoubtedly inspired by the Việt Minh victory over French expeditionary forces, as it showed that a "mighty" European power could be dislodged from "conquered" territory.
