Vang's War
How the fighting in Southeast Asia transformed a curious young man into a fiercely dedicated pilot.
- By Roger Warner
- Air & Space Magazine, September 01, 2003
Unknown
THROUGHOUT HIS CHILDHOOD IN LAOS, he lived in a thatched hut with a dirt floor, outside the Hmong village of Muong Ngat, about 10 miles from the Vietnamese border. He never saw cars or trucks, but he did see his first airplanes high overhead as a boy, in 1953 and 1954. Some days he saw hundreds of them, as the French and their U.S. allies flew supplies to a besieged French army garrison in the Dienbienphu Valley. But to a Hmong child like Vang Bee, the things he saw in the waning days of French colonial control over Indochina seemed to belong to another world.
After the fall of Dienbienphu, the French left Indochina, and a 1954 agreement partitioned it along political lines into North and South Vietnam. It wasn’t long before the United States began to fill the regional power vacuum. That’s when Vang Bee first saw an aircraft up close—a U.S. Sikorsky H-34 helicopter about the size of a house, he recalls. His entire village watched in fear as it descended slowly and landed noisily in a cloud of dust. When they saw men emerging from the beast, the villagers relaxed. Not long after that, small fixed-wing airplanes became a common sight.
By 1960 a civil war had broken out in Laos, and nations on both sides of the cold war sent support to the factions they favored. The Chinese, Soviets, and North Vietnamese communists backed the Pathet Lao; the Hmong were among several groups opposing the North Vietnamese. To counter the communists in northeast Laos, operatives of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and their allies in the government of Thailand contacted the highest-ranking Hmong officer in the Laotian army: Vang Pao. To support this charismatic warrior, the CIA and the Thais sent in the Police Aerial Reinforcement Unit, or PARU, a Thai special-operations force whose officers had been through U.S. Army Ranger training. The PARU wore uniforms without insignias, spoke the Lao language, and blended in as if they were native Laotians.
A three-way alliance arose: Vang Pao recruited and led a Hmong guerrilla force that would grow to a 30,000-man multi-ethnic irregular army. The PARU provided trainers, radio operators, and field advisors for local Hmong commanders. The CIA provided money, food, surplus World War II-era weapons, a few dozen officers, and transportation in the form of Air America, a contract airline the agency secretly owned.
Early in this proxy war, the people of Vang Bee’s village moved several times to escape North Vietnamese attacks. U.S. aircraft relocated tribespeople and dropped rice and supplies. According to Vang Bee, the elders appreciated the flights, which saved them long treks on foot, but soon came to take them for granted. For ambitious young people like him, however, aviation opened a world of opportunities and ideas. Now a U.S. resident, he recalls thinking: “Why the people can make the airplane fly in the air? A piece of metal, they made like a house, they put the engine in it. The airplane come from the technology. A lot of young Laotian people, they want to work close to the situation like that. I said, ‘I want to know how to fly. I want to know.’ ”
In 1965, Vang Bee and his family moved to Long Tieng, Vang Pao’s headquarters, southwest of Laos’ Plain of Jars, named for the large and mysterious ancient stone vessels found there. By this time Vang Bee was a square-jawed young man serving in the new alliance’s army. He was assigned to work as an announcer at a radio station, broadcasting news to the many ethnic groups in the north, but he did not like the job much, partly because the pay was low. When word went out that there were slots available for a dozen literate Hmong to take pilot training, Vang Bee was ready to apply, but his boss told him he was needed at the radio station and would just have to wait.
The idea to train Hmong tribesman to fly—to yank them out of the Stone Age and plunge them into the 20th century—originated with a CIA paramilitary officer named Bill Lair, the founder of the Thai PARU and the day-to-day leader of the CIA’s hill tribe operation in Laos. Lair believed that when it came to the wars in Southeast Asia, the United States should provide training and modest assistance, but beyond that, should stick to a supporting role. He believed that the fewer Americans in Asia, the more self-reliant the local people would become. This was not the prevailing view in the U.S. government, which had already started sending troops to support South Vietnam and warplanes throughout the region, including the skies over Laos. Lair, who had parachute training and worked with pilots every day, was determined to train indigenous Asians in as many forms of warfare as he could and equip them to fight. In 1965 he visited a CIA supply depot on Okinawa and spotted a couple of dusty Piper Cubs in a warehouse. Lair arranged for the airplanes to be shipped to his base in Udorn Thani, Thailand. And then, without notifying his CIA superiors, he opened a flight school, complete with an English language course, for a dozen newly recruited smart young Hmong. The students stayed in a safe house on the edge of a grassy airstrip to the west of the town of Nong Khai, near the Mekong river. The flight instructor was Lair’s PARU pilot.
By 1966 the first tribesmen were soloing in the Cubs. At the same time, a U.S. Air Force program at Udorn Thani was training Laotian military pilots in North American T-28D Trojans. The program, known as Water Pump, had specially selected U.S. personnel from a U.S. Air Force Air Commando unit at Hurlburt Field, Florida.
Related topics: Air Force Propeller Aircraft Trainers Military Aviators Cold War Era
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Comments (5)
Bee Vang T-28 is a great man and also a good model for the Hmong people. In the future if Bee Vang still keep his promise Hmong still have hope. At this time, we the Hmong still look for Bee Vang. Let God help and bring Bee Vang
T-28 back to life so Hmong will have life. You know the Hmong in Laos, Thailand and third countries still follow, look and respect Mr. Bee Vang T-28.
Posted by W Vang, Fresno on June 24,2009 | 01:28 PM
We (Hmong) would've never lost the war if all the Hmong in Laos were united. This wasn't a civil war between Lao people, but also Hmong. If we were able to unite as we did during the Madman's War during the French colonialism in Indochina, we would have a chance. Our army would've not been 30,000 strong, but somewhere around 60,000 to 80,000 strong. We would be able to fight against the NVA and Pathet Lao. Ly Lue was a great Hmong pilot, probably the best in all of Southeast Asia. The Lao government would never admit that he is the best pilot that ever existed in Laos. I respect all my Hmong people, Ravens, and CIA officials.
Posted by Lee Vong Yang on October 3,2010 | 06:59 PM
I do not understand what the previous comments are trying to say but Bee Vang is a great man. I'm sure that Ly Lue was also a great Hmong pilot, it's not that no one admit that he was but in life everyone is different in their own special way. To W. Vang, I do not understand what you are saying that Bee Vang did not keep his promise. He was a pilot under General Vang Pao and he was one of the loyal pilot to the general. What promise did he not keep, that he could not fight back what we call the Hmong country? What can he do when our General back out and left for America? You do not know what Bee Vang went through in his life during the time. He has family just like everyone else, and rather flew the plane over the river taking the Hmong leaders and citizens first before coming back for his family. You did not know how much there were people hating him because General Vang pao took him in quicker and trusted him more, people were jealous of him. He was loyal and that's all he could be to the General was follow and help his Hmong citizens. When time ends, he would not stay because he then know that if General Vang pao left to the U.S. and the country had fallen there was no place left. So he took his family to educated in the U.S. W. Vang you do no understand what he went through.
Posted by Nou Vang on February 12,2011 | 10:13 PM
No one know Vang Bee. He is a great person and most off what people think is just that they are jealous of him. He loved his people.
Posted by Nou Vang on February 12,2011 | 10:32 PM