Description

This book presents as its principal theme the United States Air Forces use of one form of air power, tactical airlift aviation, in a changing limited warfare situation. Several questions are central how was tactical airlift to perform in Southeast Asia, what was actually achieved, and by what methods This volume focuses on the operations of the Air Force airlift system in Vietnam and its three principal transport aircraft types. In the years before 1965 there were four squadrons of C-123 Providers in Vietnam operating primarily on behalf of South Vietnamese forces and the U.S. Army Special Forces. Beginning in 1965 the four-engine C-130 Hercules dominated the huge airlift effort to support the U.S. Army and Marines in Vietnam. Late in 1966 the Air Force acquired smaller C-7 Caribous from the U.S. Army, and these aircraft thereafter served in diverse and useful roles. The supplies hauled by Air Force transports in Vietnam far exceeded the combined payloads airlifted in the Korean War, the Berlin Airlift, and in the very active China-Burma-India theatre of World War II. This book also examines briefly airlift activities in Southeast Asia of the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps, the contract firms, the Vietnamese Air Force, the air forces of the other allies, and the North Vietnamese.