Vietnamese Red Air Force
At the present time, the Buddhist Democratic Republic of Vietnam has no air force. This is entirely the reserve of the imperialists, who bomb daily the homes and villages of the workers and peasants of Vietnam, cowardly attacking us from the air. Against this, the People's Army of Vietnam has made efforts to expand air-defense forces, with anti-aircraft batteries to protect the Vietnamese against the attacks of the foreign imperialists. This is starting to yield results, as the flaming wreckage of French bombers attests, but there is still much work to do. Vietnam will never truly be the master of her own air until she has an air force.
Thus, we must task ourselves with building up a true Red Air Force, the dragons of the air, who will prevent our people from ever again falling victim to the threats of foreign imperialism. Unfortunately, the task of building up an air force is a lengthy one. Yes yes, a bourgeois capitalist American movie film makes it all seem very easy, simply get a plane and a dashing young pilot who in the decadent ways of the bourgeois capitalists finds himself more often inside of one of the loose young American women than inside his aircraft, and send him up to shoot down the enemy. Unfortunately, outside of these capitalist daydreams, as those on the General Staff with some knowledge of aeronautical matters - specially advisers from the Soviet Union (there are substantial numbers of Soviet advisers already in the country, who are particularly needed for assisting us in anti-aircraft and artillery war) - make clear, in practice things are much harder. An air force requires aerodromes for the aircraft to be based, which must be maintained - and which can only work at some times because of the nature of the weather which often reduces the ground to mud. These aerodromes must have equipment for controlling the take off of aircraft, and for providing for their landing. There must be shelters for the aircraft to keep them out of the weather. There must be mechanics and support personnel to keep the aircraft flying. Ammunition, bombs, fuel, lubricants, spare parts, engines, canvas, replacement aircraft, all must be accumulated. Housing must be available. These airfields must receive some measure of protection from enemy attack, be it camouflage or active anti-aircraft defense, and repair capacity: bombs on the grass runways will prevent aircraft from taking off. An aircraft destroyed on the ground is just as lost to us as one which is gone in the air, although at least its pilot is not dead. How is one going to replace aircraft that are shot down? Are aircraft flown or shipped by railroad or package to the base? What sort of reserves does one have. This all happens before the first aircraft soars into the air to pursue the enemy.
Here, things become even harder. For one, what is one using these aircraft to do? Are they for reconnaissance? Against what targets and assigned by who? Bombers? How to designate what targets for bombers to hit from so high in the air, and how to decide which targets to hit? To shoot down enemy aircraft? One must set up a firm and capable doctrine that can decide what one is attacking. It must be furthermore clear how one intends to locate enemy aircraft - is one simply going to loft aircraft into a specific region, to patrol there for enemy aircraft, like anti-aircraft guns? The pilots must be equipped with navigational equipment and support for them, to be able to determine where they are going, and to return to base. They must have a capability to communicate among themselves, be it by signals or flags. They must have appropriate identification so that they are not shot at by friendly ground units and aircraft - in fact, in our case because we have no aircraft of our own at the present time, we have a remarkably easy way to decide how to shoot at a plane - if it flies, shoot at it, for it must be French. If we have our own air force, then this issue must be confronted by methodical thought.
For pilots are the most difficult part of any arrangement. The worth of an air force is to some extent decided by how good the planes one flies, but just like on the ground where a good soldier with a bad rifle will always beat a bad soldier with a good rifle, the air is a conflict between the skills of men. It must be that pilots have training, both as flying their own aircraft, for certainly even things such as taking off and landing and navigation are hard enough on their own, much less actually fighting the enemy, but also as commanders in commanding their forces. They must be able to aim their weapons, to visualize the air as a three dimensional space of combat, to hone their eyes to detect the enemy, to be aware of the influence of the wind and the climate, to take into account the sun, to know what tactics work best against the enemy, to cooperate together, to be able to dodge and to pursue, to have the stamina and discipline to fly lengthy missions, often alone, in the sky, to be able to utilize parachutes to escape to the ground and then return to our forces, the list goes on and on. There must be a steady pool of pilots, just like there is a steady pool of aircraft, if an air force is to be able to fight in the air. And there must be schools and secure zones where this training can take place to produce these pilots and other people, such as mechanics and support personnel, with sufficient numbers of training aircraft, instructors, and fuel.
At the current time, there are almost no Vietnamese who know how to drive so much as a car. There is probably no Vietnamese who knows how to fly a plane. We have no experience whatsoever. The situation cannot be presented in any more optimistic terms, for this is the simple fact.
No, it is no easy task to establish an air force. But it is one which we must start, if the skies are to be our own. As a result, marshal Hà Việt Hồng has authorized the establishment of the comité de recherche de la force aérienne, to study the questions of what is needed for Vietnamese aviation to be born, and to start to prepare for this. This is both intellectually, where it will examine doctrine and objectives, and vigorous staff work and preparation for physical improvements. The biggest concrete effort, is the intention to send a number of future pilots, currently planned at around 50, to the Soviet Union. In the spirit of fraternal comradely between fellow socialist nations, these men are to be trained by the Soviets, to receive general piloting skills and to be able to teach others to become pilots in the future. There are obvious potential problems in this relationship, as the Russians do not speak Vietnamese, and the Vietnamese do not speak Russian. So far as possible the pilots being sent will know French - these are naturally the most educated people in our ranks and so received education in the colonial era - which has a higher chance of being known in the Soviet Union, where French after all was the traditional principal foreign language under the Empire. However, it is also intended to instruct them as much as possible in the Russian language before and during their stay, as well as after they return. While these brave men will doubtless suffer from homesickness and loneliness in this distant land, that they will traverse the great vast reaches of China to arrive at, the dear leader Nguyễn Thiện Ngôn has expressed his firm confidence that they will behave themselves in the highest standards of socialist fraternity and return as heroes.
In addition, an exchange of various other personnel to go to the Soviet Union for training as supply and support personnel, technicians, mechanics, machinists, observers, gunners, navigators, and wireless operators will be arranged - an enterprise which is of equal urgency, for without them the aircraft might as well as not exist. This will place them to return home and to begin to train more Vietnamese counterparts. Soviet advisers will come to Vietnam to help set up flight simulators, advise the comité de recherche de la force aérienne, instruct us on where and how to set up airfields, and various steps to be undertaken. We will also establish liaison links with the Soviets concerning what sort of aircraft will be useful for us when we do commence to build up our air force, operating off of the staff work which is currently being conducted to prepare for that.
At the present time it is not visualized that Vietnam will have any capability to construct aircraft internally. Thus, all of our aircraft will have to be sourced from the USSR. However, there will be staff work which will be put into constructing whatever local parts that can be, such as using Vietnamese wood for replacing aircraft parts and manufacturing substitutes for canvas, and establishing aircraft assembly facilities to put together aircraft which the Soviets ship us.
Thus, we must task ourselves with building up a true Red Air Force, the dragons of the air, who will prevent our people from ever again falling victim to the threats of foreign imperialism. Unfortunately, the task of building up an air force is a lengthy one. Yes yes, a bourgeois capitalist American movie film makes it all seem very easy, simply get a plane and a dashing young pilot who in the decadent ways of the bourgeois capitalists finds himself more often inside of one of the loose young American women than inside his aircraft, and send him up to shoot down the enemy. Unfortunately, outside of these capitalist daydreams, as those on the General Staff with some knowledge of aeronautical matters - specially advisers from the Soviet Union (there are substantial numbers of Soviet advisers already in the country, who are particularly needed for assisting us in anti-aircraft and artillery war) - make clear, in practice things are much harder. An air force requires aerodromes for the aircraft to be based, which must be maintained - and which can only work at some times because of the nature of the weather which often reduces the ground to mud. These aerodromes must have equipment for controlling the take off of aircraft, and for providing for their landing. There must be shelters for the aircraft to keep them out of the weather. There must be mechanics and support personnel to keep the aircraft flying. Ammunition, bombs, fuel, lubricants, spare parts, engines, canvas, replacement aircraft, all must be accumulated. Housing must be available. These airfields must receive some measure of protection from enemy attack, be it camouflage or active anti-aircraft defense, and repair capacity: bombs on the grass runways will prevent aircraft from taking off. An aircraft destroyed on the ground is just as lost to us as one which is gone in the air, although at least its pilot is not dead. How is one going to replace aircraft that are shot down? Are aircraft flown or shipped by railroad or package to the base? What sort of reserves does one have. This all happens before the first aircraft soars into the air to pursue the enemy.
Here, things become even harder. For one, what is one using these aircraft to do? Are they for reconnaissance? Against what targets and assigned by who? Bombers? How to designate what targets for bombers to hit from so high in the air, and how to decide which targets to hit? To shoot down enemy aircraft? One must set up a firm and capable doctrine that can decide what one is attacking. It must be furthermore clear how one intends to locate enemy aircraft - is one simply going to loft aircraft into a specific region, to patrol there for enemy aircraft, like anti-aircraft guns? The pilots must be equipped with navigational equipment and support for them, to be able to determine where they are going, and to return to base. They must have a capability to communicate among themselves, be it by signals or flags. They must have appropriate identification so that they are not shot at by friendly ground units and aircraft - in fact, in our case because we have no aircraft of our own at the present time, we have a remarkably easy way to decide how to shoot at a plane - if it flies, shoot at it, for it must be French. If we have our own air force, then this issue must be confronted by methodical thought.
For pilots are the most difficult part of any arrangement. The worth of an air force is to some extent decided by how good the planes one flies, but just like on the ground where a good soldier with a bad rifle will always beat a bad soldier with a good rifle, the air is a conflict between the skills of men. It must be that pilots have training, both as flying their own aircraft, for certainly even things such as taking off and landing and navigation are hard enough on their own, much less actually fighting the enemy, but also as commanders in commanding their forces. They must be able to aim their weapons, to visualize the air as a three dimensional space of combat, to hone their eyes to detect the enemy, to be aware of the influence of the wind and the climate, to take into account the sun, to know what tactics work best against the enemy, to cooperate together, to be able to dodge and to pursue, to have the stamina and discipline to fly lengthy missions, often alone, in the sky, to be able to utilize parachutes to escape to the ground and then return to our forces, the list goes on and on. There must be a steady pool of pilots, just like there is a steady pool of aircraft, if an air force is to be able to fight in the air. And there must be schools and secure zones where this training can take place to produce these pilots and other people, such as mechanics and support personnel, with sufficient numbers of training aircraft, instructors, and fuel.
At the current time, there are almost no Vietnamese who know how to drive so much as a car. There is probably no Vietnamese who knows how to fly a plane. We have no experience whatsoever. The situation cannot be presented in any more optimistic terms, for this is the simple fact.
No, it is no easy task to establish an air force. But it is one which we must start, if the skies are to be our own. As a result, marshal Hà Việt Hồng has authorized the establishment of the comité de recherche de la force aérienne, to study the questions of what is needed for Vietnamese aviation to be born, and to start to prepare for this. This is both intellectually, where it will examine doctrine and objectives, and vigorous staff work and preparation for physical improvements. The biggest concrete effort, is the intention to send a number of future pilots, currently planned at around 50, to the Soviet Union. In the spirit of fraternal comradely between fellow socialist nations, these men are to be trained by the Soviets, to receive general piloting skills and to be able to teach others to become pilots in the future. There are obvious potential problems in this relationship, as the Russians do not speak Vietnamese, and the Vietnamese do not speak Russian. So far as possible the pilots being sent will know French - these are naturally the most educated people in our ranks and so received education in the colonial era - which has a higher chance of being known in the Soviet Union, where French after all was the traditional principal foreign language under the Empire. However, it is also intended to instruct them as much as possible in the Russian language before and during their stay, as well as after they return. While these brave men will doubtless suffer from homesickness and loneliness in this distant land, that they will traverse the great vast reaches of China to arrive at, the dear leader Nguyễn Thiện Ngôn has expressed his firm confidence that they will behave themselves in the highest standards of socialist fraternity and return as heroes.
In addition, an exchange of various other personnel to go to the Soviet Union for training as supply and support personnel, technicians, mechanics, machinists, observers, gunners, navigators, and wireless operators will be arranged - an enterprise which is of equal urgency, for without them the aircraft might as well as not exist. This will place them to return home and to begin to train more Vietnamese counterparts. Soviet advisers will come to Vietnam to help set up flight simulators, advise the comité de recherche de la force aérienne, instruct us on where and how to set up airfields, and various steps to be undertaken. We will also establish liaison links with the Soviets concerning what sort of aircraft will be useful for us when we do commence to build up our air force, operating off of the staff work which is currently being conducted to prepare for that.
At the present time it is not visualized that Vietnam will have any capability to construct aircraft internally. Thus, all of our aircraft will have to be sourced from the USSR. However, there will be staff work which will be put into constructing whatever local parts that can be, such as using Vietnamese wood for replacing aircraft parts and manufacturing substitutes for canvas, and establishing aircraft assembly facilities to put together aircraft which the Soviets ship us.
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