Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

the president ordered the creation of a smaller, top-secret Special Committee on Indochina, chaired by Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith, whose task was to “come up with a plan in specific terms, covering who does what and which and to whom” in Indochina and the surrounding region.5 Late in the month the Smith committee recommended, and Eisenhower approved, the dispatch of two hundred uniformed U.S. Air Force mechanics to Indochina to service American-supplied aircraft, including the new B-26s, on the understanding that “they would be used at bases where they would be secure from capture and would not be exposed to combat.” The president also agreed to send U.S. civilian pilots hired by the CIA, using planes from the agency’s proprietary airline, the Civilian Air Transport (CAT), to assist the French with air transport. Within a few weeks, a squadron of C-119 transports based in Formosa, painted gray and manned by two dozen CAT pilots, began flying supplies into Dien Bien Phu.