The Secret War: Laos

In 1962, JFK gave an inspirational speech at Rice University, outlining his administration's highly ambitious plan to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. Delivered with eloquence and humor, his speech expressed the need for peaceful exploration under the benevolent leadership of the United States. That same year, an agreement was signed to diffuse the growing tension in Laos. Communism was considered a huge threat to the US and any country falling under communist rule was another unfriendly fallen 'domino'. While Kennedy removed the US troops, the N. Vietnamese ignored the accord and continued to use Laos as a supply route for the growing Viet Cong insurgency in the South. The US responded by embedding 'civilian' US air force pilots, known as ''ravens”: they trained Lao pilots and flew spotting missions, marking communist targets for Lao bomber pilots. Over 400 landing sites or “lima sites” were built around the country; the picture below is LS 27 in Vang Vieng. It is now used to park buses.

The US ravens flew small propeller plans and suffered extremely high casualties. The movie “Rescue Dawn” is about one downed pilot. The US soon intensified their campaign and relentlessly bombed eastern Laos, even using massive B-52 bombers out of Guam and Thailand. By war's end in 1973, the secret air force had dropped an average of one planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years, making Laos the most heavily bombed nation, on a per capita basis, in the history of warfare.