Thanks for the kind remarks Gentlemen. I wanted to share this information on Operation Water Pump and Operation Barrel Roll along with some photos of a T-28 brought back from Laos still in the original Coin Gray camouflage paint. This T-28 is being sold on ebay by a salvage company. A lot of history with this combat veteran.
One photo shows the sliding panel on the side of the T-28 where the National Insignia could be changed from US to Laotian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barrel_RollQuote:
"The next stage of the military evolution took place during mid-March 1964, when the CIA began Project Water Pump, a program to train Laotian, Thai, Hmong, and Air America aircrews in flight and maintenance of U.S.-supplied AT-28 Trojan ground-attack aircraft. This training was conducted by Detachment 6, 1st Air Commando Wing personnel at Udon Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand.[17] The first mission in support of Vang Pao's forces took place on 25 May.[18] Eventually, the Royal Laotian Air Force would consist of five wings of ten aircraft each.[19] Water Pump could never produce enough pilots, however, since graduation rates barely exceeded the death rate of graduates, who simply flew until they died.[20] The American "civilian pilots" program was phased out in 1966 and Detachment 6 (which continued its training program) was absorbed by the 606th Air Commando Squadron in the same year.[21] The air program did, however, create the world's only guerrilla army with air superiority."
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