It is 1972 and as the war in Vietnam rages on, unbeknownst to the enemy, CIA operations are being conducted by non-com spooks and US Army Security units. With a conspicuous involvement in the heroin trade along with Air America clandestine flights comes another dimension of the Phantom P-40 that is confirmed by eye witness accounts. Who was operating the vintage World War II fighter this late in the game, and where did they ever come up with an original version of the vaunted Curtis Warhawk?  Could this be just one more example of the supernatural entering the realm of human conflict?

It returns

Throughout the years a large number of sightings of the Phantom P-40 were being made from along the coast of North and South Vietnam, but mostly further west in Burma, Laos, and even into the interior of China along that borderline. In this mysterious mix of the past, a legendary fighter plane that shouldn’t have been operational in this theater or this late date, still the unknown left its mark upon the witnesses and even in physical evidence of combat! It is very easy to see how a rugged World War II fighter replete with 6 fifty caliber machine guns could operate over the dense canopy of the Southeast Asia, and be effective.

Behind enemy lines

As described in a series of stories from the “Wanderling” website, past meets the present and many historic figures are linked in order to paint a complete picture of this legend and how it could be indeed plausible. Operating one of several CIA-KMT radio posts inside enemy territory along the dense jungles of Laos, Burma, and the Yunnan Province of China, operatives used light 4 pound radios with a range of 400 miles to share observations and to be decrypted at Nam Yu where they would be forwarded to Vientiane where the information could be relayed to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia if need be.

Nowhere to hide

The mission was to establish another hidden radio site in the Chinese rural jungles and tap into a telegraph line that ran alongside an all-weather road. They would then feed the wiring from the telegraph line and into the jungle where the radio transmitter would be operated. The CIA team had carefully timed the regular arrival of Chinese military 5 truck convoys on their portion of the road at regular intervals so that their work would go unnoticed, but one day their timing want amiss. They were caught out in the open as the Chinese troop convoy rounded a turn with two men standing on the road, one still up on the telegraph pole, and their bags of tools and equipment out in broad daylight!

No escape!

Two of the Americans grabbed their bags and sprinted for the cover of the jungle while the other practically dropped from the telegraph line to the ground and hid. It all might have worked except for the fact that one bag of equipment was left by the side of the road which caused the trucks to stop and investigate. Knowing their cover had been blown and with only a small chance of escaping, one of the CIA spooks crawled into a ditch as the Chinese troops began unloading. He raised his head long enough to see, as he looked up into the sky as the roar of a low flying aircraft assaulted his ear drums, the underside of a World War II fighter with the wheels tucked under its wings!

Saved by a ghost!

In seconds the aircraft was flying a few feet off the road firing a thunderous barrage of machine gun fire that tore up the convoy, caused the troops and trucks to scatter, and shot up the asphalt road surface into flying debris. The World War II fighter chewed up what seemed to be a mile of the road and everything on it then circled around to make another pass! By that time, the convoy had regrouped and was headed as fast as it could down the opposite stretch of road fleeing in desperation! The CIA spooks had been saved by a most unlikely ally that seemed to be a ghost from the past! Later reconnaissance photos showed that the road had been eaten up by six streams of heavy caliber bullets, and a fifty caliber slug was recovered from the site. Who had responded to that hazardous moment in favor of the Americans?

The others

Although many sightings of the Phantom P-40 had been reported none of them was of the Flying Tiger scheme of the shark’s mouth. Instead there was another iconic insignia that leant a clue to the mystery. A group of fighter pilots during the war had fought alongside of and as a remote branch of Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers in India as well as Burma. In Burma, they were known as the “Burma Banshees” and they operated with the fury and tenacity of their Flying Tiger brethren just as the India offshoot squadrons who hated the brutal Japanese. Having an eerie white skull with a baton piercing the eye socket was perhaps even more haunting than the shark’s mouth of the Flying Tiger units. This was the phantom P-40 that had been creating havoc for the enemy of the Vietnam War era!

Amazing job

To consider that the Chennault’s Flying Tigers had destroyed at least 298 enemy planes in the short time they operated before being consolidated into a formal US Air Force group from December of 1941 until January of 1942 is an amazing achievement in itself, but under the harsh conditions of the arid jungle, a shortage of parts that limited the number of aircraft that could be deployed at any given time, and the lack of facilities for proper mechanical maintenance made this ordeal even more remarkable! Consider as well that there were many unconfirmed kills that could not be verified for lack of gun camera footage or the witness of a second pilot in the midst of furious air combat!

Ghost Plane Ghost plane!

Over and over the term “Ghost Plane! Ghost Plane” was repeatedly used to describe the P-40 that made appearances in all the old targeted regions of their Flying Tiger missions, only during the Vietnam War! Yet, the P-40 was not adorned with the shark’s mouth insignia! A clue emerged however. When Chennault’s Flying Tigers had been retired as an individual unit and forced to be re-commissioned as US Air Force pilots, they were treated badly and with disrespect by the upper brass. Most of the remaining Flying Tigers resigned and headed for new battle opportunities with other air forces. Only a few pilots stuck with Chennault to form the new official US Army Air Corps unit. That left the Burma Banshees and Indian Flying Tigers abandoned, but one Indian mechanic out of Karachi, India had taken advantage of cache of Curtis Warhawks and Tomahawks gathering dust as they had been cannibalized for parts or simply left behind.

Origin of the ghost?

Being an out of work mechanic now and a specialist on the Curtis warplane he hauled off a P-40 and all the parts that he could take with him and the legend of the ghost plane strafing North Vietnamese convoys and even the vehicles of the heroin drug trade came alive! The man taught his son how to rebuild and properly maintain a P-40 and handed the legend over to his boy who would also train others in order to keep this hard hitting fighter plane in operating order. Many villagers and farmers in the jungles of Laos, Burma, China, and Vietnam had witnessed the “Ghost Plane” flying from nowhere wreak havoc and destruction on the enemy as convoys exploded under the stream of six 50 caliber machine guns in the wake of the Phantom P-40. Chances are with P-40’s and Tomahawks that had been left at more than one location (Burma and India) there could have been more than one ghost plane in operation as well.