At exactly 0600 hours on the morning of November 24, 1964, as the sun was breaking over the former Belgian colony of Congo, five four-engine turboprop Lockheed C-130 Hercules transports appeared only 700 feet above the Sabena airport on the outskirts of the city of Stanleyville. As the first Hercules, with ‘U.S. Air Force’ stenciled in large block letters along the fuselage, approached a narrow swath of grass alongside the airport’s main runway, navigator First Lieutenant John Coble called out ‘Green Light’ over the aircraft’s intercom. Immediately, the co-pilot, Captain Robert Kitchen, reached down to the panel by his right armrest and flipped the paratrooper jump lights from red to green. As the lights in the cargo compartment changed from the red ‘Prepare to jump’ signal to green for ‘Go,’ Colonel Charles Laurent, commander of Belgium’s crack Régiment Para-Commando, leaped out into the cool, moist dawn air, followed by 64 other troopers into the African skies. Dragon Rouge, the most ambitious peacetime military operation ever performed by the government of the United States up to that time, was on.

Events of Thanksgiving week of 1964 in Africa were the direct results of years of political unrest in the Congo, which began within days of Belgium’s declaration of Congolese independence in 1960. An outbreak of fighting in the newly independent country led to United Nations intervention as USAF transports under the control of the 322nd Air Division, U.S. Air Force Europe (USAFE), airlifted a peacekeeping team made up of military personnel from several nations to Leopoldville. For three years, the UN peacekeeping force remained in the Congo, supported by American C-130 and Fairchild C-124 cargo planes.

Within weeks of the withdrawal of the UN force in the summer of 1964, fighting again broke out in the Congo. Christophe Gbenye, a Marxist who declared himself ‘President of the Congo,’ led a rebellion of fierce tribesmen calling themselves Simbas-’lions’ in Swahili. The rebels soon captured large sections of the northern half of the country, leading foreign governments, including those of the United States and Belgium, to urge their citizens to flee the threatened areas.

To combat the rebellion, Congolese President Moise Tshombe recruited a fiery South African soldier, Major Michael Hoare, and gave him authority to raise a mercenary army of white Africans to assist the black Congolese army. Hoare would become a legend in the world of the professional soldier; during World War II he had fought in Burma with Brig. Gen. Orde Wingate, then became a professional soldier after that conflict. With his reputation already made from leading an earlier band during the Katangan secessionist revolt-in which Tshombe had been a participant-Hoare had no trouble training a 300-man unit of mostly South African ‘mercs’ that he dubbed 5 Commando. Hoare, often called ‘Mad Mike’ by those who knew him, enforced only two rules among his men-that they shaved and refrained from drinking before battle. Aside from that, he ‘cared not a whit’ what they did.

Tshombe also turned to the United States for assistance. Lessons from World War II, Korea and the French Indochina War indicated that air support and air transportation were crucial for combating a large rebel force. President Lyndon Johnson responded to Tshombe’s request for aid by sending Joint Task Force (JTF) Leo, a United States Strike Command task force consisting primarily of three Tactical Air Command C-130s and support personnel, to Leopoldville. The transports were from the 464th Troop Carrier Wing, based at tiny Pope Air Force Base (AFB), adjacent to Fort Bragg, N.C. A platoon of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division provided protection for the C-130s while they were on the ground at remote African airstrips. A fourth C-130 was part of Leo, a ‘Talking Bird’ communications package that allowed long-range radio communications between the task force and Strike Command headquarters at McDill AFB. Fla., as well as the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House.

Another aspect of U.S. aid was a mercenary air force made up of North American T-28 Trojans and Douglas B-26 Intruders flown by Cuban expatriate pilots in the employ of a civilian corporation under contract to the Central Intelligence Agency. The Congolese air force consisted primarily of World War II-vintage North American T-6 trainers, which like the Cuban-flown T-28s, had been converted into attack planes.

In August, the Simbas captured the city of Stanleyville with its large concentration of Europeans and Americans. For a time the whites were treated relatively well. But later, with additional American-supplied firepower and airlift support, the Congolese army made steady gains against the rebel forces. As the Simbas saw the tide begin to turn against them, their radio station in Stanleyville began denouncing the United States, accusing it of sending combat troops to aid the government forces. Rebel hostility caused fear for the safety of whites in rebel-held territory, especially after news of atrocities performed by the revels against their own people reached the outside world.

While the whites were under a semblance of protection by the rebels, Stanleyville’s black residents were not, and a reign of terror began as the Simbas systematically tortured and killed prominent Congolese. Then, evidently realizing that the whites in their territory could serve as bargaining chips, the rebels began taking hostages. On September 5, U.S. Consul Michael Hoyt was taken into custody, along with other members of the consulate staff, and thrown into the city’s Central Prison. Other whites were seized. Some were thrown into the prison with the Americans, while others were held in the Victoria Hotel. Over the next two months, the Simbas arrested foreigners from as many as 20 countries, placing them under custody in hotels, prisons and military bases. The rebels began making threats that the hostages would be killed if the United States did not withdraw its support for the Congolese government.

In late October the rebels accused an American medical missionary, Dr. Paul Carlson, of being a U.S. Army major on assignment for the CIA. Carlson, with the Protestant Relief Agency, was a medical doctor who first went to the Congo on a special six-month mission, then returned in 1963 with his family. Less than a year later, after having sent his wife and four children to safety in the Central African Republic, Carlson was seized by the Simbas because (1) he owned a radio, (2) he was an American and (3) the rebels wanted hostages. Over the next few weeks, Dr. Paul Carlson’s name would be featured in the world’s headlines.

With the fate of the white hostages in doubt, the United States and Belgium tried to negotiate with the rebels. At the same time, they began planning various means of military intervention, even as the Congolese government forces launched a major offensive toward Stanleyville. Several possible schemes were put forth, including a large paratrooper assault by members of the 82nd Airborne Division, supported by heavy tactical air strikes. While military forces in the united States worked on the larger plan, the U.S. military command in Europe came up with a less involved one, calling for the use of a small force of paratroopers begin airlifted to Africa for the rescue. That plan, formulated jointly by the United States and Belgium, was given the French code name Dragon Rouge (’red dragon’).

On November 15, Brig. Gen. Robert D. Forman, commander of the 322nd Air Division, was given word to begin preparations to airlift a force of Belgium paratroopers to the Congo for a possible rescue attempt. Forman’s command had supported the UN peacekeeping forces in the Congo from 1960 until early 1964. During those years, however, the 322nd had undergone some changes. Previously, the division had been directly under the commander of USAFE, but a reorganization of American forces in Europe led to the transfer of the division’s transfer to Military Air Transport Service a few months earlier.

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