Nguyễn Cao Kỳ

Nguyễn Cao Kỳ (8 September 1930 – 23 July 2011) was a South Vietnamese military officer and politician who served as the chief of the Republic of Vietnam Air Force in the 1960s, before leading the nation as the prime minister of South Vietnam in a military junta from 1965 to 1967.

Kỳ gained his wings on 15 September 1954.

The French defeat at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ and the Geneva Conference ended the colonial presence in Indochina, and Kỳ came back to the new Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).

The commander of a transport squadron, Kỳ was put in charge of Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base, the main aerial facility in the capital, Saigon.

Kỳ then went to the United States to study for six months at the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Field, Alabama, where he learned to speak English.

He returned to Vietnam and continued to rise up the ranks.

A soldier in the Vietnamese National Army who eventually became commander of the Republic of Vietnam Air Force, prime minister and vice president of South Vietnam, Kỳ had little political experience or ambition initially.

After flight training by the French, he returned to Vietnam in 1954 and held a series of commands in the Republic of Vietnam Air Force.

Under the regime of Dương Văn Minh, whose coup Kỳ had supported, he was made an air marshal, replacing Colonel Đỗ Khắc Mai as head of the Republic of Vietnam Air Force.

Kỳ began his association with the American covert operations community in 1961.

While still ranked as a major commanding Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base, he became the first pilot for South Vietnam's presidential liaison officer, which was organizing to infiltrate military intelligence teams into North Vietnam.

He recruited pilots from his command for this intelligence program of the Central Intelligence Agency, and flew some of the missions himself after being trained by an expert pilot from Air America.

At one point, Kỳ took the CIA's Saigon station chief, William Colby, for a demonstration low-level flight.

Kỳ's flight training graduation gift for himself and his pilots was a flight to Singapore, where he purchased black flight suits, silk scarfs, and cigarette lighters for all hands.

In November 1963, Kỳ participated in the coup that deposed president Ngô Đình Diệm and resulted in Diệm's assassination.

In 1964, Kỳ became prominent in junta politics, and was part of a group of young, aggressive officers dubbed the "Young Turks".

Over the next two years, there were numerous successful and failed coup attempts.

In September 1964, he helped put down a coup attempt by Generals Lâm Văn Phát and Dương Văn Đức against Nguyễn Khánh, and the following February he thwarted another attempt by Phát and Phạm Ngọc Thảo.

His favored tactic was to send fighter jets into the air and threaten large-scale air strikes to force his opponents to back down.

After the latter attempt, he also forced the Khánh into exile and became the leading member of the junta in mid-1965 by becoming prime minister, while General Thiệu was a figurehead chief of state.

He gained notoriety for his flamboyant manner, womanizing, and risky and brash behavior, which deeply concerned South Vietnam's American allies and angered the Vietnamese public, many of whom regarded him as a "cowboy" and "Hooligan".

He cared little for public relations, and publicly made numerous controversial statements and threats.

Nevertheless, Kỳ and Thiệu were able to end the cycle of coups, and the Americans backed their regime.

In 1966 Kỳ decided to purge rival General Nguyễn Chánh Thi from a command role, which provoked major unrest in Da Nang and Huế.

He publicly threatened to kill the mayor of Đà Nẵng.

Three months of large-scale demonstrations and riots paralyzed parts of the country, and after much maneuvering and some military battles, Kỳ's forces finally put down the uprising, and Thi was exiled, entrenching the former's grip on power.

In 1967, a transition to an elected government was scheduled, and after a power struggle within the military, Thiệu ran for the presidency with Kỳ as his running mate.

To allow the two to work together, their fellow officers had agreed to have a military body controlled by Kỳ shape policy behind the scenes.

The election was rigged to ensure that Thiệu and Kỳ's military ticket would win, and strong executive powers meant that the junta, in effect, still ruled.

Leadership tensions persisted, and Thiệu prevailed, sidelining Kỳ supporters from key positions.

Then, until his retirement from politics in 1971, he served as vice president to bitter rival General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, in a nominally civilian administration.

Born in northern Vietnam, Kỳ joined the Vietnamese National Army of the French-backed State of Vietnam and started as an infantry officer before the French sent him off for pilot training.

After the French withdrew from Vietnam and the nation was partitioned, Kỳ moved up the ranks of the Republic of Vietnam Air Force to become its leader.

Thiệu then enacted legislation to restrict candidacy eligibility for the 1971 election, banning almost all would-be opponents; Kỳ and the rest withdrew as they expected the election to be fraudulent; Thiệu went on to win the election uncontested, while Kỳ retired.

With the fall of Saigon, Kỳ fled to the United States.

He continued to heavily criticize both the communists and Thiệu, and the former prevented him from returning.

However, in 2004, he became the first South Vietnamese leader to return to Vietnam, calling for reconciliation between communists and anti-communists.

A northerner, Kỳ was born in Sơn Tây, a town west of Hanoi.

After completing his secondary schooling in Chu Văn An High School, Hanoi, he enlisted in the French-backed Vietnamese National Army of the State of Vietnam and was commissioned in the infantry after attending an officers training school.

After a brief period in the field against the communist Việt Minh of Hồ Chí Minh during the First Indochina War, the French military hierarchy sent Kỳ, then a lieutenant, to Marrakech in Morocco to train as a pilot.