Most Air Commandos recognize the motto “Any Time, Any Place,” from the original 1st Air Commando Group in World War II. I became very familiar with it during my service in the 1st Special Operations Wing from 2011 to 2018. However, I recently encountered the phrase at an unexpected time and in an unexpected place. In February 2024, I traveled to Bangkok, Thailand, to interview Thai veterans of the secret war in Laos. To my surprise, I noticed that three of

the four wore a red, white, and blue shield on their jackets emblazoned with the words, “Any Time, Any Place,” in English—the very same emblem I had worn during my time in the 1st Special Operations Wing.

I interviewed Captain Sarisporn Bhibalkul (กัปตัน สฤษฎิ์พร ภิบาลกุล), Flight Lieutenant Weera Chimmuang (ร.อ.วีระ ฉิมม่วง), Squadron Leader Surapol Premsmith (น.ต.สุรพล เปรมสมิทธ์), and Mr. Thachnattaphong “Iron City” Thipsaenklang (นาย ธัชณัฐพงษ์ ทิพย์แสนกลาง). These four veterans volunteered to fight in the secret war in Laos, where thousands of Thai airmen and soldiers covertly served from 1961 to 1974 under the mysterious Headquarters 333. The Royal Thai Government believed that fighting communism abroad would avert a full-scale war at home and thus actively but secretly participated in the conflict.

The First Volunteers

In 1961, Sarisporn, a twenty-nine-year-old Royal Thai Air Force flight sergeant, delivered an AT-6 Texan attack plane to Laos. A Soviet airlift supplying the Neutralists and Communists in a three-way civil war led President Dwight Eisenhower and Thai Prime Minister Sarit Thanarat to fear that the country would soon fall to communism. Acting on the recommendation of the commander-in-chief of US Pacific Command, Thailand supplied eight AT-6 attack planes to support the Rightist government in Vientiane.

When Sarisporn volunteered for the covert mission, he signed an undated letter of resignation, enabling the Thai air force to disavow him in the event of death or capture. He also received a Lao identification card and nom de guerre—practices that would become standard for all subsequent volunteers. Upon arriving in Vientiane, a suspicious soldier stopped him and demanded his identification. Nervous that his cover might be blown, Sarisporn handed over the card. After scrutinizing it closely, the soldier appeared satisfied. “Carry on,” he instructed.

The Lao air force lacked enough qualified pilots to operate its new AT-6s, prompting the deployment of eight additional Thai volunteers. These men flew combat missions in Laos from March 1961 until June 1962, when the Geneva Agreement brought a tentative end to the fighting. One Thai pilot died in a midair collision, while another narrowly survived being shot down by communist antiaircraft fire.

Shortly after his mission, Sarisporn left the air force to fly for civilian contractors such as Bird & Sons, Continental Air Services, and Air America, lured by a salary eight times higher than his military pay. Over the next eight years, he flew a variety of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft in Laos before transitioning to a career as a commercial airline pilot.

Project WATER PUMP and the Fireflies

In November 1963, Colonel Robert Tyrrell, the new air attaché in Vientiane and a World War II veteran of the original 1st Air Commando Group, proposed deploying a special air warfare detachment to Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base to build the capability and capacity of the Royal Lao Air Force. In March 1964, thirty-eight Air Commandos, led by Major Drexel B. “Barney” Cochran, established Detachment 6, 1st Air Commando Wing, with four North American AT-28D Nomads. This training mission became known as Project WATER PUMP.

The arrival of the Air Commandos coincided with the resumption of open warfare in Laos. In May, Ambassador Leonard Unger transferred the detachment’s four AT-28s to the Lao air force and requested additional reinforcements from South Vietnam. By September, thirty-six AT-28s were on hand, with fifteen more scheduled for delivery in 1965. However, the Lao air force had only nineteen pilots qualified to fly them. To fill the gap, Thailand sent twenty volunteer pilots in May 1964 under Project FIREFLY. Each volunteer signed on for a six-month, one-hundred-mission tour, after which he would receive a $250 bonus and return to regular duty in the Royal Thai Air Force.

The US Department of Defense funded Project FIREFLY, with the CIA acting as the conduit, covertly channeling funds from Washington, DC, though its Vientiane Station to Headquarters 333. In Laos, the volunteers reported to the American commander of the Air Operations Center (AOC) at Vientiane’s Wattay Airport, a position held by legendary Air Commandos like Billie Keeler and Jerry Klingaman.

The first ten Fireflies arrived at WATER PUMP for an expedited combat-qualification course and flew their first combat mission in Laos on June 1. Subsequent groups underwent three months of combat readiness training at WATER PUMP, receiving a graduation certificate and US Air Force pilot wings upon completion.

Initially, the Royal Thai Air Force prohibited married men from volunteering, a policy that excluded Weera Chimmuang. When the policy changed, he volunteered immediately but found himself retained as an instructor at WATER PUMP because of his extensive experience in the AT-28. He finally joined the fifth cohort of Fireflies and flew his first combat mission in Laos on July 21, 1966.

High Risks, Hard Lessons

On his first combat mission, Weera’s flight attacked an underwater bridge near the Plain of Jars. He dropped four 250-pound general-purpose bombs and fired a volley of 2.75-inch rockets on his first pass. The flight leader then led them in for a second pass, strafing enemy troops with their .50-caliber machine guns. Enemy small-arms fire struck Weera’s engine. Streaming white smoke, he made it only five miles from the target before the engine quit, forcing him to bail out.

Every Firefly pilot underwent survival and evasion training at WATER PUMP and carried a survival kit prepared by an American life support technician. Using the pen flare gun in his kit, Weera signaled his flight and then hid while awaiting rescue from a US Air Force CH-3C or HH-3E “Jolly Green Giant” helicopter. “My heart dropped when it flew past me without picking me up,” he recalled. “I looked left and right, wondering why he didn’t get me.”

The crew of the helicopter that overflew Weera had spotted enemy troops in the area and withdrew to await armed escorts. Weera waited anxiously for another ten or twenty minutes before a sudden burst of machine gun fire startled him. “Bullets hit the ground all around me,” he vividly recounted. “I looked up at the sky and saw two Skyraiders diving, firing guns and rockets all around me.” These were US Air Force A-1Es from the 602nd Air Commando Squadron, call sign “Sandy.”

While two Skyraiders held the enemy at bay, two more rendezvoused with the helicopter to cover its approach. This time, the helicopter hovered directly over Weera and recovered him using a jungle penetrator. Straddling one of the paddles, Weera held on tightly. “The Jolly Green immediately pulled away and climbed even though I was still hanging in the hoist,” he reported. They reeled him in over a blur of jungle, climbing higher and higher as they quickly departed enemy territory.

Weera enjoyed a ten-day leave with his wife in Thailand before returning to combat. On his second mission, his engine took another hit. Clawing frantically for altitude, he thought, “Me again?!” Then he noticed his propeller speed holding steady at 1,900 rpm—a bullet had struck the propeller governor linkage, but the governor itself still functioned. He returned safely to Vientiane. “I was lucky,” he reflected.

In addition to small-arms fire, the Fireflies faced an increasing number of 37- and 57-millimeter antiaircraft guns. An AT-28 would disintegrate if it took a direct hit from one of these, while shrapnel from an exploding flak cloud could severely damage any aircraft within its destructive radius. “Even if there was an explosion nearby, your plane would still shake,” Weera explained. Surapol Premsmith learned that when facing heavy antiaircraft fire, he had to expend all his ordnance in a single pass and then depart the area low and fast. “That’s how I survived two hundred missions,” he revealed.

The End of Project FIREFLY

Between 1964 and 1970, 217 Thai pilots volunteered for Project FIREFLY, with twenty-four returning for a second tour, including both Weera and Surapol. The Fireflies suffered a loss rate exceeding 10 percent, with eleven pilots killed and three captured in combat, and another eight killed in accidents.

Project FIREFLY held the line as the Royal Lao Air Force gradually expanded its capability and capacity. In 1968, the Fireflies flew more than half of the Lao air force’s combat sorties. By June 1970, the Lao air force had fifty-two AT-28 pilots and twenty AC-47 pilots conducting nearly three thousand sorties per month. While the Fireflies’ contribution remained steady, their share of the total sorties declined from over 50 percent in 1968 to just 6 percent by 1970.

With the Royal Thai Air Force facing a pilot shortage of its own amid a growing domestic communist insurgency, Project FIREFLY concluded on October 27, 1970. The program had demonstrated Thailand’s reliability as an ally and provided its air force with valuable combat experience. By 1970, Firefly veterans served in every combat squadron of the Royal Thai Air Force, contributing their hard-won expertise to the nation’s counterinsurgency efforts.

After completing his second tour in Laos in March 1970, Weera became the tactical operations officer in Chiang Rai, Thailand. Each day, four AT-28s from Chiang Mai forward-staged to Chiang Rai for missions in the far north, primarily to escort resupply helicopters. As the tactical operations officer, Weera determined the tactics and selected the armament load for each mission. With two hundred combat missions in Laos, he had far more experience than most of the pilots and often led the missions himself. “Even when I was tired, I still flew all the time,” he recalled. “I enjoyed flying.”

WHITE HORSE and UNITY

The end of Project FIREFLY did not mark the end of Thai volunteers serving in Laos. Even as the Lao air force expanded, the war escalated, with an estimated sixty-seven thousand North Vietnamese regulars in the country by 1970, equipped with tanks, armored vehicles, and heavy artillery. To reinforce the Lao army and CIA-sponsored special guerrilla units, the United States funded the deployment of 17,808 Thai volunteer soldiers under Project UNITY, organized into twenty-seven infantry and three artillery battalions. The first battalion arrived in Laos on December 15, 1970. Additionally, from early 1972 until April 1974, nineteen volunteer airmen served in Laos under Project WHITE HORSE, operating two UH-1M helicopter gunships to escort Air America helicopters and ground convoys supplying the UNITY battalions.

The UNITY battalions relied on close air support to counter the superior firepower and numbers of North Vietnamese troops. A friendly fire incident in April 1971 prompted the CIA to hire English-speaking Thais as forward air guides for each battalion. Since 1969, American combat controllers at WATER PUMP had been training Lao and Hmong forward air guides, and they began training Thai personnel in 1971. Each of the 128 Thai graduates received a unique call sign.

Thachnattaphong “Nat” Thipsaenklang, call sign, “Iron City,” served a six-month tour with Battalion Commando 627 near Pakse, Laos. He credited his training at WATER PUMP with giving him the skills and mindset that would one day save his battalion commander’s life. During a long-range patrol in January 1973, Nat conducted a map study of the next day’s march, noting terrain that seemed ideal for an enemy ambush. He coordinated for a Raven forward air controller to be overhead and had the soldiers prepare a helicopter landing zone in case of casualties.

The next day, the ambush unfolded exactly as Nat had anticipated, and enemy rifle fire wounded his commanding officer. While lobbing grenades at the enemy, Nat worked with the Raven to call in close air support. The aerial firepower allowed them to break contact and evacuate his commander from the helicopter landing zone prepared the previous day.

The Legacy of the Unknown Warriors

The Thai government has never publicly acknowledged its role in the secret war. Lacking official recognition for their service and sacrifice, veterans formed the Unknown Warriors Association 333, wearing patches on their jackets featuring a colorful tiger’s head to symbolize their covert service. Firefly veterans also proudly wear the red, white, and blue shield of the 1st Air Commando Wing. This emblem, originally the insignia of their instructors at WATER PUMP and the AOC commanders who led and flew alongside them in combat, has become a symbol of their own identity—forged in the crucible of war and shaped by shared sacrifice with their American allies: “Any Time, Any Place.”

About the Author: Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Jackson served as a U-28 pilot and combat aviation advisor and is now a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He would like to thank Air Chief Marshal Sakpinit Promthep and the Thai secret war veterans for their indispensable help in writing this article.