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    Mystery of Missing Flight F-BELV
    Mystery of Missing Flight F-BELV
    Mystery of Missing Flight F-BELV
    Ebook166 pages1 hour

    Mystery of Missing Flight F-BELV

    By Stephen Wynn

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    About this ebook

    The true story of the aircraft that disappeared between Saigon and Hanoi, one of the enduring mysteries of the Vietnam War.

    Following the Geneva Accords in 1954, Vietnam found itself separated into North and South, with communist North Vietnam under the control of Ho Chi Minh. At the same time, the International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC) was established, whose role it was to oversee the implementation of the Accords.

    On October 18, 1965, an ICSC aircraft, F-BELV, was on a regular weekly flight from Saigon to Hanoi, stopping at Phnom Penh, in Cambodia, and Vientiane, in Laos. Twenty minutes after leaving Vientiane, the captain contacted the authorities at Hanoi to give his ETA, but the aircraft never arrived. It is believed to be the only aircraft never to have been recovered from the Vietnam War.

    But what really happened and why? Did the aircraft crash, or was it shot down? Did it happen over Laos or North Vietnam?

    Mystery of Missing Flight F-BELV examines all aspects of the Vietnam War, particularly the events of 1965, and how tensions in the region heightened as the first American combat troops arrived in Vietnam. It investigates the role of the CIA, and whether their involvement had any bearing on the disappearance of F-BELV. It looks at those on board the aircraft, including James Sylvester Byrne, a sergeant in the Canadian Army and a relation to the author of this book. Was he just a regular soldier? Or was he really an intelligence officer gathering information to share with the Americans? This compelling book delves into these questions and into one of the enduring mysteries of the war.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMar 30, 2020
    ISBN9781473845961
    Mystery of Missing Flight F-BELV
    Author

    Stephen Wynn

    Stephen is a retired police officer having served with Essex Police as a constable for thirty years between 1983 and 2013. He is married to Tanya and has two sons, Luke and Ross, and a daughter, Aimee. His sons served five tours of Afghanistan between 2008 and 2013 and both were injured. This led to the publication of his first book, Two Sons in a Warzone – Afghanistan: The True Story of a Father’s Conflict, published in October 2010. Both Stephen’s grandfathers served in and survived the First World War, one with the Royal Irish Rifles, the other in the Mercantile Marine, whilst his father was a member of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps during the Second World War.When not writing Stephen can be found walking his three German Shepherd dogs with his wife Tanya, at some unearthly time of the morning, when most normal people are still fast asleep.

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      Book preview

      Mystery of Missing Flight F-BELV - Stephen Wynn

      Chapter 1

      Canada’s involvement in the Vietnam War

      Although not directly connected to the story of flight F-BELV, I believe that this chapter is relevant in providing a fuller picture of Canada’s involvement in the Vietnam War, which was much greater than it may have first appeared. Canada did much more than send a few soldiers over as part of a peacekeeping mission, and it is this greater involvement in the war which makes this particular chapter pertinent to the overall story.

      Canada was not a belligerent nation during the Vietnam War, although a small number of Canadian soldiers were sent to Indochina as members of the peacekeeping mission, the International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC), as well as the much later International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS). This was a classic example of, ‘if something is not working, change its name ever so slightly, and send it straight back out there to do the same job, and hope that nobody has noticed.’

      During the Cold War, which was the period immediately after the end of the Second World War, roughly up until 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came into being, formed in 1949 to combat the spread of communism. Canada was one of its founding members and was instrumental in the forming of that military alliance against the Soviet Union and her allies, who responded by forming their own alliance in 1955, known as the Warsaw Pact.

      Canada’s 14th Prime Minister was Lester Bowles Pearson, who served in that position between 1963 and 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War. Under his Liberal government Canada managed to stay out of the Vietnam War, but that had not been a foregone conclusion. Her foreign policy at the time saw her committed to multilateralism and the United Nations, which politically placed Canada in a difficult situation as these two foreign policy objectives clearly clashed with one another.

      Canada had been involved in the Korean War of 1950–1953 when, like other NATO countries, she had sent troops to the region in support of South Korea, but as this was undertaken as part of a United Nations resolution it had a legitimacy, which did not infringe upon Canada’s policy of opposing illegal acts of international aggression.

      Another element which Canada struggled with in relation to becoming embroiled in the Vietnam War was that, being some 7,000 miles away, it was of absolutely no strategic importance to her. In addition to this, Canada did not share America’s view on communism in that it had to be actively opposed, even with foreign intervention. Unlike her neighbour the United States, Canada wasn’t paranoid when it came to the idea of communism.

      On 8 September 1954, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) came into existence, with its headquarters situated in Bangkok, Thailand. It was Southeast Asia’s version of NATO, just a whole lot less effective. Its members were Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, France, United Kingdom and the United States. The countries it was put in place to protect were South Vietnam and Laos, as it was primarily made to block further communist gains in Southeast Asia.

      As part of her foreign policy Canada had six prerequisites that would not even allow her to sign up to SEATO, let alone participate in the Vietnam War. These were:

      (1) It had to involve cultural and trade ties in addition to a military alliance.

      (2) It had to demonstrably meet the will of the people in the countries involved.

      (3) Other free Asian states had to support it directly or in principle.

      (4) France had to refer the conflict to the United Nations.

      (5) Any multilateral action must conform to the United Nations charter.

      (6) Any action had to be divorced from all elements of colonialism.

      Openly, Canada remained neutral throughout the Vietnam War which as a member of the ICSC, whose job it was to oversee the implementation of the Geneva Accords, she did not really have much choice in, not if she wanted to remain as one of the Commission’s nominated delegated members; but behind the scenes, it was an American ally. One of the Canadian delegates who sat on the ICSC was rumoured to have passed messages between the United States and North Vietnam, all of which was done supposedly with the approval of the Canadian government.

      This wasn’t the only way in which Canada assisted the United States during the Vietnam War. On Wikipedia there is a page entitled, ‘Canada and the Vietnam War’; one of the sub-headings of this page is entitled ‘Canada’s involvement in the War’. It covers how, despite Canada’s misgivings in relation to the war and her refusal to become physically involved in it, she still happily exported military supplies and raw materials useful in their manufacture, to the United States. It could be said to be quite shocking that despite her aversion to physically taking part in the war she actually played quite a significant part in it. She happily supplied ammunition, napalm and Agent Orange to the Americans as trade carried on between the countries despite the war.

      According to the same article, Canada also supplied the United States Pentagon with aircraft engines and explosives, for use in the Vietnam War. But it did not end there, as Canada also provided beverages, berets, boots, nickel, copper, lead, oil, and brass for shell casings, plate armour, as well as military vehicles. The total of these sales was a staggering $12.5 billion, supplied by an estimated 500 Canadian companies.

      So many people were required in Canada to produce all these items that this contributed towards Canadian unemployment figures falling to a record low of 3.9 per cent. Despite all these goods she was selling to the United States and the money she was making from it, Canada wasn’t always supportive of her neighbour’s tactics in the war. On 2 April 1965, the Canadian prime minister gave a speech at the Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in which he called for a pause in the bombing of North Vietnam, which some Americans, including President Lyndon B. Johnson, thought was a ‘bit rich’ under the circumstances.

      There were even cases where Canadian defence contractors were actually sent to Vietnam to carry out vital repair work on equipment which was used and operated by the United States Army.

      Under the Defence Production Sharing Agreement which was a trade agreement signed by both nations in 1956, the Canadian Department of Defence Production (CDDP) and the United States Department of Defense (DoD), tested chemical defoliants together for use in Vietnam. The United States also used Canadian bases and other facilities for weapons testing and training exercises.

      There were other aspects of the Vietnam War which also involved Canada in one way, shape or form. These included Canadians who enlisted in and willingly served in the United States military during the war, as well as American ‘draft dodgers’ and American military deserters, who sought a safe haven in Canada.

      In total it is estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 Canadian men travelled to America and enlisted in the United States military. Of these some 12,000 saw combat in Vietnam, and a total of 110 were either killed in action, died of their wounds or were injured. Another seven Canadians are still officially listed as ‘missing in action’.

      One of the Canadians who enlisted in the United States Army and went to serve in Vietnam, was Toronto-born Peter Charles Lemon who, at just 19 years of age, was awarded the Medal of Honor, America’s highest and most prestigious personal military decoration, which is usually presented by the President of the United States of America. It is on a par with Great Britain’s Victoria Cross.

      Lemon is the only Canadian-born United States citizen to be presented with the medal as a result of his service in the Vietnam War. At the time of writing this, he was the eighth youngest living recipient of a Medal of Honor, out of seventy-two who were alive at that

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