Fly Until You Die An Oral History of Hmong Pilots in the Vietnam War

During the Vietnam War, the US Air Force secretly trained pilots from Laos, skirting Lao neutrality in order to bolster the Royal Lao Air Force and their own war efforts. Beginning in 1964, this covert project, "Water Pump," operated out of Udorn Airbase in Thailand with the support of the CIA. This Secret War required recruits from Vietnam-border region willing to take great risks--a demand that was met by the marginalized Hmong ethnic minority. Soon, dozens of Hmong men were training at Water Pump and providing air support to the US-sponsored clandestine army in Laos. Short and problematic training, dangerous topography, and poor aircraft quality, however, resulted in a nearly 50 percent casualty rate, and those pilots who survived mostly sought refuge in the United States after the war. Drawing from numerous oral history interviews, Fly Until You Die, brings their stories to light for the first time--in the words of those who lived it.

Chia Youyee Vang is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the co-editor of Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women (2016) and author of Hmong America: Reconstructing Community in Diaspora (2010) and Hmong in Minnesota (2008).