"Joseph Testagrose" <Joet5@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:ajnkbal9v1ff483r09vgd7vj9fpqbmim83@4ax.com...
The Rochambeau as shown on this 1954 photograph was due
first to some Indian port and then to the South China Sea.
South China Sea because of the then Indochina War was but
why India?
The jet aircrafts in front are early vintage Dassault Mystere.
They were being delivered to the Indian Air Force which had
purchased them.
In the back are American made French Aeronavale aircrafts.
The latter aircrafts were bound for the Tonkin Gulf and were
used to support the Franco-Vietnamese (*) at Dien Bien Phu.
I have known one pilot who was lost with his plane over DBP,
downed by the Viet Minh.
(*) I say "Franco-Vietnamese" because although it's practically
never mentioned there were actually more Vietnamese fighting
along with the French than strictly French troops.
When DBP fell and the survivors surrendered, the Vietnamese
and the French were made prisoners of war.
And when a few months later as per the Geneva agreements there
were freed it was founf that the losses (due to ill tratment, malnutrition,
lack of care) were much larger among the Vietnamese than among
the French. They were if possible even more harshly treated.
In a subsequent picture in this series the Bois Belleau is shown
in the Gulf of Tonkin in Along (Halong?) bay minus its contingent
of Mystere jets (of course).
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