⚔️CharlesTrekur 🇺🇸

THE RAVEN WHO FOUGHT AMERICA’S SECRET WAR In 1970, Captain Brian E. Wages went to Laos and effectively disappeared from the conventional U.S. Air Force. No uniform. Lao-marked aircraft. Civilian clothes. An M16 and sidearm close at hand. And a call sign that placed him among one of the most unusual groups of American combat aviators of the Vietnam War: Raven. Wages first flew as Raven 48 from Long Tieng (LS-20A), the clandestine headquarters of Gen. Vang Pao’s Hmong army and the nerve center of the CIA-backed war in northern Laos. He later operated as Raven 31 from Lima Site 39. The Ravens were active-duty USAF Forward Air Controllers operating inside a war Washington publicly kept at arm’s length. Flying low and slow over hostile territory, they located enemy positions, marked targets, and directed American fighters against North Vietnamese troops, artillery, and supply routes. But this wasn’t an ordinary FAC assignment. The Ravens worked alongside CIA officers, Air America crews, Royal Lao forces, and Hmong fighters. Their aircraft often carried Lao markings, while the Americans flying them wore civilian clothes. A single Raven could direct devastating American airpower while remaining largely invisible to the public. Wages also appears in accounts involving combat search-and-rescue operations, where a Raven’s knowledge of the terrain and enemy positions could mean the difference between bringing a downed airman home or losing another crew. And Wages survived the Secret War. He remained in the Air Force, eventually rising to colonel. Two decades later, during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, he served as an Air Force liaison officer to U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. The man standing beside that aircraft with an M16 wasn’t a mercenary or a civilian bush pilot. He was an American Air Force officer fighting in a war that wasn’t supposed to look like an American war. Brian E. Wages. Raven 48. Raven 31. One of the Ravens of the Secret War. #AircraftHistoryJunky #Raven #SecretWars #LongTieng #CIA #USAF #VietnamWar #CovertOperations #AviationHistory #VangPao #ForwardAirController #ColdWar #MilitaryAviation