ARC Wings organization
also: ARC units, 581st Wing, 581st
Explore in graph → Export claims (CSV) ↓
Related entities (most co-mentioned)
CIAintelligence service · 17U.S. Air Forceorganization · 13Philippinescountry · 9John Arnold Jr.person · 8Libyacountry · 8Chinacountry · 6Koreacountry · 5Vietnamcountry · 5581st ARC Wingorganization · 5Clark Fieldplace · 4Francecountry · 4Yokotaplace · 3Mike Hoareperson · 3Okinawaplace · 3Tibetcountry · 2Cubacountry · 2Air Americaorganization · 2Japancountry · 2Soviet Unioncountry · 2U.S. Armyorganization · 2Burmacountry · 2United Kingdomcountry · 2Englandplace · 2Korean Warevent · 2
Claims (13)
CIA funded
ARC Wings book_quoted
“Of course, that would be the CIA. His review of Air Force records, including some still secret, left no doubt which agency made the request. He says that it could only have been the CIA. The CIA believed its role was well hidden. The CIA ap…”
▶ Operation Gladio-Korea Final Day @ 23:16
ARC Wings front_for
Air America documented
“special warfare units called Air Resupply and Communication, or ARC wings. Five of those units were formed and stationed at bases in Great Britain, Libya, Okinawa, and the Philippines. The ARC wings operated a wide variety of transport airc…”
▶ The Colonels corner president’s secret wars chapter 5 @ 57:17
CIA funded
ARC Wings book_quoted
“One of the CIA officers told the colonel, you're a marked man now. The CIA contributed to the cost of running the ARC wing. Colonel Darby, director of operations for the 581st, accompanied a CIA officer who made regular cash deliveries to t…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Safe for Democracy Part 7 @ 32:36
ARC Wings supplied_arms_to
U-2 mission book_quoted
“and communications wing, ARC. Similarly, plans of the 380th wing flying from Wilis, which is in Libya, in the mid-1950s, ferried critical fuel and chemical supplies to Turkey for the CIA's U-2 mission. And you're going to find a direct corr…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Safe for Democracy Part 7 @ 30:43
John Arnold Jr. headed
ARC Wings book_quoted
“581st Wing provides an excellent example of the relationship between ARC and the CIA. Activated in July of 1951, after 11 months of training in Idaho, about 1,000 airmen moved to Clark Field, commanded by Colonel John Arnold, Jr. The 581st …”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Safe for Democracy Part 7 @ 31:41
ARC Wings carried_out_attack
Korean War book_quoted
“On January 12, 1953, the wing commander and a crew of 13 flew one of their B-29s to Yokota, another Air Force base, where they picked up leaflets to drop over North Korea. These would be the 581st first PSYOPs mission into the war. Stardust…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Safe for Democracy Part 7 @ 33:34
CIA recruited
ARC Wings book_quoted
“One of the CIA officers told the colonel, you're a marked man now. The CIA contributed to the cost of running the ARC wing. Colonel Darby, director of operations for the 581st, accompanied a CIA officer who made regular cash deliveries to t…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Safe for Democracy Part 7 @ 32:36
ARC Wings supplied_arms_to
Operation Gladio host_asserted
“for resistance groups to be activated in the event of Soviet invasion. What the hell? That should have Operation Gladio neon lights all around it, blinking red. Let me read that again. Their other mission included delivering CIA-supplied we…”
▶ Operation Gladio-Korea Final Day @ 14:36
ARC Wings member_of
Mike Hoare book_quoted
“A few hundred of them made up a small battalion called 5 Commando under the South African Colonel Mike Hoare, H-O-A-R-E. It remains unclear what role the CIA had in financing the 5 Commando because available documents, principally in the In…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe For Democracy Part 28 (29) @ 30:15
ARC Wings trained
John Arnold Jr. book_quoted
“Arnold and others from his captured crew say that they had trained for such covert missions against China and the Soviet Union, but had not yet concluded any by the time they were shot down. Rain drops splattered on the tarmac at Yokota Air…”
▶ Operation Gladio-Korea Final Day @ 27:55
ARC Wings supplied_arms_to
France book_quoted
“My husband's getting ready to go to a car show, so my dog's going crazy. So just pay no attention to him. The ARC also trains CIA-hired civilian pilots for C-119 missions in Vietnam to support French forces in the decisive final months of t…”
▶ Operation Gladio-Korea Final Day @ 20:49
ARC Wings supplied_arms_to
Operation Gladio host_asserted
“We've talked about them. ARC Wings was used in Korea. ARC Wings was used in Taiwan, out of the Philippines, to supply Operation Gladio-type capability. Three of these units were formed. Weirdly enough, they were stationed in Great Britain, …”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Safe for Democracy Part 7 @ 28:40
64th Air Defense Corps carried_out_attack
ARC Wings book_quoted
“and reach Clark the following morning. Everything went fine over the first targets, but at the last, near Korea's border with China, fighter jets intercepted them and damaged the plane so badly they had to bail out. At 11 p.m., Stardust 4-0…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Safe for Democracy Part 7 @ 34:06
Mentions (45)
▶ 12:07
But the papers revealed China was right on a more telling point. Arnold's group was part of a far-reaching CIA assault on China. Born in February 1951 and christened with the innocuous-sounding name Air Resupply and Communication Services, …
▶ 12:37
demolition, hand-to-hand combat, and other guerrilla warfare skills at a secret CIA facility where? Fort Benning, Georgia, called Training Center One. They helped the CIA in clandestine operations designed to subvert communism in its grand …
▶ 13:07
And not only in the Far East, where the ideological conflict was playing out in the Korean War. Yeah, that's not what it was either. The Air Resupply and Communication Services acronym, ARC, A-R-C, was fitting. Three ARC subgroups, known as…
▶ 15:32
Just say we're flying PSYOPs missions, dropping pamphlets when we're actually putting weaponry in stay-behind units. It also felt to be important that the real purpose of these units was not made public. It was for this reason that the name…
▶ 16:02
Each of these three arc wings had about 1,000 men and an extraordinary complement of aircraft. Besides B-29s outfitted with airdropping agents and communicating with them behind enemy lines, what? They had amphibious SA-16s albatross planes…
▶ 16:27
They had the C-119 flying boxcar transports and C-118 transports with their national markings erased for CIA-supplied crews. The ARC men were sworn to secrecy and some still won't talk. I'm not interested in divulging anything more about th…
▶ 17:56
For up to 10 years, Washington called the spying charges false and the prison sentence the most flagrant violation of justice. With the Cold War over, some ARC veterans are willing to reveal glimpses of their special operations, risk dark o…
▶ 18:21
For example, their covert air supply for French forces in Vietnam before the American public knew the existence of the U.S. involvement there. Norman Runge, R-U-N-G-E, of Bexar, Delaware, flew C-119s and SA-16s from an ARC base in Libya. He…
▶ 20:49
My husband's getting ready to go to a car show, so my dog's going crazy. So just pay no attention to him. The ARC also trains CIA-hired civilian pilots for C-119 missions in Vietnam to support French forces in the decisive final months of t…
▶ 21:16
Details of actual ARC operations are hard to find. ARC veterans say their unit did not always make written records because it was classified. This is a quote. It was a matter of keeping it secret from the enemy, and in doing so, we kept it …
▶ 21:46
that trained guerrillas in the Libyan desert to drop CIA-supplied weapons where? Oh, in the Balkans in 1950. There is little doubt the CIA masterminded the Ark. A top-secret 1953 Pentagon report said Air Force unconventional warfare operati…
▶ 22:46
Friendly countries can be attacked by the CIA as long as the CIA designates there's an enemy in the friendly country. That's what they're saying. Michael Haas, a retired Air Force colonel who wrote a government-sanctioned report last year o…
▶ 23:43
One was James Darby, D-A-R-B-Y, who in World War II had served in a clandestine unit called the Carpetbaggers, and I've read about these guys, which airdropped agents in Nazi-occupied France for the OSS, which was the forerunner to the CIA.…
▶ 24:12
At the time, Arnold commanded the unit. He said CIA money helped finance some 581st operations. The CIA officer he recalled only by the name Hall would regularly accompany Darby to the unit's finance office to make cash deliveries. There we…
▶ 24:41
involvement from former colleagues of the 581st, including Henry M. Benjamin Jr., whom the Air Force listed as a B-29 gunner, but who revealed to Arnold before his death that he was one of the unit's CIA contacts. So, let me just clarify th…
▶ 25:10
had associations with the CIA, but I didn't know which ones. And I didn't want to know, Arnold said. By shielding himself from such details, Arnold believed that he was staying, quote unquote, clean to fly some Ark missions and take risks, …
▶ 26:31
The 581st, with Arnold in command, quietly deployed to the Philippines in July of 1952. Shortly after, a 2nd Wing 580th deployed to Willis Air Base in Libya. It was responsible for operations in the Middle East and the southern flank of the…
▶ 26:58
a Royal British Air Force Base, it was responsible for all of Europe, including the satellites of the Baltics in Eastern Europe. The 581st area of responsibility was Asia, including the Russia Far East. In a coerced statement to his captors…
▶ 57:17
special warfare units called Air Resupply and Communication, or ARC wings. Five of those units were formed and stationed at bases in Great Britain, Libya, Okinawa, and the Philippines. The ARC wings operated a wide variety of transport airc…
▶ 10:01
The Air Force called its approach to special forces air commandos. An air commando unit contained a little bit of everything, medium and light transport aircraft plus fighter bombers. The same unit could supply partisans, make airstrikes, m…
▶ 10:32
The tradition, the arc wings being the ones that were used in the Philippines and then into Vietnam and hid the U-2s. But the Air Force had abolished them. Had the Kampas partisans possessed such capabilities in Tibet, the PLA might have ne…
▶ 11:57
was the thing in the Air Force in the 1950s and throughout most of the early 60s. Even air transport leaders had big ticket programs like the C-130s and the C-141s. The air commandos felt nebulously somewhere along the functional responsibi…
▶ 12:29
of a small secret organization within the Air Force. As with the Army, Kennedy galvanized the Air Force. In March of 1961, responding to instructions that each service examine how it can contribute to counterinsurgency, Air Force headquarte…
▶ 14:59
And oh, by the way, they were already flying operations in Tibet. In April 1962, the Air Force dispensed of euphemisms and reactivated its first Air Commando Squadron, a formation that traced its lineage back to when? 1944 in Burma. Nothing…
▶ 30:15
A few hundred of them made up a small battalion called 5 Commando under the South African Colonel Mike Hoare, H-O-A-R-E. It remains unclear what role the CIA had in financing the 5 Commando because available documents, principally in the In…
▶ 30:44
The main parts of it excised, removed. But there's indication that there was lots of political payoffs and that they were larger than ever. And at that stage, the Belgian mining company still reigned. Five commando and the CIA Air Force spe…
▶ 36:52
that the Congolese themselves had made a decision to end the fighting. The Cubans withdrew to Tanzania. In 1965, Mobato launched a new coup and installed himself as the national leader. He renamed Leopoldville Kinshawas. The Congo, he renam…
▶ 38:48
or nine, depending on when it was, B-26 bombers and eight of the light T-28 fighter bombers. The Cuban pilots were hired by one of the ubiquitous Miami corporations, i.e. front companies. This one particular called Caribbean Aero Marine, CA…
▶ 11:23
or were flown in by planes of the Air Commando Group, formed by the Army Air Force. Radio broadcasts by Allied propaganda experts tried to spark hatred for Japan and hope of liberation by the Allied forces to the locals. The OSS slowly buil…
▶ 28:10
Troops in the field tried to run psychological warfare campaigns against North Koreans and then the communist Chinese. Army commanders soon found inadequate the use of Air Force's occasional transport planes diverted from other missions. Af…
▶ 28:40
We've talked about them. ARC Wings was used in Korea. ARC Wings was used in Taiwan, out of the Philippines, to supply Operation Gladio-type capability. Three of these units were formed. Weirdly enough, they were stationed in Great Britain, …
▶ 29:12
that the ARC units were basically tasked by the CIA. They were intimately involved in the ferrying of, not that they were actually flying them on military aircraft, I'm not saying that. I don't have any evidence of that, but of course it wo…
▶ 29:42
things in the Mediterranean and operations in Africa. A base in Alaska was planned but never activated. The ARC wings operated a wide variety of transport aircraft, exactly the same fashion as wartime air commandos or later on proprietary a…
▶ 30:13
They engaged in disaster relief, conventional transport operations, and training flights to disguise their real covert purposes. For example, when the Air Force began flying a regular passenger cargo route from Clark in the Philippines to F…
▶ 30:43
and communications wing, ARC. Similarly, plans of the 380th wing flying from Wilis, which is in Libya, in the mid-1950s, ferried critical fuel and chemical supplies to Turkey for the CIA's U-2 mission. And you're going to find a direct corr…
▶ 31:41
581st Wing provides an excellent example of the relationship between ARC and the CIA. Activated in July of 1951, after 11 months of training in Idaho, about 1,000 airmen moved to Clark Field, commanded by Colonel John Arnold, Jr. The 581st …
▶ 31:41
581st Wing provides an excellent example of the relationship between ARC and the CIA. Activated in July of 1951, after 11 months of training in Idaho, about 1,000 airmen moved to Clark Field, commanded by Colonel John Arnold, Jr. The 581st …
▶ 32:07
Black painted B-29 bombers in a model configured for long-range airdrops. Not long after reaching the Philippines, Colonel Arnold found himself summoned to the Far East Air Force headquarters in Tokyo. Officers briefed Arnold on his unit's …
▶ 32:07
Black painted B-29 bombers in a model configured for long-range airdrops. Not long after reaching the Philippines, Colonel Arnold found himself summoned to the Far East Air Force headquarters in Tokyo. Officers briefed Arnold on his unit's …
▶ 32:36
One of the CIA officers told the colonel, you're a marked man now. The CIA contributed to the cost of running the ARC wing. Colonel Darby, director of operations for the 581st, accompanied a CIA officer who made regular cash deliveries to t…
▶ 32:36
One of the CIA officers told the colonel, you're a marked man now. The CIA contributed to the cost of running the ARC wing. Colonel Darby, director of operations for the 581st, accompanied a CIA officer who made regular cash deliveries to t…
▶ 33:34
On January 12, 1953, the wing commander and a crew of 13 flew one of their B-29s to Yokota, another Air Force base, where they picked up leaflets to drop over North Korea. These would be the 581st first PSYOPs mission into the war. Stardust…
▶ 33:34
On January 12, 1953, the wing commander and a crew of 13 flew one of their B-29s to Yokota, another Air Force base, where they picked up leaflets to drop over North Korea. These would be the 581st first PSYOPs mission into the war. Stardust…
▶ 34:06
and reach Clark the following morning. Everything went fine over the first targets, but at the last, near Korea's border with China, fighter jets intercepted them and damaged the plane so badly they had to bail out. At 11 p.m., Stardust 4-0…
▶ 34:06
and reach Clark the following morning. Everything went fine over the first targets, but at the last, near Korea's border with China, fighter jets intercepted them and damaged the plane so badly they had to bail out. At 11 p.m., Stardust 4-0…