No airlines in Taiwan in the 1950s-whether they celebrate or resent it-can escape the CIA shadow. With the CIA investment in 1951, the Civil Air Transport, Inc. was expanded to 10 C-46s, two C-47s, and four Cessna 195s from a stressed fleet. In 1959 its special operation branch became the Air America. After the CIA and Taiwan backing Anti-Sukano Permista guerrilla failed in Indonesia, loads of supplied were diverted to India by CAT to support Tibetan revolt. Mar 30, the CIA trained Khampa guerrillas also failed, Dalai Lama and his 600 retinue fled to India with the help of the CIA’s Special Activities Division.
Yet the success of its DC-4 and DC-6 fleet, the CAT’s sole Boeing 727 jetliner crashed before landing at Taipei on Feb 16, 1968. Weakened by declining CIA activity, beset with the B-908 (C-46-CU) and B-1018 (B-727) disasters, the Civil Aeronautics Administration took steps to distance CAT from Taiwan. Soon the China Airlines with just two PBY-5Bs replace it as the ROC’s flag carrier. Meanwhile, another Catalina twin of the TransAsia (Foshing) Airways hired out to the Defense Ministry, and frequently to Matsu and Dongyin outpost, HQ of the tight secret Anti-Communist Salvation Army. Eventually this air charter turned out to be the life line of TNA, during the Cold War and ACSA’s hopeless fighting over a hollow ideology.
As a Hump veteran and VP of the China National Aviation Corporation, Moon Fun Chin went to Taiwan after the CNAC and CATC defected to the Communist China. With two PBYs worth US$40,000, Chin found the TNA on May 2, 1951. In the early retrocession days in Taiwan, air traveling was wildly unaffordable, the startup then became a military charter for survival. Jun 27, 1955, his B-1402 “Blue Swan” with a CIA passenger onboard, closely escaped a MiG-15 predator, nonetheless it reached safety at Songshan airport. Oct 1, 1958, Taipei-bound 02 took off at 1745 from Matsu, with four crewmen, three officers of the Penghu Defense Command, and four CIA agents onboard. Proceeded on a 130° course at 1000’, 80 nm from TPE, it made a last contact at 1810, then blasted by a MiG-17 and lost without a trace. After this sinister loss, TransAsia ceased to trade.
