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This Month in AFMS History: Operation NEW TAPE in the Congo

  • Published
  • By Major Kathy Jimenez
  • AFMS History Office

In July 1960, the United States Air Force in Europe and the Military Air Transport Service began an airlift that eventually evacuated 2,540 refugees from the Republic of the Congo, and became the largest airlift since the Berlin Airlift.

 

The Belgian Congo, a colony in West Central Africa belonging to Belgium, had been granted independence in June 1960 and became the Republic of the Congo.  In the first general elections, no party received a majority.  On the eve of independence, a power-sharing compromise between the two opposing main parties resulted in civil war across the former colony. Tribal warfare, provincial secession movements, mutinies among Congolese military units, power struggles among political leaders, and racial violence tore the new nation apart. The U.N. deployed troops to keep the peace.

By action of the United Nations Security Council, July 9, 1960, the United States Embassy began arrangements to evacuate American women and children from the Belgian Congo.  More than 300 American civilians were evacuated from the fledgling nation. First called Operation SAFARI and later Operation NEW TAPE, the airlift became one of the United States Air Force’s greatest peacetime accomplishments.

USAFE provided medical support for Air Force personnel and facilities for the operation.  The primary concern was malaria and other preventative medicine issues.  The 317th Tactical Hospital Detachment out of Evreux Air Base, France, set up a dispensary in a hangar at Leopoldville, which at its height treated between 25 and 30 patients a day.

Injuries to USAF personnel were negligible during this operation, with the exception of an attack by Congolese troops on an American MATS crew mistaken for Belgians.  The eight crewmen sustained multiple contusions, lacerations, and broken bones.  An aeromedical evacuation crew flew the injured first to Wheelus Air Base in Libya and then to Wiesbaden Hospital in Germany.

Operation NEW TAPE concluded in January 1964.