The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) attempted to create a national air force during the Indochina War. In 1945, the former Emperor Bao Dai, now supreme advisor to Ho Chi Minh, donated the first two planes to the DRV’s air force. One was a Tiger Moth and the other was a French Morane-Saulnier. Following the outbreak of full-scale war in Hanoi on 19 December 1946, the planes were hidden in Chiem Hoa district in the north before being sneaked on to other hideouts. They never posed a threat to the French and never got off the ground except for a few flying lessons. This was no air force.
What concerned DRV air authorities most in the early years of the Indochina War was how best to protect the population and soldiers against French air attacks and bombing and how to shoot down the enemy planes. European crossovers with experience in air war gave lessons and trans-lated valuable manuals into Vietnamese or French for use in training classes. During the Fontainebleau Conference in mid-1946, Ta Quang Buu acquired and brought back a wide range of aviation books and manuals to help train Vietnamese cadres, including aircraft recognition guides and a German manual for shooting down aircraft by deploying concentrated fire by infantry weapons. The German crossover and pilot, Werner Schulze, played a particularly important role in translating German aviation materials and instructing Vietnamese air cadres. He helped translate the manual on shooting down enemy aircraft that was printed by the General Staff and widely distributed from 1948. By 1949, the Vietnamese claim, the French no longer dared to fly at very low altitudes.
The imminent victory of the Chinese communists in 1949 led DRV strategists to attempt to develop their air force again. In early 1949, Vo Nguyen Giap, Hoang Van Thai, Phan Phac, and Ho Chi Minh met and decided to create an air task force called the “Air Force Training Unit”. On 9 March 1949, as preparations to modernize the Vietnamese army intensified, Vo Nguyen Giap signed a decree creating the Air Force Research Committee (Ban Nghien Cuu Khong Quan) that was to work with the Naval Research Committee (Ban Nghien Cuu Thuy Quan) and the Bureau of Artillery (Cuc Phao Binh). Ta Quang Buu headed up the development of the DRV’s aviation, assisted by Schulze and other Japanese and Europeans experienced in aeronautics. However, in the end, the DRV never got pilots or planes off the ground much less in the air. When Chinese communists began providing the Vietnamese with field artillery and anti-aircraft artillery guns, the DRV’s Ministry of Defense disbanded the Air Force Research Section and concentrated its personnel and its efforts on operating and developing artillery and anti-aircraft missions against the French Air Force.