Allen Lawrence Pope

Allen Lawrence Pope (born 1928 or '29) is a retired US military and paramilitary aviator. Pope is a native of Miami, Florida, and a graduate of the University of Florida.

Pope's early career was with the United States Air Force, in which he served with distinction flying bombing missions in the Korean War. In 1954, he transferred to the CIA, in which he served with distinction flying transport missions in the First Indochina War. In the Permesta rebellion in Indonesia in 1958, Pope flew bombing missions for the CIA. Indonesian government forces shot down his plane, captured him and held him under house arrest for just over four years. In 1960, an Indonesian court condemned him to death, but in 1962 President Sukarno released him. Pope returned to the USA and subsequently flew CIA covert missions in other theaters.

Pope is now retired and lives in the USA. In 2005, France made him a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur for his service in Indochina.

USAF service
After university, Pope entered the USAF and served as a first lieutenant in the Korean War. He flew a Douglas B-26 Invader in combat, winning three Air Medals and a Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war, the USAF returned Pope to the USA as an air force instructor.

Điện Biên Phủ
In March 1954, Pope left the USAF and joined a CIA front organisation, Civil Air Transport, flying one of its Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcars to supply French forces besieged in the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ. On March 13, Việt Minh artillery disabled Điện Biên Phủ's airstrip, so thereafter all supplies to the French garrison had to be dropped from the air. CAT pilots flew hundreds of sorties from Cat Bi to Điện Biên Phủ. On May 6, 1954, the day before the French force surrendered, Pope was co-pilot of the lead aircraft in a group of six C-119s that made the last air drop to the besieged garrison.

After the end of the First Indochina War that August, Pope remained with CAT, making civilian charter flights firstly from Taiwan and then from Saigon.

On February 24, 2005, France's ambassador to the USA, Jean-David Levitte, made the then 76-year-old Pope and six other CAT pilots Chevaliers de la Légion d'Honneur for their service in the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ. In 2005, Pope said of his Vietnam service:

"I'm a communist fighter. I was born and raised to be against the communists."

AUREV service
In April 1958, CAT recalled Pope from Saigon to Taiwan and sent him to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, where he was assigned a B-26 Invader that had been painted black and had its markings obscured. On April 27, 1958, Pope landed the bomber at Mapanget, a rebel-held Indonesian Air Force base on the Minahassa Peninsula of northern Sulawesi. The rebels were Permesta, led by dissident local army officers opposed to the government of President Sukarno. At Mapanget, Pope joined another CAT pilot and former Air Force officer, William H Beale, Jr, who had been flying a B-26 Invader for Permesta since April 19. The two bombers formed part of Permesta's Angkatan Udara Revolusioner ("Revolutionary Air Force") or AUREV.

Pope flew his first AUREV mission on April 27, attacking the government-held island of Morotai in the hours before a Permesta amphibious force successfully landed and took the island. The CIA instructed CAT pilots to target commercial shipping in order to frighten foreign merchant ships away from Indonesian waters, thereby weakening the Indonesian economy and undermining Sukarno's government. On April 28, Pope attacked the government-held province of Central Sulawesi. One source asserts that off the port of Donggala, he bombed and sank three merchant ships: SS Aquila (1940) (Italian), SS Armonia (1924) (Greek) and SS Flying Lark (registered in Panama). Pope continued the sortie by attacking Palu, the provincial capital city, destroying 22 vehicles in a truck park.

Aquila was certainly bombed and sunk by an AUREV aircraft. However, a wreck off Ambon Island, more than 500 mi east of Donggala, has now been identified as Aquila. Another source suggests that Aquila was bombed not on April 28 but on May 1 or 2.

On April 29, Pope attacked the government-held province of South East Sulawesi. He struck the Indonesian Air Force base at Kendari, the provincial capital, with 500 lb bombs and machine-gun fire. He then strafed an Indonesian Navy patrol boat, KRI Intana, killing five crew and wounding another 23. On April 30, Pope again attacked Palu and Donggala; sinking a ship, destroying a warehouse and demolishing a bridge.

On May 1, Pope attacked the city of Ambon, the provincial capital of Maluku. His four 500 lb bombs missed his waterfront targets and fell in the sea. He then tried a strafing run, but his starboard engine suffered an explosion. Pope aborted the attack and returned to Mapanget.

It took several days for the B-26 to be given a replacement starboard engine. Pope's next sortie was on May 7, when he again attacked the government airbase at Ambon. He seriously damaged a Douglas C-47 Skytrain and a North American P-51 Mustang and caused other damage on the airbase. On May 8, he attacked the Palu area in the morning and Ambon in the afternoon. On Ambon, he bombed and machine-gunned the government-held Liang airbase in the northeast of the island, damaging the runway and destroying a Consolidated PBY Catalina. He then continued to Ambon city where he attacked an Indonesian Navy gunboat at anchor. His bomb missed, but he then attacked with machine-guns, wounding two crew and damaging the gunboat.

Since May 1, Beale and his B-26 had been resting at Clark Air Base, leaving Pope's aircraft as AUREV's only active bomber. On May 9, Beale returned to Mapanget, releasing Pope who then took his turn to fly to Clark for several days' leave.

On May 15, Pope attacked a small transport ship, the Naiko, in Ambon Bay. She was a merchant ship that the Indonesian Government had pressed into military service, and was bringing a company of Ambonese troops home from East Java. Pope's bomb hit the Naiko's engine room, killing one crew member and 16 infantrymen and setting the ship on fire. He then attacked Ambon city, aiming for the barracks. His first bomb missed and exploded in a market-place next door. His next landed in the barracks compound, but bounced and exploded near an ice factory. He then returned to Mapanget to find that in his absence, the Indonesian Air Force had bombed the rebel air base, destroying a CIA/AUREV PBY Catalina and damaging a CIA/AUREV P-51 Mustang.

The Indonesian government alleged that Pope's bombing of a marketplace in Ambon city had killed a large number of civilians. This later turned out to be untrue, but in the meantime, the US Embassy in Jakarta protested to the United States Department of State which then warned the CIA team in Manado. The CIA tightened its AUREV pilots' rules of engagement so that they could attack only airfields and boats. They were no longer allowed to attack buildings — not even military ones.

Capture
By mid-May, Indonesian government forces were planning amphibious counter-attacks on the islands of Morotai and Halmahera that Permesta had captured toward the end of April. This involved assembling a naval and transport fleet in Ambon bay, where ships started to arrive from Java on May 16. At 0300 on May 18, Pope took off from Mapanget to attack Ambon again. He first attacked the airfield, destroying the C-47 and P-51 that he had damaged on May 7. A short distance west of Ambon Bay, he found the invasion fleet, which included two 7,000-ton merchant ships being used as troop transports. One of the transports, the Sawega, which was trying to take evasive maneuvers as Pope attacked it. His bomb fell in the sea 40 m short of its target.

The Indonesian Air Force had one serviceable P-51 Mustang on Ambon, at Liang airbase. When Pope attacked Ambon airfield on May 18, the P-51 flown by Ignatius Dewanto at Liang was scrambled to repel him. Dewanto closed on the B-26 just as Pope was attacking the Sawega. The convoy took both aircraft to be AUREV and fired on both of them. Dewanto also hit the B-26, damaging its starboard wing and the bomber caught fire. Pope and his Permesta radio operator, Jan Harry Rantung, bailed out. As they jumped, the B-26 was entering a sharp dive and the slipstream threw Pope against the tail fin, fracturing his right leg. They landed on the coast of Pulau Hatala, a small island west of Ambon, where a small Indonesian Navy landing party from one of the invasion fleet's minesweepers put ashore and captured them.

Some 20 other AUREV insurgent aircraft were reported to have been seen with Nationalist Chinese markings obscured by hasty coats of paint. Their pilots were Nationalist Chinese and Americans from CAT.

Trial, conviction and release
US Ambassador Howard Jones portrayed Pope as an American "paid soldier of fortune" and expressed his regret at the involvement of an American. However, when he was captured, Pope was carrying about 30 incriminating documents that added to the embarrassment of the Eisenhower administration in the USA.

Pope admitted to flying only one or two missions, but his flight log (which was among the 30 documents that he was carrying when he was captured) recorded eight and another source states that he flew a total of 12 missions. Pope "spent the early hours of Sunday, May 18, over Ambon City in eastern Indonesia, sinking a navy ship, bombing a market, and destroying a church. The official death toll was six civilians and seventeen military officers". When Pope was shot down by anti-aircraft fire, he was pursuing a ship carrying one thousand Indonesian troops. "His last bomb missed the troopship by about forty feet, sparing hundreds of lives".

After fracturing his right thigh when bailing out, Pope was held not in prison but under house arrest at the small mountain resort of Kaliurang, where his injury was given "excellent medical attention". He said he felt he was fighting international communism. An Indonesian four-man military court rejected Pope's plea that he be considered a prisoner of war. On April 29, 1960, it found him guilty of killing 17 members of Indonesia's armed forces and six civilians and sentenced him to death.

The death sentence was not carried out, and Pope remained under house arrest. In February 1962, US Attorney General Robert Kennedy paid President Sukarno a goodwill visit and pleaded for Pope's release. Sukarno also received a visit from Pope's wife, mother and sister who all tearfully pleaded for his pardon. On July 2, 1962, Pope was quietly driven to the airport and put on a US plane out of Indonesia. Sukarno himself told Pope:

"I want no propaganda about it. Now go. Lose yourself in the USA secretly. Don't show yourself publicly. Don't give out news stories. Don't issue statements. Just go home, hide yourself, get lost, and we'll forget the whole thing."

Pope later said of himself:

"I enjoyed killing Communists… They said Indonesia was a failure[, Al Pope reflected bitterly]. But we knocked the shit out of them. We killed thousands of Communists, even though half of them probably didn't even know what Communism meant." Interestingly those were statements after the US government had negotiated his release with these communist in exchange for the US support against the Dutch.

His release was not a "goodwill" visit by US Attorney General Robert Kennedy but actually a secret agreement between US Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Sukarno. It is well known and documented that Sukarno made a take over of western New Guinea a focus of his continuing struggle against Dutch imperialism and part of a broader Third World conflict with Western imperialists. Both of Sukarno's key pillars of support, the Indonesian Communist Party and Indonesian army supported his expansionism.[9] In December 1961, President Sukarno created a Supreme Operations Command for the "liberation of Irian". In January 1962, Suharto, recently promoted to major General, was appointed to lead Operation Mandala, a joint army-navy-air force command. This formed the military side of the Indonesian campaign to win the territory.[10] Indonesian forces had previously infiltrated the territory using small boats from nearby islands. Operations Pasukan Gerilya 100 (November 1960) and Pasukan Gerilya 200 (September 1961), were followed around the time of Suharto's appointment by Pasukan Gerilya 300 with 115 troops leaving Jakarta on four Jaguar class torpedo boats (15 January). They were intercepted in the Aru Sea and the lead boat was sunk. 51 survivors were picked up after flotilla commander Commodore Yos Sudarso went down with his boat.[11] Parachute drops were made onto the swampy south coast away from the main concentration of Dutch forces. The commandos were thwarted by tall trees on which they were snared and by the swampy terrain which made them wet and ill, and their equipment was lost and damaged. Having been prepared for eventual independence by the Dutch, Papuan fighters attacked the paratroopers or handed them over to Dutch authorities. Of the 1,429 troops dropped into the region, 216 were killed or never found, and 296 were captured.[12] While Dutch casualties were relatively few, they knew that a military campaign to retain the region would require protracted jungle warfare. Unwilling to repeat the events of 1945-1949, the Dutch agreed to American mediation. Supporting the secret talks was the new American President, John F Kennedy, who said that compromise "will inevitably be unsatisfactory in some degree to both sides". Kennedy took the advice of American ambassador to Indonesia, Howard Jones, and that of his own National Security Council, which was counter to the views of the Dutch and the CIA. Kennedy sent his brother Robert to Jakarta to solicit entry into negotiations without pre-conditions. Sukarno had hinted at releasing Allen Pope, who was sentenced to death for bombing Ambon four years previously, however, he now offered to release Pope in exchange for America's support against the Dutch. In July 1962, Suharto's Mandala Command was preparing to resolve the military campaign with a major combined air and sea assault on the trade and communications centre of Biak Island, which was the location of a Dutch military base and the only jet airstrip.[12][13] However, this risky operation did not eventuate as continuing US efforts to have the Netherlands secretly negotiate the transfer of the territory to Indonesian administration succeeded in creating the "New York Agreement", which was signed on 15 August 1962.[12] The Australian government, which had previously supported of Papuan independence, also reversed its policy to support incorporation with Indonesia.[14][15] The vaguely worded agreement, ratified in the UN on 21 September 1962, required authority to be transferred to a United Nations Temporary Executive Authority (UNTEA) on 1 October 1962, and that once UNTEA had informed the public of the terms of the Agreement, administration of the territory would transfer to Indonesia after 1 May 1963, until such time as Indonesia allowed the Papuans to determine whether they wanted independence or be part of Indonesia. On 1 May 1963, UNTEA transferred total administration of West New Guinea to the Republic of Indonesia. The capital Hollandia was renamed Kota Baru for the transfer to Indonesian administration and on 5 September 1963, West Irian was declared a "quarantine territory" with Foreign Minister Subandrio administrating visitor permits.

Southern Air Transport
After his release, Pope returned to Miami where he joined Southern Air Transport. Like CAT, SAT was a CIA front organization flying covert missions in regions including southeast Asia.