Thao Ma

Brigadier General Thao Ma was a Lao military and political figure of the Second Indochina War. From 1959-1966, he was commander of the Royal Lao Air Force.

He personally commanded the squadrons bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail and provided close air support for Secret Army operations in the northeast of Laos.

He is credited with the invention of an early version of what later became the AC-47 gunship. Aware that the Communists often attacked at night when his T-28 fighters were grounded, Thao Ma sought a way to provide night-time air support for government forces and decided to arm his C-47 transports with side-firing .50 caliber machine guns. As he converted these transport planes into primitive gunships, he reduced the air force's logistic capacity, which put him into conflict with Generals Kouprasith Abhay and Ouane Rattikone of the high command, who pressured him to provide transport for their drug trade.

In the early morning of October 22, 1966, he launched a coup d'etat when six of his T-28 fighters took off from his Savannakhet base to bomb General Kouprasith Abhay's office at general staff headquarters in Vientiane. The planes strafed and bombed the compound extensively and destroyed two munitions dumps at Wattay Airport. The planes also tried to bomb Kouprasith's home at Chinaimo army camp, but missed. Over thirty people were killed and dozens wounded. Kouprasith himself was unharmed.

After receiving numerous appeals from both Lao and United States officials, Gen. Thao Ma went into exile in Thailand. He returned to Laos in 1973 to attempt a second coup d'etat. He failed, and he and sixty of his cohorts were executed by Kouprasith's forces. He was 42 years of age at the time.