On Thursday 7 August 2025 at 6pm, Stuart Hadaway will consider the role of the RAF in French Indo-China during 1945-1946. This lecture will be hosted virtually via Crowdcast.

The abrupt end of the war against Japan in August 1945 caught the vast majority of the Allied forces in the Far East completely by surprise. Operations across South East Asia and the Pacific had to be rapidly abandoned or refocused, and forces and resources reallocated to fit the new strategic and political realities. For the British forces in India and Burma this included Operation Zipper, the liberation of Malaya, which was swiftly divided into separate forces to liberate Japanese occupied areas across the region. This led to a myriad of ill-prepared and ad-hoc operations, including Operation Masterdom, the plan to re-occupy French Indo-China and re-establish French civil administration.

The Indian Army troops who were deployed in mid-September were dropped into an incredibly complicated and evolving internal and external political situation. Faced by a range of indigenous political factions, many backed by their own para-military forces, they were forced to re-arm the Japanese to help maintain order within the country. However, this talk will focus on the air elements, particularly No. 908 Wing and No. 273 Squadron, who were tasked with supporting the Indian Army in their efforts. Hampered by lack of intelligence and highly restrictive rules of engagement, the RAF struggled to adapt from a war-fighting stance to a new posture somewhere between Imperial policing and peace-keeping operations. Despite constant pressure from the French authorities to take a stronger hand, the RAF kept a close hold on operations and managed to avoid the mission-creep that had such disastrous effects in other regions, such as the Netherlands East Indies.

The talk will also cover Task Force Gremlin, the auxiliary transportation and communications force created by conscripting Japanese aircraft, aircrews, and technical staff and based at Tan Son Nhut (RAF Saigon), which operated for some months across the Far East.

Stuart Hadaway is the Historian at the Air Historical Branch (RAF), where he has worked since 2009. Before that, he worked at the RAF Museum, where he met and interviewed veterans from French Indo-China for the Museum’s archive. An Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and committee member of the Royal Air Force Historical Society, he has written widely on RAF history, including the Second World War and immediate post-war period in the Far East.

Virtual Lecture: Imperial entanglements: The RAF in French Indo-China 1945-46