March 1963. Static line ARVN paratroopers jump from USAF Fairchild C-123 Providers of the 346th Troop Carrier Squadron (Assault) during Operation Phi Hoa II, a tactical air-ground envelopment strike against Viet Cong in the Tay Ninh Province of South Vietnam. Between 13-22 March, no less than 1,181 ARVN paras hit the silk over Tay Ninh, near what would later be known as the “Iron Triangle” north of Saigon.
Official period caption: “Sixteen C-123s dropped more than 840 parachutists in two minutes after Vietnamese Air Force tactical fighters and bombers had worked over the area. A smoke bomb, dropped minutes before the assault, marks the drop zone.”
USAF Photo 342-AF-93093USAF, National Archives Identifier 542293
South Vietnam fielded a full four-brigade airborne division by the 1970s, with 1,000 American airborne-qualified advisors attached, although they pulled very few large combat jumps such as at Phi Hoa II. They were primarily delivered by helicopter but did continue to put their chutes to work in myriad small squad and platoon-sized recon missions (often in places they never officially were) to watch roads and conduct ambushes and small-scale raids.
Before the above image was taken, the ARVN Airborne Group, as it was termed at the time, had already made five increasingly larger combat jumps– leaping in to reinforce the garrison at Bo Tuc in March 1962, setting a two-company ambush behind a VC group north of Saigon in July 1962, conducting a battalion-sized raid at An Xuyen in August 1962, and finally two regimental-sized drops at Ap Tan Thoi and Ba Rai in January 1963.
They had a lineage that went back to the old French, who recruited and trained 1e BPVN, 3e BPVN, and 5e BPVN, which were airdropped into Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The French raised at least four colonial airborne battalions and five independent companies during their fight against the Viet Minh.
Of note, the C-123s of the 346th at the time were also used to train Air America crews and in Ranch Hand defoliant spraying operations, which were no doubt a bonus to the ARVN paras.