Intermountain Airlines, also known as Intermountain Aviation and Intermountain Airways, was a

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

(CIA) airline front company. Intermountain performed

covert operation A covert operation or undercover operation is a military or police operation involving a covert agent or troops acting under an assumed cover to conceal the identity of the party responsible. US law Under US law, the Central Intelligence A ...

s for the CIA in

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...

and elsewhere during the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

era.

History

Intermountain's main base of operations was Marana Army Air Field near

Tucson Tucson (; ; ) is a city in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and its county seat. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona, behind Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, with a population of 542,630 in the 2020 United States census. The Tucson ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

. In 1975, it was acquired by

Evergreen International Aviation Evergreen International Aviation, Inc. was a global aviation services company based in McMinnville, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1960, Evergreen was primarily known publicly for commercial helicopter operations in agricultural and forestry a ...

, a company that has acknowledged connections with the CIA. Other CIA "proprietary" airlines such as Air America and

Air Asia Capital A Berhad (), operating as AirAsia (stylised as ''airasia'') is a Malaysian multinational low-cost airline headquartered near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Established in 1993 and commencing operations in 1996, the airline is the largest in ...

also operated out of Marana during the Vietnam War years. During its years in operation, Intermountain used several types of aircraft including the Curtiss

C-46 Commando The Curtiss C-46 Commando is a low-wing, twin-engine aircraft derived from the Curtiss CW-20 pressurized high-altitude airliner design. Early press reports used the name "Condor III" but the Commando name was in use by early 1942 in company ...

, the

Lockheed L-188 Electra The Lockheed L-188 Electra is an American turboprop airliner built by Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed. First flown in 1957, it was the first large turboprop airliner built in the United States. With its fairly high power-to-weight ratio, huge pro ...

, the

de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou The de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou (designated by the United States military as the CV-2 and later C-7 Caribou) is a Canadian specialized cargo aircraft with STOL, short takeoff and landing (STOL) capability. The Caribou was first flown in 1 ...

and DHC-6 Twin Otter. One of Intermountain's covert missions was Project Coldfeet, in which intelligence operatives were dropped in the Arctic to reconnoiter an abandoned

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

drift station and then recovered using a Fulton Skyhook recovery system mounted on an Intermountain

B-17 Flying Fortress The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is an American four-engined heavy bomber aircraft developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). A fast and high-flying bomber, the B-17 dropped more bombs than any other aircraft during ...

. The modified B-17G, civilian registration N809Z (now N207EV), had previously operated out of

Clark Air Base Clark Air Base is a Philippine Air Force base in Luzon, located west of Angeles City, and about northwest of Metro Manila. It was previously operated by the U.S. Air Force and, before that, the U.S. Army, from 1903 to 1991. The base cov ...

in the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

in an all-black scheme for the CIA for agent insertions and other unspecified covert operations in Southeast Asia. The B-17 and its skyhook appeared at the end of the

James Bond The ''James Bond'' franchise focuses on James Bond (literary character), the titular character, a fictional Secret Intelligence Service, British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels ...

film '' Thunderball''. Intermountain is alleged to have been involved in the delivery of a number of A-26 Invader bombers to be flown by Cuban exile pilots supporting the

Bay of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called or after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front ...

Sources

* James Bamford, "Body of Secrets : Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency", Anchor Books(2002), * Brendan January, "The CIA", Franklin Watts ( 2003), * Scott A. Thompson, "Final Cut - The Post-War B-17 Flying Fortress: The Survivors", Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, Missoula, Montana, Revised Edition, August 2000, * The history of Intermountain Aviation, Inc., as a CIA air proprietary, is examined in Jason H. Gart, "Electronics and Aerospace Industry in Cold War Arizona, 1945–1968: Motorola, Hughes Aircraft, Goodyear Aircraft." Ph.D. diss., Arizona State University, 2006.

References

External links

Information on Marana Army Airfield

Central Intelligence Agency front organizations Defunct airlines of the United States Defunct companies based in Arizona Airlines disestablished in 1975 {{US-airline-stub

History

See also

Sources

References

External links