FOIAWEAR — TURBO PORTER / Continental Air Services Tee

FOIAWEAR / ARCHIVE SERIES 037 — TURBO PORTER

Continental Air Service, Inc. (CASI) flew the missions nobody could file. From 1965 to 1975 the CIA's contract airline in Southeast Asia carried food, medicine and supplies to isolated outposts across Laos, South Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia — often landing where there was no runway at all.

CASI's holdings began as the aviation division of Bird and Sons, Inc., a San Francisco heavy-construction company operating in Vietnam and Laos. Owner William H. Bird sold that division, its aircraft and its crews, to Continental Airlines in 1965, and CASI began operations that September. Between 1965 and 1975 more than 260 CASI pilots and maintenance personnel operated aircraft and ground facilities in support of the CIA as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Operations Mission, and other U.S. Government organisations throughout South Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Singapore.

The aircraft is the Pilatus PC-6 Turbo Porter, designed and built by Pilatus Aircraft Ltd. in Stans, Switzerland. A single-engine turboprop, it was known for its STOL capability — short takeoff and landing. Unloaded, a PC-6 needed only the length of a football field to get airborne, and even less to land; with a 3,300-pound payload it needed roughly double those distances. That short-field performance, combined with high reliability in almost all weather and terrain, made the Turbo Porter ideal for “up country” missions.

CASI pilots operated from primitive dirt landing sites, often in poor weather, with few navigational aids, under the constant threat of enemy fire, among towering mountains and unforgiving karst formations. They also flew the rescues, bringing downed airmen out of country that offered no other way home. Pilot Lee Gossett flew his PC-6 Turbo, Lao registration XW-PCI, through the late 1960s and early 1970s. His own summary of the aircraft: “The old girl brought me home every night.”

Because so many of those flights supported covert operations, most of what CASI accomplished stayed in the shadows for decades — many family members did not know the true nature of the work. On 2 August 2007, the Hon. Loretta Sanchez told the CASI story on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, honouring personnel who “sacrificed their own safety for the safety of American soldiers and for our country.”

The artwork is a stylised mid-century graphic tribute in four flat colours — deep teal, burnt orange, sand cream and charcoal — showing a Turbo Porter climbing out over karst peaks. It is an interpretation of the aircraft's documented form, not a reproduction of any photograph or painting, and it carries no lettering, labels or callouts.

Offered in ten garment colours: the artwork carries light typography on dark garments (Black, Graphite, Espresso, Navy) and dark typography on light garments (White, Ivory, Butter, Chalky Mint, Blossom, Light Green).

The QR code on the front opens the CIA Museum's page for Continental Air Service's Pilatus Turbo Porter, the source for everything above: https://www.cia.gov/legacy/museum/artifact/continental-air-services-pilatus-turbo-porter-landing-up-country-in-laos-1969/

Garment: Comfort Colors 1717 garment-dyed t-shirt. Heavyweight 6.1 oz/yd² (206.8 g/m²), 100% ring-spun US cotton, pre-shrunk, relaxed fit, double-needle stitched with no side seams and a sewn-in label. Sizes S–4XL. Printed on the front at 300 DPI; plain back. The main artwork prints at 10 × 10 in and the QR at 1.8 × 1.8 in.

Care: machine wash cold, inside out, with like colours. Tumble dry low. Do not iron directly on the printed area.

FOIAWEAR is an independent brand and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States government, or any other government or agency.