In early August 1964, thousands of Simba rebels under the command of Nicholas Olenga attacked and captured the city of Stanleyville, a city of 300,000 deep in the heart of the newly independent Republic of the Congo and took more than 1,600 European and American residents as hostages, threatening to kill them if any attempt was made to recapture the city. So began the drama that culminated in the first-and in many ways, the most complex-multinational hostage rescue operation of the cold war. One hundred and eleven days after Olenga's capture of Stanleyville, in the dawn hours of 24 November 1964 following a strike by CIA-piloted B-26s against Stanleyville Airport, 5 U.S. Air Force C-130s bearing 240 troops of the 1st Battalion, Belgian Paracommando Regiment, staged a combat assault to seize the airport. The airborne assault was planned to coincide with the arrival in Stanleyville of a ground force composed of Belgian and U.S. Army officers, a small CIA element, and a contingent of the Congolese Army. Once Stanleyville was secured, the Belgian paras staged another combat assault on Paulis, several hundred miles away, to rescue still more European hostages. "Dragon Operations: Hostage Rescues in the Congo, 1964-1965" provides both the political background to these events and a detailed account of the actual operations: Dragon Rouge, the operations in Stanleyville, and Dragon Noir, focused on the city of Paulis, several hundred miles away. The book highlights the difficulties in organizing an international rescue effort with insufficient joint planning and inadequate command and control among the Belgian and American forces, as well as their differing political ideas and goals. The ad hoc nature of the planning was exemplified by an initial American Special Forces plan to air drop its forces east of Stanleyville and float down the river to Stanleyville. This plan was aborted when it was pointed out that the existence of Stanley Falls between the drop zone and the city was an insuperable obstacle. The operation also suffered from the Belgian commander's colonial-era contempt for the numerical strength of the Simbas and American fears of what was in reality a non-existent Communist element in the rebel movement. "Dragon Operations" demonstrates that, despite the slapdash nature of their planning and communications aspects, as well as the distance involved, the austere support, the large number of hostages, and a lack of intelligence data, they were remarkably successful in rescuing most of the hostages. Although less than ideal, the operations worked better than expected, given the conditions under which they were conducted. Drawing on newly declassified official American and Belgian sources-as well as on personal interviews with commanders and staff officers who planned and executed the operations-the author analyzes and assesses events in the Congo. This important study of an almost forgotten episode of the Cold War provides a valuable insight into the nature and complexities of multinational contingency operations.

On spine: Hostage rescues in the Congo, 1964-1965.

The birth of a nation -- An American crisis -- A Belgian crisis -- Determination and doubt -- The dragon roars -- last gasp of the dragon -- Operational postmortem -- Appendix A: personalities, code names and terms, and acronyms -- Appendix B: order of battle-command structure -- Appendix C: chronology -- Appendix D: results of the dragon operations.