Ethiopia-United States Mapping Mission

The Ethiopia-United States Mapping Mission, also known as the Ethi-U.S. Mapping Mission, was an operation undertaken by the United States Army during the 1960s to provide up-to-date topographic map coverage of the entire country of Ethiopia. The soldiers who conducted the mapping operations on the ground during that time used the latest surveying and mapping techniques and were exposed to many hardships and dangers, but they completed their mission near the end of the decade. The maps that were created still serve as the base maps for the country of Ethiopia and are presently being updated and maintained by the Ethiopian Mapping Authority.

The Ethiopia-United States Mapping Mission was a mission of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 64th Engineer Battalion, 29th Engineer Company and U.S. Army Map Service, later U.S. Army Topographic Command (TOPOCOM), Special Foreign Activity during the Cold War in the 1960s to survey and map the entire country of Ethiopia, then under the rule of Emperor Haile Selassie I. Aviation support for the Army Map Service was primarily provided by the 572nd Engineer Platoon (Topographic Aviation) and civilian pilots under contract, along with some early support from the U.S. Air Force and Ethiopian Airlines. Battalion Headquarters was located in Leghorn (Livorno), Italy, and the Mapping Mission itself was headquartered in Addis Ababa, the nation's centrally located capital.

The topographic surveyors and their aviation support pilots and crew served on field parties that endured sweltering heat in this Sub Saharan region of Africa. They also struggled to subsist in remote areas of the country that included jungles, deserts, dense bush, mountains and swamps that harbored deadly snakes, crocodiles, lions, leopards, hyenas, hippos, cape buffalo, elephants, wild dogs, dangerous bees and ants, aggressive tribes of baboons and sometimes hostile natives, not to mention any number of malignant diseases. In addition, these troops and their support personnel were frequently required to conduct their operations in active war zones along the Somalia and Sudan borders, where brutal wars and indiscriminate killing had been going on for years, and the area of the country that is now Eritrea, where the Eritrean Liberation Front was engaged in armed struggle with imperial Ethiopian forces.

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