Phisit Intharathat

Phisit Intharathat (พิสิษฐ์ อินทรทัต) (name also sometimes transliterated as Pisidhi Indradat) is a Thai citizen who was retrieved during the only successful prisoner of war rescue of the Vietnam War. After service as a commando in the Thai Border Patrol Police Parachute Aerial Resupply Unit, he went to work as a civilian with Air America during the Laotian Civil War; his job was to parachute pallets of food and supplies out of a cargo plane to aid the refugees.

On 5 September 1963, he was a member of a Curtiss C-46 Commando air crew shot down near Ban Houei Sane, Laos. He would be held in nine jungle prisons while the Vietnam War officially began. After two escape attempts, including one spell of 32 days spent starving in the jungle, he was still struggling to flee when rescued by the Ban Naden raid of 5 January 1967. He would return to work for Air America until they departed Southeast Asia. After working for a Bangkok company, he would retire there.

Phisit Intharathat trained and served as a paratrooper in his native Thailand's Border Patrol Police. Members of James William Lair's Police Aerial Resupply Unit received Special forces training as commandos. After that experience, he found employment with Air America as a cargo handler on refugee relief missions dropping rice and other supplies into the Kingdom of Laos. On 4 September 1963, as part of Laotian Civil War operations, he was scheduled to fly such missions the following day with his usual flight crew on a Curtiss C-46 Commando. One of them had a hunch that he should not fly this schedule; he resigned that night. Prasit Thanee would replace him the following morning. Later, upon the death of his mother, Intharathat would write a dispassionate account of this flight and his imprisonment.

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