Operation Dumbo Drop EXCLUSIVE
In a lapse of judgment with surrounding village children, a child steals a Nestlé Crunch bar from Doyle's backpack; the wrapper, when found, lets the NVA know of the local villagers' cooperation with the Americans. As punishment, Brigadier Nguyen (Hoang Ly) of the NVA, orders his subordinate, Captain Quang (Vo Trung Anh), to kill the villagers' elephant right before a spiritual festival. To aid the villagers, Cahill promises to replace the slain elephant before their upcoming ceremony while Doyle (whom the villagers blame for the elephant's death) reluctantly agrees to help.
Operation Dumbo Drop
The premise of Operation Dumbo Drop is based on the true story relating to the cooperation of South Vietnamese villagers and the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s.[2] The U.S. Army viewed many villages as having a strategic value due to their proximity to enemy weapons supply routes, such as the Ho Chi Minh trail.[2] Elephants found in villages were typically the primary source of farm labor. To appease hostile villagers, the U.S. offered elephants as a token of appreciation. According to actor Glover, one such operation took place specifically on April 4, 1968, but received fairly little coverage due to the death on the same day of a Vietnamese military leader and also the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis.[2] The film is based on a story depicted by retired United States Army Major Jim Morris, who related his experiences surrounding the elephant air-drops during the war.
The film premiered in cinemas on July 28, 1995 in wide release throughout the United States. During its opening weekend, the film opened in a distant 6th place grossing $6,392,155 in business showing at 2,980 locations.[1] The film Waterworld soundly beat its competition during that weekend opening in first place with $21,171,780.[22] The film's revenue dropped by 33.2% in its second week of release, earning $4,271,252. For that particular weekend, the film fell to 9th place screening in 2,158 theaters but still holding on to a top ten position. Waterworld, remained in first place grossing $13,452,035 in box office revenue.[23] The film went on to top out domestically at $24,670,346 in total ticket sales through a 21-week theatrical run.[24] For 1995 as a whole, the film would cumulatively rank at a box office performance position of 67.[25]
We also see a lot of the Viet Cong, especially of one soldier named Nguyen (Hoang Ly), who shot the first elephant but didn't feel good about it. And now, as the Berets move through the countryside with the elephant on a truck, and float down a river with it, and finally prepare to parachute it into the village using the same techniques used to drop tractors, the Cong follow them and try to prevent the Dumbo drop.
Naturally, the townspeople blame Liotta's arrival as bad luck and refuse to help the Americans, unless they can get them a brand new, better elephant by Friday. (Yes, there's actually a deadline for when they need to drop Dumbo.) Liotta and Glover have no choice but to put together a crack team for the job that includes COOL RUNNINGS' Doug E. Doug, playing a soldier who has a week left on his tour and doesn't want to take anymore dangerous risks, and Denis Leary as a requisitions officer who can make a phone call and find anybody anything in the middle of a war, including an elephant.
Because dropping a five-ton pachyderm out of a plane isn't exciting enough, the soldiers also have to disobey orders and finish their mission in secret when the general ends up canceling the operation. This means they have to steal a plane and jerry rig a parachute device for the animal by themselves, which of course leads to Bo Tat's chute not opening once in the air, which of course introduces the idea in young viewers that there's a chance the elephant they've grown to love might smash in to the ground at terminal velocity. And ironically, much to the detriment of the film's central conceit, while filming the drop sequence, the parachute really did fail to open multiple times, destroying three out of the six elephant dummies that were built. So please don't try this at home, kids.
Who else but Disney would try to convince America that a twoton elephant could be air-dropped from a military cargo plane into a remote Vietnamese mountain village? This latest creation from the Magic Kingdom could be easily passed over by the avid moviegoer--if only it weren't a true story.
In an interview with talk show host Jay Leno, Operation Dumbo Drop star Danny Glover said that the U.S. military maintained good relations with Vietnamese mountain villages during the war by air-dropping elephants to them.
Mixing comedy with the deadly facts of war is always dangerous. M*A*S*H* is a rare example of how the horrors of war can be alleviated with some levity, but the serious nature of the situation is still present. In this movie, nothing is serious, yet people are shooting at each other, bombs are dropping, and kids viewing it will be cheering for the elephant.
Feeling responsible for their loss, Cahill promises to get them a new one, a move that Doyle vehemently opposes. Despite his protests the operation is approved and Doyle is placed in charge. They set about gathering their team, comprising of two soldiers, a requisitions officer, an elephant and the boy who handles the elephant, Linh.
Poole: (turns around) Yeah, Cahill! Yeah, I do! Call General Richardson!I'll get him on the phone for you right now! Because I am sick and tired... (tries to get the radio set open and just drops it, fuming) That's it! I've had it! I was on a plane that almost crashed, I came this close to being killed by an angry mob, and now look at my uniform! It's covered in elephant crap! So you really think I give a damn whether or not you call General Richardson, and tell him I slept with his wife, huh?
Elephants were used in the construction of other A-camps, such as at Tran Phuc, where the local Mong Gar Montagnard tribe used their elephants to haul trees to improve the fields of fire and extend the perimeter around the camp. Some A-teams even used elephants to transport supplies on operations.
March 31, 1968, was the day of execution for this transport operation. A C-130 aircraft arrived and off-loaded a forklift, two pallets, two cargo nets, and an entourage of group operations and civil affairs staff people, veterinarian personnel, various other staff officers, and of course the public affairs reporters and photographers. The moment they had all been waiting for arrived when the two elephants finally lumbered onto the airstrip. The first elephant, Clyde, was placed on a laid-out cargo net and the group veterinarian tranquilized him with compound 99, delivered by a dart shot from a CO2 rifle.
At this point the veterinarian, Capt. George McCahan, put on his rubber gloves and covered one arm with plastic and proceeded to take a rectal temperature reading of the elephant. The Montagnards found this highly entertaining. It was shortly after the temperature reading that the operation acquired its name: Operation Barroom. Rest assured, elephant farts are epic. Turns out the chemical used to tranquilize elephants creates a considerable amount of intestinal gas. The group veterinarian had anticipated this and donned a protective mask. A-233 did not anticipate this and did not have masks (and were not issued masks until the following December, after a mortar attack that involved CS and CN gases). So, they were at the mercy of the elephant gas.
Within minutes, the elephant became drowsy and lay down on the cargo net. The forklift then picked up the cargo net, with the elephant inside, and placed it on one of the pallets. The net was secured and the pallet was placed inside the C-130 and off it and the elephant, Clyde, went to Chu Lai. Later that day, the operation was repeated with the second elephant, Bonnie. A few days later the headlines in Stars and Stripes stated that Operation Barroom was a rip-roaring success.
So, the truth is that there were two elephants, Bonnie and Clyde, and they were transported by aircraft from Ban Don to the Special Forces Camp at Tra Bong, in the northern part of I Corps, not dropped in by pachaderm-chute, as in the movie. The other key truth is that both elephants were pygmy elephants, too small for hauling timber. It was never determined if the elephant handler had pulled a fast one or not. But, he probably knew they were pygmies.
And, also, civil affairs operations can be tenuous affairs indeed. Civility in the civilized world is hard enough, but trying to deliver such solutions or infrastructure to remote Third-World locations can carry enormous challenges. There are many similar stories from Afghanistan, Iraq, Thailand, Haiti, and numerous other places that Special Forces teams have been over the past seven decades, trying to win hearts and minds, all with varying degrees of success.
Many visitors went to see this great public works program, and the elephants. Lots of photos were taken. Various SF men from that time and place have said that pictures of riding the pygmy elephants were probably the best things to come out of that whole operation. It would have been nice if the elephants had lived long and prosperous lives. But life is not a Disney movie, especially in a war zone. 041b061a72