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Ky was easily the gaudiest aviator in Asia. His trademark was a black flying suit—a legacy of secret night missions over North Viet Nam in 1964, dropping saboteurs. Afraid he might be dropped by Red ground fire himself, Ky designed the black suit to be less visible swinging from a parachute against the night sky. He also affected pearl-handled pistols in the cockpit, and has a considerable gun collection, to which he added in Honolulu with the purchase of a .357 Magnum and a symbolically-named Colt .45 Peacemaker. He also picked up a .22 revolver for the demure Madame Ky, a beauteous former Air Viet Nam stewardess whom he married after the divorce of his first wife. With 4,000 hours' flying time, Ky has only partly succeeded in letting his duties as Premier ground him. On a state visit to Formosa recently, he took time out to try a U.S. F-104 Starfighter, snapping smartly through a linked series of barrel rolls and wingovers. He commutes from his home-a converted office building at Tan Son Nhut Airport-to Gia Long Palace flying his own Alouette helicopter.
Long before he became Premier, Ky as air force chief had his flyers emulating his style-and loyal to a man. As "warlord of the air," Ky found himself with a power base that inevitably drew him into Saigon's politics. He became a protege of goateed General Nguyen Khanh, who promoted Air Commodore Ky to the Anglicized altitude of air vice-marshal. In return, Ky twice scrambled his Skyraiders over Saigon to stave off coup attempts against Khanh's 'government-once even resorting to the cold threat to flatten Saigon with bombs if the rebels refused to cease and desist. Ky probably would not have carried out the threat, but the plotters could never be sure. They ceased and desisted.
On a third try, however, Ky and other young officers decided Khanh had lost his charm. As a general from the older generation, Khanh seemed to the young Turks lacking in the flexibility and idealism that South Viet Nam's social revolution required. Partly out of ambition, partly out of impatience, the younger officers themselves turned Khanh out, replaced him with a civilian physician and moderate, Dr. Phan Huy Quat, and his "medicine Cabinet." The officers genuinely wanted Quat's civilian government to work so that they could concentrate on prosecuting the war. But without a firm hand, all the old religious and fractional rivalries erupted anew. Quat asked the generals to take over, and reluctantly they did-in the first peaceful transition of power that Saigon had seen since the death of Diem.