Paul Ély

Paul Henri Romuald Ély (17 December 1897 - 16 January 1975) was a French General and former Chief of the Defence Staff. He was the son of Henri Ely, a civil servant and Therese (née Coste). He attended the Lycée de Best. Ely attended the Ecole Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr and was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1919. He was promoted to captain in 1930 and then commandant in 1938. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the Free French forces in 1942 and full colonel in 1944. In 1946 he was promoted to general. Ely was appointed as the first Chief of the Defence Staff and served in this role from August 1953 to June 1954. From 20 to 26 March 1954, Ely visited Washington D.C. for previously scheduled high-level talks that coincided with the increasingly dire straits for the French forces in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. In the course of Ely's visit, discussions regarding potential direct US air support for the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu took place and these became known as Operation Vulture. Vulture apparently originated as a carrier-based United States Navy mission but evolved into a plan for a single strike by the entire B–29 fleet of United States Air Force (USAF) Far East Air Force Bomber Command, with 98 B–29s flying from Clark Air Base to make a raid against Viet Minh targets around Dien Bien Phu. Navy fighters from two carriers already positioned near the Gulf of Tonkin would have provided escort and cover. The USAF prepared for the Operation Vulture contingency. Ely apparently left Washington under the impression that the French could request that the Americans make such a strike. On 4 April Ely cabled Gen. Jean Étienne Valluy, head of the French military mission in Washington, to communicate to Admiral Radford the French government's request that the United States execute the air strike that Admiral Arthur W. Radford and Ely had discussed to relieve Viet Minh pressure on Dien Bien Phu. French foreign minister Georges Bidault delivered the same message to Douglas Dillon, the US ambassador to France.