As the World Turns: Whatever Happened to That Fairchild C-123 of the CIA?

By Ed Rogers

The country of Nicaragua has seen its share of war, and the CIA has been in the middle of it all. In my book Boystown: The Cocaine Highway, I tell of my characters flying guns into the mountains of Honduras and drugs back to the United States. That story took place in the mid-sixties and all with the knowledge of the CIA.
    The story I’m about to tell happened much later, during the Contras-Sandinista war. The war started in the ’80s shortly after the Sandinistas ousted the Somoza dictatorship and lasted into the ’90s. Weapons were pouring into Nicaragua; the Russians were shipping in guns, Cuba was sending weapons, even Mexico had picked a side.
    In Costa Rica, feelings were mixed. There was the support for the left-leaning Sandinista government, but Costa Rica also needed to keep the US happy and the money flowing, and the US was surporting the Contras.
    At the west end of Juan Santamaría International Airport on the outskirts of San Jose are a complex of warehouses. Goods come into the warehouses from overseas and go out to other countries. I used one of these warehouses myself to ship some of my things back to the US upon leaving Costa Rica after four years. I asked the warehouse owner if he had ever heard of the CIA owning one of the warehouses. He had; he said that just after he opened his business people were talking about the CIA closing up and leaving. He said he went down and looked at the warehouse once, but it appeared as if no one had ever been in the building.

A stock photo of the
Air Mobility Command Museum

Shortly before the CIA’s departure, one of its Fairchild C-123 Provider military transport aircrafts, which had taken off from Juan Santamaria Airport, was shot down over Nicaragua. The pilot, co-pilot, and crew chief lived, and they admitted to flying weapons to the Contras for the CIA.
    The American Embassy in San Jose denied any knowledge of the plane or of the CIA being in Costa Rica, which they had left by then. However, in their haste to leave, they had left the twin of the C-123 plane that had been shot down on the tarmac at Santamaria Airport.
    Years passed and the plane continued to sit there, with no one claiming ownership. Then a very enterprising man had an idea, and he made an offer to the government to buy the plane.

First he disassembled it and sold the parts he didn’t want. And then he loaded everything else onto flatbed trucks, and moved it over the mountains toward the west coast, to a location with a view of the jungle and the bay at Manual Antonio. It had to have been a feat to get the plane up there in the first place.
    If you’re ever in Costa Rica and find yourself driving over those mountains toward Playa Manuel Antonia in the South Beach area of the country, you will be very near the spot shown by the photos below, taken at the El Avión Bar and Restaurant. To get there, you drive down the coastal highway south to Quepos, where Janie and I stayed. From there you go over a mountain with resorts all along the drive and also a National Park. Then you drop down to Playa Manual Antonio.

    Says the restaurant’s creator (on his Facebook page), Allan Templeton:

Our plane may be on the ground, but El Avión’s famous sunsets paint the sky almost every evening. As we are about 150 meters above the beach, we have a bird’s eye view of the prettiest panorama anywhere in Manuel Antonio.

“USA” emblem near the rear of the airplane

Janie in the bar inside the airplane

Another scene inside the plane

Monkeys playing around in the “rafters” of the airplane

Structural frame of the airplane

Copyright © 2021 by Ed Rogers