Ky C Nguyen

South Vietnamese Prime Minister and Air Force General. Nguyen Cao Ky was one of South Vietnam's most colorful leaders. In the early 1960s, he rose to the rank of general in the fledgling South Vietnamese Air Force, ultimately becoming its top commander. In 1965, he was chosen prime minister of the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government by a junta of Vietnamese generals, despite the fact that he had no political experience. He ruled the country with an iron fist and was able to end the cycle of coups and counter-coups that had plagued the country following the assassination of former South Vietnamese Primier Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. During a Buddhist-led uprising in Da Nang in 1966, he used Army troops to crush the demonstrations and placed the country's leading Buddhist cleric under house arrest. He was also known as a playboy who loved purple scarves, upscale nightclubs and beautiful women. In 1967, he lost the Vietnamese presidential election to his longtime rival, Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, and then served as Thieu's vice president from 1967 to 1971. When Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese forces in 1975, he fled the country with his family, ultimately settling in the United States. Ky was born in 1930 in the northern province of Son Tay, west of Hanoi. He grew up under French colonial rule and as a young man became involved in Ho Chi Minh's national liberation movement. He eventually left the movement and later joined the French colonial army, where he trained as a pilot during the French fight against the communist insurgency. After the French defeat in 1954, he fled south to Saigon where he joined the South Vietnamese air force. Ky was married three times, and had six children. He died in a hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he was being treated for a respiratory ailment.