Don't Waste Time! 9 Facts Until You Reach Your Airlift-logistics
Operation Babylift Is Largest Rescue Effort in History It was a sparkling late afternoon in April 1975. Abruptly the news flashes raced across the base: A U.S. Air Force C-5A Galaxy transport plane carrying 243 Vietnamese orphans had gone down shortly after leaving Tan Son Nhut airfield, near Saigon. Air Force officials feared sabotage. Only a few of the adult passengers, including some U.S. Embassy personnel covertly leaving Vietnam, managed to make their way to the limited oxygen masks. The overcrowded transport plane should have been carrying no more than 100 children, rather than the 243 who had been loaded aboard. With enormous difficulty, the pilot managed to turn the plane around and crash-land two miles south of Tan Son Nhut, skidding 1,000 feet into a rice paddy. Nurses, volunteers and crew aboard, many injured themselves, did all they could to save as many children as possible. The news reached Clark almost instantly. Operation Babylift had just gotten started when the cras