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 crash occurred. Although there were conflicting reports of the casualties, more than 130 people died, including at least 78 children. Many Americans came to regard the crash as just one more in the long series of heartbreaking incidents during the ill-fated war in Vietnam.

At the time of the crash, various groups had been working frantically to shuttle the infants out of the country before it fell to the invading NVA. With this tragedy, the mission was severely disrupted, but it continued. Reports differ, but in the 24 hours that followed, possibly some 1,200 children, including 40 of the crash survivors, were evacuated on other planes. As the evacuation continued, the growing panic in the streets of Saigon and the constant rocket attacks turned the loading of the infants and children into a safety nightmare.

Adult participants wondered if the plane they were boarding would get off the ground. And if it did, would it then be shot down? Two armed military security police officers rode shotgun on nearly every subsequent evacuation flight.

Prior to the fatal C-5A crash, New York's Cardinal Terrence Cooke had sent a plea to President Gerald Ford for federal support and an immediate waiver of immigration red tape for more than 4,000 children living in Catholic orphanages in South Vietnam. With South Vietnam's reluctant agreement, the order for Operation Babylift had come from the U.S. president, who told the press: I have directed that C-5 Aaircraft and other aircraft especially equipped to care for these orphans during the flight, be sent to Saigon. It's the least we can do.

As Saigon fell, President Ford ordered all in-country U.S. orphans to be airlifted out for asylum and adoption. Although he allocated $2 million for the operation, many flights were made in aircraft not outfitted to carry passengers. Nonetheless, more than 2,000 babies and children were flown out by military and smaller private chartered planes and eventually adopted in the United States. Another 1,300 were adopted in Canada, Europe and Australia.

When that first flight crashed, the rest of the C-5A fleet was grounded temporarily. That only added to the pressure on the mission and the workload at Clark Air Base, which more than doubled. All flight-line and ground crews immediately went to high-alert status. The usual turnaround ground time for C-130 and C-141 aircraft was eight hours. On high alert it shrank to three hours. With C-130s coming in at the rate of three per hour after dark, an air traffic control nightmare developed. The logistics of the operation was staggering, and the cycle was nonstop. Often the flight crew members ran close to the maximum flying time or crew rest limit.

Because of the differences in aircraft capabilities, the C-141s flew during daylight hours and the C-130s flew at night. The C-141 required a longer runway for landing and takeoff. The C-130 was capable of short-field approach and takeoff, meaning it could land by diving to the end of the runway when it was directly overhead, and it could take off with less than 2,000 feet of runway.