History Book: Operation Babylift

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, April 7th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

Fifty years ago, the US and other nations began frantically evacuating Vietnamese who fought and worked alongside them in the decades-long war.

EICHER: As North Vietnamese and Communist soldiers moved rapidly south, families began pouring into Saigon seeking safety from the advancing forces. It became obvious that nowhere would be safe for anyone who supported the West. And one group was particularly vulnerable.

But an American operation to evacuate got off to a disastrous start.

WORLD’s Todd Vician has the story of Operation BabyLift.

TODD VICIAN: U.S. combat troops left Vietnam in 1973. Two years later, communist forces advance on Saigon. Orphanages are teeming with children—and growing. Parents can’t care for their children after years of war and famine and many are already dead. Audio here from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

REPORTER: Various voluntary organizations were at full stretch caring for thousands of babies and young children who had been orphaned or abandoned by fleeing parents. Australian, American, and European bodies all offered to fly them to new homes.

Despite the impending collapse in Vietnam, international adoptions remain painfully slow, even for children with an American father. That changes overnight.

GERALD FORD: I have directed that money from a $2 million special foreign aid Children's Fund be made available to fly 2,000 South Vietnamese orphans to the United States as soon as possible.

President Gerald Ford announces Operation BabyLift on April 3rd. U.S. Air Force leaders first learn about this mission as they watch the president on TV.

FORD: I have directed that C-5A aircraft and other aircraft especially equipped to care for these orphans during the flight, be sent to Saigon. I expect these flights to begin within the next 36 to 48 hours.

Air Force planners quickly begin to notify crews on alert in the Philippines. Captain Bud Traynor is eating when he’s summoned to the command post, still unaware of the president’s announcement.

BUD TRAYNOR: “So what we want to know is, how many people can you carry out?” Well, we got 73 seats upstairs. That's how many people we can carry. “No, no, no. How many can you really take?” they said.

About three hours after that first phone call, two flight crews and two teams of nurses and medics are airborne. It is the first aeromedical evacuation mission for the hulking military cargo aircraft.

After landing in Saigon, the crew unloads artillery destined for the South Vietnamese army. Then nuns and caregivers from orphanages exit waiting buses with bars on their windows. Most carry a child in each arm.

TRAYNOR: We put a Pan Am stairs up against the back of the airplane, and we just bucket brigade carried kids up the stairs all the way up into the cargo compartment, and then up the stairs.

Nurses quickly assess the condition of each child. wishing they could comfort the sobbing Vietnamese women handing children to strangers. 150 children are soon sitting or lying two to a seat in the passenger compartment six stories above the ground. About the same number of children sit on blankets on the plane’s metal floor, with cargo straps tightened over their legs. American families fleeing the country volunteer to escort the children home. Along with the flight and medical crews, nearly 400 people are onboard. Sergeant Greg Gmerek is a medical technician alerted for the flight.

GREG GMEREK: “They seemed to all be had a cold or something. So I was going around trying to wipe their noses and calm them down and do whatever I could to make it okay.”

The takeoff for Clark Air Base in the Philippines is uneventful. But 12 minutes into the flight and 23,000 feet over the South China Sea, there’s a loud bang as the aircraft’s rear cargo ramp is torn from the plane. Fog fills the air inside the plane as air rushes out and there aren’t enough oxygen masks for everyone onboard. Sergeant Phil Wise is stationed in the cargo compartment.

PHIL WISE: I looked back, I saw the rear cargo doors and ramp rip off the aircraft like it was really never attached…. I remember hearing screaming and yelling. I remember seeing bodies sucked out.

The blast severs some hydraulic lines and flight-control wires. Traynor, the aircraft commander, and his copilot force the plane to descend, turn it around, and head for Saigon. The rest of the crew tend to children, secure what they can, and prepare for a crash landing.

CBS REPORTER: The huge plane crashed into a field about five miles from the end of the runway, near a small village in Jaden province. There were pieces of wreckage scattered across a half a mile of rice paddy. A fire was slowly burning itself out near the engines, smashed bodies, or parts of them were uncovered by Vietnamese Air Force crews and American officials who rushed to the scene. It was like a combat operation.

The giant airplane’s first impact with the ground is similar to a rough landing one might experience in the back of an airliner. Still traveling at about 500 feet per minute, it bounces before crashing and comes to rest in several pieces.

TRAYNOR: I'm looking out my window, I can see that there's dirt and everything coming up. So I said goodbye to my wife twice, and because I thought that was it. And suddenly I came to a stop. It was quiet. I was alive, and somebody yelled, ‘fire’.

176 people onboard survive, but more than 120 children die. All but three of the fatalities occur in the plane’s lower cargo area. Forty of the 62 volunteer escorts and a Catholic nun who had selected many of the children for adoption are also killed, along with eleven of the flight crew members.

Air Force officials initially suspect a bomb hidden on the aircraft during the frenzied loading. But they later find the locks on the rear cargo door were improperly installed during maintenance stateside. The locks gave way under the immense pressure at altitude.

The Air Force temporarily grounds the C-5 and resumes the airlift with other airplanes. Several airlines also volunteer to fly orphans out of Vietnam.

Gmerek suffers broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and other injuries in the crash, but is still able to hold babies’ heads out of the water—preventing them from drowning in the rice paddy.

GMEREK: I had a lot of guilt about surviving when somebody didn’t. I think what really helped me a lot was I had gone back to Vietnam and I met some of the orphans that did survive. I met two and I had the picture where they were on that plane specifically. I thought to myself, they could have been one of the ones sitting right in front of me that I put a mask on or did whatever for, really did put a lot of closure for me to it and so it’s better now.

Despite the tragic start, the operation goes on for 33 days, evacuating more than 3,000 children to waiting families and new lives.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Todd Vician.

Audio courtesy of The Ford Presidential Library and Museum, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, and iMichigan Productions’ Veteran Narratives Project.

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