April 30, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, a conflict that spanned more than 20 years, from 1954 to 1975.
Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City) was captured by North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces on April 30, 1975. Historically referred to as the “Fall of Saigon,” Vietnam also commemorates that day as Victory Day, or the day that Vietnam had its reunification as one country under communist rule.
The day before the Fall of Saigon, as the NVA forces closed in on the South Vietnamese capital, the US military launched Operation Frequent Wind. It was the first major operation involving the use of US Air Force (USAF) helicopters from an aircraft carrier. Lasting two days, Operation Frequent Wind evacuated more than 7,000 remaining American nationals and at-risk Vietnamese out of Saigon.
Operation Frequent Wind is considered a success. However, much earlier, before the operation was executed, in the early days of April 1975, the US, Australia, and other Western countries, including France, West Germany, and Canada, began planning for an airlift evacuation that required special handling: Operation Babylift.
Operation Babylift
The US became involved in the Vietnam War in 1965. From then until the war ended in 1975, approximately 2.7 million US soldiers served in Vietnam on a rotational basis, with the peak numbers reaching 543,482 deployed simultaneously in April 1969.
An estimated 100,000 children were born to foreign (mostly US) military servicemen and Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War. Referred to colloquially as “Bui Doi”, meaning “dust of life”, these children were often neglected and left behind in Vietnam as orphans.
On April 3, 1975, US President Gerald Ford announced that the US government had planned to airlift orphans out of Saigon via a series of 30 flights aboard Military Airlift Command (MAC) C-5A Galaxy and C-141 Starlifter cargo aircraft operated by the 62nd Airlift Wing of the USAF.
Later that same day, Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam announced that the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) would also evacuate around 200 children from Saigon to Bangkok in Thailand, where they would be met by a Qantas plane to bring them to Australia.
These missions would become known as Operation Babylift.
First mission: 155 killed
The first official babylift ended in tragedy. On April 4, 1975, a USAF Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, with registration 68-0218, departed Saigon’s Tan Son Nhat Airport (SGN).
It was the first flight from Operation Babylift, and it was scheduled to fly from Saigon to Clark, in the Philippines, where it was then to fly onwards to Los Angeles. The flight was carrying 149 orphans, 10 members of a medical team, 155 military personnel, and 16 crew members.
12 minutes into the flight, while cruising at an altitude of 23,000 feet over the South China Sea, the aircraft experienced a technical issue with the rear access ramp doors, followed by a rapid decompression of the cabin. The Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives (BAAA) recorded that during this time, a crew member fell out of the aircraft. Later on, the aircraft’s rear access door detached and also fell into the sea.
The flight’s captain then declared an emergency and contacted Saigon Airport’s ATC, where he was given clearance to perform an emergency landing.
🎥 | 𝗔𝗶𝗿 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝘀𝗵 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Season 7, Episode 5: ‘Operation Babylift’📺 | 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱: 2 December 2009 pic.twitter.com/W9hcTj7kSK
— Air Crash Investigation (@AirCrash_) April 4, 2022
According to the BAAA, two of the aircraft’s four hydraulic systems were out of order and control, and trim cables to the rudder and elevators were severed. Only one aileron and one wing spoiler were operating. The crew was able to descend to runway 25L when the rate of descent increased to 4,000 feet per minute.
The airplane first struck the ground at a speed of 250 knots about four kilometers short of runway 25L, before bouncing for three seconds and then crashing 500 meters further in a rice paddy field. The aircraft disintegrated on impact and debris scattered over a wide area, the BAAA said.
141 orphans were killed as well as six soldiers, five crew members, and three of the medical team.
After the crash, Major General Maurice F. Casey, the Deputy Director for Logistics in the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that the US government still planned to continue Operation Babylift. It was agreed then that Lockheed C-141 Starlifter planes would be used for the operations and, as an extra safety precaution, these evacuation flights would only land and take off during the day.
RAAF: Improvised cots
50 years on, the RAAF has published a media release recalling the events of Operation Babylift and how it hurriedly made preparations right after Prime Minister Whitlam announced that Australia would also evacuate around 200 children out of Saigon.
Staff from the RAAF Base Butterworth in Malaysia, along with four aeromedical teams from 4 RAAF Hospital were placed on alert to deploy to Saigon for Operation Babylift.
The RAAF said that hospital staff busily cut down packing cases with foam rubber bases to create make-shift cots to carry babies on board the aircraft.
“The babies were simply laid side by side, five to a medevac litter, with a bottle of boiled water put in their mouths. This was to keep them sucking and adjust their ears to changing air pressure,” an RAAF nursing sister was reported to have said, according to the RAAF media release.
“A tie-down strap was used to secure them for take-off. It seems pretty rudimentary in retrospect, but at the time this was the simplest way of coping with such large numbers,” the nursing sister said.
The RAAF used two C-130 Hercules aircraft for the operation. The first one departed shortly after the doomed Lockheed Galaxy of the USAF. The two RAAF C-130s eventually landed in Bangkok, where they were welcomed by wives of Australian diplomats and Thai flight attendants, who assisted the RAAF nurses to care for the orphans.
The children were then transferred to a Qantas Boeing 747 aircraft that had been chartered by the Australian government to bring the orphans to Australia. According to the RAAF, the staff had to improvise and use cardboard cartons as cots for the babies during this flight to Australia.
“Every available space in the aircraft was soon filled to capacity, with the very sick orphans placed to the rear of the aircraft to receive intensive nursing,” said an RAAF nursing staff member who was on the flight.
The Qantas B747 arrived at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne the following morning, and children who were very unwell were transferred to waiting ambulances.
On April 17, 1975, another two RAAF aircraft evacuated a further 77 orphans during a second airlift.
Continuous reunion
Operation Babylift ran between April 3 and 26, 1975. In total, approximately 3,000 children were evacuated from Saigon.
Out of those, more than 2,500 were relocated to the United States, where they were adopted out to families. Australian families adopted more than 250 children and became members of the Australian community.
Operation Babylift may have concluded 50 years ago, but the journey of these Bui Doi continues.
Now middle-aged and living either in the US, Australia, or Vietnam, as well as other parts of Asia, many of these children have embarked on a quest to find their biological parents. With the advantage and ease of DNA technology and social media, these reunions continue to take place, long after they were airlifted as babies.
