Andi Biancur
The Evacuation of Vietnam
Operation New Life / Babylift
By late March, 1975, the Ford administration had begun planning a complete evacuation of the American presence in Viet Nam. Planning was complicated by practical, legal, and strategic concerns. The administration was divided on how swift the evacuations should be. The Pentagon sought to evacuate as fast as possible, to avoid the risk of casualties or other accidents. The U.S Ambassador to South Vietnam, Graham Martin, was technically the field commander for any evacuation, since evacuations are in the purview of the State Department. Martin drew the ire of many in the Pentagon by wishing to keep the evacuation process as quiet and orderly as possible. His desire for this was to prevent total chaos and to deflect the real possibility of South Vietnamese turning against Americans, and to keep all-out bloodshed from occurring.
President Ford approved a plan falling somewhere between the extremes in which all but 1,250 Americans, few enough to be removed in a single day's helicopter airlift, would be evacuated quickly; the remaining 1,250 would leave only when the airport was threatened. In between, as many Vietnamese refugees as possible would be flown out.
On 3 April, President Gerald R. Ford announced "Operation Babylift", which would evacuate about 2000 orphans from the country.
On 4 April, 1975, the first Military Airlift Command C-5 Galaxy, tail number #68-0218, departed Tan Son Nhut AB, near Saigon loaded with over 300 crew, children and adult escorts, Shortly after take off the aircraft experienced an "Explosive Decompression" about 40 miles from Saigon when the rear ramp and pressure door blew out through the rear of the aircraft (due to a lock failure) and was forced to return to Tan Son Nhut with no flight controls to the tail, and only limited roll control. The plane could not reach the airport; but instead it crash-landed, at about 270 knots, two miles away into a field of flooded rice paddies, killing 138 people, including 127 of the orphans. Over half of the passengers survived the crash. Most of the infants and adults in the upper deck areas survived. Those in the lower decks, including most of the adult "chaperones", "non-essential" members of the Defense Attachs Office (mainly administrative staff), did not.
At the time, I was assigned to the Current Operations Directorate of Headquarters Military Airlift Command (MAC). As the Chief of Current Operations I directed three teams, consisting of two officers and one enlisted member, to be responsible for the planning, scheduling and directing the operation of world-wide airlift for the Department of Defense. MAC was under the command of Gen Paul K. Carlton. Vice Commander, LtGen. Daniel Chappie James, was newly assigned from Headquarters Air Force where he had served with the Secretary of Defense and as the Chief of MIA/POW affairs. Of note; during my tour there in the Directorate of Programs, I had often flown with Chappie who knew me by appearance.
Considering the time difference between Saigon and Scott AFB, the C-5 accident was unknown until early the morning of the 4 April. On that morning, LtGen. James was taking the normal morning operations briefing in the MAC command center. Many of the key operations personnel, of which I was one, were required to Back Bench those briefings. Shortly after the briefing officer informed him of the fatal accident, LtGen James halted the briefing and completed a phone call (presumably to Hq. Air Force). That phone call clearly resulted in the decision to commence an all out evacuation effort.
Following the call, Chappie swung around in his chair, surveyed the staff, and ordered: "Biancur, get those people the F--- out of Viet Nam." He then stood and left the briefing. (I think he singled me out because, with his recent arrival in the command, I was the one he first recognized.)
The staff left the command center behind him and returned to our respective work areas. I immediately sought out my supervisor, Colonel Norman Cole, to ask if he had any idea as to what the general had in mind. The response was: "I don't have a clue; he told you to do it." I took that to mean that neither he nor much of the remainder of the staff had any desire to get in the middle of the situation unless they were subsequently directed to do so.
Later that morning; the Director of Operations, BrigGen Charles Irions, informed me that I could take the resources I needed to respond to LtGen. James direction. I selected Major Phil Louden and Capts Bruce Gerrity and Venable Hammonds to serve as a Crises Action Team (CAT). We moved into a secure area of the command center and set about the tasks of acquiring the necessary airframes to accomplish the move and laying out a plan to get it started. It became immediately clear that the operation would require a tremendous amount of passenger capability which could be best provided by civilian resources.
Little did any of us know the extent of the operation we were launching.
Within hours, we had procured several wide-bodied aircraft from several U.S. civil airlines and had them in the air enroute to Saigon and Danang. We worked closely with Mr. Art Perkel, our civil airlift procurement contact, to contract every asset the U.S. civil air carriers could provide.
The rest was history. Phil and I, each working with one of our young captains, proceeded to alternate 12-hour shifts for the next three and one half months. We worked primarily without a break for reasons of continuity, only bringing in additional officers on a temporary basis to cover an occasional hourly break. By 1 August we had completed the bulk of the requirement moving some one hundred forty thousand people (including approximately 2,600 orphan children). Originating from several Far Eastern locations, flights spanned the Pacific Ocean with stops at Clark AFB, PI; Anderson AB, Guam; Wake Island; and Hickam AFB, HI prior to arriving at one of the several re-settlement camps in the United States.