Operation Babylift

For Hercules pilot Ian Frame, the Babylift flights were ‘just another task in a long string of tasks’. In typically assiduous C-130 style, the crews of Detachment S simply got on with the job, not aware that their flights in extremely challenging conditions were creating an important chapter in the history of the Royal Australian Air Force.

After decades of war and with the imminent fall of Saigon, a humanitarian crisis was unfolding in South Vietnam. As the North Vietnamese Army took more and more southern cities, South Vietnamese citizens began to flee en masse. Australian combat troops had been officially withdrawn from Vietnam. But in 1975, as the communist north steamrolled its way south, the South Vietnamese ambassador to the United Nations asked US-led forces for help relocating thousands of orphans, many of them bi-racial, who had been brought to Saigon. 

Among hundreds of thousands of refugees, Saigon was crowded with abandoned and orphaned children. Very few doctors were available, most having been seconded to war work; and the mortality rate for children, particularly orphans, was extremely high. There was real fear that a bloodbath would ensue when the communists took over, particularly for children born of American soldiers and Vietnamese women. The United States government was keen to be seen to be doing something good for the South Vietnamese. As a last gesture of support and friendship for the South Vietnamese, President Gerald Ford allocated huge resources and coined the name Operation Babylift, as a commitment to evacuating 3,000 orphans from Saigon.

Australian servicemen in Vietnam were no strangers to orphanages. Many men visited orphanages when they could, passing on the gifts of guilds and clubs in Australia who sent clothing, toys and food. The Australian government was convinced it should help in a humanitarian way, not just militarily. Their plan centred around the use of RAAF aircraft to transport food and relief supplies; but also how to lift vulnerable Vietnamese civilians from the front line; and when to extract orphans to Australia. The task was approved in late March, and Detachment S (for Saigon) was brought together at RAAF Base Richmond. This detachment, based at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Airport, was to assist with the distribution of Red Cross supplies and other non-military tasks.

Initially the unit comprised two C-130 Hercules and two C-47 Dakotas from 36 and 37 Squadrons, but within a fortnight it had expanded to include six more C-130 aircraft. As the North Vietnamese Army advanced and conditions deteriorated, Detachment S was forced to operate from Butterworth or Bangkok and make daily relief sorties to South Vietnam. RAAF Hercules flew dozens of sorties into Saigon and An Thoi airfield on Phu Quoc island, taking in rice, shelter and other aid to the mass of refugees who had fled there. The Australian government also arranged for RAAF medical teams to assist in the movement of children whom Vietnamese authorities would allow to leave. They would be evacuated to Australia to adoptive parents who had already been approved by state and territory adoption authorities.

Prepared

On the ground in Saigon, Rosemary Taylor, an Australian school teacher and social worker, liaised with various orphanages to collate a list of orphans who were well enough to travel. Taylor had been in Vietnam for many years and had established an adoption assistance agency, Friends For All Children (FFAC), a system of acute care and housing for abandoned and orphaned children. For nearly two years she had arranged the overseas adoptions of Vietnamese orphans, usually on an ad hoc small-scale basis. “These babies [had] no identity and no prospects. They were never the centre of anyone’s universe and never received the nurturing warmth of parental love. To give them caring parents was the first step.”

The first lift

On 4 April, Rosemary Taylor was notified that two Babylifts would take place that day. Children in reasonable health, who could endure a long air journey, would be taken on a C-5A Galaxy to the United States. Those in more fragile heath would undertake the shorter journey to Australia. Taylor and FFAC readied over 200 children, babies and escorts that same day.

That same morning at RAAF Base Butterworth in Malaysia a Hercules crew piloted by Flight Lieutenant John Stone and Flying Officer Geoff Rose, carrying a RAAF nurse and two Airfield Defence Guards, departed early for Tan Son Nhut airport. When they landed there was no information about their next duty, so the crew remained on board on the tarmac. After some hours they were taken to stay at the Embassy Hotel in the city. As they checked in, they received an order to return to the aircraft immediately. In Geoff Rose’s words, “Driving back, we could see a huge pall of smoke rising in the northern distance.” There was frenzied activity at the airport and the Australian crew watched a ‘continuous stream’ of helicopters landing briefly in front of the airport operations building, then flying toward the billowing smoke.

While Stone and Rose’s crew had been en route to their hotel, the first ‘Babylift’ aircraft had taken off, a RAAF C-130 carrying 87 babies bound for Bangkok. This was followed shortly after by a colossal US Air Force Galaxy C5-A aircraft carrying hundreds of orphans, escorts, medical and military personnel. Minutes after take-off, at 23,000 feet, the locks of the Galaxy’s rear loading ramp failed and a catastrophic explosive decompression occurred. The pilots began an emergency descent and turned back for Tan Son Nhut. With hydraulic systems inoperable, they were unable to maintain flight and the aircraft crashed, slid, and broke into four sections in rice paddies near the airport. Of the 330 passengers and crew, 154 were killed. Describing the chaotic scene, Geoff Rose recalled a stream of helicopters flying to the crash site and ferrying survivors to hospital.

On the tarmac at Tan Son Nhut airport, Stone and Rose’s crew wondered what had brought the Galaxy down – had it been shot down or sabotaged? What lay in store for them? Waiting to depart for Bangkok, their Hercules A97-190, was loaded with 107 babies. “The smallest were simply placed in cardboard boxes, packed side by side on the floor and the loadmaster secured each row of boxes with a tie-down strap. It was such a sad and pathetic sight to see so many tiny, helpless babies and young children crammed into the back of our aircraft.”

The crew conducted a methodical pre-flight inspection, and it was dusk by the time they were given clearance to take off. In a darkening sky they flew over the site of the Galaxy crash and the Hercules climbed with a tense and silent RAAF crew. The flight passed uneventfully, and in Bangkok the cargo of babies was transferred to a Qantas 707 for their onward journey to a new beginning in Australia. For pilot Geoff Rose, “It was a day I experienced the stress and anxiety of operating in a war zone, but also one of the most satisfying days of my life.”

The following morning Stone and Rose’s crew returned to Saigon and Geoff Rose photographed the Galaxy crash site. “We could clearly see the path it had taken as it slammed into the sodden earth, bounced across the river and slid to rest, leaving bits and pieces of debris strewn across the paddy fields just a few kilometres short of the airport.”

The RAAF Unit History of No. 36 and No. 37 Squadrons in April 1975 record the movements and operations of the unit in a typically dry military fashion. A reflection of the dynamic and ever-changing role of the C-130 workhorse, the many humanitarian relief flights to Phu Quoc, the Babylifts and the mass evacuation of civilian refugees from Phan Rang to Can Tho are recorded in understated entries as ‘national commitment for South Vietnam’. At the same time, other crews from the same squadrons took part in army exercises at Whyalla, air displays at RAAF Edinburgh, and even, on the eve of Saigon falling, lifting a 94-man Navy guard of honour from Nowra to Canberra for a parade for Princess Anne.

Mass evacuation

Between the Babylifts co-ordinated by the United States, Detachment S was called in to transport civilian refugees away from the front lines. To maximise the number of passengers, no seats were fitted. Over several days in April 1975, the RAAF detachment evacuated more than a thousand civilians from Phan Rang to the safer southern town of Can Tho. Loadmaster Al Harris recorded unparalleled chaos.

“There were masses of people trying to get on the aircraft, some were throwing babies to us from the back of the crowd. That day showed us the value of our procedures to control and limit access to the aircraft in mass-people situations. We learnt to only open one door and block all the other accesses, including overhead hatches, to take control of desperate people as they climbed up one at a time. Even then, one of our aircraft taxied with people hanging off the crew entrance door handle.” 

During the Phan Rang air lifts one RAAF C-130 suffered gunshots to the empennage (tail assembly), fired into the air by an ARVN soldier trying to control the crowds.  Luckily the aircraft remained serviceable.

Second Babylift

Earlier in the month, at the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital in Melbourne, Matron Vivian Bullwinkel had been asked to put together a team of nurses to travel to Vietnam to bring home the second Babylift. They bussed up to Sydney, boarded a Qantas 707 flight to Bangkok and after a night there the nurses split into two teams.  Team one, led by Bullwinkel, flew on a RAAF C-130 to Saigon to meet and sort the babies into categories of age and level of care required. The second team stayed in Bangkok and reconfigured the 707 into a flying hospital.

Flying into Saigon for the second Babylift on April 17, Navigator Ian Scott flew saw the huge scar on the ground from the Galaxy crash. “Up to that point I had believed in the domino theory and that Communists were evil, but in Saigon itself I was struck by how the people were just intent on living: working to build a life for their families – commerce and trade. It was a pointless war – we were stupid to go there [as] we had no grand strategy.”

Scott’s crew had been delivering food relief to Phu Quoc Island from Saigon for about a week, but the night before Babylift they were in Bangkok. After landing at Saigon, nuns and organisers from various orphanages began arriving with their charges. It took over two hours for all to arrive, and by that time the smallest babies needed feeding. “Someone came and told us these kids need feeding. They were thin and didn’t look well. It was while I was feeding babies on the tarmac that suddenly the human cost of the Vietnam war became very real. The fallout of victims was very very sad.” Once the Hercules landed in Bangkok the precious cargo was whisked onto the 707. Pilot Ian Frame regrets never having had the chance to see the babies off.

A survivor

Dominic Golding believes he was born in Cholon, the Chinatown of Saigon. He was discovered in the street by an Australian doctor outside a building which had just been bombed. Dom’s deafness is attributed to this bombing. A vulnerable newborn with cerebral palsy, Dom was taken to a World Vision Orphanage and at some stage named named Hong Duc Nguyen, Duc meaning ‘good’.

For Australia-bound orphans to qualify for evacuation, they had to have adoptive parents, approved by state and territory adoption authorities, waiting to receive them. Dominic believes he was one of four children without any such paperwork. “The circumstances which led to me being placed in the C-130 are haphazard. I think I was so small and sick they thought I would probably die, so they just put me on the aircraft hoping for the best.” He survived the journey, but two of the other babies did not. When he arrived in Melbourne, the Golding family of Mt Gambier met the Qantas Babylift, only to find that the baby they had been allocated had died in-flight. In Dominic’s words, “They asked if there was a spare baby.”

Dominic spent four months in Melbourne’s Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital under the care of Matron Vivian Bullwinkel, after which he was able to go to his new home and family at Mt Gambier. His adoptive parents were school teachers who had worked in Papua New Guinea, and he had four older siblings. Thus, in Dominic’s words, “they had already been de-programmed from racial discrimination.” In 1975 orphans and refugees from Vietnam were test cases for the new Racial Discrimination Act which replaced the openly racist White Australian policy.

Though nearly fifty now, Dominic Golding Nguyen’s life has been completely shaped by his first chaotic months. Dominic went to a loving family with first world medical care and opportunity. He is absolutely certain that his life was saved by Babylift. Life for a foreign adoptee, though, is not without difficulty. Placing a child of one race with adoptive parents of another race creates a complex identity narrative. Reflecting on his life, Dominic is outspoken on race relations and chooses to ‘interrogate whiteness’.

In this context, the question of his feelings toward the C-130 Hercules was posed carefully. When we spoke, Dominic stood up, with some difficulty removed his coat and pulled up his sleeve. There on his left forearm was the answer. A bold black tattoo, the silhouette of a C-130 in-flight and the year [19]75. The C-130 means everything to him.

For over 65 years RAAF C-130’s have continually provided invaluable support in times of humanitarian crises. Though Australian Hercules squadrons have demonstrated their capacity, willingness and rapid responsiveness to unfolding disasters time and time again, Babylift must surely have been one of their more rewarding operations.

Dominic Golding-Nguyen is proof of that.