Getting Out
In April 1975, escaping Saigon meant crowding into a darkened C-130 in the middle of the night.
- By Fred Reed
- Air & Space magazine, July 1992
South Vietnamese refugees walk across a U.S. Navy vessel after fleeing their homes in April 1975.
U.S. Navy
Evacuations following military catastrophes have occasionally been successful, such as the one the British staged at Dunkirk in 1940, when, by fearful effort and improvisation, they managed to save most of their army from capture. The April 1975 evacuation of Saigon was not in this league.
Since the fall some five weeks earlier of Ban Me Thuot, a town of 65,000 in the central highlands, it had become obvious that the defeat of South Vietnam was imminent. The North Vietnamese army had been charging southward virtually unopposed. Yet thousands of Americans were still in Saigon—many of them contract bums, former employees of the big international contractors who had built things during the halcyon days of the war and had stayed when the GIs left, hoping that work would return. Although history has shown that the capture of an Asian city is never a good event to participate in, the state department was dragging its heels on getting the Americans out.
Politics had caused the delay. Withdrawal might have started a panic or signified that the United States lacked confidence in the South Vietnamese army—an army now obviously fleeing in terminal collapse. The U.S. embassy had put out the word that Americans could leave on the military transports that regularly flew between Saigon and the Philippines. However, neither the embassy nor the Vietnamese government would allow Americans to take out their Vietnamese families.
So the evacuation was delayed until the last moment, and then anybody could go. The result was chaos.
At 3 a.m. every morning, under the lights of the tennis courts al Tan Son Nhut, an airport and military base outside Saigon, what seemed like three-quarters of the world’s population would wait in groggy exhaustion for the great hulk of a C-130 or C-141 transport to carry them from a lost cause. With artillery thumping softly in the distance, Vietnamese babies slept on their mothers’ ratty suitcases. Children, too tired to care, lay on the bleachers like sacks of rice. Asian faces stared blankly, as did round-eyes, who were growing testy. Every few minutes one of the lumbering transports, usually a C-130 Hercules, would roar in, load up evacuees, run up the engines, and leave.
As a stringer for several military newspapers, I had been determined to stay until the end. But I had a Vietnamese friend named Sandy who had worked for the Americans and could have had her throat cut for it when the city fell. I decided to take her out.
On the day we were to leave, Sandy and I went to the American Legion Post near the airport and boarded a blue bus with anti-grenade screens on the windows. It was hot. The bus inched through mobs of scooters and decaying Citroëns to the main gate of Tan Son Nhut. A mean-looking Vietnamese military policeman boarded the bus to check credentials. He examined Sandy’s papers, which alleged her to be my wife. As I held my breath, he stared hard at her, and then moved on.
The bus stopped at the tennis courts and we piled off in the ghastly heat. U.S. military police herded us into a sort of corral to begin the endless processing that would consume much of the day. F-5s screamed overhead in a futile attempt to slow the advancing North Vietnamese army. “All right, form three lines!” shouted the MPs. “‘Three lines, not five lines. Get out your papers for examination. Now.”
Comments (3)
The last C-130 out of Saigon was tail #56-0518.
This aircraft was subsequently transferred to the Tennessee Air National Guard with the 118th Tactical Airlift Wing.
As an Aeromedical Evacuation Tech, I flew on this aircraft several times over the years, never knowing the history of the a/c until years later in my retirement when I started researching the history of our old 'A' model C-130's.
What a privelege it is to know that I flew on this historic aircraft.
Ironically, my last operational C-141 mission was on "The Hanoi Taxi" which was the last C-141 to retire from the USAF.
Posted by MSgt. James L. Reynolds (ret) on November 4,2009 | 05:14 PM
I remember this scene, albeit not so vividly, when I left Tan Son Nhut in a C-130 as the base was being rocketed. I was almost five and saw all of this unfold from the cockpit because my father was one of the pilots of a VNAF C-130. I remember how crowded the aircraft was with people trying to fit wherever they could. I sat on the lap of the flight engineer and remember the deafening noise of the engines since I had no earplugs or headset. Thanks for this story. It brings back memories that have been buried for a long time.
Posted by Stephen Viet Pham on October 19,2010 | 01:34 AM
I recall my ROTC instructor, Col. Tom Sledge, had clipped this article from his newspaper and brought it to class to read and provide us the impressive details. I thought this was around August 1973. The five ton overload and crew/passenger load of 452 stuck in my mind all these years. We compared it to a 747 that had 400 seats shoulder to shoulder and then scaled down the size and tried to imagine how they even breathed. A cubic foot of water weighs 64 pounds and at 100 pounds for each person, that translates to about 2 cubic feet each. They must have stood on each other's shoulders and squeezed into every place possible. Knowing that control cables and hydraulic plumbing was all over that plane, it was just a miracle none of the passengers didn't endanger the pilot's control. It was a weight and balance miracle. I imagine that 450 people certainly absorbed lots of vibration and noise in that cabin.
I wonder where those refugees are today, and what became of their lives. It has been almost 40 years. Every person's story of their own survival casts multitudes of values and inspiration to any audience of admiring readers.
Posted by Oscar Olszewski on October 21,2012 | 01:42 PM