1970s: End of Vietnam conflict doesn’t end base’s mission

Vietnam was just beginning to wind down as President Richard Nixon announced his Vietnamization strategy to bring American military forces home and slowly turn the war over to the Vietnamese.

Operations at Travis were beginning to wind down, too.

By 1975, the number of personnel and cargo moving through Travis was dropping back under a million a year to 338,529 personnel and 82, 870 tons of cargo.

Travis not only moved troops to and from Vietnam, it also flew missions carrying Army and Marines to major American cities to be ready to protect government installations from protests against the war in case they got out of hand. This also included transport missions to Chicago, Oakland and Washington in April 1968 a fter the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated; to Chicago in August 1968 during the Democratic National Convention; to Washington in May 1971 during antiwar protests; and to Miami in July 1972 during the Republican National Convention.

By January 1970, the 60th Military Airlift Wing was sharing the base with a new tenant, the Air Force Reserve’s 349th MAW. It was transferred to Travis from its old home at Hamilton Air Force Base in Marin County on July 25, 1969, to become an associate wing, sharing many of the same resources with Travis, from its aircraft to its facilities.

Travis’ first C-5 G alaxy arrived on Oct. 24, 1970, going to the just reactivated 75th Military Airlift Squadron. It was designed to carry anything in the Army’s inventory and, operating with the C-141, gave Military Airlift Command the capability to deliver men and equipment anywhere in the world.

In early 1971, the C-5s started arriving at about one a month until the base ended up with 33 of the large transports. It also spelled the end of Travis’ C-133 Cargomasters, the last of which left the base for Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona in August 1971.

The arrival of the C-5s also meant a construction boom for the base. Between 1969 a nd 1980, approximately $11 m illion was spent building hangar and maintenance space to support the large airlifter.

Racial problems rose to the surface of the base in May 1971 when a fistfight between two airmen over a noisy party escalated into a night-long riot in the dormitory area that saw cars smashed, 30 i njuries, including a lieutenant colonel beaten when he tried to restore order, and the partial burning of the visiting officer quarters building. At one point, police in riot gear fought an estimated 200 a irmen. This ended in 135 a rrests and 80 detentions. A curfew was imposed and police from the surrounding communities were brought in to reinforce base secur ity police.

The riot shocked the Air Force into restructuring its programs dealing with equal opportunity, creating a new Social Actions Directorate and ordering mandatory education in race relations to help officers and enlistees improve communications across racial and ethnic barriers.

Travis’ involvement with the nation’s space program continued through this period, flying C-141s and C-130s in support of the Apollo 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 14 a nd 15 m issions. In the case of the Apollo 12 m ission, it flew a mobile quarantine facility, with the three astronauts inside, to Texas. In 1975, it was support of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, and later missions supporting the launch of the shuttles Columbia and Challenger.

In October and November 1973, another military crisis, this time the Yon Kippur War when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, sent Travis aircraft to Lod International Airport as part of Operation Nickel Grass, carrying armor, artillery, munitions, medical supplies and other assistance to the Israel i military.

Most of the missions to Southeast Asia between 1970 a nd 1973, when the Paris Peace Accords were signed, involved bringing back all those service members from Vietnam.

Part of that was Operation Homecoming, the return of the POWs from North Vietnam, which was planned by the 22nd Air Force as a massive aeromedical evacuation from Hanoi to Clark Air Base. The first three C-141s landed at Gia Lam Airport on Feb. 12, 1973, to pick up the first 116 POWs, who were taken to Clark for medical care and then back to the U.S.

Lt. Col. Richard Brenneman was one of those POWs, describing the C-141 w ith a large red cross painted on its tail parked at the Gia Lam Airport as “the most beautiful aircraft I had ever seen.”