Operation Babylift crash brings tragedy, hope

Travis co-pilot Capt. Tilford Harp thought his fatally wounded C-5 G alaxy jet transport was going to survive intact as it slid along the South Vietnamese rice paddy.

Capt. Keith Malone, riding between Harp and pilot Capt. Dennis Traynor as an observer, announced over the intercom, “We are going to make it.”

That held true until the transport was slapped back into the air after hitting an 8-foot-high dike and pitched over the Sa igon River.

“We all decided we were dead up front then,” said Harp in a 1995 Daily Republic interview, 20 years after the crash.

Malone and Harp vividly remembered the April 4, 1975, crash that killed 138 people, including 78 Vietnamese orphans.

But through the efforts of Harp, Malone and other crew members, 176 others, including 150 orphans, either walked away or were carried from the wreckage.

“The real bottom line was that we were just plain lucky,” Harp said.

The victorious North Vietnamese Army was closing in on Saigon in April 1975 when President Gerald Ford ordered Military Airlift Command aircraft to one of the last open airports in crumbling South Vietnam to evacuate Americans and friendly South Vietnamese.

Among them were large numbers of Vietnamese and mixed-race orphans, ranging from a few weeks old to teenagers, who were taken out of the country in flights quickly dubbed Operation Babylift.

Babylift took place from April 4 to May 7, 1975, and involved 24 M ilitary Airlift Command flights and a number of aircraft chartered by private charitable organizat ions. About 2,945 orphans flew to the United States, including 1,794 who were flown out in Military Airlift Command or Military Airlift Command-contracted missions.

The C-5 Harp and Malone were on was the first flight out carryi ng orphans.

Harp, a flier with 1, 200 hours in the air, remembered the tense, chaotic vision of Tan Son Nhut Air Base as the South Vietnamese government collapsed before the advancing North Vietnamese Army.

Although official accounts state 138 people died in the crash, Harp said he has never seen an accurate listing of how many were on the aircraft.

With Saigon surrounded, things were falling apart with people trying to get out any way they could. Tan Son Nhut was a mass of ground and a ir traffic.

“Trucks would pull up and we would ask for manifests,” Harp said. “The drivers would tell us that was all taken care of.”

The C-5 landed shortly before 3 p.m., unloaded its cargo of howitzers and readied the aircraft for children, also collecting a medical crew that flew in on a C-141 from Clark Air Base in the Philippines to help with the children.

The flight crew and medical personnel formed a human chain, passing Vietnamese children through the door, up the ladder and into the troop compartment.

“The armrests were removed so we could put two in each seat, so there were six across in each set of seats. We tried to put most of the younger children upstairs and the older children downstairs,” said flight nurse Lt. Regina Aune in a later interview.

The C-5 left the ground with 229 orphans and 85 f light and medical personnel – with most of the orphans in the troop compartment and the rest strapped down on the deck of the cargo compartment.

Malone, a C-141 pilot who just finished training for C-5s, was along for what was called “a dollar ride” to better familiarize himself with C-5 operations, which put him in the seat between Malone a nd Traynor.

“It was what saved my life, otherwise I would have been down in the cargo compartment,” Malone said.

Disaster struck when three locks holding the aircraft ramp in place unlocked, breaking the ramp loose. That tore the pressure door from the C-5 at 23,000 feet.

The first indication that something was wrong was “a loud bang and it misted up in the cockpit,” Malone said.

To make matters worse, the pressure door ripped into the fuselage, severing vital pitch, trim, rudder and elevator controls.

Word came from the cargo compartment that “the whole back of the plane was gone” and severed cables hung down like spaghetti, Malone said.

1975: Remnants of the C-5 cargo plane litter a field while Vietnamese rummage through the debris. U.S. investigators had to buy back some of the plane parts from locals while looking for the cause of the crash.

“We could only marginally control the airplane,” Harp said.

Traynor wrestled the aircraft into a slow descending turn while Harp collected information on the C-5’s condition.

The aircraft dipped into a wild descent. Pulling back the throttles didn’t do anything. Only pushing the throttles forward saved the aircraft by putting it into a climb.

“We were trying all of the systems. It became obvious that all we had was power. We could only halfway control the airplane,” Harp said.

The aircrew managed to put the aircraft into a shallow descent back toward Ta n Son Nhut.

“We had a floating feeling that we were going to make it,” Harp said.

Drag from the landing gear slowed the C-5 a nd put it into a descent. The pilots realized that they would never reach the runway, so, “We spotted an open field and hoped for the best,” Harp said.

The aircraft rolled into a marsh two miles from the runway in a landing that filled Harp with hope.

“I made worse landings on a runway,” Harp said, but the C-5 slid into a dike “that literally threw us back into the air” and catapulted the plane across the Sa igon River.

The C-5 slammed back to the ground 2,700 feet beyond the dike and broke up into four parts – the tail section, the flight deck, the troop compartment and the wing section – as it skidded for another 1, 200 feet before stopping in a rice paddy.

“We lost all power. It was really dark on the flight deck because mud covered the windshield and we could feel ourselves sliding,” Harp said.

Harp didn’t realize that the cockpit section had rolled upside down until he unbuckled his seatbelt and fell out. The flight deck’s survivors stepped out into the paddy through the pilot side window, “which was normally 30 feet up i n the air.”

“I had a couple of sprained ankles that I didn’t notice until later,” Harp said. “I had trouble walking, but I assumed it was the terrain.”

Malone looked to the right and saw little but burning wreckage. He walked around the C-5’s nose and, to his amazement, spotted the troop compartment st ill intact.

The fliers then went to work tending survivors scattered around the wreckage.

Nurses such as Aune, who had broken her leg, staggered out of the still-intact troop compartment and started handing out babies. Aune handed out babies until she nearly collapsed while flight nurse 1st Lt. Harriet Goffinett, one arm immobile due to a broken collar bone, carried children on her other hip.

Loadmaster Sgt. Howard Perkins splinted his own broken leg with a crutch and six seat belts before joining the line passing babies out of the troop compartment to helicopters that arrived within five minutes.

“I think I have a broken back. I would like to be relieved,” said Aune, just before collapsing.

Despite the crash, the Air Force continued with Babylift. The crew and the nurses were cited for heroism, both in bringing the aircraft down and rescuing the survivors.

For years afterward, the C-5 was restricted from carrying passengers on the cargo deck. The locations of flight controls and hydraulic lines were changed.

A lot of changes in procedures also came out. So did 37 medals, including Air Force Crosses for Traynor and Harp.

Both Harp and Malone went back to flying. Malone retired in 1993 from Travis as a lieutenant colonel. Harp retired at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas as vice wing commander of a KC-135 t anker wing.