Goodnight Saigon

by Charles Henderson

  Helen Drye and her daughter Theresa died in the crash. So did Thelma Thompson’s friend Twila Donelson. Thelma credited her survival to the last-minute move that she made from the cargo bay to the upper-level seating in the tail section.

  Laurie Stark and Sharon Wesley also died in the crash, as did Clara Bayot, Barbara Stout, and Mary Ann Crouch. Ruthanne Gasper, Dorothy Howard, Joan Pray, Juanita Creel, Elizabeth Fugino, Vera Hollibaugh, and Beverly Herbert also died in the airplane that day.

  Although bruised and badly frightened, one-year-old baby girl Bach Thi-Kim Cuong survived the disaster. She later flew to England and joined her new parents Colin and Diane Felce. While many occidental families gave their adopted Vietnamese orphan children Western names, the Felces preserved their new daughter’s Indochinese heritage by giving her the name Safi Thi-Kim Felce.

  In total, of the 328 passengers and 16-member crew, 175 passengers and eleven of the crew made it out alive, thanks to the brilliant and determined actions of pilot in command, Captain Dennis “Bud” Traynor, and copilot, Captain Tilford Harp.

  For their decisive leadership and heroic airmanship, Captains Traynor and Harp each received the Air Force Cross for their valor during the horrifying final fifteen minutes of the last flight of C-5A Galaxy, serial number SN 68-218.

  Because of the violent nature of the explosion that took out the Galaxy’s rear fuselage and aft cargo ramp and doors, Air Force officials immediately feared that a saboteur had managed to put a bomb on the plane. Only days later did officials discover that faulty latches, or a failure to properly close the latches to the rear doors, had in most probability caused the explosion. Once the aircraft neared its cruise altitude, its internal atmospheric pressure apparently caused the latches to give way and snapped off the doors with explosive force, tearing away part of the fuselage and rear ramp as well as the hatches.

  Some speculated that with so many infants aboard the flight and given that high altitude inflicts a greater level of discomfort on babies, the crew may have allowed cabin pressure to build higher than the typical atmospheric equivalent of eight thousand feet. Perhaps they may have pushed it down a bit to five thousand feet to make conditions more comfortable for the children. With possibly faulty latches, or with the latches failing to lock securely before takeoff, the higher than typical pressure may have exacerbated the problem to excess.

  According to the flight crew, however, all systems had functioned normally during preflight inspections and at the time of launch.

  Lawsuits later pursued by surviving family members of those killed in the crash pointed blame at Lockheed, citing faulty aircraft systems.

  When the C-9 Nightingale carrying out the second flight of Operation Babylift launched that next morning, two fully armed United States Air Force security policemen rode shotgun. They had flown from their Third Security Police Group headquarters at Clark Air Base at two o’clock that morning to make the Nightingale flight at eight o’clock.

  Every flight after that carried two of the 3rd SPG/CC armed security policemen aboard it. Striving to remain in compliance with the War Powers Act, none of the United States Air Force policemen remained in Saigon overnight, but commuted from the Philippines daily. However, as the North Vietnamese Army closed on Saigon and increased their assaults on defending ARVN units, the daily-enlarging detachment of Clark Air Base security policemen’s commutes rapidly segued into an around-the-clock, ever-increasing air evacuation operation.

  LOC NINH, NEWLY RELOCATED NVA FIELD HEADQUARTERS

  GENERAL TRAN VAN Tra sat at a simple, clean table inside a plain-looking house in Loc Ninh, sipping tea and silently reading a copy of the April 5 edition of Pacific Stars and Stripes that Colonel Vo Dong Giang had an aide smuggle to Song Be Airfield the evening before and then take to him that morning at the supreme headquarters for the forward forces of the North Vietnamese Army. An aide had to read the general the newspaper, but he knew from the photographs and his limited understanding of English that the plane crash had tragic consequences. He understood the headline, “178 Die on Babylift Crash at Tan Son Nhut.”

  The incorrect number of deaths seemed consistent for the newspaper, missing the toll by twenty too many. Viet Cong undercover agents had already made a full report with more accurate numbers than the United States Information Agency publication could gather. Although he had a tedious time trying to speak or even read English, he understood a few words based on his fluent French abilities. So the general slowly studied the words and deciphered them quietly as he sipped his tea. An aide would read the whole thing to him soon enough.

  Through his long career as a soldier of the people, first against the French, then against the Americans and their puppet regime in Saigon, he had held responsibility for the deaths of thousands of people. However, as a man and a father, to know of the death of so many innocent babies caused his heart to ache.

  “Such a terrible thing,” he said to General Van Tien Dung as he too came to the table and sat with a fresh cup of tea.

  “Yes, and the Saigon regime immediately looks to blame us for killing these children,” Dung said.

  “So be it,” Tran said philosophically. “Both our side and theirs carry the blood of thousands of children already. It is the nature and cruelty of war. The weakest and most vulnerable get caught under its coarse heel.”

  “Today, we conclude our planning discussions and move forward full force with the operation,” Dung said happily. “I read a novel maybe fifteen years ago by an American writer, Jack Kerouac, who died five or six years ago. He was an innovative thinker and very much a socialist, I think, perhaps even a member of the Communist Party in Paris. His book that I read, On the Road, remains very popular among liberal young Americans and many liberal Europeans, especially in London and Paris. Now, our illustrious Comrade Le Duc Tho, the way he came here for our meeting, riding that motorcycle from Song Be Airfield with the leather satchel on his shoulder, tall and striking, like a college boy on his life’s first adventure, he reminded me of Kerouac’s main character, Sal Paradise, so seemingly carefree and so willing to flaunt himself at risk.”

  Tran Van Tra looked up and smiled, appreciating the comparison. He too had considered the risk when one of Vietnam’s founders of the Communist Party and most revered leaders, Le Duc Tho, had ridden up on the sputtering motorcycle, wearing the stiff troopers’ helmet, the breezy blue shirt and khaki trousers, and the black leather satchel looped over his shoulder. He considered how the great British chieftain from the desert war of the early 1900s, Colonel T. E. Lawrence, had died. To have survived capture by the Turks and to have ridden at the forefronts of the great campaigns across the Arabian wastelands leading the Bedouin armies, accomplishing what many thought impossible, only to die in a tumble while riding a motorcycle seemed to him tragically wasteful. As the inspirational leader of the Viet Cong, winner of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for his negotiations opposite Henry Kissinger in Paris, a member of the politburo in Hanoi, and a founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party, revered by many as second only to Ho Chi Minh, Le Duc Tho’s adventurous personal risk seemed inconsiderate. His death or injury could have a devastating impact on the political power structure throughout North and South Vietnam.

  After his flamboyant entrance to that meeting, Le Duc Tho announced that the politburo had named General Van Tien Dung as supreme commander of all forces for the onslaught of Saigon. Their host, the humble rice farmer Pham Hung, became chief political officer, holding an equal stature to General Dung. Tran Van Tra and General Le Duc An assumed the posts as deputies to Dung and Hung, respectively. Le Truong Tan received the honor of holding operational command of the forces in the field and figuratively became General Dung’s second in command. Tran Van Tra now felt like an automobile hood ornament, striking and lofty, but of little operational importance.

  After the meeting he became sullen and spoke rarely, choosing only to say things that truly mattered. The general privately blamed his loss of command significance on
the failure of his forces in 1968 when he had planned, organized, and led the Tet Offensive attacks on Saigon. Although still quite powerful in the Hanoi hierarchy, Tran Van Tra had crippled himself badly in that embarrassing loss. The American press had made it seem like a Communist victory, yet the defeat of his forces had badly hurt his credibility with Hanoi as a leader. Clearly, Van Tien Dung held the complete confidence of the politburo, Party First Secretary Le Duan, and even fellow South Vietnamese Communist Le Duc Tho.

  The Communist leader had examined Dung’s maps and planning for the upcoming siege of South Vietnam’s capital. With only minor changes, Le Duc Tho and one of the plan’s masterminds, First Secretary Le Duan, approved it and promised unanimous consent from the Communist Party in a matter of days, once Le Duan had presented it to the Central Committee.

  Meanwhile, Tho sent General Dung and his armies into action, initiating the preliminary skirmishes in the Mekong Delta regions south of Saigon.

  “My morose but dear friend, Tran Van Tra,” General Dung said, finally breaking the long silence, watching the Viet Cong leader picking his way through the newspaper, “I must tell you a thing that I promise will bring a smile to your face while we wait for our comrades Pham Hung and Le Duc An.”

  Tran Van Tra looked at Dung, took off his glasses, and wiped the glow of sweat from his face with a handkerchief.

  “Please do, then,” Tran said. “My spirits do seem a bit down today, and a cause to smile would be nice.”

  “Our Tenth Division, as you know, has enjoyed great success in defeating the ARVN forces at Cam Ranh,” Dung said.

  Tran Van Tra nodded, agreeing.

  “On their advance to Cam Ranh,” Dung continued, “they confronted the city of Da Lat, which has an airfield and other strategic benefits, west of Cam Ranh. As they approached Da Lat, the citizens there invited our forces to come into the city before anyone had commenced a battle.”

  “Very gracious of the citizens,” Tran said, “and quite wise of them.”

  “They invited the Tenth Division forces to the city not because they feared the artillery or gunfire, but to restore order!” Dung said and laughed hard. “These fatherless ARVN scum had invaded Da Lat and held the people there in complete terror, raping, murdering, and looting. The community’s leaders came to our army for help, and peace. This truly represents the full meaning of the people’s liberation and our purposes for unification.”

  Tran Van Tra smiled.

  “MR. PRESIDENT, MR. Secretary of State, good morning, gentlemen,” General Fred Weyand said, standing behind a briefing lectern set on the end of a conference table at a Palm Springs, California, resort with President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger seated at the opposite end with National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and a host of other high-level State Department, CIA, and NSA bureaucrats. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger remained off the guest list and conspicuously absent, despite Weyand’s position in the Pentagon.

  “First of all,” the general began, “I flew home on April 5 with my heart in my throat. This C-5 crash has simply devastated many of us, especially General Smith, who lost so many treasured friends who were also DAO employees. The deaths and injury of these children not only broke our hearts, but presented us with a serious political and operational dilemma.

  “The decision to keep the planes flying is the only real choice we had. First of all, if we cancelled the operation as a result of the crash, we would take a political bath. International opinion and domestic reaction would remain focused on the loss. Continued evacuation in the face of disaster, saving many thousands of lives despite these 150 or so deaths, offsets the balance of the loss. Secondly, Communist forces have begun movement toward Saigon, so the evacuation process remains a prudent action.”

  “Of course, you have my support and concurrence,” President Ford told the general. “I know Graham Martin has spoken quite frankly about this, again championing his cause of not pulling the pin and folding the tent so quickly, but I think it is best that we err on the side of caution. I hope that Ambassador Martin is correct in his estimation of the capabilities of Saigon’s forces, but we must act in a practical manner too. We will keep these planes flying.”

  “Mr. President, that brings me to the crux of my briefing,” General Weyand continued. “CIA Station Chief Tom Polger had his staff put together an assessment of enemy forces, and I know you have read it. Very dismal reading, indeed. Saigon looks to be outnumbered by at least two to one, and probably more than that. However, as we know, the army on the road has greatest vulnerability when compared to the army standing at its citadel with all of its defenses, stores, and equipment at hand.

  “Given that the North Vietnamese now field more than three hundred thousand forces north of Saigon and possess all the abandoned arms and equipment from I Corps and II Corps, the ARVN must receive a massive infusion of equipment, munitions, and materiel in order to hold their defenses adequately.”

  “Fred,” President Ford said, “what do we need? Bottom line?”

  “Sir,” the general then said, “in addition to the $700 million already authorized, and by the way, thank you for expediting the first loads of that authorized equipment, South Vietnam will require at the very minimum an additional $733 million in military supply.”

  “We need to go to Congress and ask for another $733 million in emergency aid, in addition to that already approved on the current budget authorization?” President Ford asked.

  “At the very least, sir,” Weyand responded. “More importantly, it is a matter that cannot wait. They need the additional materiel today.”

  That same morning, President Ford called leaders from the House of Representatives and the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats. They turned him down flat.

  Through the increasingly difficult days of April, President Ford kept asking Congress to grant the aid, repeatedly. No one on Capitol Hill would stand up with him. Congress turned their backs on him, and they turned their backs on the people of South Vietnam.

  Chapter 18

  THE SIEGE BEGINS

  SAIGON, RVN—TUESDAY, APRIL 8

  TWO AMERICAN-MADE Northrop F-5A Skoshi Tiger fighter jets, rolling in staggered formation, each loaded with six MK-82, 500-pound “snake eye” bombs latched on their wing pylons and half a dozen MK-77, 250-pound napalm canisters clustered under their bellies, roared down the parallel runways at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Air Base. As the sleek duo thundered toward the sky, their twin General Electric J85 engines running full thrust with afterburners afire, leaving wakes of black exhaust smoke swirling in their trails, South Vietnamese Air Force First Lieutenant Nguyen Thanh Trung nudged his Skoshi Tiger’s dual throttle levers forward with his left hand while stepping hard on the left rudder pedal, turning the nosewheel, and brought his fighter jet onto the active runway.

  The ground crew had traded off the weight of two of the Mark 82 bombs in exchange for additional nine-yard belts of 20-millimeter cannon ammunition for the plane’s two big guns. Trung had the double duty of flying top gun on this three-plane sortie, covering the high side of the attack while his comrades focused on putting their loads of “snake and nape” down the enemy’s stack. When they wrapped up their work, he would pile his four bombs into any positions his colleagues might have missed.

  The youthful father of three adoring daughters and husband of a devoted and beautiful wife had spent nearly a year away from this family that he valued and cherished even more than his own life learning to fly the F-5 jet and master air combat maneuvering at Williams Air Force Base near Phoenix, Arizona. Trung had done well in his training and now often flew the top gun slot because of his superior dogfighting skills.

  These days, however, the task of flying top gun had changed from a formerly mundane lookout duty to a highly stressful combat chore. The North Vietnamese had begun incorporating the multitude of A-37 Dragonfly light attack aircrafts and a handful of F-5As and Es that they captured intact in the northern provinces, with their pr
eviously small air force of formidable Soviet-built Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 Fishbed jet fighters, with their wide array of air-to-air and air-to-surface rockets, bomb payloads, and twin 23-millimeter cannons.

  As North Vietnam had begun flying more and more combat missions with their growing air force, they now seized the majority ownership of the skies across South Vietnam with the increasing numbers of SA-2 and SA-3 surface-to-air missiles that they deployed southward, as near to Saigon as Phuoc Long Province. The Communists also took full advantage of Phuoc Long’s air facilities at Song Be Airfield as the primary base for their air and missile defense operations. The former AFRVN airfield’s tarmacs now displayed rows of MiG-21s and A-37 Dragonflies with red stars painted on their wings and tails.

  Beyond the station’s perimeter, missile launch trailers loaded with ready-to-fire SA-3 SAMs stationed on the high ground, buttressed by quadbarreled 23-millimeter antiaircraft guns, guarded the skies. Farther out from the airfield and NVA supreme command headquarters, scattered in an arc looking southward at Saigon, larger, longer-range, and higher-reaching SA-2 SAM batteries lay in ambush for any AFRVN aircraft that happened to venture within range.

  As Lieutenant Trung pushed the throttles forward and kicked in both afterburners, his right hand applying slight back pressure to the pistol-grip control stick, his thumb resting on the top-hat trim switch, his Skoshi Tiger with four 500-pound snake eyes under its wings put its nose toward the blue and climbed like a rocket. Rolling to the right and picking up the trails of his two companions, he switched his radio to its intercom frequency and called the pair to report he had launched.

  In the distance he saw his flight partners turning from their northerly heading and climbing toward the west. They had obviously encountered the signatures of SAM batteries kicking in their high-power radar, trying to lock and fire. Trung knew that today’s mission, like so many in the past few days, would doubtlessly end with the two planes ahead of him making another bomb run on the trees and river near Cambodia. They would not tempt their fate against any MiGs or SAMs.