Memories about the deadly accident that killed dozens of Vietnamese orphans in a plane crash during Operation Babylift in 1975 have remained unfadable for witnesses.

>> An audio version of the story is available here

The operation was organized to carry Vietnamese orphans away from their homeland, which was then falling into a crisis and ravaged by war.

Operation Babylift was never completed since one of its flights crashed minutes after taking off in Saigon, which is now Ho Chi Minh City.

The debris of the cargo plane C5A Galaxy and the bodies of the orphans aboard were later found in District 2 of the city.

Forty years after the accident happened, survivors of and witnesses to the operation who are now living across the world have gathered in the city many times to relive the sad memories.

Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper met witnesses to the event and was showed the way to visit the place the killed children were laid to rest – a mass grave in Pattaya in Thailand.

A disaster

During the last days of the war in Vietnam in 1975, U.S. President Gerald Ford assigned the U.S. air force to evacuate thousands of Vietnamese orphans to the U.S. and some other countries.

C5A Galaxy, the largest cargo plane of the U.S. Army, carried out the first flight of the operation.

Fifteen minutes after taking off, the door of the cargo hold in the rear of the plane burst open, leading to a drop in air pressure inside and control of the aircraft lost. It crashed then.

A Tuoi Tre reporter met Phil Wise, an army medical corps officer who survived the C5A Galaxy crash, in a small hotel on Bui Vien Street in the ‘backpacker area’ in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City recently to hear him tell his story.

Phil Wise, a witness to and survivor of the C5A Galaxy crash in 1975. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Every five years, he returns to the city to visit the old place he said he still remembers clearly moment by moment before the accident happened.

It was on the morning of April 4, 1975, when he was in bed after an entire sleepless working day. Someone knocked on his door and he was ordered to fly in five minutes. No further explanation.

He said he was not aware of the operation he was ordered to take part in.

Wise opened his memoir and selected a paragraph to read. “The door closed. The atmosphere inside the plane started cooling up and I feel more comfortable after the brutal heat outside in Saigon. My uniform gets soaked with sweat. The children get better in the cool atmosphere.”

It was around 4:15 pm, a short moment of calmness before a deadly accident.

Wise recalled he heard a noise in the back of the plane but ignored the thought that it might be an attack because it was just a small sound.

Many investigations were made later and the reason that was most agreed upon was the unlocking of one of the six door bolts there. It made the door burst out.

Boxes containing orphans began drifting out and falling down through the hole when the plane was at an altitude of thousands of meters.

It was all Wise could remember before he regained his consciousness two days later in the Philippines.

The cargo plane crashed at 4:45 pm on April 4, 1975.

The real number of dead children from the crash has yet to be confirmed. Some sources said it was 76 while others believed it was 78, 79, or 98.

All Wise was informed of days after the accident was that the dead bodies of the orphans were taken to the U-Tapao air base in Pattaya, Thailand.

A nearly forgotten tomb

Few people know that Pattaya was turned into a developed tourist city as a result of the war in Vietnam.

Before 1969 it was a small village and soon turned out to be a venue for R&R (rest and relax) for U.S. soldiers.

There, a part of Vietnam has existed. The Vietnamese orphans who got killed in the crash were buried in a mass tomb in the cemetery of the Saint Nikolaus Church, located on Sukhumvit Street in Pattaya.

The accident has been covered by the media across the world but the tomb was not mentioned.

Pink lotuses are laid on the mass tomb of the Vietnamese orphans. Photo: Tuoi Tre

It lies at a corner of the cemetery near a wall. Some simple words taken from the Bible are now seen on the tombstone, such as “Come suffer unto me” and the words of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, forecasting some 10,000 worlds of growth and death they will go through.

Reverend Father Francis of the church told the Tuoi Tre journalist that he was the first-ever Vietnamese visitor to ask him about the tomb.

And he recommended him to visit Sister Joan, who has taken care of the tomb in the last 19 years and is living some kilometers from the church.

Sister Joan, who is Irish and now over 80 years, said she saw the tomb for the first time in 1996. She rarely goes out of her place because of her health problems.

She said forty years ago, she came to identify and bury another sister who was aboard the plane.

Sister Joan did some charitable jobs in Saigon before 1975.

She asked the Tuoi Tre journalist if the tomb was clean because she feared leaves from the mango tree nearby could fall onto it.

She said the tomb initially had a marble stone reading ‘Known but to God’. Later, Sister Rosemary put another marble block featuring the words of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, “Out of your smiles will bloom a flower and those who love you will care for you to surpass ten thousand incarnations.”

Sister Joan said she believed the number 76 is correct and does not understand why Sister Rosemary said it was 79.

Before leaving, the Tuoi Tre journalist brought to the grave a bouquet of pink lotuses – the flower Vietnamese offer to the dead – and the Sisters and the Father promised from now on to give the children pink lotuses instead of orchids as what the Thais do.

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