O. Lee Walker
Most of those reading this will not be old enough to remember, but today is the anniversary of the final invasion of Saigon and the end of a free South Vietnam. I was there. Here is my story: April 29, 1975
I was in the 345th TAS at the time, a young butter bar, that arrived in time to be a part of the final days of South Vietnam. We had already been evacuating hundreds of soon to be refugees to Clark AB, PI. Just a few days before we began the final evacuation of Ton Son Nhut, the C-5 “baby killer” crash dominated the news. It just added to the mental confusion that surrounded everything about what we were doing.
The last day, April 29,1975, my crew was on alert in Thailand at Utapao RTNAB, restricted to quarters, or the base pool. After bedding down for the night, the alert to launch came at midnight. Fighting the fog of interrupted sleep, we rushed to get prepped for the mission, pulling on flight suits, boots, and grabbing our gear. I was the co-pilot, Capt John Steele, the aircraft commander and Capt Phil Philipps, the navigator; I can’t remember the flight engineer. The Duty OIC met us with a washed out look, to brief us on our mission – he was visibly shaken.. “They’ve got a 130 down on the ramp. Mortor through the wing. You’d to land and pick up survivors, and get the hell out!” We waited in the seats for hours before the command to launch came in the predawn, around 5 am local. The takeoff and departure had to be executed in a steep spiral to insure any non-friendlies were kept out of small arms range while we gained altitude. On departure, the loadmaster, Lee Jackson, came to the cockpit and gave us a shock. When I turned to him, his face was a complete mess of bloody scrapes. It seems he had decided to nap on the tarmac outside while he waited for the go command. Not a good idea. In fact, it was specifically prohibited in the safety brief – you might get run over by ground equipment in the dark. Yes, that’s exactly what happened. A small Thai-Am 3 wheeler had run over his head in the dark. Had it been a regular sized truck, it would have had the same effect as running over a watermelon. .
We were in the holding pattern over Ton Son Nhut a few hours later. We couldn’t get clearance to land because of the chaos on the ground – the 130 was still burning, and the ramp was closed. The personnel that had manned the tower were long gone, as was anyone else except the ALCC, (Airlift Command and Control), operating out of a mobile van, who told us to hold. While orbiting overhead, we were were joined by two A-37’s, US markings, so we thought we graced with escorts to guard against the possible intercept by North Vietnamese who were surrounding the area on the ground. So far no reports of enemy aircraft had been reported in the area. It was only hours later, after landing in Utapao, Thailand, that we were informed that the A-37’s were stolen by the N. Vietnamese out of Da Nang AB, and that they probably couldn’t figure out how to arm the weapons to fire on us! -A very chilling afterthought!
We were unable to land at Ton Son Nhut that day, so after hours of orbiting, we headed back to Thailand. Upon arrival in the pattern, we were met with a cacophony of frantic calls on the tower radio. It seems that everyone that could fly a plane had left Vietnam to escape the onrushing hoards from the North. It was bedlam. The controllers sounded like auctioneers trying to sequence the hornet’s nest of aircraft trying to land. “Emergency fuel”. “Hydraulic failure”, “Flight controls” – you name it- every emergency in the book was being called. We got out of there and headed to clear airspace, holding over an island off the coast, can’t remember the name. After we reached our fuel limit, about 8 hours total, we had to go in. By then, it had calmed down, and the approach and landing were uneventful, but we were unprepared for what we saw. There was every vintage US aircraft you could imagine cluttering the ramp – 123’s, Sandy’s, Bird Dogs, and even F-5’s. The story goes that one Vietnamese brought his whole family of 5 , bunched into the single seat cockpit of an F-5 fighter jet!
That ended the US’ involvement in the Vietnam conflict (notice the euphemism for getting defeated), and another era began.
Interestingly, the ALCC control officer that gave us instructions to hold that day, turned up as my First Sargeant when I became an ALCC officer myself, and worked with me for over a year. Years later, at Altus AFB, as an instructor myself, my squadron commander had been the co-pilot on the C-5 “Babylift” that crashed that tragic day…
Paul Hooper’s experience . . . Tuesday, 29 April 1975
My first assignment out of USAF Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) was as a C-130E Co-Pilot assigned to the 345th Tactical Airlift Squadron at Kadena AB, Okinawa. Forty five years ago on the evening of 29 April 1975 I was with the rest of the crew having dinner at the Thai O’Club at Utapao AB in Thailand. We were the alert crew but had not been called out to fly. LtCol Larry Duval came into the club, said that the 7th Airborne Command and Control Squadron (7th ACCS) needed a Co-Pilot and Flight Engineer to fill out a crew to go fly, and asked if my Flight Engineer (MSgt Joe Kotai) and I would volunteer. We said we would.
Around 2200 we took off in C-130E-II 62-1863 as Cricket 01. We flew into Vietnamese airpace and orbited over Vung Tau as the airborne representative of the Commander United States Activities Group, Seventh Air Force, during the evacuation of Saigon, OPLAN 5060V codenamed “Frequent Wind”. This mission was directly responsible for the evacuation of the last American diplomats from Saigon. Since the mission of Cricket 01 was as the Airborne Battlefield Command and Control Center it is very likely that we remained on station until the last US military aircraft/helicopter had landed and thus were, arguably, the last US Military aircraft to leave Vietnamese airspace in the Vietnam War.
The 71st Rescue Squadron at Moody AFB, Georgia, sent the Air Force’s oldest C-130 to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance And Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, for retirement on 3 March 2015. The aircraft, an HC-130P Combat King personnel recovery aircraft nicknamed Iron Horse, served for fifty-two years and recorded 27,533 flying hours. The aircraft (US Air Force serial number 62-1863) began its Air Force career as a C-130E assigned to the 374th Tactical Airlift Wing during Vietnam. Iron Horse first got its nickname when it was stationed at Davis-Monthan in 1994 as an EC-130E Airborne Command and Control Center, or ABCCC, aircraft in the 1990s. The aircraft was modified into an HC-130P in the 1990s. The aircraft’s final deployment came in 2009.
( http://codeonemagazine.net/p3_news_item.html?item_id=1399 )
1Lt Madden: Almost, but no cigar . . . Tuesday, 29 April 1975
Most of the squadron had been deployed to Clark AB, Philippines several days before. Being relatively still new to the squadron, and not assigned to a “Formed Crew”, I was still stuck at Kadena AB pulling Duty Officer. However, on Tuesday, April 29 1975, whoever was left at Kadena was put together into four or five crews and assembled in the squadron briefing room. The assistant Ops Officer, Major ___ , gave an informal briefing as to what was going on.
We were to deadhead (ride in the back of the plane while another crew flew) to Clark, then proceed to the 21TAS squadron building to get our plane/mission assignment for Saigon. Below is a page from the logbook I carried with me with my notes of frequencies and IFF squawks. I do remember being told if we had to put the plane down, we were to try to get out to a carrier off the coast (USS Midway or USS Hancock) and ditch there. I was the copilot for AC Capt DD Smith. When we got to the airplane, we found that the cargo compartment had been stripped down and everything had been removed. We sat on the floor as cattle should and a tiedown strap was put across the cargo compartment as a safety belt. And we were off for the approximately 3 1/2 hour flight to Clark AB.
Arriving at Clark AB at 10:00 AM local time, the first thing I noticed was the activity. Every C130, C141, and C5 in the Air Force (not really but it looked like it) was parked there. They had even moved the Clark assigned F4s from their normal parking spots into hangars to make way for cargo aircraft. We immediately crew bussed to the 21 TAS squadron building where the ACs were taken to a briefing and we hung out in the nice 21 TAS lounge/snack bar. I remember another copilot from the 21TAS I knew met me on the way in and told me that one of our C130s (50th TAS aircraft, #72-1297) had just been hit by a mortar that morning (think it was actually a rocket) at Tan son Nhut and they were not sure if we would go. And sure enough, the ACs came out of the briefing and told us we were cancelled. We were put back on another C130 five and one half hours after landing to deadhead back to Kadena that day. Oh well, a 15 hour day and no flying time logged, that’s life. No cigar for me that day.