This year’s Anzac Day falls 50 years after Australian air force crews took part in a perilous rescue mission of thousands of young orphans from a conflict zone.
During the final days of the Vietnam War, the US and its allies launched Operation Babylift to fly the children, many just babies, to safety.
By April 1975, thousands of them had been brought to the city of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, with many of them in need of medical help that wasn’t available.
There were also a large number born of American soldiers who faced being murdered by the advancing communist forces, as 20 years of bloody fighting drew to a close.
The Australian War Memorial’s curator of military history, Emily Hyles, says the humanitarian mission was triggered by a request from then-US president Gerald Ford.
“Operation Babylift was the largest evacuation ever of orphans,” she said.
“In April 1975, 3000 children were evacuated from Saigon to America, to Australia and to European countries.”
Because the flight time from Vietnam to Australia was half the time from the South-East Asian country to the US, the sickest orphans were flown out by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
“The ones that came to Australia were so sick and malnourished that their carers didn’t think they could sustain that longer journey to the United States,” Hyles said.
The RAAF deployed 10 transport planes from 36 and 37 squadrons, mostly C-130 Hercules, during Operation Babylift.
Among the pilots was Hugh Howell, who today recalls the perilous flight from Vietnam to Bangkok in Thailand, where the children were transferred to a Qantas plane for the onward journey to Australia.
With enemy North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong fighters just a few kilometres from the city, danger was constant as the planes packed with young children took off.
“Because of the danger of surface-to-air missiles, we would actually have to take off and then climb in a circular pattern up over the top of the airfield, which was a safe area, up to about 10,000 feet before we could then set off,” he said.
The RAAF air crews had seen at first hand the high risks involved with Operation Baby Lift when a giant US Air Force C-5A Galaxy aircraft, carrying orphans, crashed shortly after take-off from Saigon.
The mercy flight was hit by a catastrophic decompression at 23,000 feet, resulting in a crash that killed more than half the passengers, including babies, young children and two Australian women, Lee Makk and Margaret Moses.
Operation Babylift is a touching reminder of the Australian Defence Force’s role in providing humanitarian aid during conflicts.
