03-05-2025
Operation Babylift: A humanitarian mission for Vietnamese orphans
GARDEN CITY, LONG ISLAND (PIX11)– The Cradle of Aviation Museum hosted a special event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Operation Babylift, a humanitarian effort to evacuate thousands of Vietnamese orphans in the final days of the Vietnam War.
The children who survived were later relocated and adopted by American families.
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The adoptees, now adults, and those involved in this extraordinary moment in history reunited five decades later.
In the Pan Am museum within the Cradle of Aviation, a poignant exhibit provides a dramatic account of Operation Babylift. Harrowing images of young children lie side by side on airplane seats, some in tears, some visibly afraid and in distress.
It was a dangerous operation in April 1975. Saigon was falling, and as the North Vietnamese military advanced, President Gerald Ford ordered the evacuation of South Vietnamese orphans.
About 3,300 children left their war-torn nation in the daring mission.
Carol Mason was one of the youngest orphans.
'This is me when I was five and a half months old with my airlift mother, Karen,' said Mason, as she pointed to a photo of herself as an infant. Her 'airlift mother' was a Pan Am flight attendant who cared for the children onboard. 'Operation Babylift has given me a chance I would've never had in life.'
Another crew member, Ingrid Templeton, says she thinks about the children almost every day and keeps a memento she looks at all the time—a photo of herself on the plane with an infant in her arms.
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'They were so tiny, and they almost stuck to your chest because it was so humid and hot,' said Templeton, getting emotional. 'You could just feel their heartbeat.'
The mission actually began with a tragedy.
On April 4th, a C-5A military cargo plane, the mission's first flight, crash-landed shortly after takeoff. A door malfunctioned and blew open, leading to mass structural failure. One hundred thirty-eight souls perished, 78 of them children. But more than 170 survived, including dozens of children.
Steve Mark was one of those children. 'My parents thought I was on the April 4th C-5A that crashed, but then my mom got a call on April 28th that I'd landed in San Francisco,' said Mark.
Mark was one of four children on the last Pan Am flight out of Saigon on April 24th, 1975. He's thankful to all who gave him a chance at life, including Pan Am. 'I just want awareness of the efforts made by Pan Am to get all of these orphans out of Vietnam,' adds Mark.
The now-defunct airline played a critical role when it provided the jumbo jets for the evacuation after the military plane crashed. On board were the orphans, government and airline employees, and their families.
Al Topping was Pan Am's director of Operations in South Vietnam and Cambodia. 'I was walking through the cabin and people were crying,' said Topping. 'They're leaving behind their home country forever, probably, and they don't know what lies ahead .'
Topping helped organize the flights as the North Vietnamese troops were closing in.
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'My heart was pounding,' said Topping. 'I was just so worried that something bad was going to happen.'
He describes the thousands of desperate South Vietnamese people at the airport, desperate to leave the country.
'A North Vietnamese soldier could be out there in the rice paddy somewhere with a shoulder rocket missile who could just shoot that plane down,' said Topping. 'We had no more protection, the South Vietnamese Army had dissolved into the woods, they had taken off the uniform, and on our final departure, when we were boarding, I saw some South Vietnamese soldiers now in civilian clothes trying to get on the plane with everyone else.
Their plane made it safely back to the States. Thuy Williams, who was five then, was one of the older children. Years later, she was able to find her Vietnamese birth mother, who told her she gave her up because she feared for her daughter's safety, as a biracial child fathered by an American soldier. The emotional scars have endured.
'I remember a lot of war, I was in an area that I saw people get killed, and I heard the guns going off and the bombs,' said Williams. 'I have had a good life, and I had a good adoptive family.'
The survivors and all involved in Operation Babylift say they want what happened to be more widely taught in schools as part of American history.
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