Latest news with #USSMidway
Buzz Feed
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
65 Extremely Rare And Fascinating Pictures I Found Last Month That Will Completely And Totally Change Your Perspective On The Past
This, snapped the day before his death, is one of the last pictures ever taken of Pope Francis: And here's what Pope Francis looked like as a young man: Popes: they were once young! Who'da thunk it. This is what Niagara falls looks like from way, way above: Would ya look at that. This, my friends, is what a pregnant horse looks like: I am still searching for what a horse baby shower looks like. I imagine it's delightful. This is what a human skeleton looks like next to a gorilla's skeleton: Feel free to pull this image up in your next "Yo Mama" debate on the playground. This is Fernand Meyssonnier, France's last executioner, standing next to one of the guillotines he used on the job: Someone was executed by guillotine as recently as 1977 in France. The death penalty has since been abolished. And here's a mask an executioner would typically wear: Not creepy at all. This is what the USS Midway looks like compared to a person in a kayak: This makes me feel very relaxed. Just kidding. This is what the bottom of the deepest trench on Earth, the Mariana Trench, looks like: Imagine being the guy responsible for the trash at the literal deepest part of the ocean. In the mid-80s, the Statue of Liberty was completely covered in scafolding while being renovated: A pigeon's dream come true. Over 2.5 MILLION people attended Lady Gaga's show in Brazil last month. Here's what millions of people in one place looks like: I have to pee just thinking about it. Here's another angle: Again, my bladder hurts. This comparison of the graphics of Grand Theft Auto V and the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI has been making the rounds. The jump in graphical fidelity is incredible: What a different 13 years makes. This is what an x-ray of a baby's hand looks like: A comforting thought. In 1731, King Frederick I of Sweden was gifted with a lion that, after its death, he sent to be stuffed and preserved. The only issue was that the people doing the taxidermy had never actually seen a lion. This, the Lion of Gripsholm Castle, is the finished product: Juuuuuust a bit off. Speaking of terrible taxidermy and fossil reconstruction, this is the Magdeburg Unicorn, quite possibly the worst fossil reconstruction ever: It was probably done by Otto von Guericke, who thought he had found the remains of a unicorn. Turns out he'd just mixed and matched the bones of a rhinoceros, a mammoth, and a narwhal. This is Steven Spielberg on top of Bruce, the animatronic shark that, well, played Jaws in Jaws: And now I'm realizing why the shark in Finding Nemo was named what it was. Here's a look at the full Jaws fake-shark rig: In 2001, there was a huge dust storm on Mars that obscured the whole planet from the outside: Imagine leaving your windows open on Mars that day. This is what a lizard getting a CT scan looks like: Stay strong, l'il fellah. The is the one-time record holder for world's heaviest hamburger: Are the tomatoes really necessary? They're not even that heavy. Deep scars don't sweat, so dirt doesn't stick to them: That's one way to stay clean. Quarters... quarters can be very, very tiny: They were made by the Franklin Mint in the 1980s. This is what a World War II combat helmet looks like compared to a World War I combat helmet: Here's the other side of the helmets: I'm taking the World War II helmet for anything combat-related and the World War I helmet for anything heaping-bowl-of-soup-related. This is what the first iPhone's camera looks like compared to a recent iPhone's camera: What is this... a camera for ants? This is what a nuclear warhead looks like: Looks like the next water bottle TikTok is going to convince half the world to buy. In 1924, a game of Human Chess was played in the Soviet Union: You know, if you weren't able to watch Babe Ruth hit 46 homeruns back then, you had to find some other way to entertain yourself. This is what a four person see-saw looks like: That's a little busy. Some libraries let you know just how much money you save by going to them: Let's hear it for 'braries, folks. This is what a golf course green that's been struck by lightning looks like: Or when my approach shot from 65 yards at hits the screen and bounces directly into the woods behind it. This is what a Coke bottle from 48 years ago looked like: It was intentionally a throwback design for Coke's anniversary. The original Pledge of Allegiance didn't include "under God": This was changed by Dwight Eisenhower during the Cold War, for, of course, Cold War reasons. The year 2025 is the first year that's a square number since 1936: And you will almost certainly be long dead before the next one. Have a nice day! This is "Boy Samson," the 14-year-old "strongest boy in the world" holding up a grown man on a motorcycle circa 1932: Today, that very same boy might have a Podcast. The mind reels. This is how much it cost to buy a whole bunch of groceries in 1988, almost 40 years ago: Today that'll get you about two and half bell peppers. This is what the first class menu looked like on the Titanic the day the ship sunk: No chicken tenders? No thanks. And this is what the Second Class menu looked like that same day: Some similarities to the first class menu, but overall very, very different. And, for good measure, this is what the third class menu looked like that day so many of them tragically died: Literally getting served "GRUEL." This is what the World Trade Center looked like at the very beginning of its construction: Construction began in 1966 and was finished in 1971. This is what a fusion reactor looks like compared to a person: This particular reactor is located in China and set a record "160 million degrees celsius for 20 seconds." This is Igor Sikorsky, inventor of the world's first "practical" helicopter, getting ready to take off in his contraption: This was in 1939. And here he is in the air: My guy Igor CHILLIN' up there. Some playgrounds have special "wheelchair only" swings: Love it! This is Norwegian speed skater Oscar Mathisen pictured with his many, many, many, many awards and honors throughout the early 1900s: He set numerous world records, some even apparently lasting until the 21st century. This is what a pair of maraschino cherries put through a dishwasher looks like: Now you have officially seen everything. Here's a scientist testing out a hands-free shaving machine that used robotic arms: Okay, it was actually meant to be used with radioactive material, but shaving is a cool second use-case. Strawberries, my boy... strawberries can be very, very big: Nature is beautiful. And dogs? Dogs can be gigantic: Who's a good... man? And frogs, my boy... frogs can be very, very tiny: Now you know. Use this knowledge wisely. This is a group of World War I soldiers creating a "Human Liberty Bell" at Camp Dix in 1918: This is what people did before iPhones. This is 17-year-old Bryn Owen and his, frankly, ludicrous amount of mirrors on his Vespa: Every single source I've seen containing this picture points out that he used his own "pocket money." Now you know. Here's a scene from the 1924 Olympics gold medal hockey game between the USA and Canada: Canada won 6-1. This is what Meryal Waterpark, home of the world's tallest waterslide, looking like while it was under construction in Qatar: I can feel the wedgies just looking at this picture. This is what Earth looks like from 3.7 billion miles away: To paraphrase the big man Carl Sagan, everyone and everything you have ever known exists on that little speck. This is what the grave of HR Giger, creator of the design of the alien from Alien, looks like: Commitment to the very end. Speaking of which, the new Pope Leo went to a World Series game in 2005 and was caught on TV: Slacking off there, Leo. Should've been Pope-ing. This is what caffeine looks like under a microscope: Looks about right. This is Henry Behrens, at one time the world's smallest man, doing a little tango with a cat: He stood 30 inches tall, and, we can safely assume, was one heck of a dancer. This is planet J1407b, a, I quote, "Super-saturn" with "over 30 rings, each stretching over tens of millions of kilometers in diameter:" It's hundreds of times bigger than the Saturn we all know and love. This is what the remains of a World War I trench looks like today: These trenches date back to the Battle of the Somme and are located in Newfoundland Memorial Park near Albert, France. This picture, from the early 1900s, shows an early basketball game, kneepads and all: Josh Hart would make that man CRY. Here's another photo of a vintage basketball player, standing in front of a piano and striking fear into the hearts of his opponents: I think Jalen Brunson could put up 176 on this dude. This is what Stephen Hawking's grave looks like: It reads "Here lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking." This isn't a fake picture of your worst "driving nightmare." It's the Hisashimichi Interchange, located near Tokyo, perhaps one of the most complicated roads in the world: I'll walk, thanks. This is what the nerve inside a tooth looks like: (Cartoon cat slamming his finger inside a door voice) YEEEEE-OUCH! This is what the knots on the outside of a tree look like on the inside: Neat! Cough medicine used to be very, very, very strong: Add some melatonin to that baby and you might never wake up. Finally, there's a copperhead snake in this picture. Can you find it? Well, can you?
Spectator
30-04-2025
- General
- Spectator
Was Nixon solely to blame for the fall of Saigon?
At 7.53 a.m. on Tuesday 30 April 1975, 50 years ago today, Sergeant Juan Valdez boarded a Sea Knight helicopter sent from aircraft carrier USS Midway that had landed a few minutes earlier on the roof of the US embassy in Saigon. He was the last US soldier to be evacuated from Vietnam. As he scurried to the rooftop, he was aware that some 420 Vietnamese, who had been promised evacuation, were left in the courtyard below. They faced an uncertain fate. The day before it had been reported to Washington that Saigon Airport was under persistent rocket attack. Escape by airplane became impossible. President Gerald Ford explained: 'The military situation deteriorated rapidly. I therefore ordered the evacuation of all American personnel remaining in Vietnam'. Back in New York, President Nixon's Secretary of State was not a happy man. A crestfallen Henry Kissinger cancelled his tickets to see Noel Coward's play, Present Laughter.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
50 years later: Refugee shares her story of survival as USS Midway crucial in rescuing thousands after Fall of Saigon
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — All week, people across the country and in San Diego are remembering the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. The USS Midway took part in one of its most daring missions in history, Operation Frequent Wind, and became the first stop to freedom for more than 3,000 Vietnamese refugees that began April 29, 1975. USS Midway Museum commemorates 50th anniversary of Fall of Saigon The USS Midway was stationed off the coast of Vietnam during that time. 'My dad said, 'let's go, get ready,'' recalled Stephanie Dinh. Dinh fled South Vietnam on that day with her five siblings and parents. Her father was part of the South Vietnamese Army and when word broke that Saigon was about to fall to the North Communist forces, she and her family were among thousands fleeing their homeland with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. 'I had three very close friends. It's very hard as kids and you feel you want to tell them, 'I might never see you again,' said Dinh. Veteran returns to Vietnam, finds peace with former enemy She and her family escaped on a helicopter and landed on the flight deck of the USS Midway where she and other evacuees were fed and treated with medical care. 'It was complete pandemonium,' said USS Midway Museum Historian, Karl Zingheim, of the pilots that were fleeing with families crammed inside their cabins. 'None of them had been trained on shipboard operations, so how are you going to handle people you probably can't talk to on the radio. There's no air traffic control. They've got helicopters that are dangerously overloaded,' he said. The Midway crew stopped at nothing to clear the flight deck and accept as many helicopters as possible, including a pilot who crammed his family of seven into a small Cessna and showed up the following day asking the crew to clear the deck of helicopters so he could land. Full special: Vietnam – A Lost Generation Dinh recalls the crew pushing helicopters into the water with their bare hands so they could create space for him to land his family. 'I saw them pushing them over the flight deck. I saw them floating and they sink really fast. I said wow, what is this, what is going on? And I hear all this screaming and yelling on the flight deck and here comes another one after another one and then here comes a plane coming in,' Dinh said. That safe landing would become a symbol of courage and hope for so many Vietnamese families as they started a new life. 'Every time I see the ship I kind of relive that day when it was out there waiting for us,' said Dinh. 'I don't look back. This is my country. I move forward, and I repay what they have given me.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CNN
30-04-2025
- General
- CNN
US officers who broke rank to save lives recall the fall of Saigon 50 years ago
As servicemen aboard the US Navy aircraft carrier dumped millions of dollars of military hardware into the South China Sea, the commander chose not to watch. Capt. Larry Chambers knew his order to push helicopters off the flight deck of the USS Midway could cost him his military career, but it was a chance he was willing to take. Above his head, a South Vietnamese air force major, Buang-Ly, was circling the carrier in a tiny airplane with his wife and five children aboard and needed space to land. It was April 29, 1975. To the west of where the Midway was operating, communist North Vietnamese forces were closing in for the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, which the US had supported for more than a decade. Buang feared his family would pay a terrible price if captured by the communists. So, he jammed his family aboard the single-engine Cessna Bird Dog he found on minor airstrip near Saigon, headed out to sea – and hoped. And luckily Buang ran into another 'idiot,' as Chambers puts it. 'I figured, well, if he's brave enough or dumb enough to come out and think some other idiot is going to clear the deck (of a US Navy aircraft carrier) of a whole bunch of helicopters to give him a personal runway to land on …' Chambers told CNN, with a chuckle and a scratch of his head as if still not believing the crazy episode. The Midway's deck was crowded with helicopters that Tuesday because it was assisting in Operation Frequent Wind, the helicopter evacuation of Saigon. Some 7,000 South Vietnamese and Americans would make their way onto US Navy ships on April 29 and 30 in frenzied escapes from Saigon. Some 2,000 of them found their way onto Midway. But few could rival the drama of the family of seven in that two-seat Cessna. Buang had no radio and so the only way to let the captain of the Midway know he needed help was to drop a handwritten note onto its deck as he flew overhead. Several attempts failed before finally one found its mark. 'Can you mouve [sic] these Helicopter to the other side, I can land on your runway, I can fly 1 hour more, we have enough time to mouve. Please rescue me, Major Buang wife and 5 child,' it read. Capt. Chambers had a choice to make: clear the deck as Buang requested; or let him ditch in the ocean. He knew the aircraft, with its fixed landing gear, would flip over once it hit the water. Even if it held together, flipping would doom the family to drowning. He couldn't let that happen, he said, even though his superiors did not want the small aircraft to land on the carrier. Neither did the Midway's air boss, who ran flight deck operations. 'When I told the air boss we're going to make a ready deck (for the small plane), the words he had to say to me I wouldn't want to print,' Chambers said. Chambers said he ordered all of the ship's 2,000-person air wing up to the deck to prepare to receive the small plane and turned his ship into the wind to make a landing possible. Crewmen pushed helicopters – worth $30 million by some accounts – off the deck. American, South Vietnamese, even CIA choppers splashed into the waves. Chambers still doesn't know exactly how many. 'In the middle of chaos, nobody was counting,' he said. And he wasn't looking. Because he was disobeying the orders of his superiors in the US fleet, he knew his decision could land him a punishment that included being kicked out of the Navy. 'I knew that I was going to have to face a (court martial) board. And I wanted to be able to say, even with the lie detector, that I didn't know how many we actually pushed over the side,' Chambers told CNN, explaining his decision not watch as his orders were executed. 'So that was my defense. It was kind of a stupid idea at the time, but at least it gave me the confidence to go ahead and do it.' With enough space cleared, Buang touched down on the Midway. Crewman grabbed onto the light plane with their bare hands to make sure it wasn't blown off the deck in the strong winds coming across it. The rest of the crew cheered. 'He's probably the bravest son of a bitch I've run into in my whole life,' said of Buang, adding that the South Vietnamese pilot was trying save his family by landing on an aircraft carrier – something he'd never done before – in a plane not designed for that. 'I was just clearing the runway for him … that's all you can do.' And life came before hardware, he said. 'We do the best we can saving human lives. That's the only thing you can do.' The fall of Saigon brought the final curtain down on a grinding conflict that unleashed devastation across the region, cost more than 58,000 American and millions of Vietnamese lives, saw the might of US military power fought to a bloody stalemate and triggered huge social unrest at home. The 50th anniversary on Wednesday will trigger complex and mixed emotions for those who lived through it. For Vietnam's government, still run by the same Communist Party that swept to victory, it will be a week of huge parades and celebrations, officially known as 'Liberation of the South and National Reunification Day.' For those South Vietnamese who had to flee, many of whom settled in the US, the anniversary has long been dubbed 'Black April.' For US veterans, it will once again raise the age-old question – what was it all for? Chaos ruled Saigon in the last week of April 1975. Though more than a decade of US military involvement in the Vietnam War had officially ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam in January 1973, the deal didn't guarantee an independent state in the South. The administration of US President Richard Nixon had pledged to keep up military aid for the government in Saigon, but it was a hollow promise that would not last into the era of his successor Gerald Ford. Americans, tired of a divisive war that had cost so many lives and hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars, were broadly unsupportive of the South Vietnamese regime. In early March 1975, North Vietnam launched an offensive into the South that its leaders expected would lead to the capture of Saigon in about two years. Victory would come in two months. On April 28, North Vietnamese forces attacked Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon, making an evacuation by airplane impossible. There was no other place in the city that could handle large aircraft. With helicopter evacuation the only option, Washington launched Operation Frequent Wind. When Bing Crosby's seasonal classic 'White Christmas' played over the radio, that was the signal for Americans and select Vietnamese civilians to go to designated pickup spots to be airlifted out of the city. More than 100 helicopters, operated by the US Marine Corps, the US Air Force and the CIA, would deliver evacuees to US Navy ships waiting offshore. While Capt. Chambers was making command decisions at sea, American helicopter pilots were doing so above Saigon. Marine Corps Maj. Gerry Berry flew from a US ship offshore to Saigon 14 times during the evacuation, the last of those flights marking the official end of the US presence in South Vietnam. But getting to that point wasn't straightforward. Berry, the pilot of a twin-rotor CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, got orders on the afternoon of April 29 to fly to the US Embassy in Saigon and get Ambassador Graham Martin out. But nobody seemed to have told Martin or the US Marines guarding the embassy. Upon touchdown, when he told the guards he was there to pick up the ambassador, they ushered about 70 Vietnamese evacuees aboard the aircraft instead, he said. Subsequent flights from an offshore US Navy ship were greeted with more and more evacuees – and no US envoy. With each flight to and from the embassy, Berry could see the crowds outside the it growing – and North Vietnamese forces drawing closer. 'I remember thinking at the time, 'Well, we can't finish this,'' he told CNN. But he knew someone had to take charge, to at least get the ambassador out. Around 4 a.m., he could see the North Vietnamese forces closing on the embassy. 'The tanks were coming down the road. We could see them. The ambassador was still in there,' he said. Landing on the roof, the Sea Knight took on another stream of evacuees – and no Ambassador Martin. Berry called a Marine guard sergeant over to the cockpit – and told him he had direct orders from President Ford for the ambassador to get on the helicopter. 'I had no authorization to do that,' Berry said. But he knew time was short, and his frustration at making this trip more than a dozen times was boiling over. 'I basically ordered him out, when I said in my best aviator voice, 'The president sends. You have got to go now,'' using military terminology for how an order is handed down. He said Martin seemed happy to finally get a direct order, even if it came from a Marine pilot. 'It looked like an Olympic sprint team getting on that (aircraft). So you know, I've always said that all he wanted to do was be ordered out by somebody,' Berry said. With the envoy aboard, the Sea Knight headed out to the USS Blue Ridge, ending Berry's 14th flight of Operation Frequent Wind, some 18 hours after he started. Hours later North Vietnamese tanks would break through the gates of the South Vietnamese presidential palace, not far from the US Embassy. The Vietnam War was over. Berry and Chambers were both officers who had to make decisions – outside or against the chain of command – that saved lives during the fall of Saigon, which was soon renamed Ho Chi Minh City by the victorious North Vietnamese. And Chambers says it is a quality that sets the US military apart from its adversaries to this day. 'We have young kids … taught initiative to do things and to take responsibility, unlike some of the other militaries where the commissar, or whoever it is,' looms over every decision, Chambers said. 'We want everybody to think, and everybody to act,' said Chambers, who as a Black man was the first person of color to command a US Navy aircraft carrier. 'You've got to be the guy in charge. You can't run things all the way up through the Pentagon every time you have to do something,' Berry said. Chambers never faced any disciplinary action for his decisions aboard the Midway off Saigon. He's not sure if that's because the Midway wasn't the only ship dumping helicopters overboard that day or because he was quickly dispatched on another rescue mission. And it certainly didn't hurt his naval career. Two years after dumping those helicopters into the sea, he was promoted to rear admiral. Pilot Berry, who also served a combat tour in Vietnam in 1969 and '70, is also left with sadness at the war's futility. 'I hate to think all those deaths were for naught, the 58,400,' he said. 'What did we gain by all that, you know? And we killed more than a million Vietnamese.' 'Those people not only lost that life, but they lost the life where they would have had families and all those things,' Berry said. As the 50th anniversary of his evacuation flights neared, Berry, now 80, was asked how long Americans would remember the Fall of Saigon, which brought to a close one of the US military's greatest failures. 'With the number of lives we lost… it can't be called a victory. It just can't be,' Berry said. But Vietnam also provides lessons 50 years later about keeping your trust with allies and friends, like NATO and Ukraine, he said. 'We had all that promised aid for South Vietnam that never came after the final assault' began in March 1975, he said. 'We never, never delivered. 'You promise something, you should follow through.'
CNN
30-04-2025
- General
- CNN
US officers who broke rank to save lives recall the fall of Saigon 50 years ago
As servicemen aboard the US Navy aircraft carrier dumped millions of dollars of military hardware into the South China Sea, the commander chose not to watch. Capt. Larry Chambers knew his order to push helicopters off the flight deck of the USS Midway could cost him his military career, but it was a chance he was willing to take. Above his head, a South Vietnamese air force major, Buang-Ly, was circling the carrier in a tiny airplane with his wife and five children aboard and needed space to land. It was April 29, 1975. To the west of where the Midway was operating, communist North Vietnamese forces were closing in for the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, which the US had supported for more than a decade. Buang feared his family would pay a terrible price if captured by the communists. So, he jammed his family aboard the single-engine Cessna Bird Dog he found on minor airstrip near Saigon, headed out to sea – and hoped. And luckily Buang ran into another 'idiot,' as Chambers puts it. 'I figured, well, if he's brave enough or dumb enough to come out and think some other idiot is going to clear the deck (of a US Navy aircraft carrier) of a whole bunch of helicopters to give him a personal runway to land on …' Chambers told CNN, with a chuckle and a scratch of his head as if still not believing the crazy episode. The Midway's deck was crowded with helicopters that Tuesday because it was assisting in Operation Frequent Wind, the helicopter evacuation of Saigon. Some 7,000 South Vietnamese and Americans would make their way onto US Navy ships on April 29 and 30 in frenzied escapes from Saigon. Some 2,000 of them found their way onto Midway. But few could rival the drama of the family of seven in that two-seat Cessna. Buang had no radio and so the only way to let the captain of the Midway know he needed help was to drop a handwritten note onto its deck as he flew overhead. Several attempts failed before finally one found its mark. 'Can you mouve [sic] these Helicopter to the other side, I can land on your runway, I can fly 1 hour more, we have enough time to mouve. Please rescue me, Major Buang wife and 5 child,' it read. Capt. Chambers had a choice to make: clear the deck as Buang requested; or let him ditch in the ocean. He knew the aircraft, with its fixed landing gear, would flip over once it hit the water. Even if it held together, flipping would doom the family to drowning. He couldn't let that happen, he said, even though his superiors did not want the small aircraft to land on the carrier. Neither did the Midway's air boss, who ran flight deck operations. 'When I told the air boss we're going to make a ready deck (for the small plane), the words he had to say to me I wouldn't want to print,' Chambers said. Chambers said he ordered all of the ship's 2,000-person air wing up to the deck to prepare to receive the small plane and turned his ship into the wind to make a landing possible. Crewmen pushed helicopters – worth $30 million by some accounts – off the deck. American, South Vietnamese, even CIA choppers splashed into the waves. Chambers still doesn't know exactly how many. 'In the middle of chaos, nobody was counting,' he said. And he wasn't looking. Because he was disobeying the orders of his superiors in the US fleet, he knew his decision could land him a punishment that included being kicked out of the Navy. 'I knew that I was going to have to face a (court martial) board. And I wanted to be able to say, even with the lie detector, that I didn't know how many we actually pushed over the side,' Chambers told CNN, explaining his decision not watch as his orders were executed. 'So that was my defense. It was kind of a stupid idea at the time, but at least it gave me the confidence to go ahead and do it.' With enough space cleared, Buang touched down on the Midway. Crewman grabbed onto the light plane with their bare hands to make sure it wasn't blown off the deck in the strong winds coming across it. The rest of the crew cheered. 'He's probably the bravest son of a bitch I've run into in my whole life,' said of Buang, adding that the South Vietnamese pilot was trying save his family by landing on an aircraft carrier – something he'd never done before – in a plane not designed for that. 'I was just clearing the runway for him … that's all you can do.' And life came before hardware, he said. 'We do the best we can saving human lives. That's the only thing you can do.' The fall of Saigon brought the final curtain down on a grinding conflict that unleashed devastation across the region, cost more than 58,000 American and millions of Vietnamese lives, saw the might of US military power fought to a bloody stalemate and triggered huge social unrest at home. The 50th anniversary on Wednesday will trigger complex and mixed emotions for those who lived through it. For Vietnam's government, still run by the same Communist Party that swept to victory, it will be a week of huge parades and celebrations, officially known as 'Liberation of the South and National Reunification Day.' For those South Vietnamese who had to flee, many of whom settled in the US, the anniversary has long been dubbed 'Black April.' For US veterans, it will once again raise the age-old question – what was it all for? Chaos ruled Saigon in the last week of April 1975. Though more than a decade of US military involvement in the Vietnam War had officially ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam in January 1973, the deal didn't guarantee an independent state in the South. The administration of US President Richard Nixon had pledged to keep up military aid for the government in Saigon, but it was a hollow promise that would not last into the era of his successor Gerald Ford. Americans, tired of a divisive war that had cost so many lives and hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars, were broadly unsupportive of the South Vietnamese regime. In early March 1975, North Vietnam launched an offensive into the South that its leaders expected would lead to the capture of Saigon in about two years. Victory would come in two months. On April 28, North Vietnamese forces attacked Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon, making an evacuation by airplane impossible. There was no other place in the city that could handle large aircraft. With helicopter evacuation the only option, Washington launched Operation Frequent Wind. When Bing Crosby's seasonal classic 'White Christmas' played over the radio, that was the signal for Americans and select Vietnamese civilians to go to designated pickup spots to be airlifted out of the city. More than 100 helicopters, operated by the US Marine Corps, the US Air Force and the CIA, would deliver evacuees to US Navy ships waiting offshore. While Capt. Chambers was making command decisions at sea, American helicopter pilots were doing so above Saigon. Marine Corps Maj. Gerry Berry flew from a US ship offshore to Saigon 14 times during the evacuation, the last of those flights marking the official end of the US presence in South Vietnam. But getting to that point wasn't straightforward. Berry, the pilot of a twin-rotor CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, got orders on the afternoon of April 29 to fly to the US Embassy in Saigon and get Ambassador Graham Martin out. But nobody seemed to have told Martin or the US Marines guarding the embassy. Upon touchdown, when he told the guards he was there to pick up the ambassador, they ushered about 70 Vietnamese evacuees aboard the aircraft instead, he said. Subsequent flights from an offshore US Navy ship were greeted with more and more evacuees – and no US envoy. With each flight to and from the embassy, Berry could see the crowds outside the it growing – and North Vietnamese forces drawing closer. 'I remember thinking at the time, 'Well, we can't finish this,'' he told CNN. But he knew someone had to take charge, to at least get the ambassador out. Around 4 a.m., he could see the North Vietnamese forces closing on the embassy. 'The tanks were coming down the road. We could see them. The ambassador was still in there,' he said. Landing on the roof, the Sea Knight took on another stream of evacuees – and no Ambassador Martin. Berry called a Marine guard sergeant over to the cockpit – and told him he had direct orders from President Ford for the ambassador to get on the helicopter. 'I had no authorization to do that,' Berry said. But he knew time was short, and his frustration at making this trip more than a dozen times was boiling over. 'I basically ordered him out, when I said in my best aviator voice, 'The president sends. You have got to go now,'' using military terminology for how an order is handed down. He said Martin seemed happy to finally get a direct order, even if it came from a Marine pilot. 'It looked like an Olympic sprint team getting on that (aircraft). So you know, I've always said that all he wanted to do was be ordered out by somebody,' Berry said. With the envoy aboard, the Sea Knight headed out to the USS Blue Ridge, ending Berry's 14th flight of Operation Frequent Wind, some 18 hours after he started. Hours later North Vietnamese tanks would break through the gates of the South Vietnamese presidential palace, not far from the US Embassy. The Vietnam War was over. Berry and Chambers were both officers who had to make decisions – outside or against the chain of command – that saved lives during the fall of Saigon, which was soon renamed Ho Chi Minh City by the victorious North Vietnamese. And Chambers says it is a quality that sets the US military apart from its adversaries to this day. 'We have young kids … taught initiative to do things and to take responsibility, unlike some of the other militaries where the commissar, or whoever it is,' looms over every decision, Chambers said. 'We want everybody to think, and everybody to act,' said Chambers, who as a Black man was the first person of color to command a US Navy aircraft carrier. 'You've got to be the guy in charge. You can't run things all the way up through the Pentagon every time you have to do something,' Berry said. Chambers never faced any disciplinary action for his decisions aboard the Midway off Saigon. He's not sure if that's because the Midway wasn't the only ship dumping helicopters overboard that day or because he was quickly dispatched on another rescue mission. And it certainly didn't hurt his naval career. Two years after dumping those helicopters into the sea, he was promoted to rear admiral. Pilot Berry, who also served a combat tour in Vietnam in 1969 and '70, is also left with sadness at the war's futility. 'I hate to think all those deaths were for naught, the 58,400,' he said. 'What did we gain by all that, you know? And we killed more than a million Vietnamese.' 'Those people not only lost that life, but they lost the life where they would have had families and all those things,' Berry said. As the 50th anniversary of his evacuation flights neared, Berry, now 80, was asked how long Americans would remember the Fall of Saigon, which brought to a close one of the US military's greatest failures. 'With the number of lives we lost… it can't be called a victory. It just can't be,' Berry said. But Vietnam also provides lessons 50 years later about keeping your trust with allies and friends, like NATO and Ukraine, he said. 'We had all that promised aid for South Vietnam that never came after the final assault' began in March 1975, he said. 'We never, never delivered. 'You promise something, you should follow through.'
