issue 54 - AsiaLIFE Magazine

Tracking
Down Disaster
In the closing days of the war in Vietnam an audacious plan was hatched to fly
thousands of Vietnamese orphans out of the country. The first of those flights
ended in disaster, killing more than 150 people. Almost four decades later,
Brett Davis accompanies a survivor of that fateful flight on a search for the
scene of his brush with death.
It’s an unusually clear early-
August afternoon and we are
standing in the middle of a
small cluster of rice paddies
in Ho Chi Minh City's District
12. It is only a kilometre or
two from the main road but
the landscape quickly takes
on a semi-rural feel, dotted by
low-set houses with small front
gardens.
The directions were not
exact; we had a rough idea and
then started asking around
once in the vicinity. Pulling out
the photographs we were given,
there is no doubt we have
found the spot. This is where
the first of the Operation Babylift
flights came to a shuddering
halt, crash landing shortly after
take-off in April 1975.
I’ve come along on the day’s
search with Landon Carnie,
who with his twin sister was
among the fortunate who
survived that day. They were
both thought to have perished.
Yet the two were found more
than a day later in a nearby
field, unharmed and reportedly
clinging to each other.
While he says he has often
thought about visiting the site,
Carnie only became aware of
the general location of the crash
recently. “I was interviewed a
few months ago by a reporter
from Al Jazeera, and she was on
one of the later Babylift flights
and she told me about the location,”
he says.
There are 173 other survivors.
Another 153 people,
including government officials,
air force crew, nurses, civilians
and 76 children were killed. Yet
there is little to mark the location
of such a significant event
— just an old bowl and vase
atop a cracked bit of concrete,
nestled between two rice paddies
hidden by the tall grass.
The crash
In the dying days of the war
in Vietnam, then US President
The only marker of the resting place
of the plane's front section
30 asialife HCMC