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. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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 \u2013 and hoped. <\/p>\n
And luckily Buang ran into another \u201cidiot,\u201d as Chambers puts it. <\/p>\n
The Midway\u2019s deck was crowded with helicopters that Tuesday because it was assisting in Operation Frequent Wind, the helicopter evacuation of Saigon. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Several attempts failed before finally one found its mark. <\/p>\n
\u201cCan 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,\u201d it read. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
He couldn\u2019t let that happen, he said, even though his superiors did not want the small aircraft to land on the carrier. <\/p>\n
Neither did the Midway\u2019s air boss, who ran flight deck operations. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I told the air boss we\u2019re going to make a ready deck (for the small plane), the words he had to say to me I wouldn\u2019t want to print,\u201d Chambers said. <\/p>\n
Chambers said he ordered all of the ship\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
Crewmen pushed helicopters \u2013 worth $30 million by some accounts \u2013 off the deck. American, South Vietnamese, even CIA choppers splashed into the waves. <\/p>\n
Chambers still doesn\u2019t know exactly how many. \u201cIn the middle of chaos, nobody was counting,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
And he wasn\u2019t looking. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo 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.\u201d <\/p>\n
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\u2019t blown off the deck in the strong winds coming across it. The rest of the crew cheered. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s probably the bravest son of a bitch I\u2019ve run into in my whole life,\u201d said of Buang, adding that the South Vietnamese pilot was trying save his family by landing on an aircraft carrier \u2013 something he\u2019d never done before \u2013 in a plane not designed for that. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was just clearing the runway for him \u2026 that\u2019s all you can do.\u201d <\/p>\n
And life came before hardware, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe do the best we can saving human lives. That\u2019s the only thing you can do.\u201d <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
The 50th anniversary on Wednesday will trigger complex and mixed emotions for those who lived through it. <\/p>\n
For Vietnam\u2019s 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 \u201cLiberation of the South and National Reunification Day.\u201d For those South Vietnamese who had to flee, many of whom settled in the US, the anniversary has long been dubbed \u201cBlack April.\u201d <\/p>\n
For US veterans, it will once again raise the age-old question \u2013 what was it all for? <\/p>\n
Chaos ruled Saigon in the last week of April 1975. <\/p>\n
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\u2019t guarantee an independent state in the South. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n