Forty years ago this month, North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon. The long war in Vietnam was coming to an end.
In the midst of the political fallout, the U.S. government announced an unusual plan to get thousands of displaced Vietnamese children out of the country. President Ford directed that money from a special foreign aid children's fund be made available to fly 2,000 South Vietnamese orphans to the United States.
It came to be known as Operation Babylift. The first plane to leave as part of that mission took off on April 4, 1975, just a few weeks before the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. But shortly into the flight, a malfunction forced the pilot, Captain Dennis "Bud" Traynor, to crash land the C-5 cargo plane into a nearby rice paddy.
