I was reminded yesterday that 40 years ago we were in the middle of Frequent Wind…
Officially only two days long, that was the final evac/mass exodus from Vietnam by any that could get out, any way they could get out…
Helicopters, airplanes, boats of all sizes, running anywhere they could to get out of South Vietnam as the NVA closed on Saigon. My squadron was flying pretty much every day, either off Saigon or flying searches for the next week or so of the South China Sea/Philippine Sea looking for those small boats.
I do remember one small boat, maybe 40ish feet long, out of gas or broke down about 700 miles from the Philippines. We got a Destroyer over to them, and I remember the DD saying they’d pulled 75 people off that one little boat. They’d been out of food for two days, and water for the last day.
I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I believe at one point there were something in the neighborhood of 10000 Vietnamese refugees were camped out on Grande Island in Subic Bay.
Rough numbers were 125,000 refugees made it to America over the next year, and many were taken in by Churches, military groups, and others as they started new lives with, in many cases, nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
The sad part is we will never know how many died trying to escape…
You can go HERE and read about Major Buang Ly’s landing aboard USS Midway. One of the enduring feel good stories from those days…
I worked with guys who were drilling an offshore well off of Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. They said they were inundated with refugee boats. Eventually, the NVA came out and gave the rig only a few hours to leave. They had to cut the anchor chains in order to get away.
I was sent to work with the refugees that were brought here. At one time our little tent city had close to 60,000 refugees. I was in Motor T and got to drive a bus, taking them to the main hospital. You can get 70 refugees on a 44 passenger bus.
I got there in June of 75 and our last refugees were out of there by the end on October. Tearing down all of the tents and cleanup lasted another 3 weeks. I spent the 200th year of the Marine Corp eating sandwiches and drinking PBR in a field full of rolled up tents and surrounded by trucks. It’s hard to believe that was 40 years ago.
I never thought that I’d be old enough to say, that forty years almost seems like yesterday (almost).
What a horrible time that was for so many people. So many individual stories of tragedy. And as you pointed out, there were so many people who set to sea in leaking boats that simply vanished in the Pacific.
I do remember those days (from the TV of course)and I still wonder why they couldn’t have just flew the UH-1’s off the deck until the plane landed and put them back down. At least some of them.
The guy in my link below explains it.
http://veteransradio.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/VRP042615.mp3
Start at the 30 minute point.
I listened to this broadcast Sunday.
Interview with Col. Herrington.
” At dawn, April 30, 1975, he was one of the last Americans to helicopter off the roof of the United States Embassy during the Fall of Saigon”
Great post on our history! Thanks for sharing your memories.
On 5/1/75 I was leaving a DD in the Med. We all just hung our heads. Shameful.
On 5/1/75, I was leaving a DD in Naples, bound for Adak. We all just hung our heads, not quite believing that the U.S. could abandon those people. It was shameful, and made a lot of us very angry.
The US Navy thought so highly of Major Buang Ly they put his aircraft in their museum. I saw it there some 7 years ago. Jim, is it still on display?
Memory of a sad, shameful day.
PE- Interesting, I’d never heard that! I do remember dodging those damn things on rigging runs though…
Robert- Thanks for your service, I never realized y’all got that many dumped on you!!!
LL- Yeah, that is the part that bothers me the most…
CP- It was all about safety…
Ed- Thanks for the link!
Fargo- You’re welcome…
Rev- Yeah, y’all didn’t have to deal with it at all. And shameful is right.
Stretch- It’s still there!
WSF- Amen…
Wasn’t there, but watched it on TV.
What a waste of sacrifices by so many brave men and women … and not just Americans.
+1 CenTexTim
10,000camped out on Grande Is.!! WOW!! How about little Grande?? I was in the “Canoe Club” ‘Cruise of ’68 USS Princeton LPH-5, Cruise of ’70 USS Okinawa LPH-3 and we made “Subic” many times!! ‘Used to love to go snorkling around “Grande” back then!! ‘Hard to imagine 10,000 people camped out there ,,,but.
Got Gunz??,
III%,
skybill-out
Tim/Rick- That it was
Skybill- Yep! Lots of Marine tents set up, pretty much covered the island.
Hey Old NFO;
I remember being 10 years old and watching my Dad a Vietnam vet glued to the TV as the reports came of the fall of Saigon. I knew that this greatly disturbed him, all the sacrifice was for naught..and the United States congress (full of anti-war) democrats refused to give President Ford any options….I hold them partially responsible for the fall. I hoped to never see in my lifetime that we as a nation would do that again….and we did it to the Iraqi’s
And for the conspiracy theorists…..the guys on the drilling rig claimed that they had just made a major oil find before they were told to leave. The field was eventually drilled by the Russians. It was the Bach Ho, or White Tiger oil field. So, oil was the reason for the war?