The American airlift of Vietnamese children deemed war orphans to the U.S. and other Western nations begins disastrously on April 4, 1975, when an Air Force cargo jet from Tan Son Nhut airbase in Saigon. More than 135 passengers, mostly children, were killed. Some of the children had been loaded two to a seat in the plane's troop compartment; others were strapped more haphazardly to the floor of the cargo bay, with blankets and pillows.
"Operation Babylift," initiated to bring South Vietnamese war orphans and the children of American servicemen to the West for adoption, was carried out during the final, desperate phase of the war, as North Vietnamese forces were closing in on Saigon. Although the first flight ended in tragedy, subsequent flights over the subsequent weeks took place without incident, up until the fall of Saigon and the end of the war. Ultimately, were transported out of their home country.
While the U.S. government presented the program as a humanitarian mission鈥擯resident Gerald Ford posed with some of the incoming babies at the San Francisco airport鈥攃ritics assailed Babylift as poorly planned, politicized and racist. Newspaper headlines read, "Babylift or babysnatch?" and "The Orphans: Saved or Lost?" Some of the children , but had families who had temporarily given up custody under wartime duress. was thrown out of court, and the records sealed. and the U.S. government, filed on behalf of the doomed first Babylift flight's injured survivors, ended in a $19.7 million settlement.
