Operation BABYLIFT

April 4, 1975

Overview

The evacuation of approximately 2,600 Vietnamese children from Saigon to the United States, known as Operation BABYLIFT, begins.

The initial BABYLIFT flight crashes shortly after takeoff. Of the over 300 people on board, nearly half are killed, most of whom are Vietnamese children. The rest of the dead are employees of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Attaché Office Saigon, and others. Later flights arrive in the United States safely. Several hundred children are flown out on private planes not on military contract.

The children of BABYLIFT are adopted by people in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe.¹

¹Spencer C. Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2nd edition; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 87–88; Charles DeBeneditti, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 379–80; Dana Sachs, The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), vii–xv; “Operation Babylift and Frequent Wind,” http://www.afhso.af.mil/topics/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=19872 (link is external) (accessed 12/3/14).