April 4, 1975. A giant C-5 Galaxy lifts off from Saigon with hundreds of Vietnamese orphans on board. Babies in cardboard boxes. Toddlers strapped to the floor. Nurses and volunteers holding as many as they can. Twelve minutes later the rear cargo door blows open at 23,000 feet. Explosive decompression. Control cables shredded. The pilots fight for every second of flight and try to limp back to the runway. They don’t make it. The plane cartwheels into a rice paddy and breaks into pieces. 138 people die — 78 of them children. But 176 survive. Flight nurses with broken bones drag babies from the burning wreckage. Air Force crew members ignore their own injuries and keep going until they collapse. Despite the horror of the first flight, Operation Babylift continued. In the final days of the war, more than 2,500 children were flown out of Vietnam to new lives in America and beyond. One of the darkest days in Air Force history… and still one of the most remarkable rescues of the entire war. Would you have climbed on that plane knowing the risk? Disclaimer:This is a historical account of Operation Babylift (April 1975). The images do not depict real individuals or the actual crash victims. Respect to all who were lost and all who survived.