On April 2, 1975, the United States announced its plans to evacuate to America 2000 Vietnamese war orphans and children fathered by American servicemen, where it was hoped they would be adopted.
Australia's intention to mount a similar effort was made public later that day by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who announced that RAAF aircraft would evacuate around 200 children from Saigon in Vietnam to Bangkok in Thailand, where they would be met by a Qantas airliner to bring them to Australia.
This announcement triggered a flurry of activity at RAAF Base Butterworth in Malaysia the next day, with four aeromedical teams from 4 RAAF Hospital placed on alert to deploy to Saigon the next morning for Operation Babylift.
That night, hospital staff busily lined cut-down packing cases with foam rubber bases to carry babies on board the aircraft.
The American program got off to a tragic start on April 4 when a United States Air Force C-5A Galaxy aircraft with 243 children on board crashed soon after taking off from Saigon.
The crew was attempting to return to the airport following a pressurisation failure when the Galaxy crashed two kilometres short of the runway, bounced across the 150-metre-wide Saigon River and exploded on impact. Around 200 people - 143 of them young children mostly under 12 months old - lost their lives.
'We used cardboard cartons as improvised cots for the babies.'
The first of two RAAF C-130 Hercules aircraft departed Saigon with 87 orphans on board shortly after the Galaxy had taken off (but before it had crashed).
"The babies were simply laid side by side, five to a medevac litter, with a bottle of boiled water put in their mouths. This was to keep them sucking and adjust their ears to changing air pressure," a RAAF nursing sister said.
"A tie-down strap was used to secure them for take-off. It seems pretty rudimentary in retrospect, but at the time this was the simplest way of coping with such large numbers."
As the crew of the second RAAF C-130 aircraft were preparing to depart Saigon, they became aware of the crash of the Galaxy. Because it was not immediately known if the crash had possibly been caused by an act of sabotage or a bomb, the C-130 and everything loaded on it were carefully scrutinised for suspicious items or tampering.
When the second RAAF C-130 safely joined the first in Bangkok, 194 children had been evacuated. They were met by wives of Australian diplomats and Thai flight attendants, who assisted the RAAF nurses to care for the children.
The children were then transferred to a Qantas Boeing 747 airliner that had been chartered by the Australian Government to bring the orphans to Australia.
"We used cardboard cartons as improvised cots for the babies," a RAAF nursing sister who accompanied the orphans on the Qantas flight said.
"Every available space in the aircraft was soon filled to capacity, with the very sick orphans placed to the rear of the aircraft to receive intensive nursing.
"On arrival at Tullamarine [in Melbourne] in the early morning, amid tight security, the very ill children were transferred first to waiting ambulances."
On April 17, another two RAAF aircraft evacuated a further 77 orphans during a second airlift.
The babies and children evacuated by RAAF and Qantas during Operation Babylift were later adopted by Australian families and became members of the Australian community.
