Commemorating the infant airlift from Vietnam

Vietnam Babylift, My Story with pictures

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The war was closing in. Hour by hour, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers tightened their grip on Saigon. Their artillery shells fell, like heavy footsteps, across the restive city.

In the chaos, a C-5A Galaxy cargo plane took off from Saigon-Tan Son Nhut Airport as part of "Operation Babylift" - a mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam.

Jim Zimmerly was one of scores of babies on the aircraft climbing over the South China Sea on April 4, 1975 when locks on a rear loading ramp failed and cargo doors blew open explosively.

The crew almost nursed the plane back to the airport but crash-landed in a rice paddy, where Zimmerly was one of 175 survivors. A total of 138 died, including 78 children.

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