Sayville VFW Post 433

https://www.facebook.com/100057518916436/posts/662260809034544/?q

ARMY ART FRIDAY - APACHE HELICOPTERS AND DESERT STORM AIR CAMPAIGN 1991

“DESERT STORM, 101st Style,”
by Army Artist SFC Peter G. Varisano

U.S. Army U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command

ARMY ART FRIDAY - DESERT STORM

Enjoy this Army Artwork that highlights GEN Schwarzkopf, Soldiers and their service during Desert Storm.

"The Man Of The Year (the Bear)"
by Army Artist Peter G. Varisano, Feb 1991

U.S. Army U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command

ARMY AND REVOLUTIONARY WAR 250TH COMMEMORATION WEBSITE

Visit our new website dedicated to the U.S. Army and Revolutionary War 250th commemoration. This is a one-stop location for information and resources about the history of the Army in the Revolutionary War.

Highlights include key battle overviews, Soldier and leader profiles, Life of the Continental Soldier, a calendar of events, publications and videos, and resources available to host your own commemoration events.

https://history.army.mil/Revwar250/

U.S. Army U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command

Eight American presidents were members of the VFW. Who were they? Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and George H. W. Bush. Happy Presidents’ Day!

Attention SCCC Student Vets! Do you have questions about filing VA disability? Are you interested in learning more about the VA's VR&E program? Join us for a special virtual seminar to get all your questions answered!

Veterans workshops…

US Army Nurse Mary Therese Klinker:
Twelve minutes after takeoff, an explosion rocked the plane as the lower rear fuselage was torn apart. The locks in the loading ramp of the C-5 military transport plane had just failed. The explosive decompression rocked the interior, hurling passengers and equipment throughout the aircraft. To add to the terror, the interior was instantly filled with smoke and fog.

The pilots frantically worked the controls, but almost all maneuverability was lost. Control and trim cables to the rudder and elevators were shredded, leaving only one aileron and wing spoilers operating. The pilots wrestled at the controls, regaining some control using engine thrust. The pilots managed to turn the crippled smoking plane and began to descend in an attempt to pull off an emergency landing. �

Mary Klinker was born in Lafayette, Indiana, and studied nursing at St. Elizabeth’s School of Nursing. In January of 1970, Klinker joined the US Air Force, became a flight nurse, and was promoted to captain. After being assigned to the 10th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, she was temporarily assigned to Clark Air Base in the Philippines.
As the end of the Vietnam War approached, a mission called Operation Baby Lift began with the goal of evacuating over two thousand orphans from Saigon.

By April 3, 1975, the city of Da Nang had fallen and the North Vietnamese Army continued its march forward. With Saigon under attack and about to fall, President Gerald Ford announced that the US government would begin airlifting orphans in a series of flights.

When US businessman Robert Macauley learned that evacuating the surviving orphans would take more than a week due to the lack of transport planes, he chartered a Boeing 747 and arranged for three hundred orphans to leave the country. Cash-strapped at the time, Macauley paid for the trip by mortgaging his house.

Flights continued until attacks by the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong on Tan Son Nhut Air Base rendered any flights further impossible. By the final flight, approximately 3,300 infants and children had been airlifted.

Along with Operation New Life, over 110,000 refugees were evacuated from Vietnam. Over 2,500 orphans were relocated and adopted into families in the United States and its allies, but the mission was not without a heart-wrenching tragedy.

On April 3, 1975, at 4:03 PM, the first transport flight of Operation Baby Lift took off from Tan Son Nhut Airbase outside of Saigon. Captain Mary Klinker was one of the flight nurses assigned to care for the orphans as they were transported.

The Air Force C-5A Galaxy military transport aircraft was bound for Clark Air Base in the Philippines. Captain Dennis Traynor was the aircraft commander, and Captain Tilford Harp was the co-pilot. Twelve minutes after takeoff, when the aircraft had passed through 23,000 feet, the rear loading ramp’s locks suddenly failed. This caused an explosive decompression and massive structural damage to the plane.

Control cables were severed, leaving only one wing spoiler and aileron working. In addition to their problems, two hydraulic systems catastrophically failed, causing more flight control problems. Traynor and Harp regained marginal control of the aircraft using engine power thrust. They turned back toward Tan Son Nhut for an emergency landing.

As the C-5 passed 4,000 feet and was turning to the final approach, it quickly became apparent that they could not reach the runway. Traynor applied full power to hold the nose up while Harp fought the controls to maintain a wings-level attitude.

Just off the ground, Traynor reduced power to idle and the C-5 touched down in a rice paddy. It skidded about 1,000 feet before becoming airborne again, violently striking a tall d**e and breaking into four parts.

The cargo compartment was destroyed, killing 141 of the 149 orphans and attendants. Only three of the 152 in the troop compartment were killed. Five of the flight crew, three of the medical team, and three other servicemen lost their lives; of the original 328 passengers aboard, 175 survived.

Captain Mary Klinker was only twenty-seven years old when she was killed. She was the last nurse and the only member of the US Air Force Nurse Corps to be killed during the Vietnam War. Captain Klinker was posthumously awarded the Airman’s Medal for Heroism and the Meritorious Service Medal.

Almost fifty years later, US Army Medic Lonnie Wiseman, who volunteered to help during Operation Baby Lift, stated in a CGTN America interview, “It was my way of giving back and to honor the sacrifice of the fifty-eight thousand US soldiers that were lost.”

Survivors tell their story:
Chris Norland:
My name is Chris Norland, and I survived a plane crash as a baby. I was born at the end of the Vietnam War. I don’t have a birthday, so I don’t really know exactly when I was born. I was put on the first plane out. It was a C-5 Galaxy, which, at the time it, was the largest airplane in the world.

Because I was a baby, they put me in a shoebox, and they put that on the airplane. After a few minutes in the air, there was a malfunction on the plane and the rear cargo doors blew. Because I was young, I was in the upper half of the plane, and therefore I survived.

After we lost power, the pilots tried to regain control, and so they ended up speeding up the plane and they turned around and crashed into a rice field. The plane skidded for about a quarter of a mile and then skipped up back in the air and then crashed into a d**e. We were full of fuel and the plane exploded into four parts and everything caught on fire.

The plane was about a mile from the road, so the Americans had to walk really far across the rice field and the helicopters arrived, but they couldn’t land, and so they would hover above us. There was this smoke and fire everywhere, but they would lower one rescue worker at a time, rescue one person, and bring it back up in a basket.

But because the rescue operation was slow, some people actually survived the crash, but either burned to death or drowned in the mud. Those of us who survived the crash were sent to the United States.
When I arrived in the USA, I didn’t have any paperwork, so it was actually really difficult to prove that I existed.

All I had was my little three-by-five card that said I was from Sancta Maria Orphanage. After living seven years in the USA, I was eligible to apply for US citizenship.

I went down to the courthouse, and I swore to be an American. Like all the other immigrants, and I had to miss a day of school. The next day at school, my teacher said, “What did you do?” And I said, “I became an American,” and I remember really clearly this little girl walks to the front of the room and reads me a welcome to America speech and every kid in my grade made me Welcome to America cards. This is what America means to me. After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, I joined the United States Navy to be a pilot. —October 2020

David Leduc:
I’m living the American dream, having a big family, a good career, and owning a few small businesses. Life is good!

Thuay Williams:
My name is Thuay Williams, and I was one of the orphans brought to the United States. I was five years old when my mother put me on the C-5 cargo plane. As a mixed-race child of a US soldier, my mother knew the North Vietnamese would consider me the enemy.

She didn’t know that the plane was overfilled, and I was later removed from it and put on another plane the next day. She was told that I died on the original April 3rd flight. After being adopted in the US, I remember for the first time not being hungry, dirty, or wet.

Because of the great people, the heroes who stepped out to save the lives of children like me, I have had the opportunity to accomplish much in life. As a high schooler, I played in the Junior World Soccer Cup, and I proudly served the country I love in the US Army as a tank mechanic.

I’ve organized over thirty humanitarian missions to help impoverished countries around the world, and I now coach high school track and soccer. I do not think I would have survived as a five-year-old in Vietnam. I owe everything to all those who were part of Operation Baby Lift. —2022 Pan Am Museum interview

-------------------------------------------------------------------

The other military personnel who died due to the crash were Lieutenant Colonel William Willis, Captain Edgar Melton, Master Sgt. Joe Castro, Master Sgt. Denning Johnson, Master Sgt. Wendle Payne, Technical Sgt. Felizardo Aguillon, Technical Sgt. William M. Parker, Staff Sgt. Donald Dionne, Staff Sgt. Kenneth Nance and Staff Sgt. Michael Paget.

To read this full story plus over twenty more heart-wrenching accounts of women in war please check out our latest book, "Women in War" by David A. Yuzuk available as a Paperback & eBook on Amazon, Apple Books, Google Books and most other sites.
Link to buy on Amazon below in the comments.

https://youtu.be/W5EzPXlf-es?si=CMGeqHhWL86N_5hK

Sayville VFW Past Post Commander Joan Furey was featured in a Documentary on the Vietnam War which will be shown on Apple TV+ starting January 31st. It was produced by 72 Films and It is called Vietnam: The War That Changed America. It is comprised of six episodes, all of which will be available to watch from the 31st of January on Apple+ TV. Joan is featured in Episode 4. Check out YouTube below…

Joan A. Furey - U.S. Army 1968-70 | Vietnam War http://usawarriorstories.org - Joan Furey was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1946 and grew up in Terryville, a small town on Long Island. She graduated from...