One day at the end of April this year, I saw an old photo on Twitter of a small private plane from Vietnam landing on an American aircraft carrier. It was a black and white photo highlighting the goodness of human beings, and I was so moved by it that I tweeted it out. After it was retweeted, it sparked a lot of debate, with people from all angles and opinions, saying anything and everything. Many Chinese people still don’t believe it, saying the photo is fabricated. Why is it that many Chinese people’s first thought after seeing something kind is not to believe it? Is it because people themselves do not have good thoughts and do not believe that there is still goodness and sincerity in the world? Looking back at the past, one cannot help but think that in today’s time and in today’s international situation, would such a thing still happen and would the U.S. military still push a helicopter worth 10 million dollars into the sea?
The story of 45 years ago is this: In 1975, to escape the communist invasion of North Vietnam, a South Vietnamese Air Force officer stole a small private Cessna aircraft and landed on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Midway with his wife and five children. The commander of the U.S. carrier, at the time, ordered more than a dozen helicopters of more than $10 million to be pushed into the sea to clear the runway so that the small plane could land without incident. Because carrier-based aircraft, all of which have tail hooks, can hook onto the runway’s blocking ropes when landing, they can stop within a very short distance. Civilian small planes do not have such tail hooks, although they are small and require longer runways. The name of this South Vietnam Air Force Major (SVAF Maj.), was Buang-Ly (Bang-Ly).
The story is so touching that the U.S. Naval Institute (Naval Institute) posted this photo on its Twitter account on the anniversary of this incident. One Justice Network user saw the photo and said, “My eyes are wet. How many people have been maimed by the dogged Marxism using humans for so-called scientific experiments? Love life and flee communism!” Another netizen said it was “the glory of humanity!”
But a mainland netizen who saw the photo said, “It’s obviously made up, if the flight deck is full of flying machines that can’t even land a small plane, then the captain should be removed from his post and how it was dispatched.” Fortunately, the knowledgeable netizen immediately responded that he had seen the video of this scene and there was no problem with authenticity. The author replied to him, “Don’t easily veto things you don’t fully understand yet, look at the relevant pictures and historical accounts and you’ll know.” Others opened their mouths directly, “That’s bullshit! No helicopter will park on the runway unless there is a flight mission that requires immediate takeoff, and secondly, even if the aircraft is parked illegally, it is much easier and faster to take off directly than to push it down to the sea, and to post such low-quality fake news is to smash your own sign!” He didn’t investigate either, he said others were releasing fake news!
Some serious netizens have raised many questions, such as “why not let the helicopter take off”, but to push into the sea? The author actually had the same confusion at first, so I continued to do some literature search and found out the reason behind it.
From April 29 to 30, 1975, U.S. troops were finally evacuated from Vietnam. A total of 1,373 Americans and 5,595 Vietnamese and third-country nationals were evacuated from the U.S. Embassy at that time. The aircraft carrier USS Midway became so crowded that they had to push helicopters into the sea to make room for the new arrivals. As you can see from the related pictures, the deck of the aircraft carrier was densely packed and piled with helicopters. This aircraft carrier, the USS Midway, is now available for tours at the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum in San Diego, California.
To save a family’s life, American soldiers would not hesitate to push a dozen helicopters worth $10 million into the sea, which the Chinese would find hard to imagine, and naturally some would not believe. It is not hard to understand, because people no longer believe in the value of life, the value of freedom, and the need to fight communism. But would the United States do the same thing today? Maybe, maybe not, depending on the people involved. The morality of human society has declined dramatically, and the determination of human society to fight communism may be gone!
The captain of the aircraft carrier USS Midway at the time, was Lawrence Cleveland “Larry” Chambers, the first graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy to receive “He was the first black admiral to receive Flag rank status from the U.S. Naval Academy, and the first black carrier captain, who eventually became an admiral. The so-called “Flag Rank” is a senior officer in the U.S. Army with enough authority to fly a special flag to mark his command status. Chambers made this decision when he was captain of the USS Midway and in command of Operation Frequent Wind, pushing tens of millions of dollars worth of UH-1 Huey helicopters into the sea. But his bold decision also caused a lot of controversy.
During Operation Standing Wind in April 1975, Chambers’ carrier was asked to go full speed ahead and reach South Vietnamese waters to rescue American and South Vietnamese personnel as North Vietnamese communist forces were attacking. The carrier departed from Subic Naval Base in the Philippines and headed for Vietnam. Once the rescue operation began, the carrier’s deck was soon filled with helicopters from the South Vietnamese military. Buang-Ly, a major in the South Vietnamese Air Force, crammed his wife and five children (ages one to six), a family of seven, into a small two-passenger Cessna. He took off and dodged ground fire from North Vietnamese communist forces while spotting the aircraft carrier USS Midway at sea. Midway tried to contact him on an emergency channel but could not, while Bonley turned on his landing lights and hovered over the carrier. He had limited fuel and could not make a forced landing at sea because he was overloaded with a child. After three circles over the carrier, Bonley passed low and threw down a note from the air stuffed in a pistol holster saying he would land on the carrier but needed to move some helicopters. Bonley he had never seen an aircraft carrier, let alone landed on one.
Chambers conferred with his superior, Admiral William Harris, commander of the Midway Strike Group, who was opposed. But Chambers finally ordered that Bonley could land on the carrier. The blocking ropes on the deck were removed and all the helicopters that could not be safely transferred away, worth $10 million, were pushed into the South China Sea. It was raining lightly and the wind was blowing 15 knots at sea, so Chambers ordered the carrier to travel at 25 knots against the wind. At that time, the carrier was already densely packed with all kinds of helicopters, and at one time there were 26 helicopters hovering over the carrier at the same time, waiting to land. Just as the deck was busy with preparations, five more UH-1 rescue helicopters landed, and Chambers ordered them to push into the sea as well. Chambers knew that if he didn’t make room for Bonley to land, his small plane, along with a husband and wife and five children, would have to crash on the deck.
In the end, Bonley made a successful forced landing, leaving behind this historic scene. The Bonley family, all of whom later became American citizens, were among the 130,000 Vietnamese who escaped from Vietnam during the evacuation operation at the time. U.S. soldiers on Midway Island also chipped in to help the Bonley family settle in the United States; Bonley’s little Cessna is now on display at the Naval Air Service Museum in Pensacola, Florida.
Chambers, then, had just been a captain for four or five weeks, and he had thought that the orders he gave might subject him to court-martial. In the end, there should have been at least a dozen helicopters pushed into the sea, but Chambers knew he could face punishment, so he deliberately did not count exactly how many there were. Of course, he was not punished in the end, and he retained his position as captain and was later promoted to the rank of admiral.
Returning to the question at the top of the title, would the United States still be pushing helicopters into the ocean in this day and age? One user said, “Back then, the United States was righteous and the American people were chivalrous and loyal. Today’s America is in a muddle and the American people are getting by.” The author, on the other hand, believes that the vast majority of American soldiers, American people, American people who adhere to the value of life, to conservatism, to tradition, to resolute anti-communism, to faith, they would still do so today. They would do so on their own if they were not ordered to do so by their superiors; they might even disobey orders if they were ordered to stop them. But we also have to say that many people, many politicians in the United States today, judging from their ambiguous attitude toward the forces of communism, judging from their lack of moral backbone qualities in the choice between money and morality, I’m afraid it would be very difficult to do so.
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