Saigon’s Baby Airlift: A Flint Medic’s Story

Remastered edition: re‑edited and shortened for clarity and pace. A cargo aircraft built for tanks, not toddlers. A city collapsing in April 1975. And a young Air Force medic from Flint who boarded anyway. In this Radio Free Flint interview, Flint‑born Air Force hero Sgt. Phillip Wise recounts the harrowing crash of an Air Force transport plane loaded with hundreds of orphaned Vietnamese‑American babies, his survival in the cargo hold, and his decades‑long quest to honor the lost and the rescued. Wise traces his journey from Flint Southwestern High School to the U.S. Air Force, where he served as a senior medical technician on aeromedical missions across Southeast Asia. When President Gerald Ford authorized Operation Babylift to evacuate Vietnamese orphans, Wise’s unit transitioned from the DC-9 Nightingale to the massive C-5A Galaxy to move hundreds of children in a single flight. Fifteen minutes after takeoff from Saigon, the rear cargo doors failed. The aircraft rapidly decompressed. Hydraulics were crippled. The crew fought to return to Tan Son Nhut Air Base before the C-5A crash-landed in rice fields outside the city. The disaster became one of the most devastating aviation accidents of the Vietnam War. Wise survived the cargo compartment impact and later received the Airman’s Medal for heroism. He reflects on rescue efforts, months of recovery, reunions with now-adult adoptees, and the complicated legacy of Operation Babylift—heroism, loss, identity, and the ethics of wartime evacuation. This is a firsthand account of the 1975 Operation Babylift crash, told by a Michigan veteran who lived through one of the final tragedies of the Vietnam War. Sgt. Wise wrote the book " Fragile Delivery: Operation Babylift " which sheds light on the Boeing C-5A crash. His writing sheds light on the doomed flight, the brave men and women involved in Operation Babylift, and one man's story of near-impossible survival in the horrifying shadow of death as the plane split violently apart in swampy rice paddies. Sgt Wise was the only crew on the cargo area of the plane to survive the tragic plane crash. Wise told the Flint Journal, "The doctors thought I would be a vegetable. They thought I wouldn’t be able to see out of my left eye or to walk,” the Flint resident and decorated veteran said. “I came through with 20-20 vision. I became a mailman. I missed one day in 13 years." The U.S. Air Force bestowed upon Phillip Wise a medal for his heroism for his part in the military operation to rescue these children. Phillip Wise is part of a veterans group Peaceful Warriors who speak across Michigan and the US about their role in helping others. The Mitten Channel is a network of podcasts. 👉

You can listen to Saigon’s Baby Airlift: A Flint Medic’s Story online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Saigon’s Baby Airlift: A Flint Medic’s Story is an episode from Radio Free Flint Podcast by The Mitten Channel.

This episode is 22:48 long.

This episode was published on Feb 12, 2026.

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