tv,ext on american history a retired colonel, a former marine corps pilot, talks about his participation in operation frequent wind, the 1975 evacuation of americans and south vietnamese allies from saigon after it fell to the north vietnamese. the national world war i museum provided this video. >> now, i would like to proudly introduce retired marine corps colonel thomas w. holden. he was commissioned as second lieutenant in the united states marine corps during his college graduation and proceeded directly to pensacola, where he was trained as a marine pilot. he was designated a naval aviator in december of 1968 and received further training in the ch46 helicopter at the marine base in california.

he was deployed to vietnam in april of 1969 and on his second southeast asia tour, he participated in the saigon evacuation, flying the last 11 marines off the roof of the american embassy on the morning of april 30, 1975, which, this evening, we will hear more about. he is a graduate of the army war college in carlisle, pennsylvania. and the national war college in washington, d.c. he later served as the marine corps chair on the faculty of the naval war college teaching national military strategy. he moved to kansas city in 1993 and was assigned as the commanding officer and later retired from the corps in 1996. please help me in welcoming colonel thomas holden to the stage. [applause] colonel holden: thank you.

[applause] colonel holden: thank you very much. it is a pleasure to be here. to talk to you tonight about some of my experiences and as i start, i want first to say that i want to speak on behalf of all of the marine pilots that were involved in operation frequent wind when we evacuated the embassy in cambodia. 77 helicopters took to the air and accomplished that mission and we had great marine corps pilots making that happen. unfortunately, like a lot of operations, it did not go without a mishap. early in the frequent wind saigon evacuation, just before they started with the helicopter extraction, we lost two marines

at guard post 1. corporal mcmahon and lance corporal judd were both killed instantly when a rocket hit their guard post. we also lost a ch46 during the evening. i will talk a little bit more about that. lieutenant shea and captain install were aboard that. they were lost at sea. we did get the crew rescued. i would like to start a little bit about the history of that time. we had an election not long before the evacuation. president nixon had vowed to end the war in vietnam and he was true to his word. he and dr. kissinger worked hard at doing that. in 1973, they signed a peace with honor type treaty, similar to what we had in korea. the north would stay north, the south would stay south.

the american fighting forces would be removed. prisoners of war would come home. everything was supposed to stay like that. the north -- anytime a violation by the north vietnamese would mean a complete reversal. nixon said he would send the bombers back in and attack again. i think, quite honestly, they believed him. reports were that the north vietnamese were terrified of nixon and listened to every word he said. the problem was, when he resigned and left the white house, the north vietnamese immediately took action and launched an attack along the main quarters of south vietnam, coming south. i had returned to westpac in okinawa and i was assigned to a ch46 squadron. however this works.

i'm not getting it to make -- it's not coming forward. i'm not real good with technology. [laughter] anyway, i was with this squadron and i had no indications that we would be going back to vietnam. we were very happy with doing our mission. there's a funny thing on the screen here. there you go. ok. thank you. that's the h46 that you see there that we used on the evacuation. we were happy campers. we were flying all over the pacific. this was taken in the philippines, heading out to a carrier, and everything was going well for us. then on april 4, i had been gone for a while, i came back to the united states for a short vacation. when i got back, we were told

immediately on april 4 to get everything you have loaded up, your flight suits and all the equipment and fly out to the uss midway, which was sailing south about 70 miles at sea. we would land on it and that would take us down to the philippines. from there, we would do some additional work. every aircraft in group 36, which was stationed in okinawa, my squadron had 14 h46's that all flew out to the midway and landed. we spent 2.5 days doing nothing but eating in the galley and having a great time. it was a great ship. i was very happy to be on the midway and once we got to the philippines, they said, get on your aircraft and fly to the airfield. we did that. the next day, the uss hancock --

here's another picture of the h46 doing carrier born operations, similar to what we did. h53 was the other aircraft we were with, a heavy hauler. can carry a lot of passengers. this is the uss okinawa sailing around with a hmm 462. that was the shift we embarked on, the uss hancock. we got aboard there in the philippines. we had a complete h53 squadron. composited with some cobras and hughies. the oddity was, our squadron did not have enough pilots back in those days. we were short and pilots. we bought some guys that had flown five or six earlier. they were flying copilot, which is dangerous.

that's the only way we could get every aircraft going onto the ship. the other thing that was odd, we did not have senior leadership, we had three majors. one had come from headquarters in the maintenance squadron. a wonderful man who had been the maintenance officer at the headquarters of the maintenance squadron. we had a cobra pilot, a junior major, and then we had another major who was also with the cobras. he had been their operations officer. then we had a safety officer from the air group. the question was, who is going to be in charge and go to meetings and do everything you have to do on board a ship? they got together and we decided we would make the junior officer the commanding officer. the way we did that, the reason for that, he had a letter that was very valuable. how many marines or former military do we have tonight? quite a few.

you all know what office hours are, nonjudicial punishment. [laughter] he had the letter that allowed him to do that. for good order and discipline, we needed to be able to, if we had a trooper that did not do the right in, we had to have the ability to hold him accountable. we made him the commanding officer. the maintenance officer took care of the maintenance issues and worked with the ship the best he could because we did not take a lot of maintenance parts with us. we had just gone 10, 15 days and come back. we did not think we would need a lot of stuff. by that time, the aircraft were running pretty good. the ops officer from the cobra unit became our operations officer. the senior major became the laundry officer. [laughter] he sort of backed off on some of this stuff. he thought we were doomed to failure and was a downer. we did not want to see him a lot.

we didn't. but we lived aboard ship. the other thing at that particular time was the h46 community and the ch53 community of helicopters were not the best of friends. we respected each other. but in vietnam, back in the day, the h53 cost a lot of money. if they got shot up, they had to really answer for it. we did not have a lot of them. we needed that aircraft for the heavy lift. if we lost an h46, no big deal. we had tons of them. we can always replace it and the crew. but the h53, you can imagine how we let them know what we thought. [laughter] they kept us out of a lot of the information that we needed. anyway, we sailed south and we loitered off the peninsula. we sat there and sat there and

sat there, waiting for the south to fall and things slowed down. on april 10, they diverted us to cambodia. we went over there. the operation order was set. the 53's were going to run that mission completely because the distance from the ship to the landing field was 130 nautical miles. the h46 would have to refuel when we got there in order to get back to the ship. we ran search and rescue off the coast of cambodia. should an h53 go down en route or get shot down, we could go in with a team to rescue the crew and rescue the aircraft if we could. once cambodia was done, it was done really efficiently -- where's my numbers here? i think there was 289 americans

and country nationals that came out and that was it. we did not bring any cambodians out. interesting in the fact they wanted to stay. they did not believe that they should leave their country. it was theirs and they were going to stay and see what they can do. most of them, unfortunately, were killed and they did not survive the takeover. we went ahead on the ship, went back around, and it was 289 people that came out of that evacuation. we moved back to south vietnam and the ship circled in an area. we had two battalions with us. second battalion, fourth marines, and a battalion from the ninth marines. there was a big discussion whether we should have an amphibious landing. admiral whitmire, a wonderful senior officer who was the commander of the seventh fleet,

said he would have nothing to do with putting more americans back into vietnam. our mission was to get everybody out. so that came to an end real quick like. we kept sailing around and every day, we would get up around 4:00 in the morning expecting, today is the day and nothing would happen. we would stay ready to go until 2:00 in the afternoon. then we would go back to our bunks and wait and wait until the next day would come along. the same thing over and over. on april 29, actually the 28th, they started taking rockets at the air base. the heavy lift air force aircraft could no longer do evacuations of the vietnamese and americans out of that site. they decided at 0700, the morning of the 29th, to stop all fixed wing evacuation and activate the frequent wind operation order and do everything by helicopter.

this is the american embassy seen here. every pilot had a picture of this. this is the other thing. there is the landing zone on top of the embassy for our h46's. the big aircraft had to land down here. this tree had to be removed. we got it down within about 12 hours. the marines that were on-site, they were ready to go. outside i can tell you right , now, the street out here, and other streets around here was wall-to-wall people. everybody was trying to get in. everybody wanted a ride to freedom. it was a mess. the other problem we had was communication. my son, who some of you know also served in the marine corps, used to call me and he read a few books about vietnam. he would say, that's all fiction, isn't it? i say, it depends on what you're reading. he said, how did you fly at night?

i said, it was easy. we took off, it was a moonlit night, it was easy. if not, we would use our navigation aids to get to where we wanted to go. he said, how did you do that without night vision goggles? [laughter] he was astounded by that. he would say, you went into the jungle to get a medevac, how did you know where that guy was? did you have gps? [laughter] i said, no, we had distance on the attack and radio that would give us so many miles out. we had a radio, when the two needles crossed we figured we , were within a five mile area. we would look for a strobe light on the ground. if it picked up the strobe, that's where we had to be. the marines on the ground knew to take the strobe and put it in a helmet. as we went around, once we saw it, we knew we were on a flight path to pick up the wounded individual. you did not have to worry about seeing a lot. generally speaking, the marines

on the ground would try not to put a tree in your glide path. that would ruin your whole day. [laughter] they wanted to get out as badly as we wanted to get in and out. it worked out pretty good. to this day, my son has a problem with that. he's always had night vision goggles on his helmet. he's always had gps. anyway, we started flying -- oh, the other issue. communication. no cell phones. we did not have cell phones. we had a uhf radio. a high-frequency that we never use because it would shut down the engines and dangerous. the uhf was primary. we would leave the ship and we would have the helicopter direction center give us a steer towards vietnam. we would go that way, see the land, pick up the air force direction center. they would tell us where to go and all this good stuff. we started the operation.

we were supposed to start at 12:10. the confusion was, when is l hour? the navy and army have different definitions for l hour. so it was screwed up to begin with. by the time we got there, it was 3:00 in the afternoon. one thing happened that was really unforgivable, a message came in to say, we are going to start this operation right about noon. the guy was going off shift. he was leaving another guy was , coming aboard. this guy took the messages, file d them away. the next guy went through stuff. he did not go through the flash message basket until an hour or two later. there was the message that said, the operation starts at 12:10. right now, it is 3:00. you can imagine how we had to scramble. everybody on the ground was a little bit ticked off nobody showed up when they were supposed to and that is because we did not get the word correctly.

we thought it would go like phnom penh. the h53's started out beautifully. they would go two aircraft at a time. they went in where they were going to pick up some vietnamese and americans to start bringing them out to the ships. we had 44 naval vessels in about a 10 nautical mile area. it was really packed out there. it was a beautiful sight to see. i don't know if we will ever have that many navy ships in one location again. we had the uss midway, of course. the uss hancock, the uss coral sea, and the oddity about the midway, it had 10 air force helicopters aboard. the air force flew these aircraft down from thailand all the way down and around the peninsula, refueled, and came aboard the navy ship. this had not been done before. it's a terrible time to practice this right when you need everybody working.

[laughter] but they did a marvelous job. the navy, after about a day, learned how to work with them. they do have peculiarities. some are good, some are bad, but we made it happen. everything was going well. they went in and did their part of the mission. my mission that day, we had doctors and everything. i was going to orbit. there was an aircraft that went down and needed extraction. that kind of mission. 3:00 tot there from about 4:30, it was time to come back to the ship. we only carry one hour and 40 minutes of fuel. we had to come back and get gasoline. we landed on the hancock, refueled, went back, it became clear at that point that this line of people needing evacuation was endless. it looked like it would never

stop. they were lined up for miles. it was like going to a trump rally. [laughter] it was one of those things where we said to ourselves, this is crazy. what we started to do, we made a command decision. we will not use the search-and-rescue mode anymore. we are going to start going into the embassy picking up people. , we went back and forth. you came in, picked up people, refueled, and went back, which is called daisy chaining. you try to keep the two aircraft together the best you could. we always landed on the roof. it was neat the first couple times. the security guard came into the aircraft, he asked me, do you want some pistols? i said, no. i've got one. he said, do you want pistols? he showed me this box full of pistols. everybody getting on aircraft was frisked and they were taking weapons off these guys and other stuff. i said, here is my helmet bag,

fill it up. he did. everybody came out of that operation with a full bag of nine millimeter brownings, .45 automatics, some of them were very nice. [laughter] that was one of the benefits. we kept flying. the weather was really bad. it started out ok, but the ceiling kept coming down. the operation plan called for flying above 3000 feet and if you have ever flown a helicopter, anything above 3000 feet is a little bit nerve-racking. that's a long way to fall if things come apart. we tried to go down early, down to 3000 feet. we stayed there below what the other traffic was. we finally talked to the 53's and said, you are wasting a lot

of time climbing all the way up to that altitude. get your people look to 3000 feet. go out over the water. eventually, they did. the other problem was the air force cricket who was trying to keep track of everything, the loads of people coming out, who is where, what is going on, their communication wasn't too good. they weren't ready to handle 77 helicopters. it just wasn't possible. a couple of the cobra pilots who were down low, circling around the city, literally took over. they said, we know which landing zones are open. we will guide you in. contact us. they took over. then the operation really took off. we were able to be more efficient. it worked really well at that point. another thing that was operational concern -- my squadron did not get all the briefings that the h53's got. one of the questions was, how many people are we going to be picking up?

no one had a clue. it could go on forever. so that was a big problem. the other big issue was, is anybody going to shoot at us? no one knew. one reason we went to 6500 feet inbound was because we thought, if they are going to use a missile, we could see it coming at us early enough to take defensive measures against it. which were not much. at that stage, we did not have a lot of antimissile capability. those were issues that would really get to us as we were flying along, especially when it got dark. that was the other one. are we going to fly at night? we had asked to fly at night to train because most of us have not had a night flight for 65 -- 60 days. especially off of a carrier at night, it's really difficult to see sometimes. you want to be ready. we were not allowed to do that. the ships did not want to operate at night.

so that was turned down. like i said the weather really , got bad. that was starting to force everybody down lower. the other issue that became a real problem that night, as we came out, was finding fuel. you got 77 aircraft out there, flying out to these ships, and they have to get gas each time they come out and land. we did not have enough refueling points. one of my friends who was flying an h46 went to a landing ship dock which has two spaces in the back for helicopters. he was ready to flame out and lose his aircraft. he landed right next to the ship in the water and sat there bobbing up and down in the waves until an aircraft would leave so we could jump on the deck and get fuel. there was a cobra that night who literally could not find a place to land. they crashed into the sea. both pilots got out and were

rescued by a boat. refueling was a big issue. the embassy here was going to be a secondary point of departure for evacuation. it was supposed to be americans only. we figured there might be about 200 americans coming out of there. it turned out there were 2000 vietnamese there. not just americans, they were all mixed in. the ambassador was an interesting fellow, ambassador graham. i don't know what he was thinking or what he intended. i do know he was conflicted. he had lost his son in vietnam who was killed a couple years earlier, i think he had a real passion for vietnam, and all these vietnamese that had worked for him and the united states. he felt he had to take care of these folks. they were his responsibility. he figured rightly that if they get captured by the north vietnamese, they would be killed

or sent off to education camps. so he just kept delaying his departure. jerry barry with hmm 165 went in twice to get the ambassador. the ambassador refused to go up to the top deck to get into the aircraft. jerry got back to the command ship, the admiral was out there to greet the ambassador. all these vietnamese get off. the admiral asked jerry, where's the ambassador? he says, he's refusing to leave. he literally would not come out of the embassy. he was really upset when the rockets hit and we had to switch to helicopters. he drove all the way out there, had a staff car driving all the way out there, to make sure that he was being told the truth. then he came back in. finally, at 0458 in the morning,

lady ace 09 was flying with jerry barry and he flew 18 straight hours. he came in and landed. he told the ambassador, you better get on board now. this is the last aircraft. you will get a couple more for the rest of your security detail. that's it. finally, the ambassador took the flag and everything you needed. he departed. the problem we ran into, no one knew this, is that when jerry got back to the command ship, he first called the tigers out. that was the call sign for the ambassador. when he landed on the blue ridge he said, tiger is out. we are done. everybody took that as a signal that the operation was complete. people, at this point, had already started shutting down because of exhaustion. most of us had been up since 3:00 or 4:00 the previous morning and some longer than that.

the air force guys had already shut down. they have a very strict aircrew requirement. so they were all tied up and done. i had come back a little after 10:00 that night. my wingman and i had landed and when we were sitting there refueling on the hancock we looked off to our right and saw this flash. that's when the aircraft flew into the water. we knew there was an accident. we had one problem. i could not get -- everybody that was refueling us had stopped to watch what was going on. i could not get the crew chief and refueling crew to break the hose loose. my wingman got his loose. he flew over -- it could not have been more than 60 or 70 yards from the ship -- and he landed in the water and was able to see the two crewmen because they managed to get there pin

-- their pin flares out. they were shooting the pin flares at the helicopters. he was able to land in the water and drop his cargo door and drag the man with broken legs and a lot of other damage to their bodies. they came in and we saved those two. when they got back on, it became apparent that aircrews were getting really exhausted. so they finally shut us down and told us to get out of the aircraft. they told me and my wingman to go down into the ready room. so we went downstairs. the aircraft -- the h46, the blades fold up like a cocoon and they put them away. we went down into the ready room and they said there was a rumor that there were americans 60 miles south of saigon.

i said, more than a rumor, what facts do we have about that? they did not know. they literally did not know. we started breaking out the maps and they wanted us to search for these people. i said, that's really insane. down in that area, there was no electricity. it was a small village. i said, i'm not going to be out there just searching around. we spent two hours looking at that. we also spent a lot of time doing the accident investigation because we knew that was going to be a problem. just one more slide here i wanted to show. this is what it looked like at night when we took off with the weather. that's the h46. this is what the roof looked like at night that we had to land on. pretty small target to hit. especially in that kind of weather. kept us alive, kept us thinking all the time. we got back in to the ship. my copilot was steve cook, a wonderful man.

stan hughes was the crew chief. i can't remember the gunner's name. we were sitting on the flight deck and it was around 6:00 in the morning. most of the guys were smarter than me. most of them are always smarter than me. they went to bed. they said, screw this. instead of hanging around, they went to bed. we were walking around the flight deck, back and forth. a guy comes running up, we have a problem. we have 11 marines on the roof at the embassy. i looked at him saying, sure you do. this can't happen. they said, you have to get that aircraft. there was one aircraft on the flight deck. they said, go get it and go. so the crew chief, stan hughes, said, is it ready to go? i said, yeah. he got it buttoned up and everything. we got in there and away we went. we were sort of numb, literally. we were so tired. we started going inbound.

just like this aircraft, the problem was, along the coast, you get these squall lines. you get thunderstorms that pop up and they go about 15,000 feet or higher. we thought, how are we going to get through there? we knew that the line might be a mile wide. we were trying to think about back at flight school, what did they tell us about penetrating thunderstorms? we made a point that we were going to go through it, which we did and the hail was so bad -- the h46 has windshield wipers, which i always thought was a nuisance, but the hail was so bad, it blew them off the aircraft. i don't know where they ended up. we broke down. so much fuel, i knew it would be a problem. we went straight ahead, up the saigon river.

we stayed at right about 500 feet, we saw the rooftop, we landed and picked up the 11 marines. that is where something else interesting happened. there are several books written about this. most of the books embellish a bunch of stuff. i was called one time and they asked questions. i could not remember much. they were asking me, they say you picked them up and landed again. your crew chief says that was because you had to get your gas mask on because the marines had popped their gas containers to hold off the vietnamese trying to get to the roof. i said, that doesn't sound right. i don't think i ever checked out a gas mask. i didn't think about it very much and i let it go. i told one fellow here, there's a great video out by the

american experience, pbs, called "the last days" and i am watching it and son of a gun, when we landed we picked up the 11 guys, but the last guy getting on the aircraft over the ramp in the back fell out. so when we got up about five or six feet off of the ground, the leader of the team yelled at the crew chief to yell back at me, don't set it down. which we did and that guy eventually crawled back on the aircraft. we had all 11 on board. that answered the question that had been burning in my mind for years. the other thing that burned in my mind, a lot of you probably see it at the exhibit here. it shows a healy sitting on a small rooftop with a whole line of people coming up to it, getting on it. that is sort of an iconic picture. that is a cia healy. that's on top of a apartment building. he's taking his family and wife's family out of the country with him. so that's what that's about. some other air america people landed there to get other people

out of the apartment house. that was usually several days before the final evacuation. anyway, we lifted off and we headed down the saigon river. that day was a beautiful, sunny day. everybody was along the river banks, waving like this to us. we put our hands out and we waved back at them. i got to thinking, this is really surreal, this cannot be happening. calm, noed to be so one shot at us. they could have because when we landed, the embassy was surrounded by t72 tanks. it was surrounded by aaa anti-aircraft guns. they tracked us in and out. i told the gunner, don't think about shooting at them. we don't want to make them mad. i knew there was something strange going on about the rules of engagement. we flew back to the ship.

we got to the uss okinowa. we left the rooftop at 7:53 in the morning and got back to the okinawa at 8:20, refueled, and this time i made sure i went to bed. i did not hang around, i just said everybody, get out of here , and hide someplace. we did. that night, 1054 hours were flown by the aircrews. 682 in and out. the evacuation of the compound, they took out 395 americans, 4475 vietnamese. went out. 978 americans came out of the embassy and third country nationals, another 1120 vietnamese and third country nationals. there was a total of 1300 plus

americans evacuated on that mission, 5595 vietnamese and third country nationals. ending up in the united states was over 138,000 vietnamese from the evacuation by sea, air, and across the border into thailand. the sad part is we lost our search and rescue aircraft. i wish that could have been different. the irony there was, there were some people that did not come. he knew we were short on pilots. his wife and kids had just showed up in okinawa and we told him to stay behind, but he came. that night, the question was what mission do we get this guy? , we had no idea what the outcome of the operation would be.

we said, the search and rescue chopper would be the best place. it turned out, it wasn't. today, i look at some of the stuff and i think -- let's see what we've got here. i've got one more here. this was a hangar deck of the hancock. let me tell you a good story. i don't know how many hundreds of people are there. this became a real issue. we were going to be at sea for 4 to 5 days on our way back to the philippines and you have to feed them. i met with the admiral when i was an instructor at the national war college later in my sitting down,were talking, and i asked him, what's the most important thing you thought about? people shooting at us? do we have enough military aircraft? he said, no. he said i was worried about , water cuts and food. i looked at him and said, what you mean? he said, these people have to

eat the same diet they have been eating. i can't afford to give them steak and ice cream and everything we eat. i need all the rice that i can get. he had people -- every ship had coca-cola machines. every can was kept and cut in half. when you came on board the ship, you were frisked, you were given a cup, and we had the galley give them rice and other items that were familiar with the area. that was one of his biggest concerns. one of the other great concerns was, what do you do with them for five days? the engineers, naval engineers on the ship have my greatest respect. because one of the problems is, you have to have a way to relieve yourself.

they went out on the hangar elevator and they built these miraculous latrines for men and women, separately. it was quite an invention. they were able to solve that problem. then again, you had boredom. captain eagle, ch53 pilot, one of my favorites, came up to me and said, i have got an idea. eagle was known as the tuba man and ray kroc owned the san diego padres. at the first game of the season, tuba man always had to be there. because he played the tuba. his tuba was a bright green camouflage in some places and he went and got the tuba and he would literally walk up and down the aisle here in these little kids would jump in behind him

like a snake following him. he did that for about an hour one day and he was going to quit. he was getting tired. the captain of the ship came down and said, that is really great. he said, thank you i am going to , quit. he says, no you're not. [laughter] you will be here for the next six hours. [laughter] by the time we got to the bay in the philippines, his lips -- the kids gathered around him. they loved him. he really saved the day. that was quite a mess. swift 22, where are you today? i just saw this in a magazine a month ago. this was the famous aircraft that i flew in and out with. it's in a cocoon. i'm glad to tell you that

that aircraft is soon to be relocated to the castle air museum in california. they are going to repair it and put it back into original colors and everything. it will be a museum piece. that's where it is today. that's how it looks. that's how i feel some days when i get up. [laughter] oh yeah, one last epitaph. when we came back, they kicked us off of the hancock. they were glad to see helicopters go because it is a real insult to a fixed wing carrier to have helicopters. how low can you go? [laughter] they were so happy to see us leave. we left and we landed at qb point, beautiful air station in the philippines. we needed to get back to okinawa. i had 14 aircraft crews, working different angles, what ship is heading back that way so we can get home?

we were sailing back to the island on the uss okinowa. i am in the lead aircraft, the rotors are turning, everything is good, i can see on the horizon the silhouette of the island coming up. at that time, as some of you know, i had a girlfriend there and was eager to get back. all of a sudden, as i'm sitting there, the ship does one of these hard 90 degree turns and another 90 degree turn and i'm yelling to the crew chief, take the chains off. do something, we have to get off the ship. we immediately got the shutdown signal. a thing happened were a bunch of people had taken a u.s. freighter -- that is a whole other story -- but we could not get back to okinawa. we were forced to hang out at the pool at qb point for 30 days. [laughter]

san miguel was $.25 and a san miguel hot dog was another $.25. i can't begin to tell you how many hotdogs and beers i had for those 30 days. nobody drowned while i was there. [laughter] that was the good news. and that's my story. i hope you enjoyed it. if there are any questions, i would be glad to answer them. [applause] >> as a reminder, you are going to get two rounds of applause tonight. you are welcome to come to either side of the stage. if you are unable, i will come to you. colonel holden: this is my real hair, by the way. [laughter] good. >> from the audience. >> what was your fuel situation? when you left the embassy, going back to the carrier, what was your fuel situation?

colonel holden: desperately low. if you look at the last days ' video from american experience, they had some pictures of the last 11 guys in the back of the aircraft. great picture. i don't know how they got it. one picture was of the guys and you could see in the cockpit the two warning lights. the warning lights come on at roughly 400 pounds of fuel. the question we had -- the sad part is -- and i love the navy. maybe. [laughter] you can't get them to turn a ship around sometimes. we called them and said, we are short on fuel. you better turn around if you don't want us to go in the water. the good thing, it was daylight. we landed with about 100 pounds aside. we just barely made it back to the ship. okinawa was the closest one and that is why we went there first.

but yeah fuel was a big problem. , it was a problem during the evening when we flew. like it tell you one other good little sigh story then i will take your question. as we were coming back, i got up one morning, i had the early morning flight and i told you there was a whole bunch of , ships, we have a hancock, the midway, all this stuff. i take off and i am flying and i see something strange right in the middle of this fleet. there is a cruise ship. how it got there, i don't know but everybody was waving and , looking. they could not have been more than 100 yards away from a midway, which is a great site to see, especially if you go to san diego, it is a wonderful museum. these people on the cruise ship are right in the middle and i'm thinking, how did they get there? you cannot penetrate that. they had to do it at night somehow. it was odd. when i went back after that flight, they were gone. i don't know how they did it.

any other questions? >> the marines that had been left behind at the embassy and you went back and got, was that because people had stopped because they knew the tiger was back? did you learn more about how something like that could happen? colonel holden: good question. i tried to read everything i could get my hands on. basically, the whole operation was stopped when they said the tiger is out. there were still a few aircraft flying that made a few last trips before those marines went into the embassy, locked the doors, went up the stairs to the roof, and they were up there about an hour and a half to two hours. i think they were getting nervous. they were calling out to the ships. all we had was radio.

the ships were out to sea about 60 miles. getting contact was almost impossible. what happened, i really can't verify this, is that their unit did a headcount. the question started going around, where are these guys? someone said, the last time we saw them was at the embassy. they could not find anybody that could verify that they had come out. that's how we ascertained that that's where they were. >> you are welcome to ask a follow-up. >> have you kept -- do you know who those marines were? have you kept or found any of them? colonel holden: no. i know who they are. i was told one of them lives here in payola. but that did not turn out like that, he did. i've never been able to make contact with them. i've contacted my crew chief and the gunner. i have not been able to contact the copilot, but yeah. it would be interesting to talk to them because i am sure they

can add more to what i cannot remember. of course, they are my age and probably can't remember either. [laughter] >> next question is from the audience, toward the back. >> i am sure most of us, or all of us, have seen the film that shows people pushing helicopters off of an aircraft carrier. what's the deal with that? colonel holden: when the evacuation -- when things were getting dicey, the south vietnamese decided they better get out. the south vietnamese military they had some other private , planes, and everybody knew we were out there in the water. they were coming out in small boats, hundreds of boats. so they came out to the ships. we had some space. we landed some of them. as it kept growing, the numbers were growing, we could not keep them all.

some of them were fairly decent. the navy had a crew that would go up with a saw and cut the rotor blades off. throw the blades in the ocean and we would take the carcass of the aircraft down into the hangar deck. heelys that the cia had, we saved a lot of those. it turned out to be worthless. they were made by kawasaki industries in japan. the metal that they used to make it with could not get an airworthiness certificate in the united states. it was a coproduced aircraft. you will see a lot of pictures where people landed, got out, and they took the aircraft and shoved them off the side of the ship. a couple things -- i think one story i was told about this, bill install spent his days -- the chinook would hover off the side of the ship and the pilot

would then blow his door off the side of the aircraft. he would stand there and take the aircraft this way. he would step this way. he would go into the ocean. they would try to pick him up. the problem we had was a lot of the vietnamese did not swim. us that wes told could not find them, that would be a problem. the other problem we had is that we didn't have navy seals that could do water rescue. we have the equipment, but we did not have people that could enter the water. so if a helicopter ever comes over the top of you, the rotor wash coming down on you literally pushes you underwater. they said that bill probably drowned maybe two or three people that afternoon. it was weighing heavy on him. so that's what happened.

we could not bring them all back. there are some interesting stories. what kind of souvenir did you bring back from the war? a friend of mine said, i brought a helicopter back. [laughter] he literally did. the captain of one ship, they were pulling these barges so they could land these aircraft on the barges and when the rescue was completed, the captain told bill and another guy, sink it. the navy air boss said, can you fly that chinook? bill says certainly. ,he says can you fly that healy? , certainly. they went out there on the barge and did what they were told. it was prepared to sink. they flew the aircraft over to the ship. the captain thought that those things were left behind in the water. the problem was, the captain saw those and got really irate and told them to get the aircraft

off of his ship. they did and they went into qb point. qb point wasn't going to let them land. they were not u.s. aircraft. so they had a real problem and a real dilemma. they finally landed and the military police arrested them. they took both aircrafts away. chinook was big enough, we made an office out of it for a while. to get it back to the states, it was too expensive for him to put it on a ship and bring it back. he did not have that kind of money. but that's true. we got rid of a lot of aircraft. >> this will be our last question. >> i am curious, the parallel picture of the side view of the 46 with the foothills in the background, is that laguna coming in and out? colonel holden: that's the philippines. >> ok. colonel holden: beautiful country to fly over.

i don't know if we have any world war ii guests here tonight. leyte gulf was one of the most pristine places i've ever seen from the air. you can see 50 feet straight down in the water. it's just gorgeous. it was beautiful. >> this wraps up our program. tom will be available in the lobby if you have additional questions. as always, on behalf of the national world war i museum and memorial, thank you for joining us. another round of applause for colonel holden. [applause] colonel holden: thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] is american history tv on c-span three where each weekend, we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our past.

♪ c-span has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events. you can watch c-span's public affairs programming on television, online, or listen on our free radio app, and be part of the conversation through washington journal, or through our social media feeds. c-span, created by america's table -- cable television companies as a public service and brought to you by your television provider. ♪ sunday, peter cruz nick gives a tour of an exhibit arcing the

70th anniversary of the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki. here is a preview. this is after the decision to drop the bomb. we have a section about the reasons for using the bomb. the official narrative says the united states dropped the bomb to expedite the end of the war without having to invade and truman says an american invasion would cost a half million lives. the number keeps going up. is 1955, his memoir says a half million lives. there is no record of that anywhere. a lot of americans would have been lost in an invasion. that is the official narrative, he dropped the bomb to avoid an invasion and the bomb ended the war in the pacific. there is truth to that. japanese, onas the the battle of saipan in july of

1944, they hoped to get one more victory. the big obstacle was the emperor. they wanted to make sure they could keep the emperor. across the southwest pacific command, issued a report, background briefing in 1945 in the summer that says the hanging on the emperor to them would be like the crucifixion of christ to us. almost every advisor of truman's advised him to change surrender terms. let the japanese know they can keep the emperor and that was in america's interest. america planned to let them keep the emperor but we refused to signal that, we were calling for unconditional surrender. what else was going to end the war? roosevelt got a promise from stalin that three months after the end of the war in europe, the red army would come into the war against japan.

truman said he went to meet with churchill and stalin to make sure the soviets were coming in. he gets the agreement from the soviets the first day of the conference and writes in his journal, stalin will be in the japanese war by august 15. he bites home to his wife the next day, the russians are coming in, the war will and a year sooner, speak of all the boys you want to be killed. truman knew the japanese were trying to surrender. describes in a telegram, a telegram from the japanese emperor asking for peace. we knew that. they all do the japanese are finished. american intelligence reported repeatedly that the entry of the soviet union into the war will convince all japanese that complete defeat is inevitable. it will lead to the end of the war. truman, who is, why

is not bloodthirsty, he is not whyor -- he is not hitler, would truman use the atomic bombs knowing the japanese were trying to surrender, knowing they were not militarily necessary? what we assume as historians was a big part of his motivation was that he was sending a message to the soviets that if the soviets interfered with american plans, in europe or asia, this is the fate they were going to get any a stubby thing is the soviets interpreted it that way. suddenly, the day of judgment was tomorrow and has been ever since. >> see more of the exhibit to this sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern here on american history tv. next on history bookshelf from 2005, a filmmaker and author talks about his book

shockwave, countdown to hiroshima. the story begins with the first atomic bomb test on july 16, 1945 and document key events leading up to the august 6 bombing of hiroshima in japan, was the author describes in detail. >> thanks very much. you will hear me, i hope. thank you for coming on a most wonderful evening in this glorious city which my daughter has fallen in love with. itis such a lovely evening, is great that you can come here to listen to horror stories about the atomic bomb. not -- i want to talk to you from the heart about what this book is and what it means to me. the journey i have taken over the last two to half years since i started the document tree. i was asked to make this document