Ba Van Nguyen Chinook Escape

On April 29, 1975, as North Vietnamese forces closed in on Saigon, South Vietnamese Air Force Major Ba Van Nguyen loaded his wife, Nho, their three children, and friends into a CH-47 Chinook and flew out to sea, where he radioed the USS Kirk and begged to land. With the ship’s deck too small for the helicopter, he hovered over the fantail while sailors caught his children and wife as they jumped, then flew the Chinook a safe distance away, stripped off his gear while holding a hover, rolled the aircraft into the sea, and leaped clear before it crashed. The Kirk’s crew pulled him from the water alive, and he later resettled in Seattle, where he learned English, worked his way up to a Boeing technician, and in 2010 reunited with the Kirk’s sailors to receive an air medal for bravery before his death at age 73.

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