Yokota Air Base, Japan, Apr. 3, 1975: Mary Fisher, wife of a Seventh Day Adventist Church minister, holds an infant as she is surrounded by reporters aboard a World Airways plane that landed at Yokota Air Base on April 3, 1975.

The plane left Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Airport the day before with 54 Vietnamese orphans aboard a World Airways DC8 jet.

The flight was set to leave with more than 400, but many organizations bowed out after the U.S. embassy declared the plane unsafe — an untrue statement according to World Airways’ president Ed Daly who had organized the flight.

In the end, the flight landed at Yokota Air Base with the 54 children and 17 World Airways employees and two doctors, according to Stars and Stripes’ story at the time, before continuing to Oakland, California.

U.S. president Gerald Ford announced on April 3 that the U.S. government would begin airlifting orphans out of Saigon in what would become known as Operation Babylift.

Read the full article on the flight and see additional photos here.

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