Travis Air Force Base

September 10, 2008

Travis Air Force Base

Crowds welcome home Vietnam Troops at Travis Air Force Base

This is what Phil and Meredith would have witnessed from afar at Travis Air Force Base in ’73.

Vietnam POWs coming home to Travis Air Force Base

 

Originally named Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Base, construction began on Travis in 1942. The United States Navy had aircraft at the base for training, but this proved temporary. In October 1942, the War Department assigned the base to the Air Transport Command. The base’s primary mission during World War II was ferrying aircraft and supplies to the Pacific Theater.

 

The base was renamed Travis Air Force Base in 1951 for Brigadier General Robert F. Travis, who was killed when a B-29 Superfortress crashed on August 5, 1950. The ensuing fire caused the 10,000 pounds of high explosives in the plane’s cargo — a Mark 4 nuclear weapon — to detonate, killing Robert Travis and 18 others.

 

Operation Homecoming was the mission to return POWs from Southeast Asia. Between February 12th and March 29th in 1973, North Vietnam released 566 American military and 25 civilian POWs and MIAs, many of whom had spent many years in various communist prison camps. Hanoi’s Gia Lam Airport was the main release point where Miliary Airlift Command’s C-141 Starlifters, took off on 18 “Freedom Flights” returning these heroes to their homeland via Clark Air Base in the Philippines.

 

One POW remembered the North Vietnamese announcer told the prisoners,

 

“As I call your name, step forward and go home.”

 

“Free at last!: That C-141 was the most beautiful bird I’d ever seen! I have chills running all though my body—you will just never know how it feels.”

 

 

 

For more info: http://www.travisairmuseum.org/html/vietnam_war.html

 

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