VIET NAM: TOWARD THE FINAL AGONY

At 4:30 p.m. the C-5A transport, the world's biggest plane, lumbered off the runway at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut Airbase, carrying 243 Vietnamese orphans destined for adoption in the U.S. and 62 adults. The children were the first to leave Viet Nam in an official and well-intentioned American program to evacuate 2,000 orphans and bring them to the U.S. Minutes after takeoff, the pilot radioed that his rear loading ramp was defective; he had lost control of his elevators, rudders arid flaps. Seven miles out of Saigon, he made a sweeping turn...