Only three RAAF aircraft were in Vietnam on Anzac Day 1975, just days before the Fall of Saigon.
Hercules flown by Flight Lieutenant Sam (Dave) Nicholls and Flight Lieutenant Brent Espeland departed Tan Son Nhut, leaving only the backup aircraft piloted by then Flying Officer Jack Fanderlinden to pick up the stragglers.
Stragglers included embassy staff who'd missed the earlier flights, Vietnamese war orphans and their nurses, South Vietnamese allies, nuns from a nearby order … and four Airfield Defence Guards armed only with pistols as the Viet Cong approached.
One of the ADGs, then-corporal Ian 'Spike' Dainer, recalled there were also a number of "nuns with hairy legs … one even had a moustache" among the crowd trying to board that last plane.
"My job on the day was working out who was entitled to get on and to search luggage to make sure the flight was safe," Mr Dainer said.
"We had a group captain trying to hurry us along paying lip service to security, but he changed his tune when we found grenades in one of the bags.
"We were trying to get as many people aboard as we could and things became contentious because the embassy staff were taking a lot of personal possessions; there were cartons of whisky, Persian carpets, porcelain elephants taking up seats.
"It was at that point that the captain of the aircraft [a 23-year-old Jack Fanderlinden] said, 'I need you to take some of that stuff off so that we can get more people on board'," Mr Dainer said.
'We had a group captain trying to hurry us along paying lip service to security, but he changed his tune when we found grenades in one of the bags.'
The Hercules pilot, Air Commodore (retd) and general manager of RAAF Base Williamtown's Fighterworld, Jack Fanderlinden, held a reunion on April 30 at Fighter World for his crew and their families to mark the 50th anniversary of the event.
Mr Fanderlinden recalled the missions leading up to the evacuation of Saigon.
He and Mr Dainer remembered the incongruity of South Vietnamese civilians going about their daily chores as rocket and gun fire got ever closer to airfield where their Herc was loading.
"There were people painting 'Tan Son Nhut' on the airfield tower and they kept on painting even as we were taking off," Mr Dainer said.
Mr Fanderlinden added: "I shared lunch with some Vietnamese workers who were just glad that the war would be over."
After citing statistics of Australians killed and wounded in the conflict, with nearly 30 per cent of the 35,000 veterans alive today suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Mr Fanderlinden outlined the fates of some of the rescued war orphans who overcame adversities to lead successful lives in Australia.
It was important to remember the human costs of war, he said.
