
How a Vietnamese helicopter pilot saved his family - fortepianissimo
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/29/us/vietnam-sea-rescue/
======
digitalzombie
There are probably hundreds crazy stories like that.

My mom and father had to run during the fall. Grandfather was part of the
South Army and got killed by friendly fire from the American. Family burned
all the medal from my grand father to hide his involvement from the war. Then
my father family gave my parent golds before they ran away. I think they went
to Laos then Thailand. Between Vietnam to Lao, the Vietcong caught my father
in some field, a gun to his head. Suddenly they hear other people running so
they left him to chase the other people.

We ended up in Laos and then they decided to grab a boat to Thailand. They
missed the first boat cause they slept late. Later they found out the boat
they missed was pirated and all of the people on the boat died. Anyway second
boat got to thailand. Somewhere in there I was born in Cambodia and they
decided to tell me when I was a teenager...

Dad decided to spend the money to build a farm there. It didn't work out so
they move to Philippine or something before America. It's a bit vague but
there other weird stuff in that story too. I don't recall how he became some
priest, he's not one now btw.

I had a buddy that was the head of the dorm. We ended up having a crazy story
time try to out do each other. Some viet girl basically told us her father was
a Viet Cong spy, he spied on the US. >___>

------
spiritplumber
When I was 9, we ran away from Kuwait because a friend of my father saw the
Iraqi tanks move in and called him using a radio phone.

We put random stuff in the back of one of the toyota pickups that were used as
runabout in the construction site, drove to the harbor, and my dad traded the
car for an empty container on a cargo ship.

We lived in the container for 2 or 3 days until the ship got to Egypt, to
which we disembarked, and we managed to get family to buy us plane tickets to
Italy - bit of a feat pre-internet, I remember that for some reason, buying a
plane ticket remotely could be arranged, but not a ferry ticket which is why
we flew home rather than sail there via Sicily.

We get to my grandparents' house in Italy, and only then they explain to me
what was going on.

That's the closest I ever have been to a war zone, and would like to keep it
that way.

------
clamprecht
I think the best story is that of Orestes Lorenzo, the Cuban fighter pilot. In
1991, he defected by flying his Mig 23 to Florida and landing at a military
air base. That wasn't enough - he had left his wife and children in Cuba. So a
year or two later, he flew a Cessna back to Cuba, flying 10 feet over the
ocean to avoid radar. He landed on a rural highway, and picked up his wife and
children. They made it back to Florida, and today they live in Orlando.

He just recently flew an L-39 Albatros jet at an airshow in Cozumel:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRXRBcuJE-U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRXRBcuJE-U)

~~~
spiritplumber
Why didn't the USAF hire him as a flight instructor?

------
junto
Here's a shortened video if anyone is interested:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHJm3Ptoo3o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHJm3Ptoo3o)

Longer version here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9svL4j9xCc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9svL4j9xCc)

The story is fantastic. Thanks for sharing.

------
rdl
The Major Bung Ly story
([http://studentpilot.com/interact/forum/showthread.php?20184-...](http://studentpilot.com/interact/forum/showthread.php?20184-30-years-
ago-very-overweight-Cessna-landed-on-an-aircraft-carrier)) where he landed a
Cessna on a carrier was always impressive to me.

------
frozenport
I asked a Vietnamese friend whose grandparents had been interned in one of the
mentioned camps why the South had lost the war. He explained that the soldiers
from South Vietnam had shown a suprising level of cowardice and nepotism.

There is perhaps another story, that of a soldier fleeing with expensive
military equipment in the moddle of a battle, I bet he is laughing at his
collegues who died fighting for their country. In this way it is a microcosm
for everything wrong with South Vietnam.

~~~
rhino369
By the time the evacuation of Saigon happened the war was over.

Why they lost before that point can be debated. Communist nations funding of
the North increased while US funding was cut by Congress.

Some claim the US agreed to sacrifice South Vietnam to the Chinese in exchange
for reestablishment of relations and trade.

Others claim it was because of Watergate and the war weariness of the American
people.

Probably a lot of things.

~~~
user_0001
People fighting for their homeland and existence tend be in it for the long
haul and quite determined - they don't have a choice

An aggressive, invading, external military just whilst it is makes financial
sense.

------
p3lim
It's a nice story and everything, but this is Hacker News, not
CNN/FOX/BBC/<insert random newspaper here>.

~~~
junto
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

I think this qualifies.

~~~
davidw
Did you find it 'intellectually gratifying'?

I thought it was a beautiful, powerful and very moving story, but I didn't
really learn anything new.

