1975-Continued

23 March Hancock, en route from Subic Bay, R.P.,

as relief for Enterprise, on station in the South China

Sea, loaded HMH-463 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for

transport to the southwest Pacific. The unit would sup-

port operations in case evacuations of American and

other nationals from areas of the Indochinese peninsu-

la became necessary. Meanwhile, North Vietnamese

forces continued their advance southward and were

poised to cut off the entire northern quarter of the

Republic of Vietnam some 300 miles north of Saigon.

1 April Eugene Taylor "Smokey" Rhoads, Chief

Aviation Pilot, USN, died at the Veterans Hospital, San

Diego, Calif. Rhoads was a member of the flight crew

that made the first trans-Atlantic flight in May 1919 in

the NC-4.

12 April Operation Eagle Pull was activated for

Cambodia. Twelve CH-53 Sea Stallions of HMH-462

evacuated 287 persons from Phnom Penh to Okinawa.

Among those evacuated were U.S. Ambassador John

Gunther Dean and Cambodian President Saukhm

Khoy, as well as newspapermen and other foreign

Sai101:5 from Durham (LKA 114) lending a hand K-107587

UNITED STATES NAVAL AVIATION 1910-1995

311

nationals. Upon completion of the evacuation, heli-

copters of HMH-463 from Hancock, retrieved the ele-

ments of the 31st Marine Amphibious Unit which had

established the perimeter from which the evacuees

had been rescued.

13 April The Naval Aviation Museum was dedicated

at Pensacola, Fla. All funds for construction of the

68,000-square-foot structure had been donated private-

ly. The building was presented to the Navy by the

Naval Aviation Museum Foundation, Inc. It replaced

the small temporary museum set up in 1962. Among

the 72 vintage aircraft at the museum, a feature attrac-

tion was the original NC-4, the first airplane to fly the

Atlantic Ocean. Plans, and an ongoing drive for pri-

vately donated funds, called for continued expansion

of the new museum through three more stages to

eventually reach 260,000 square feet of floor space.

19 April Midway, Coral Sea, Hancock, Enterprise

and Okinawa responded to possible evacuation con-

tingencies by deploying to waters off Vietnam as

North Vietnam overran two-thirds of South Vietnam

and pronounced the carriers' presence a brazen chal-

lenge and a violation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords.

Sailor from Durham (LKA 114)

cares for two Vietnamese children

separated ti-om their mother dur-

ing the evacuation K-I07619