Rolf Stibbe relays the story of former South Vietnamese Air Force aviator Major Trinh Tranh Chau, who reminisces about flying the Northrop F-5 – and his hair-raising escape from approaching communist forces
This coming April 30 signifies the 45th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon in Vietnam. With this in mind, the author took the opportunity to meet former South Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) pilot Maj Trinh Tranh Chau and hear his account.
Boyhood dreams
A former operations officer with the VNAF’s 542nd Fighter Squadron (FS) at Bien Hoa Air Base, 16 miles (25km) from Saigon, Maj Chau had a distinguished flying career. In fact, he even gained notoriety in the pages of Northrop’s 1974 F-5 marketing brochure after notching up 2,000 hours on the type.
Having daydreamed about flying since boyhood, his ambition became reality in 1963. Beginning at Lackland Air Force Base (AFB) in Texas for language school, the young lieutenant was soon sent to Randolph AFB to fly the North American T-28 Trojan during his initial pilot training. Chau recalls: “When I was young, it was a dream of mine to become a pilot after reading a book written by a Vietnamese Air Force commander. We needed to be ready to defend our country –…
