Valor Friday
Orestes Lorenzo Perez
Having been to the USS Midway Museum, I’ve seen the Cessna O-1 Bird Dog landed on her deck by South Vietnamese Air Force Major Buang-Ly. Major Buang stole the plane, loaded his wife and five children into the nominally 4-seat observation airplane, and flew out to sea. He did so because it was April 1975 and the communists had just won the war, and Saigon was falling. American warships in the area, among them Midway, took in the refugees as they came. Famously, the crew of Midway pushed tens of millions of dollars of military equipment by hand into the sea to make room on her flight deck for more RVN helicopters.
Major Buang, with no solid plan for where he would go, took his family and headed out. He soon enough found Midway. He circled a few times, signalling his intent to land, but the Bird Dog is not a naval aircraft and not designed for a carrier arrested landing. He finally dropped a note to the crew of Midway on a low pass, advising that he could land, if only they’d move a helicopter out of the way.
Deck hands shoved the UH-1 in the way right off the side of the ship unceremoniously, and Major Buang was able to make a perfect landing on Midway. His bold, perhaps even suicidal, flight from the homeland he’d fought to defend resulted in the evacuation of his wife and five kids.
This week, I came across a similar story, from a few years later. Orestes Lorenzo Perez (pictured above, center) was a Cuban Air Force pilot. He defected with his MiG-23BN (a variable swept-wing fighter-bomber) in 1991. Now a single-seat fighter has no room to spirit a whole family away from communism. I imagine if one tried, it would draw significant attention if you were walking your wife and kids out to your fighter jet before a sortie.
Perez, on a training mission, defected with his plane to NAS Key West. Landing, he requested asylum, which was soon granted. Eventually his plane was repatriated, as usually happens in these cases. The plane is meticulously cataloged, inspected, documented, and then shipped back to Cuba in a crate. Normally this also includes a bill for the transport costs (which is never paid).
Now, how was Perez to save his family? Even with help from the President of the United States (GHW Bush), after well more than a year, Castro wouldn’t let them go. Perez would have to go get them. If caught, he would surely face death for his traitorous act.
Cessna 310 example
With the help of a Cuban refugee organization, they bought a Cessna 310 (a twin engine light general aviation plane with 4-6 seats). He got a message to his wife to meet him in a specific spot, and flew there at just 100 feet over the water to avoid Cuban radar detection. Landing within 10 yards of his wife and two boys (who were wearing bright orange as instructed so he could see them), he took off again and brought them back to America.
I can’t believe a Cessna 310 has the lifting capacity for this man’s cojones.
Read more about the story at the Aviation Geek.
Category: Air Force, Historical, Valor, We Remember
Yeah, but…
Ok, sorry but I will be the asshole today.
Going through hell for your own benefit or your own family’s benefit doesn’t really count.
Just saying.
To protect your family at the risk of being tortured and killed or shot down, is pretty commendable in my book. Remember the dems and commies want to destroy the nuclear family.
If saving your own family under circumstances like those is not valor in your opinion, maybe you have the wrong family.
And this is why I stay away from Valor Fridays.
I don’t see why. A counterintuitive viewpoint is sometimes helpful.
I’m just going to say you’re straight up wrong.
People do heroic things all the time for all kinds of reasons. Certainly love of their family is one of the reasons that we fight. It was for me. To say that someone is less special because they love their family is kind of idiotic.
For a man to risk everything that he loves by packing his family in a small plane with no plan to land is pretty ballsy. To risk near certain death to fly back to Cuba and save his loved ones is the type of behavior they got us out of caves.
Agreed.
Where we disagree is whether valor demonstrated in fighting for oneself or one’s family should be recognized.
I say no. I don’t even think it is really valor. It is self-preservation.
Ok. You can argue is valor.
I still stand by my point that it is not the same as willingly running into a burning building to save someone else, for example.
But your argument is if someone runs into a burning building to save their daughter it doesn’t count. I’m saying it does.
Yes, but anyone would do that for their own daughter. How many would do it for someone they don’t know?
Edit:
How many would do it for someone they are not related to?
Firefighters do it more often than they like im sure.
Firefighting is completely different. Special training, preparations, gear etc, reduce the risk in a very low probability event anyway. There are certainly some that put it all out there, but it becomes notable when they do.
I get all that, but it’s still running into a burning building to rescue somebody they don’t know. So still the same to me.
Again, I’m going to say no they won’t. Lots of people won’t risk their own skin for their own flesh and blood. Having worked as a first responder I’ve seen this enough times to know.
Ok. I think you might be right that not everyone would risk their life for their family.
I will defer to your experience. It seems counterintuitive to me, but I have lived on post for the last 19 years, surrounded by a military community. The civilian world is another world. As a first responder, you would know far more about that than me.
I still stand by my point though.
Ok, I will modify my point:
While risking his life for his family requires valor, it is a lesser kind of valor than risking his life for someone else who is not his family or himself.
I did 24 years in the military before retirement and changing careers. Let me tell you, it’s a whole different world out here. People mostly disappoint me every day. Make zero assumptions about what people might do when you reenter civilian life.
Isn’t your company “family”?
You might not like what I said, but it is true.
Everyone fights to defend their own pelt.
Valor is when you willingly go from cover to exposure, to save someone else.
Look at Ross McGinnis. When that grenade went inside his vehicle, he could have jumped out of the hatch, but instead, he dove in on top of the grenade to protect his buddies. He had a way out. He chose not to use it. That’s what valor is. Doing the right thing because it is right, not because you don’t have a choice, or to save yourself.
Ross McGinnis – Recipient – (militarytimes.com)
No they don’t.
If they did recruiting offices would be turning people away. There would be no discussion on gun control. If it were true, there wouldn’t have been anywhere to land on that carrier because it would have been full of planes. Cuba would not have an Air Force because they all would have flown to the United States.
This is an important distinction.
Joe, Joe, Joe… While I generally agree with many of your comments (other than your previous choice in fermented beverages), gotta go the other way on this. And, no, I haven’t downvoted you…yet. I do understand the point you’re trying to make. I also know that you are a naturalized citizen, Valorous, Decorated Warrior, and a squared away troop. You, Mr. Perez, and others like y’all are the type of immigrants that we need and welcome.
“Valor is when you willingly go from cover to exposure, to save someone else.” Welp, that’s exactly what Mr. Perez did. He could have stayed safe and sound, with a safe job in the military or US government and left his family to wither on the vine in Communist Cuba. When he took off to go back there were 100 things that could have happened, and 96 of those things woulda been bad. Just imagine the torture he woulda went thru had he been captured. Just because it was his blood family does not take away from the courage it took to undertake his mission.
Most of us would like to think that we would charge thru the gates of Hell, fight til Hell froze over, and then continue to fight on the ice for our family…whether it be blood or uniformed family.
BZ, Mr. Perez…SALUTE!
Thanks again, Mason, for bringing us a story that some of us knew, but had not thought about in many years.
So… saving your family isn’t right…
What is true is that valor is somewhat like beauty, it is an opinion in the eyes of the beholder. You are entitled to your opinion, but don’t expect most of us to agree. Both men risked death to save their families. Had they been captured they most certainly would have been executed. That is the Commie way.
If you won’t go through hell for your family, turn in your man card. Is your wife aware of your feelings on this?
Where the fuck do you get that fuckin idea from, mothefucker?!
I would and I will fuckin DIE for anyone wearing this flag on their shoulder.
Think what I CAN AND WOULD DO for my wife and my boys.
Fusclinkin pussy, trying to read shitt btweeen the lines that aint there
You’d die for your family, but it’s not valorous. Got it.
SFC, you struck a nerve there.
Fuckin bitch little cat tryin to pck a figh with a fukcin LION. I own liltte bithhcws lik yuo for diner, mothefkcer
Good talk, Joe.
You are really embarrassing yourself again Yef, oops, I mean Slow Joe.
You are an NCO in the Army. Try to regain your military bearing and make an effort to act like one.
You must remember that you are not the only combat veteran that posts here on this site. There are many combat veterans here, some of whom have seen much more actual combat than you ever have, or ever will.
You must also remember that you are not the only individual here who has received a valor award for individual actions in combat. The difference between the others here who have received valor awards and you is that you are the only one here who feels compelled to constantly boast and brag about yours. You also always go out of your way to disparage the valor awards and accomplishments of others at every opportunity. All of this has become quite tiresome.
You should also take a remedial spelling course. Or did you misspell all of those words when you posted your replies to SFC D because you were drunk again on too much Bud Light?
Have a great Army day.
You left your cup, Joe…
Family is not nearly the tribal commitment here as it is elsewhere, as actually -practiced-. We here are often more likely to act sacrificially for those we have chosen as kin-like, or even total strangers, than for happenstance of genetics. It’s one more way Americans are sometimes extraordinarily weird to folks from elsewhere.
As your family extends it’s USA membership down the years, that strong tribal call you personally feel will dilute some and share room with a fuzzy bond to the other goofballs who venerate that wonderous flag. And that ability allows us to form -military- bonds of familial love very rapidly. Thus our centuries of holding together when most others would shatter, shirk, and ultimately fail.
And like family, we occasionally rhetorically rip each others nads off over relatively trivial points of debate.
It works, here. Because Americans are both weird and infectious.
Great read. For the Cuban, it’s a different kind of valor, to be sure, but balls nonetheless. For the Vietnamese, guy, that’s a tough call. Guts on an individual level, but…. The article says the commies had just won the war so I’ll assume that a certain NVN tank has already busted through a certain gate on Saigon so he’s free to run. If it was a couple of days prior, it’s an easy case for self-serving cowardice!
Having flown in an O-1 Bird Dog, I can affirm that it is not a “nominally four seat observation airplane.” The O-1 has two seats, one fore and one aft, one for the pilot and one for the observer. However, I can see how it would be possible to squeeze a Vietnamese woman and four small children into the cockpit.
O-1 bird dog isn’t the plane I pictured in my minds eye. What I pictured was the Cessna with the front and rear mounted engines in a push pull layout.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://heritageflight.org/aircraft/o-2-skymaster/&ved=2ahUKEwjVlp2zxNSEAxXOHzQIHYLvCKMQFnoECCQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw110wgXEQcTheukve0r2pSl
That is an O-2, which is the militarized version of the Cessna 377 Skymaster. It was the primary Forward Air Control aircraft of the USAF in the Viet of the Nam before it was replaced by the OV-10 Bronco. As a Ranger company commander, I flew in Helix FAC OV-10’s frequently, searching for suitable LZ’s where we could insert LRRP teams.
Jez, what was the author smoking? I flew waaaay too hours in an O-1 backseater. You needed a shoe horn to get two of us in it. No way was it ever designed for 4.