Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, when the capital of South Vietnam was captured by North Vietnam. The event led to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government, the evacuation of thousands of U.S. personnel and South Vietnamese civilians, and the end of the Vietnam War, according to Vietnam War history.

Frank Senn, of Minot, was stationed at the time at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa as a maintenance egress technician with the U.S. Air Force’s 23rd Tactical Flying Wing, a unit flying F-4 Wild Weasels – planes that remove air defenses.

Senn recalls the day he was alerted to deploy.

“It was my day off and I was taking the boys (three young sons) to the swimming pool for swimming lessons. A siren on the base went off for alert so I went home and I called my shop. I says, ‘What? Do I have to come in?’ And they said, ‘You need to be in here right now.'”

Frank Senn is shown in this photo when he served in the U.S. Air Force in Phanrang, Vietnam, from 1969-70.

Senn went to his shop and found out that they were going to deploy.

“It was a classified mission at the time. I came back to the house, packed my bags and we left. My wife never knew where I was,” he said.

“Just like in the movies, they opened the safe up (with the orders) and told us when we were halfway there where we were going,” he recalled. “We didn’t know. That’s very interesting because we were all maintenance guys to maintain airplanes. We were support.

“We went to Korat, Thailand, with the airplanes and we flew cover for Saigon when everything was happening. I still have the classified orders. I’d never had classified orders before,” he said. “When we flew down we flew on C-130 airplanes and we could not cross over Vietnam to get to Thailand. We had to go all the way around the bottom of it and came in. It was a long trip.”

Senn said back at the base in Okinawa all the wives were brought together and told where their husbands were located, and those who remained with the wing offered to help the spouses if there was anything they needed.

“The military is really like a big family,” he said.

He said his wife, Chris, had no idea for a week and a half or so where he was. He said at the same time all this was going on in Saigon, there was a typhoon in the Philippines.

“She thought I was going there,” he said.

Senn spent almost two months in Thailand.

“When Saigon fell we went back home,” he said.

Senn had served in the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam from 1969-70.

The Senns remained in Okinawa until his assignment there was up.

“We spent two and a half years in Okinawa,” he said.

He spent 26½ years in the Air Force, with his last years spent at Minot Air Force Base. The Senns have continued to reside at Minot.

A month ago, Senn became the commander of the Disabled American Veterans Chapter 4 in Minot.