Cecilia Vega (2:59)

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Sharon Alfonsi (3:02)

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Cecilia Vega (3:04)

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Sharon Alfonsi (3:30)

It was a week of chaos at airports across the country. Gridlock in Washington left TSA workers without pay, triggering four hour security lines in some of the nation's busiest airports. Last Sunday, a commercial jet crashed into a fire truck while landing on a Runway at New York's LaGuardia Airport. Dozens were injured and two pilots were killed. Authorities are investigating, but the air traffic controller on duty said they were dealing with an earlier emergency and soon after the accident said, I messed up. It is a chilling reminder of just how thin our aviation system is stretched. Last year, American Airlines Flight 5342 and an army helicopter collided over the Potomac river near D.C. the deadliest aviation disaster in almost a quarter century. Tonight you will hear from an air traffic controller who was inside the tower the day of that collision. She tells us why controllers at Washington's busiest airport have been warning of danger for years. It is a story of a system pushed to the breaking point and the shattered families left to pick up the pieces. In southern Maryland, seven widows whose husbands were on Flight 5342 agreed to share their story together for the first time. The men, all work buddies, met up with friends in Kansas for a week of duck hunting. The women shared these photos with us and the excitement their husbands felt leading up to the trip.

Anderson Cooper (5:04)

Alex got home from work. He was like, before you say anything, it's already paid for. I was like, when do you leave? Like, there was no asking any more questions. He was so excited to go. Like it literally looked like Christmas morning in his face.

Sharon Alfonsi (5:16)

So Kayla Huffman's husband Alex posed with the crew and their trophies. Bridget Johnson was married to Steve for 19 years. Kylie Pitcher's husband Jesse owned a plumbing company. Ashley Stovall's husband Mikey was a steam fitter. So was Charlie, Heather McDaniel's husband. I met Charlie on the softball field. And he basically from that day always said, you know, I knew I was

Emily Honoka (5:40)

going to marry that girl.

Sharon Alfonsi (5:41)

Because you were that good of a softball player?

Emily Honoka (5:43)

Well, that too, yes.

Sharon Alfonsi (5:44)

I gave him a run for his money. When the hunting and fun was over, the men headed to the airport. Sarah Boyd's husband John checked in from the plane.

Anderson Cooper (5:53)

John had texted me when he first boarded and said boarded, bourbon in hand. And then right before they landed, he said about to land this bird.

Sharon Alfonsi (6:03)

Jill Claggett was tucked into bed with her young daughters, waiting for her husband Tommy, when the phone rang. And then I kind of slid out of the bed not to wake them up. And I turned on the TV and

Anderson Cooper (6:17)

I remember just seeing the explosion.

Sharon Alfonsi (6:20)

Fire command. The accident happened in the river. Families raced to the airport as divers searched the icy Potomac. By morning, they were told the rescue mission was over.

Anderson Cooper (6:32)

I literally screamed, what am I going to do? It got to the point where like his friends were calling me at like five in the morning and they were like, is he okay? Is he okay? I said, no, he's dead. He's gone. And it's no longer a rescue, it's a recovery. Which means there's no survivors.

Emily Honoka (6:49)

None.

Sharon Alfonsi (6:51)

As the wreckage was pulled from the river, federal investigators began a year long forensic autopsy of the collision. Video shows the American Airlines jet seen here on the right of your screen pulled up just before it and the army helicopter collided.

Emily Honoka (7:07)

There were obvious cracks in the system. There were obvious holes.

Sharon Alfonsi (7:10)

Emily Hinoka says she saw those holes during her time as an air traffic controller at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, commonly known by its airport code, dca. Her shift in the control tower ended a few hours before the fatal crash. She is speaking for the first time about the stress conditions that she believes set the stage for tragedy.

Emily Honoka (7:33)

You had frontline controllers ringing that bell for years and years saying this is not safe, this cannot continue, please change this. And that didn't happen for more than a decade.

Sharon Alfonsi (7:46)

Air traffic controllers warned the Federal Aviation Administration that the tempo of passenger jets and beehive of army police and hospital helicopters near DCA was a recipe for disaster. The NTSB confirms between 2021 and 2024, 85 near mid air collisions between helicopters and commercial aircraft at DCA were reported to the FAA. And 60 Minutes has obtained documents that reveal just one day before last year's fatal crash, two separate passenger jets had to take sudden action to avoid colliding with army helicopters.

Emily Honoka (8:25)

The warning signs were all there. Controllers formed local safety councils. And every time that a controller made these safety reports, another controller was compiling data to back up the recommendation. And many recommendations were made and they never went too far.

Sharon Alfonsi (8:43)

DCA is unique. It's owned by the federal government. And the number of daily flights is ultimately determined by Congress. Since 2000, lawmakers added at least 50 flights to the already congested airport and approved another 10 in 2024.

Emily Honoka (9:00)

Some hours are overloaded to the point where it's over the capacity that the airport can Handle.

Sharon Alfonsi (9:07)

Was there pressure to get more planes in and out?

Emily Honoka (9:09)

Yeah, there was definitely a pressure. If you do not move planes, you will gridlock the airport.

Sharon Alfonsi (9:16)

DCA moves 25 million passengers a year, 10 million more than its intended capacity. Its location near the heart of D.C. makes it popular, but also problematic. Restricted airspace near the airport shields the White House, the US Capitol, and other government buildings for years funneling planes and helicopters into the same narrow corridor over the Potomac. And Honoka showed us on her map of the airspace why the tarmac is just as tricky. There are only three short runways at DCA and none are parallel. And so if a plane's coming in because these runways intersect, everything is connected.

Emily Honoka (10:00)

Everything is connected. There is no independent operation at DCA.

Sharon Alfonsi (10:05)

DCA's main Runway, Runway 1, is the busiest in the country with over 800 flights a day, roughly one every minute. To make it work, Honoka says air traffic controllers often relied on what they called a squeeze play.

Emily Honoka (10:20)

A squeeze play is when everything is dependent on an aircraft rolling, an aircraft slowing, and you know it's going to be a very close operation.

Sharon Alfonsi (10:29)

So they're really just one's going up and one's going in at the same time.

Emily Honoka (10:33)

And that is a really common operation.

Sharon Alfonsi (10:36)

Two airplanes on one Runway within seconds of each other. Is that normal at other airports?

Emily Honoka (10:42)

No. So you'll get new controllers come in, so they've transferred from other facilities and they'll look at the operation and say, absolutely not, and they'll withdraw from training. And that when I was there, it was about 50%.

Sharon Alfonsi (10:55)

50%.

Emily Honoka (10:56)

About half of the people that walked in the building to train would say absolutely not.

Sharon Alfonsi (11:00)

A year after the crash, nearly one third of the controller positions in the DCA tower are unfilled.

Emily Honoka (11:07)

It was surprising walking into that work environment, how close aircraft were.

Sharon Alfonsi (11:13)

It's just kind of accepted there.

Emily Honoka (11:16)

Yeah, this is what has to happen in order to make this airspace work. And it did work. It worked. Until it didn't.

Sharon Alfonsi (11:23)

In January, the NTSB determined the mid air collision of Flight 5342 and the Black Hawk helicopter was preventable. In its 388 page report, investigators didn't identify a single cause of the accident. Rather, they called out systemic failures, including ignored warning signs about risks and a helicopter route that was designed so poorly that in some parts of the sky, it allowed for just 75ft of vertical separation between helicopters and passenger jets.

Anderson Cooper (11:56)

I flew these routes hundreds of times.

Sharon Alfonsi (12:00)

During his 20 years in the Army, Tim Lilly flew Black Hawk helicopters often down the Potomac river near dca. The night of the crash, investigators say the Black Hawk crew was relying on what's called visual separation, literally just looking out the window to avoid nearby passenger jets.

Anderson Cooper (12:19)

To apply visual separation, the pilot has to positively identify the other aircraft and say, that's the plane you're talking, that's the plane. And he has to maintain constant surveillance on that aircraft, which is impossible under these conditions.

Sharon Alfonsi (12:34)

Impossible, he says, because the crew was likely wearing night vision goggles, which Lilly says limit what a pilot can see. Help people out with this at home because I think we've all watched enough movies where you see somebody put on night vision goggles and they can see everything. But that's not the case.

Anderson Cooper (12:50)

Especially under these conditions, that's not the case. So when you have a lot of bright lights like you do in Washington D.C. area, everything gets washed out through the goggles. Aircraft Washington Star Automador 2 Nadir Nadder 0.

Sharon Alfonsi (13:04)

The NTSB built this simulation to show what those Black Hawk pilots saw, or rather what they couldn't see. That green circle indicates the pilot's view wearing night vision goggles. That purple circle is the American Airlines jet they were supposed to be looking out for. You can see how it's hard to distinguish between an airliner and ground lights. Night vision goggles also limit peripheral vision. So the crew on a training mission didn't see Flight 5000, 342 until it was too late.

Anderson Cooper (13:37)

So the proper way to fly that is constantly scanning, always moving your head side to side because your field of view is limited with goggles.

Sharon Alfonsi (13:45)

But why is that kind of training happening in this airspace where it's so busy?

Anderson Cooper (13:49)

The military would say this is where our mission is, this is where we need to train. And to some degree I agree with that. But those training environments, they should be nowhere near commercial airliners.

Sharon Alfonsi (14:02)

Tim Lilly is now advocating for changes to make the skies safer. His son Sam shared his love of aviation and in the cruelest twist of Fate was the first officer on American Airlines Flight 5342, one of the 67 killed in the crash.

Anderson Cooper (14:19)

And I never thought to warn him about the helicopters because I just didn't realize how far the safety margins had slipped since I had flown those routes.

Sharon Alfonsi (14:31)

This was a system that failed. The people on the aircraft, on the helicopter, in the air traffic control tower. Jennifer Homendy is the chairwoman of the NTSB. After a year long investigation, the agency suggested 50 safety recommendations to prevent similar accidents. If everybody knows those coast calls are dangerous, then why didn't anybody step in and say, we have to lighten the load here. The air traffic control tower the entire time was saying, we have a real safety problem here, and nobody was listening. It was like somebody was asleep at the switch or didn't want to act. It is a bureaucratic nightmare. Immediately after the accident, the FAA moved some helicopter routes away from DCA and and ended the use of visual separation. Earlier this month, it expanded that ban to busy airports across the country. In a statement to 60 Minutes, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he's helped secure more than $12 billion to, quote, aggressively overhaul our air traffic control system. But the problems at DCA continue. Since the crash, 60 Minutes has learned at least four times aircraft and helicopters have gotten too close, triggering safety reports. It is unconscionable that we are having to be here right now. Some of the families of Flight 5342 are now fixtures on Capitol Hill advocating for aircraft surveillance technology that might have saved their loved ones. Jennifer Homendy says if the FAA and lawmakers don't move quickly on safety legislation, they are clearing the path for another disaster. I imagine most of them fly in

Emily Honoka (16:20)

and out of dca.

Sharon Alfonsi (16:22)

They do. So what would you say if they were listening? I'd say, why do we always have to wait until people die to take action?

Cecilia Vega (16:38)

It is not hard to destroy a college.

Emily Honoka (16:41)

Last season, the podcast Campus Files brought you stories of fraternity drug rings, stolen body parts, campus cults, and more.

Anderson Cooper (16:49)

And now Campus Files is back for another season. There's a guy screaming into his phone. He's like, I just saw Charlie Kirk get assassinated right in front of me. Every week is a new episode and a new story. It was so chaotic. It's almost like a university under siege.

Emily Honoka (17:03)

Listen to and follow Campus Files available now. Wherever you get your podcasts.

Sharon Alfonsi (17:12)

Now. Holly Williams on assignment for 60 Minutes.

Cecilia Vega (17:17)

When America went to war with Iran last month, the US Military faced an enemy using mass produced drones to deadly effect. The same weapons have been used for years in Ukraine, some of them supplied by Iran to Russia. Unmanned and remotely controlled drones have transformed the Ukrainian battlefield. They're estimated to inflict around 80% of combat casualties on both sides. Sides? The technology is nothing short of revolutionary and it's evolving rapidly as we discovered to adapt to the new era. The US Military is learning lessons from Ukraine. Forget everything you think you know about warfare. The traditional front line in Ukraine has expanded to a roughly 10 mile wide strip called the kill zone. Anyone who sets foot there can be spotted by a drone operator and hunted down. This was a Narrow escape for some Ukrainian soldiers. They call these Frankenstein tanks, retrofitted with cages and mesh to deflect drone strikes. Netting covers roads close to the front designed to catch them before they hit their target. To evade interference from electronic jammers, both militaries launch drones attached to miles long spools of fiber optic wire, leaving behind a digital spider's web. But the drones are not just in the air. Continuously innovating.

Anderson Cooper (19:17)

Yes.

Cecilia Vega (19:17)

Beside a frozen lake, Ukraine's security service took us to see one of their most treasured weapons. I mean, it looks a bit like a fishing boat scout. That's an outboard motor.

Anderson Cooper (19:28)

Yeah, yeah.

Cecilia Vega (19:29)

It's a sea drone developed in Ukraine called Sea Baby. We're protecting this operator's identity because he's a target for Russian assassination. What's the payload on this?

Anderson Cooper (19:42)

It can really take 2,000 kilograms.

Cecilia Vega (19:46)

2,000 kilos of explosives. Is that enough to take out a Russian warship?

Anderson Cooper (19:50)

Yes.

Cecilia Vega (19:51)

Produced for around $300,000. Ukrainian sea drones have destroyed warships that cost tens of millions. Ukraine says it's used them to sink or disable 11 Russian vessels. Which one is more useful, a warship or a sea drone? Like the Sea Baby.

Anderson Cooper (20:10)

Sea drone. I think it's really hard to destroy these drones because they are smaller. That's why to have like 10 ships like this is much better than having one big one.

Cecilia Vega (20:22)

Wow. To be clear, you're saying you'd rather have 10 sea drones than a warship?

Anderson Cooper (20:27)

Yeah. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Cecilia Vega (20:31)

Oleksandr Kamyshin started out the war as the CEO of Ukraine's railways. He was so good at his job, helping millions of Ukrainians to evacuate, that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recruited him to become the architect of Ukraine's drone program.

Anderson Cooper (20:48)

Cheap, fast, efficient.

Cecilia Vega (20:51)

Commission told us he helped boost Ukraine's production from 2,000 drones a year to 4 million. For the outnumbered Ukrainians, the inexpensive new technology has allowed them to level the battlefield.

Anderson Cooper (21:07)

It's a data driven war. We speak numbers. It's a numbers game.

Cecilia Vega (21:12)

What do you mean by a numbers game?

Anderson Cooper (21:14)

We have to count everything. We have to count number of drones. We use efficiency of each of them. Cost to kill for every Russian.

Cecilia Vega (21:25)

And what is the cost of killing every Russian?

Anderson Cooper (21:28)

You would be surprised, but the cost of killing every Russian is less than $1,000 now. That's why they send so many people to die on the front line. They don't count them, they don't value them.

Cecilia Vega (21:42)

Would you want to be in Vladimir Putin's shoes right now?

Anderson Cooper (21:45)

No. Strategically, he lost. He Wanted us to become weaker, became much stronger.

Cecilia Vega (21:55)

Ten retired US generals told us they agree that Russia isn't winning the war despite its territorial gains. Some caution that Ukraine isn't winning either. But with the help of drones has managed to draw Russia into a stalemate. This is like a kind of obstacle course for drones. Ukraine's military has set up drone training academies to teach the new technology patience and practice.

Anderson Cooper (22:27)

Yes, I mean, practice makes perfect, am I right?

Cecilia Vega (22:30)

And the rapid shifts in tactics that come with it. This ground drone, mounted with a 50 caliber machine gun, recently held off a Russian attack single handedly for 45 days straight. In January, three Russian soldiers surrendered to a similar robotic drone.

Anderson Cooper (22:50)

Our main idea, we can send the robot and to not risk with a human life. So for us, it's a human life is the most important.

Cecilia Vega (22:58)

Ukraine says it makes more than 95% of its own military drones, harnessing talent from some unusual places. Roman Tikhychenko is a former brewery engineer who founded a company called Tencor and developed these remote controlled armored evacuation drones to transport wounded soldiers. They gave us a demonstration at a military training ground and claim the drones have saved hundreds of lives. How do you figure out what your next design needs to be?

Anderson Cooper (23:32)

We are working with the end users, end users.

Cecilia Vega (23:35)

That means the soldiers who are on the front line. Yeah, the soldiers said we need a drone to do evacuations. And you built it?

Anderson Cooper (23:42)

Yep, that's how it works in Ukraine. We are designing for soldiers.

Cecilia Vega (23:47)

The same drone base can be Adapted to mount a 40 millimeter grenade launcher controlled from a bunker, which could be hundreds of miles away. When it comes to drones, how quickly is the technology changing?

Anderson Cooper (24:03)

Innovation cycle is roughly one week. It means from the point you send a drone to the front line, get the feedback, change something and get the new version. It could be as short as one week.

Cecilia Vega (24:18)

Are the Russians also innovating?

Anderson Cooper (24:20)

Yes, definitely. We have to admit it.

Cecilia Vega (24:24)

Who has the edge at this point,

Anderson Cooper (24:27)

I would say that's equilibrium.

Cecilia Vega (24:29)

Equilibrium in a drone arms race. And both sides will take any help they can get. Air Logics makes aerial surveillance drones for the Ukrainian military. Their production spread across more than 20 sites to minimise risk because they've already been bombed twice by Russia. It's a dangerous business, but the company recently secured over a million dollars from an American investment fund that specialises in Ukrainian drone technology. It's run by two former U.S. marines, William McNulty, who has a background in humanitarian work, and Lenore Karafa, who built a career in finance after leaving the military. They told us their Investors are wealthy individuals who support Ukraine.

Sharon Alfonsi (25:20)

I worked at one or two jobs

Anderson Cooper (25:22)

after the military that were more about the money than anything else. That is not my main motivation. You didn't join the Marines for the money.

Cecilia Vega (25:30)

What's your main motivation?

Anderson Cooper (25:32)

Service, patriotism, democracy, mission.

Cecilia Vega (25:36)

And Ukraine ticks all of those boxes.

Anderson Cooper (25:39)

It ticks all of those boxes. I fell in love with the Ukrainians when they arrived. How could you not? And how can you not just come to help the people that are literally fighting for what NATO was created for, to stop Russian aggression.

Cecilia Vega (26:02)

At a NATO training exercise in Estonia last year, the alliance tested its vulnerability against drones. Around a thousand NATO personnel were defeated in the drill by a group of drone operators, some of them Ukrainian. Is this a revolution in warfare?

Anderson Cooper (26:22)

It is.

Cecilia Vega (26:23)

No question in your mind.

Anderson Cooper (26:24)

No question, no question. You know, in every war, there is innovation, from going from horses to tanks to machine guns.

Cecilia Vega (26:31)

And then tactics evolve in response to that.

Anderson Cooper (26:34)

And that is why it's just incredibly important for the US for our European allies to learn these lessons from Ukraine. There's a real risk that the US would lose its military supremacy if it doesn't adapt to modern conditions on the battlefield. We're going to be going up against these same unmanned systems that Russia is using against Ukraine.

Cecilia Vega (26:56)

The US Military told us it intends to hang on to its supremacy not by buying, stockpiling, or replicating Ukraine's drones, but by tapping into the same page passion for innovation the Ukrainians have at the Wiesbaden garrison in Germany.

Anderson Cooper (27:15)

Cable channels you run through keep everything nice and flush.

Cecilia Vega (27:18)

The Forge is one of dozens of drone innovation labs set up by the US military around the world.

Sharon Alfonsi (27:25)

Props are good.

Cecilia Vega (27:28)

Any service member with an idea or just an interest can request to spend time in one of the the labs.

Anderson Cooper (27:34)

The legs slide out and you just add a spacer. It's adding a culture of innovation, and that's new. That's not something that we've really seen in the last 20 years.

Cecilia Vega (27:43)

Is it possible that a soldier will walk into one of those innovation labs with an idea that could be a breakthrough in drone technology?

Anderson Cooper (27:51)

It's entirely possible. The thing with drones and innovation is what I would describe as unlimited innovation potential. If you can think of it, you can make a drone do it. Expedited basic training.

Cecilia Vega (28:03)

Captain Ronan Sefton was first deployed to Germany with the Army's 2nd Cavalry Regiment not long after Russia launched its invasion in 2022. His job was to give basic training to over 8,000 Ukrainian soldiers. But he told us almost immediately the Americans began Learning from the Ukrainians.

Anderson Cooper (28:26)

The first really poignant lesson for us was there needs to be more drones. They need to be everywhere involved in the training to add to the realism.

Cecilia Vega (28:34)

So the Ukrainian soldiers were giving that to you as feedback?

Anderson Cooper (28:37)

Absolutely.

Cecilia Vega (28:38)

Did you then talk to your commanding officers about it?

Anderson Cooper (28:41)

We went to every senior commander we could. The thing that we wanted to communicate was this is important. It's changing warfare and here's how we can actually implement it now. We're already doing it. We should scale this.

Cecilia Vega (28:53)

The message got through and now Sefton's joined the Army's Ukraine Lessons Learned task force. It has the job of translating experience from Ukraine's scrappy fighting force to America's sprawling military. He told us the new technology does not make the US Military's traditional firepower obsolete, but it needs to adapt urgently countering the drones developed by America's adversaries. You still need howitzers, you still need Abrams, but you have to figure out how to get the drones to work with the howitzers and Abrams.

Anderson Cooper (29:31)

Exactly. And that's the challenge, but also the goal to become ready for the next conflict. We see it with the armed forces of Ukraine. They have learned these lessons through blood. There will of course be additional lessons that we will learn, perhaps through blood, but it will only make us better at what we already are.

Cecilia Vega (29:51)

The day after that interview, the United States went to war and the Iranian drones began flying. The first Americans killed in the conflict were targeted with a drone. The US Military is now learning its lessons in blood, just as Ukraine did.

Sharon Alfonsi (30:20)

The next breakthrough in battlefield drones.

Cecilia Vega (30:23)

Drones working together like a swarm of bees.

Anderson Cooper (30:26)

Exactly.

Cecilia Vega (30:27)

Pretty scary.

Anderson Cooper (30:28)

It is scary, absolutely.

Cecilia Vega (30:29)

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Anderson Cooper (30:35)

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Scott Pelley (31:03)

Imagine in the 21st century discovering a marvel on par with Mount Everest or, or the Grand Canyon. It happened in 2009 with the revelation of the largest cave passage in the world. It's in Vietnam and they call it Hang Song Dong Mountain River Cave. An intrepid British explorer, Peter McNabb led the first team through this epic underworld of caverns. The height of skyscrapers. McNabb is to caving what Armstrong is to the moon. The first explorer. Recently, we asked McNabb to show us this wonder of the world. But before we begin our trek, we really have to show you a preview of where we're going. Simply glorious. This was the moment Son Dong caught us in its grasp. Sunbeams cascading 120 stories from a break in the ceiling. Groundwater above us slipping through the light like rain and rock, reflecting what seemed like the only sound in the world. Not many have stood in this space that transcends time. It was a reward for our journey that began days before. The only way to Son Dong is on foot. A trek of a day and a half. We had a party of 53 moving in groups, mostly porters, heaving camping and TV gear, plus experts in safety and climbing. There were 20 river crossings, water flowing through limestone, two of the essentials for building caves. This is the slender center of Vietnam. The Chusan Range between Laos and the South China Sea. We were following the Vietnam War's Ho Chi Minh Trail through a jungle where tigers are not unknown and leeches are plentiful.

Sharon Alfonsi (33:35)

Oh, there's another one.

Scott Pelley (33:38)

Leading us were explorers. Howard Lambert, whose work in Vietnam over 30 years discovered 500 caves. And Peter McNabb, whom Lambert sent to be the first in Sondome.

Anderson Cooper (33:52)

I find it an adventure going exploring and not quite knowing what's around the corner and just sort of finding your way through. And things reveal themselves, like big chambers, big passages or tight narrow bits, beautiful formations.

Scott Pelley (34:09)

And there aren't a lot of places on Earth that you can discover for the very first time.

Anderson Cooper (34:12)

No, you have to look pretty hard for them.

Scott Pelley (34:15)

You have to look pretty hard. For the entrance to Son Dong, you'd hardly notice but for the writing on the wall proclaiming the miracle of ho Kan. In 1990, Ho Kahn, a villager, discovered this entrance after he sheltered here from a storm. He told us, I was collecting wood. I saw a sinkhole and I felt something strange. The strange feeling was wind blowing out of the ground. Cavers know that's the breath of a tremendous cavern. In 2000, the British cavers asked young Hokan to show them. But it took eight years. He'd lost it in the trackless jungle. In 2008, I finally found it, he told us. In 2009, they started exploring. That exploration began here. We're just inside, looking back toward the entrance. Above the first obstacle is a spectacular 30 story wall that our climbing team showed us how to descend.

Anderson Cooper (35:36)

You step to the left side, darkness

Scott Pelley (35:39)

would be nearly total. But we lit it so you can see Peter McNabb was the first to do this in 2009. He and four others on his team were dropping into darkness.

Anderson Cooper (35:54)

There's an obvious big black hole where you're heading towards and you just sort of skirt around and look around and find this way's pretty good. This way works quite often. You get stopped. Can't get down here. You just basically feel your way through the cave by trial and error. You had no idea, none whatsoever, what

Scott Pelley (36:13)

was beyond the light on your helmet.

Anderson Cooper (36:14)

Yeah, no, we didn't at all. Every corner you went round was completely new, completely exciting, and it just kept getting better and better as you went into the cave. It was absolutely spectacular.

Scott Pelley (36:26)

Spectacular like the entrance. We just rappelled down. Look at the two men halfway down holding lights. At the very top is the entrance and the last daylight we would see for a while. At the bottom of the climb, we met the architect of Son Dong, the Brow Tongue River. Its waters are acidic, so it's really good at dissolving limestone. Well, this is a pretty good setting for an interview. Yeah. In camp, we spoke to Purdue University geologist Darrell Granger, who came here in 2010 to figure out when the river started its project.

Anderson Cooper (37:15)

We found a nice package of sediment further in the cave, and that dated to about two and a half million years ago.

Scott Pelley (37:23)

That's when the river first found a tiny crack in the limestone ridge.

Anderson Cooper (37:29)

The width of a hair, maybe. Right. That's all it takes to make a cave. The water started flowing through it and dissolving it, bigger and bigger and bigger. We still have water going through it today, so it's continuing to get bigger as we speak.

Scott Pelley (37:45)

Our exploration of the cave took three days and two nights. The length is 5.6 miles. It's 65 stories tall and the width of one and a half football fields. The Great Pyramid of Giza would fit easily. A 747 could fly through the biggest passage and not scrape a wing. Sometimes the only way forward was the width of our shoulders. But we noticed in the broadest caverns, you often lose the sense of even being underground. What reminds you is the isolation. No cell phone, no satellite. We were cut off from the world. Roughly halfway, there was a light. Ahead, there are two skylights where the roof collapsed. For us, a break from total darkness and a chance to show you the scale. Geologists call these holes dolines. The word has used European roots. It means sinkhole or depression. And this doe line formed because the roof over our heads, the limestone is a little bit thinner here than it is in the rest of the cave. Then, as the cave grew wider and wider and wider over millions of years, it was unable to support the roof above. It all caved in right here. What's remarkable about it is that it allows light into this cave that would otherwise be utterly dark. And it allowed the jungle to come inside the cave. Like everything else about the cave, this Doe line is enormous. It's 450ft above my head. In other words, about the height of a 45 story building. We stopped here with Howard Lambert, who's explored Vietnam since the 90s. When my producer, Nicole Young suggested the story, I turned her down. I said, nick, it's a hole in the ground.

Anderson Cooper (40:06)

Yeah.

Scott Pelley (40:07)

What was I missing?

Anderson Cooper (40:08)

You're missing best adventure that happens in the world.

Scott Pelley (40:11)

Something no one's seen before.

Anderson Cooper (40:13)

That's the beauty of caves. If you climb in a mountain, you can see where you're going, but in a cave, when you go in, you don't know what it's going to do.

Scott Pelley (40:21)

Your father was a caver?

Anderson Cooper (40:22)

He was, yep. So he was a caver in Scotland.

Scott Pelley (40:25)

Peter McNabb, the first in Son Dong, has been caving since he was a boy. You grew up in a cave?

Anderson Cooper (40:33)

Not quite, but within a mile of it.

Scott Pelley (40:37)

McNabb is a construction manager in New Zealand. Big projects like hospitals, but you get the sense he does that to pay for this. In all the caving that you've done, what is the closest call you've ever had?

Anderson Cooper (40:51)

I've been stuck. I've had rocks collapsed and I've been flooded in.

Scott Pelley (40:56)

He was stuck a few years ago when he went headfirst into a crevice that cavers call a squeeze. McNabb couldn't back out. A partner found him and used a knife to rip away his coat to give him the spare half inch he needed. Did he pull you out by your feet?

Anderson Cooper (41:16)

Pretty much, yeah.

Scott Pelley (41:19)

You are still exploring this region?

Anderson Cooper (41:21)

Yes, yes. We come back every two years and we've barely scratched the surface of the caves in this area.

Scott Pelley (41:28)

There may be another biggest cave in the world.

Anderson Cooper (41:30)

That could well be.

Scott Pelley (41:32)

Truth is, McNab's first expedition in 2009 never reached the end of Son Dome. Beyond this underground lake, he discovered a 30 story wall and ran out of time before he could scale it.

Anderson Cooper (41:50)

Take in, take in, take in.

Scott Pelley (41:54)

We climbed it on our trek and understood immediately why they call it the Great Wall of Vietnam.

Anderson Cooper (42:03)

Keep the line tight. Take in. Excellent. Take in on the lifeline.

Scott Pelley (42:09)

It's a 300 foot climb on slick rock with no foothold anywhere.

Anderson Cooper (42:17)

Take in Excellent, Scott. That's really good. Come right up to the corner.

Scott Pelley (42:26)

It's challenging enough until you realize, of course, you're doing it in the dark and it's essentially raining. The groundwater is coming from the roof. So with everything wet, you find yourself slipping back while climbing up. But our team got us up and over drenched and a little exhausted. Well, we saved the best for last. We've made it all the way through nearly all the miles of the cave over three days, and now we just have a little bit further to go. In fact, I can see the exit from here. We could see it, that light up there. But we still had quite a climb to make. We learned by the end of our trek that Son Dong may be even larger than we know. Hundreds of feet down below that lake behind us, the water is draining. Somewhere there could be more caverns beyond. It's the work of millions of years, likely to continue for millions more. Unimaginable time, measured by a pendulum of light illuminating the splendor of one of the greatest marvels on or under the earth.

Cecilia Vega (44:06)

The Last minute of 60 minutes.

Scott Pelley (44:11)

As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of independence, we wondered about a game plan for the country's future. So hall of Fame basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski drew one up for us.

Anderson Cooper (44:28)

To build a championship culture, you need talent and character. You then develop the values of that culture. The best teams have the best values. We had seven Integrity. Do the right thing. Respect everyone is important. Courage. The courage to say or do what needs to be said or done in that moment. Selfless, service, loyalty, duty, the dignity of work and trust. Values based organizations stand the test of time. Our country has great talent, and for 250 years, we have proven that we stand unshaken by the tests of history. Moving into the future, we must continue to teach, celebrate, and most importantly, live the values that have made America the best country in the world.

Scott Pelley (45:27)

I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes

Anderson Cooper (45:35)

on big lives. We take a single cultural icon, people like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Little Richard, and we pull apart the story behind the image. And we do this by digging through the BBC's vast archives, discovering forgotten interviews that change exactly how we see these giants of our culture. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I'm Emmanuel Joci. I'm Kai Wright. And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives wherever you get your podcasts. Me and my brother, we grew up off the grid, a new Paramount plus

Scott Pelley (46:11)

Original documentary explores the wild true story of two brothers.

Sharon Alfonsi (46:16)

They were dubbed the Wild Boys.

Anderson Cooper (46:17)

There's no driving records, nothing tangible.

Emily Honoka (46:20)

What's their story?

Scott Pelley (46:21)

Who shook a small town after they emerged mysteriously from the Canadian wilderness?

Emily Honoka (46:26)

Are they criminals?

Anderson Cooper (46:26)

Maybe they're in a cult. Who are these guys? Why are they here? Not my job, to tell you the truth.

Scott Pelley (46:32)

Wild Boys Strangers In Town now streaming on Paramount plus.