30 April 1975: Saigon, South Vietnam Falls To Communist North Vietnam

The Fall of Saigon, or the Liberation of Saigon, depending on context, was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by North Vietnam's People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, also known as the Vi?t C?ng, on 30 April 1975.

The event marked the end of the Vietnam Conflict, as there was never a formal declaration of war, and the start of a transition period to the formal reunification of Vietnam under the Socialist Republic. North Vietnamese forces, under the command of General V?n Ti?n D?ng,

began their final attack on Saigon on 29 April 1975, with Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces commanded by General Nguy?n V?n Toàn suffering heavy artillery bombardment.

This bombardment at the Tan S?n Nh?t Airport killed the last two American servicemen to die in Vietnam: United States Marines Darwin Judge and Charles McMahon.

By the afternoon of 30 April 1975, North Vietnamese troops had occupied the important points of Saigon and raised their flag over the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace.

The South Vietnamese government capitulated shortly afterward.

The capture of Saigon was preceded by the evacuation of almost all the American civilian and military personnel in Saigon, along with tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians associated with the southern regime.

The evacuation culminated in Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation in history. In addition to the flight of refugees, the end of the conflict and institution of new rules by the Communists contributed to a decline in Saigon's population.

The speed with which the South Vietnamese position collapsed in April of 1975 was surprising to most American and South Vietnamese observers alike, and probably to the North Vietnamese and their allies as well.

For instance, a memo prepared by the CIA and U.S. Army Intelligence and published on 5 March 1975 indicated that South Vietnam could hold out through the current dry season—i.e., at least until 1976 and possibly longer. These predictions proved to be grievously in error. Even as that memo was being released, General V?n Ti?n D?ng, Commander of North Vietnam's military forces, was preparing a major offensive in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam which began on 10 March 1975 and led to the capture of Bu?n Ma Thu?t that is very close to Saigon.

The ARVN began a disorderly and costly retreat, hoping to redeploy its forces and hold the southern part of South Vietnam, perhaps an enclave south of the 13th Parallel North latitude (the recognized and original boundary between North and South Vietnam is the 17th Parallel North latitude, so the South Vietnamese had already conceded a lot of territory).

Supported by artillery and armor, the North Vietnamese continued to march towards Saigon, capturing the major cities of northern South Vietnam at the end of March—Hu? on 25 March and ?à N?ng on 28 March. Along the way, disorderly South Vietnamese retreats and the flight of refugees—there were more than 300,000 in ?à N?ng—damaged South Vietnamese prospects for a turnaround. After the loss of ?à N?ng, those prospects had already been dismissed as nonexistent by American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers in Vietnam, who believed that nothing short of massive and sustained B-52 strikes against Hanoi could possibly stop the North Vietnamese advances.

By 8 April 1975, the North Vietnamese Politburo, the main group of people in a Communist government who make decisions about policy, which in March of 1975 had recommended caution to General V?n Ti?n D?ng, Commander of the North Vietnamese military forces, abruptly changed their strategy and policies and cabled him to demand “unremitting vigor in the attack all the way to the heart of Saigon.” On 14 April 1975, they renamed the campaign the "H? Chí Minh campaign," after revolutionary leader H? Chí Minh, President of North Vietnam,

in hopes of successfully achieving their mission goals before his birthday on 19 May 1975.

Meanwhile, South Vietnam failed to garner any significant increase in military aid from the United States, snuffing out President Nguy?n V?n Thi?u’s hopes for renewed American support.

On 9 April 1975, PAVN forces reached Xuan L?c, the last line of defense before Saigon, where the ARVN 18th Division made a last stand and held the city through fierce fighting for several days. The PAVN finally overran Xuan L?c on 20 April 1975 despite heavy losses and, on 21 April 1975, President Nguy?n V?n Thi?u of South Vietnam resigned in a tearful televised announcement in which he denounced the United States for failing to come to the aid of South Vietnam (Hell's Bells! Methinks that this individual had to be totally delusional by this time, as the United States and its Allies had been in South Vietnam for about twenty years supporting a "conflict" and, since the early 1960s, had active-duty military fighting the Communist oppression and training the South Vietnamese military to boot!).  Yet, this "skirmish" was never a declared war!

The North Vietnamese front line was now just 26 miles from downtown Saigon. The victory at Xuan L?c, which had drawn many South Vietnamese troops away from the Mekong Delta area, opened the way for PAVN to encircle Saigon, and they soon did so, moving 100,000 troops in position around the city by 27 April 1975. With the ARVN having few defenders, the fate of Saigon was effectively sealed at this point in time.

The ARVN III Corps commander, General Nguy?n V?n Toàn, had organized five centers of resistance to defend Saigon. These fronts were so connected as to form an arc enveloping the entire area west, north, and east of the capital city. The Cu Chi front to the northwest was defended by the 25th Division; the Binh Duong front to the north was the responsibility of the 5th Division; the Bien Hoa front to the northeast was defended by the 18th Division; the Vung Tau and 15 Route front to the southeast were held by the 1st Airborne Brigade and one battalion of the 3rd Division; and the Long An front, for which the Capital Military District Command was responsible, was defended by elements of the re-formed 22nd Division.

South Vietnamese defensive forces around Saigon totaled approximately 60,000 troops. However, as the exodus made it into Saigon, along with them were many ARVN soldiers, which swelled the "men under arm" in the city to over 250,000. These units were mostly battered and leaderless, which threw Saigon into further anarchy.

The rapid North Vietnamese advances of March and early April of 1975 led to increased concern in Saigon that the city, which had been fairly peaceful throughout the war and whose people had endured relatively little suffering, was soon to come under direct attack. Many feared that, once Communists took control of the city, a bloodbath of reprisals would take place.

In 1968, PAVN and National Liberation Front (NLF) forces had occupied Hu? for close to a month. After the Communists were repelled, American and ARVN forces had found mass graves. A study prepared for the U.S. mission in Vietnam indicated that the Communists had targeted ARVN officers, Roman Catholics, intellectuals, businessmen, and other suspected counter-revolutionaries, at least in the Communist way of thinking.

More recently, eight Americans captured in Bu?n Ma Thu?t had vanished, and reports of beheadings and other executions were filtering through from Hu? and ?à N?ng, mostly spurred on by North Vietnamese government propaganda. Most Americans and citizens of other countries allied to the United States wanted to evacuate Saigon before it fell, and many South Vietnamese (especially those associated with the United States' or South Vietnamese governments) wanted to leave as well.

As early as the end of March of 1975, some Americans were leaving Saigon. For instance, ten families departed on 31 March 1975. Flights out of Saigon, lightly booked under ordinary circumstances, were full. Throughout April of 1975, the speed of the evacuation increased, as the Defense Attaché’s Office (DAO) began to evacuate nonessential personnel from the area.

Many Americans attached to the DAO refused to leave without their Vietnamese friends and dependents, who included common-law wives and children. It was illegal for the DAO to move these people to American soil, and this initially slowed down the rate of departure, but eventually the DAO began illegally flying undocumented Vietnamese to Clark Air Force Base

in the northernmost island of the Philippine Islands.

On 3 April 1975, President Gerald Ford announced “Operation Babylift”, which would evacuate about 2,000 orphans from the country. One of the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy planes involved in the operation crashed, killing 155 passengers and crew and seriously reducing the morale of the American staff.

In addition to the over 2,500 orphans evacuated by Operation Babylift, Operation New Life resulted in the evacuation of over 110,000 Vietnamese refugees.

The final evacuation, as previously referenced earlier in this article, was Operation Frequent Wind that resulted in 7,000 people evacuated by helicopter from Saigon on to US Navy ships waiting offshore. 

As the following two photos show, personnel aboard the USS Okinawa are pushing South Vietnamese helicopters overboard to make room for people who were fleeing Saigon any way that they could.

By this time, the Ford administration had also begun planning a complete evacuation from South Vietnam of the American presence. Planning was complicated by practical, legal, and strategic concerns. The administration was divided in opinion as to how swift the evacuations should be. The Pentagon sought to evacuate people as fast as possible, to avoid the risk of casualties or other accidents. The U.S Ambassador to South Vietnam, Graham Martin, visible on left of picture below,

was technically the field commander for any evacuation, since evacuations are part of the purview of the State Department. Martin drew the ire of many in the Pentagon by wishing to keep the evacuation process as quiet and orderly as possible. His desire for this approach was to prevent total chaos and to deflect the real possibility of South Vietnamese turning against Americans and to keep all-out bloodshed from occurring.

President Ford approved a plan between the extremes in which all but 1,250 Americans—few enough to be removed in a single day’s helicopter airlift—would be evacuated quickly. The remaining 1,250 would leave only when the Saigon airport was threatened. In between, as many Vietnamese refugees as possible would be evacuated.

American evacuation planning was set against other administration policies. President Ford still hoped to gain additional military aid for South Vietnam. Throughout April of 1975, he attempted to get Congress behind a proposed appropriation of $722 million, which might allow for the reconstitution of some of the South Vietnamese forces that had been destroyed. Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under both the Nixon and Ford administrations, 

was opposed to a full-scale evacuation as long as the aid option remained on the table because the removal of American forces would signal a loss of faith in South Vietnam President Nguy?n V?n Thi?u and severely weaken him.

There was also a concern in the Ford administration over whether the use of military forces to support and carry out the evacuation was permitted under the newly-passed War Powers (Resolution) Act.

Eventually, White House lawyers determined that the use of American forces to rescue citizens in an emergency was unlikely to run afoul of the law, but the legality of using military assets to withdraw refugees was unknown.

While American citizens were generally assured of a simple way to leave the country just by showing up to an evacuation point, South Vietnamese who wanted to leave Saigon before it fell often resorted to independent arrangements. The under-the-table payments required to gain a passport and exit visa rapidly increased, and the price of seagoing vessels tripled. Those who owned property in Saigon were often forced to sell it at a substantial loss or abandon it altogether; the asking price of one very impressive house was decreased by 75 percent within a two-week period.

American visas were of enormous value, and South Vietnamese seeking American sponsors posted advertisements in newspapers. One such ad read: “Seeking adoptive parents. Poor diligent students.” followed by names, birthdates, and identity card numbers.

The American embassy processing staff quickly came to realize there had been a serious miscalculation of American figures, which up to this time had been based on 7,000 Americans to be evacuated. It now seemed virtually impossible to estimate how many Americans were living in Saigon and nearby Bein Hoa. Americans trying to flee found themselves unable to get exit visas and clearances for their wives and children unless they were willing to pay bribes to South Vietnamese officials, often running as high as $1,500. A South Vietnamese marriage certificate which, only a few months before, had cost no more than $20, now cost up to $2,000.

Americans and their South Vietnamese dependents, friends, and acquaintances worked their way into crowded lines to apply for or to obtain visas outnumbered the Americans doing the same thing. Despite the efforts of local police and consulate staff to turn back all South Vietnamese at the gates who were lacking proper papers,

many slipped into the embassy compound.

MSGs (Marines of the Security Guard) had to be posted on all four entrances and exits, including the consulate area. Crowds gathered outside daily and Saigon police would begin breaking them up by mid-day. A mood of panic and a sense of fear of being left behind began to develop during the last week before Saigon eventually fell to the Communist invaders.

After one day of bombardment and general offensive, the North Vietnamese were ready to make their final push into Saigon. In the early hours of 30 April 1975, North Vietnamese General V?n Ti?n D?ng received orders from the North Vietnamese Politburo to attack Saigon. General V?n Ti?n D?ng then ordered his subordinate field commanders to advance directly to key facilities and strategic points in Saigon. The first PAVN unit to enter the city was the 324th Division. By daybreak on 30 April 1975, it was obvious that the South Vietnamese ARVN position was untenable. At exactly 1024 hours on 30 April 1974, South Vietnamese officials announced an unconditional surrender. All ARVN troops were ordered "to cease hostilities in calm and to stay where they are," while inviting the Provisional Revolutionary Government to engage in "a ceremony of orderly transfer of power so as to avoid any unnecessary bloodshed in the population."

The North Vietnamese were in an overwhelmingly dominant position, and were not interested in a peaceful transfer of power. PAVN tanks under the command of Colonel Bùi Tín burst through the gates of the Independence Palace in Saigon around noon. They found South Vietnamese leaders sitting around a big oval table in the Cabinet Room, waiting for them.

As the PAVN leaders and soldiers entered the Cabinet Room, a South Vietnamese spokesman said: "The revolution is here. You are here." The South Vietnamese spokesman added: "We have been waiting for you so that we could turn over the government." Colonel Bùi Tín curtly replied: "There is no question of your transferring power. Your power has crumbled. You cannot give up what you do not have."

Later that afternoon, the South Vietnamese spokesman announced via radio: "I declare that the Saigon government is completely dissolved at all levels."

The Vietnam "Conflict" was finally over.

Was it really over? For many South Vietnamese evacuees, they left South Vietnam with the clothes on their backs, not sure where they would wind up. Some evacuees were brutally murdered on the high seas by pirates and looters from other nations. Some vessels sank in rough seas. Those who eventually made it to the United States were divvied up among the fifty States, often winding up in an area that was nothing like South Vietnam in appearance or climate or culture.

Some of the refugees turned to crime and gang activities. Yet, some did amazingly well. In 1985, I hired a young South Vietnamese refugee who had made it to Califotnia, educated himself to the point that he graduated magna cum laude from his Mechanical Engineering class at UCLA. He spoke perfect English. This young man was absolutely amazing, and I was honored to be his supervisor and to call him a friend and a fellow American citizen. Still am.

A few years later, I was asked to be a character reference for another young South Vietnamese refugee who jumped through all of the hoops to become a legal American citizen. He broke his back to learn English, to work his way through college, and to make something out of himself. I attended his ceremony and was just elated for his family and him as they achieved their dreams of becoming American citizens.

Sometimes, out of the worst of circumstances comes the best of people. 

Godspeed.

SOURCES: www.history.com ; www.cbsnews.com ; www.wikipedia.org ; www.fallofsaigon.org ; www.vietnamwar.org ; www.britannica.com ; www.msn.com ; www.bing.com ; www.google.com