The Vietnam War in pictures: the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon

[Amagi]

The Vietnam War in pictures: the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon


Warning: this slideshow contains images which you may find disturbing

The Vietnam War ended 35 years ago, on April 30, 1975, with the fall of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, to communist troops from the north. In this gallery, we look back at the conflict
April 30, 1975: a North Vietnamese tank rolls through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, signifying the fall of South Vietnam


June 11, 1963: Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, burns himself to death on a Saigon street to protest alleged persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government

January 9, 1964: a South Vietnamese soldier uses the end of a dagger to beat a farmer for allegedly supplying government troops with inaccurate information about the movement of Viet Cong guerrillas in a village west of Saigon
March 19, 1964: a father holds the body of his child as South Vietnamese Army Rangers look down from their armoured vehicle near the Cambodian border
March 1965: hovering US Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border

June 18, 1965: an unidentified US Army soldier wears a hand lettered "War Is Hell" slogan on his helmet

September 25, 1965: paratroopers of the US 2nd Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade hold their automatic weapons above water as they cross a river in the rain during a search for Viet Cong positions in the jungle area of Ben Cat, South Vietnam

November 3, 1965: a blindfolded Viet Cong guerrilla who refused to walk when captured after a raid on a Communist jungle hospital is carried on the back of a US soldier to an evacuation helicopter

November 15, 1965: a US Army officer sets fire to a hut in a Viet Cong training camp captured by the First Infantry Division during an attack on a stronghold 50 miles north west of Saigon

January 1, 1966: women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon

January 1966: First Cavalry Division medic Thomas Cole, from Richmond, Virginia, looks up with one uncovered eye as he treats a wounded Staff Sgt Harrison Pell during a firefight in the Central Highlands in Vietnam, between US troops and a combined North Vietnamese and Vietcong force

June 17, 1966: US Air Force planes spray the defoliant chemical Agent Orange over dense vegetation in South Vietnam

September 12, 1966: bewilderment and fear shows in the eyes of the youngest in a family of Vietnamese awaiting interrogation in a Viet Cong village 45 miles from Saigon. The blindfolds were intended to prevent the older members from observing American troop positions

September 21, 1966: US Marines emerge from their muddy foxholes at sunrise after a third night of fighting against continued attacks of north Vietnamese 324 B division troops

1966: Pfc Lacey Skinner of Birmingham, Alabama, crawls through the mud of a rice paddy avoiding heavy Viet Cong fire near An Thi in South Vietnam, as troops of the US 1st Cavalry Division fight a fierce 24-hour battle along the central coast

1966: the body of an American paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border is raised up to an evacuation helicopter in War Zone C

1966: US Army helicopters providing support for ground troops fly into a staging area 50 miles northeast of Saigon

June 1967: medic James E Callahan of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, looks up while applying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a seriously wounded soldier north of Saigon

June 15, 1967: American infantrymen crowd into a mud-filled bomb crater and look up at tall jungle trees seeking out Viet Cong snipers firing at them during a battle in Phuoc Vinh, north-northeast of Saigon in War Zone D

June 17, 1967: medic James E Callahan of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, treats a US infantryman who suffered a head wound when a Viet Cong bullet pierced his helmet during a three-hour battle in war zone D, about 50 miles northeast of Saigon

September 20, 1967: a Viet Cong suspect is led like a dog by a US marine for interrogation near Da Nang, South Vietnam

October 5, 1967: a young North Vietnamese woman covers a US Air Force pilot with a rifle as he is marched, head bowed, from his aircraft after being shot down near Hanoi

February 1, 1968: South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the national police, fires his pistol into the head of suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem, also known as Bay Lop, on a Saigon street, early in the Tet Offensive

April 1969: a South Vietnamese woman mourns over the body of her husband, found with 47 others in a mass grave near Hue

June 8, 1972: nine-year-old Kim Phuc, centre, runs down Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam after an aerial napalm attack

March 17, 1973: released prisoner of war Lt Col Robert L Stirm is greeted by his family at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, as he returns home from the Vietnam War

April 29, 1975: people try to scale the 14-foot wall of the US Embassy in Saigon, trying to reach evacuation helicopters, as the last of the Americans depart from Vietnam

April 29, 1975: a South Vietnamese mother and her three children are shown on the deck of an amphibious command ship being plucked out of Saigon by US Marine helicopters

April 29, 1975: US Navy personnel aboard the USS Blue Ridge push a helicopter into the sea off the coast of Vietnam in order to make room for more evacuation flights from Saigon

April 30, 1975: North Vietnamese tanks roll across the Presidential Palace grounds of the then South Vietnam in Saigon. At 11:30 a.m. local time the Vietcong flag was raised above it, signalling the end of the war. Nearly one-and-a-half million people had been killed, and a further three million wounded

April 30, 1975: Saigon residents take to the street to welcome the arrival of communist troops on trucks after the fall of Saigon which marked the end of the Vietnam War


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Impressive pictures indeed. As the most have no clue what this war was really about, it is necessary to put above pics in their context. I´d like to propose to watch this very well done documentary which introduced me to the topic once:


An outstanding documentary, that rightfully received nothing but positve feedback.

datopofdatree83I am 26 years old and I have never had real idea of what this war was about, so wow, thanks so much for making this!

, exactly as it was the case with me.
After having watched the documentary, you might see above pics in a better context, and the most common misconceptions about that war will be devastated- that I promise.

Kind regards,
Amagi

[Border Patrol]

Because people are definitely only as powerful as their government. You absolutely under no circumstances can be subject to abuse by your own government because everyone in your own government is from your own race and culture. This is 100% true and I'm not ing with you at all.

Okay, on a more serious note, stop being such a ing fascist. Even today, criticism of the Vietnamese government = you disappear. While they're opening their economy that doesn't mean they're not repressed. Why do you think people were scaling that wall in Saigon? Why do you think there are so many Vietnamese Americans?

Because if it were my land in a civil war between statists and a foreign backed individualist government, I would choose the individualists and run like hell if we lost, too. This documentary honestly seems like it was made by the current Vietnamese government.

[removeduser_052420]

Wow. Very moving pictures. + rep.

[43rdFoot]

An outstanding documentary, that rightfully received nothing but positve feedback.

The simple fact that that video does not even mention the realities of the Cold War is indicative that it is very much not a good documentary. Let alone the fact that it tries to depict the VC as being some pure freedom force, which had almost complete consent of the Vietnamese people, or even that the Vietnamese are a single people. It not once mentions atrocities committed by the VC, or by the Americans. It also accuses every member of the ARVN as being a "collaborator", and it not once mentions the million Vietnamese who fled the North for fear of political retribution. It also not once mentions the precarious situation that existed between China and the USSR. It also fails to mention the various Communist parties were not in any way "democratic". It makes it seem as if the U.S. was some evil imperialist monolith fighting against virtuous and democratic peasants out to secure nothing but freedom, and in doing so, fails to adequately analyze the realities of the Vietnam era.


Was the U.S. involvement in Vietnam the right decision? No. History shows that. Unless the U.S. was prepared to squat in that jungle and eat rice for a thousand years, the result of the war was a foregone conclusion. Was it done out of desire to spread "democracy"? No, and I am not so naive as to suggest that. The realities of the Cold War, however, made the question about U.S. involvement a very hard one to answer. It wasn't simply a matter of opening business interests, but one borne straight from the situation that dominated world diplomacy for 45 years.