Fall of Saigon: Where were you on April 30th, 1975?

[flytiger]

Well here it is 44 years later! It was a sad day for me those many years ago and it is still today. Was it a surprise? No it was not. I had left Saigon on 14 April 75 after 3 fun filled weeks flying between TSN and VPPN

Phoum Pehn. I had watched the NVA come further South every day. Got close enough on a no fly day to see artillery shells decimating the Vietnamese Airborne at Xaun Loc. Yes the handwriting was on the wall when I left. The day it was announced that Saigon was gone and with it SVN I sat there with a guy that had come out with me and we were mainly silent. What could we say.

[Rakkasan187]

Flytiger,,

 

I was just a young boy when the city fell, but I will never forget the images on TV.. My Uncle flew C-7 Caribou's and Tarhee helicopters during his 7 tours in VN...

 

Thank you for your service...

 

Leigh

[SGT CHIP SAUNDERS]

On the beautiful sandy ( Then !) beach in San . Diego . with my brand new bride ! No job, no worries ,My 750 BMW running great!

 

Bike long gone, my bride still with me . When I left in ''69 and 70 we were still winning . When we heard, I was surprised

 

it had taken so long . USMC 68 -72

[USARV72]

At work, knew it was coming. Daughter was a month old , plenty to take care of, lol.

Really PO’ed, most “LNs” just didnt care, seemed whatever. The ARVNs I worked with there were worried, some of them really apreciated what we did for them. Gave a Lt. my Gerber fighting knife, some VC or NVA has it now...)~:

[JBFloyd]

I see I posted my duty title in an earlier post a few years ago: Chief of Targets, 432nd Reconnaissance Technical Squadron, Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base.

 

I was running a team of photo interpreters and target analysts who were reading out drone imagery (from the Ryan Firebee, or "Bug") and reporting our findings to various headquarters. We'd been watching the NVA coming south for some time. The Vietnamese Marines and Airborne troops would be holding up fairly well, but the ARVN would usually collapse and head for the hills, leaving the Marines and Airborne with exposed flanks, so they'd have to fall back and re-establish a line of defense further south. We also tracked an SA-2 coming south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, knowing that when it came within range of the Saigon airspace it would be lights out. The NVA got there first, but not by much.

 

The image of the T-54 pushing through the gates of the Presidential Palace is well known, but somewhere I still have an image of another T-54 parked across the street from the main gate of Tan Son Nhut (where I spent my first SEA tour, in 71-72). That tank was parked directly in front of the "Magic Fingers" massage parlor.

 

A few weeks earlier, we had built photo maps for the US Marines going into Phnom Penh for Operation Eagle Pull and a few weeks later we were looking for the crew of SS Mayaguez and trying to locate the guns in the tree-line on Koh Tang Island.

 

When I think of those days, I think of the very junior guys in my branch (mostly E-3 and E-4), who worked under tremendous pressure and produced top notch analysis and reporting.

[gomorgan]

Hoping calls on the 4 to 12 shift, when I got home and walked across the patio my neighbor a 23rd ID engineer told me to grab a beer. He came over and told me, so we just sat there and knocked down a few.

[pmanton]

My RVN Days behind me I was at Ft. Lewis WA getting close to retirement filled with sadness and bitterness.

[BigDogMilitaria]

waiting to be born 7 days later!

[CAC1901]

Interesting question as there were so many big events going on those years. I was in high school and felt a sense of 'defeat' & that so much was for naught. Then there was the TV news showing the chaotic air / sea evacuations, which added to the gloom. Flash forward several years and I was working at a furniture place with a humble Vietnamese guy in our crew - older than us - and our boss said Henry here was on one of the last helicopters off the embassy, and, hes on the cover of a news magazine (Newsweek or Time I think). So I find a copy and by God there he is...unmistakeable Flash forward another year or two and I was in the Air Force, a new airman and the Sgt. training me related being on one of the last C-130's out. We had a conversation about US servicemen still being in country after March or April 73 and he said well we were based in Thailand but 'TDY' at Than Son Nut until literally the day it fell.

[T Ambrosini]

High School freshman.

[daskrieg]

Watching Scooby Doo cartoons bugging my mom for snacks...

[dogfoot]

I was there. The Navy did a documentary about our ship USS Kirk DD/ FF 1087. I’m not a hero, just a sailor doing my job. Watch it past the end of the credits, I’m kind of the guy speaking about what I do to this day.

Kent C.  MM-3

USS Kirk 1973 - 1977

 

We were also involved in Eagle Pull.

[atb]

On 4/30/2015 at 1:13 PM, atb said:

In the Army and stationed in Europe.

I was in my fifth year in the Army.

[donaldnol]

two years out of high school working for my dad as a contractors assistance 

[aerialbridge]

In some class at Miami Palmetto Sr. High School, several years ahead of Bald Billionaire Bezos the Amazon Astronaut and Richest Man in the World, who was valedictorian in 1982.   While Bezos has 177 billion bucks more than me,  I have 100,000 more functioning, scalp hair follicles.   

 

[otter42]

Junior year in high school.  I remember watching on the news them pushing Hueys over the side of the ships to make room for more refugees. And the utter chaos at the embassy. I was brokenhearted for those South Vietnamese and what they were in store for. 

[dmar836]

I was 7yo. I remember seeing war news on TV at night but I was busy playing.

Thanks to all who served!

Dave

[easterneagle87]

Summer break just getting out of 4th grade. I had watched the coverage at my grand parents house. My mom was a news fan and we had watched at the war coverage every night up till that point.  One interesting and sad item, our town had a foreign exchange student from Vietnam that year. Now in that summer of 1975 he was without a home to go back to.  That had to be sure turmoil for a young adult.  

[jayhawkhenry]

I had left active duty in December 74 and was attending the University of Kansas on GI Bill.   Made me sick.

[donaldnol]

On 7/24/2021 at 1:52 PM, donaldnol said:

two years out of high school working for my dad as a contractors assistance 

twenty years old and watching this unfold on the tube every day and wondering when i will be drafted

[pmanton]

Ft. Lewis WA waiting to retire in Sept. 

[Kurt Barickman]

14 and read about it in Newsweek at the Truman High School library; so sick about it since my brother was KIA in 1969 and now the communists win anyway. Why did he die anyway then? More recently think why did we go there in the first place.

 

 

Kurt

[GEB]

I was at Kansas State University in the final weeks of my GI BILL / college education.   But one of my closest friends was the navigator on a C-130 Gunship, circling high over Saigon that final day. (Flying out of Korat, Thailand.) They weren't shooting at all, rather they were helping with air-traffic control as helicopters and planes of every dimension zipped in and out of the city. All day. 

At one point he stuck the microphone from a cheap cassette tape recorder into his head set and recorded about 30 minute of random radio chatter.  The background roar of the planes engines makes it a little hard to hear everything being said, but it is a remarkable moment in history.  ( My friend, who I still see regularly, is for all intents and purposes, -even with the best hearing aid technology- largely deaf from the noise exposure in the C-130 gunship.)

[Wharfmaster]

I was 1-A with a very low Draft number, hoping that I would not be the last person killed in a war America did not want to win.

 

My father was USN Retired at the time and was disgusted beyond belief.

 

 

W

[VNAMVET70]

I was enrolled in college receiving the G.I.Bill which was about $320.00 per month. My new selective Service  Classification was 4-A (completed service).