Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
In this dramatic photograph – taken on 30 April 1975, 50 years ago this spring – a North Vietnamese tank is pictured at the climactic moment, as it smashes through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon.
The fall of the city and the surrender of the South Vietnamese government marked the end of the long conflict in Vietnam. The Southern capital of Saigon had survived relatively unscathed during nearly 20 years of war that had ravaged much of the rest of the country and caused the deaths of as many as two million civilians.
American troops had withdrawn two years earlier, under the terms of the Paris Peace Accords of January 1973. However, in December 1974, the North Vietnamese launched a final offensive on the South, with the objective of capturing Saigon by force if necessary. On 30 April 1975, the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) entered the city – but, fearing further bloodshed, the South Vietnamese president General Duong Van Minh ordered a surrender, allowing a column of seven tanks to roll unchallenged through the streets.
One of the tank drivers, Nguyen Van Tap, later recalled how he ‘didn’t like my first visit to the palace so much’. A Northerner, who had never set foot in Saigon before, Tap took several wrong turns before eventually finding the palace. Another tank briefly ended up in the city zoo. ‘I was fighting to regain [the palace] and liberate it,’ Tap added in an interview many years later. ‘I like it so much more now that I’m free to come in.’
During the hours before the Fall of Saigon, with the city on the brink of being overrun, a frantic evacuation of American civilians, military personnel, and journalists still stationed in Saigon had taken place. Helicopters airlifted the evacuees from the roof of the US Embassy to ships in the South China Sea. It was a desperate and hurried end to a war that had cost the lives of more than 58,000 members of the US armed forces – along with those of some 1,100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters, and an estimated 200,000-250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers.
Saigon was soon renamed Ho Chi Minh City, after the late leader of the North. Today, one of the tanks used that day is on display in the grounds of the palace, which now serves as a museum and memorial to the war.
Image: Alamy / Text: Calum Henderson
You must be logged in to post a comment.