13
THE BATTLE FOR THE COASTAL CITIES
When Major General Pham Van Phu received President Thieu’s 25 March cable ordering all corps commanders to defend the areas that remained under their control, no matter what the cost, his course of action was now clear. He had to protect a semi-contiguous line comprising three fronts along a narrow coastal strip from Binh Dinh province through Tuy Hoa down to Nha Trang. However, given the destruction of the Ranger groups on Route 7B, he no longer had the men or equipment to accomplish this task. Still, from 25 to 29 March, Phu attempted to reorganize the shattered Rangers and the 23rd Division, and to rebuild badly shaken morale, which was just as crucial as material to restoring the military balance. The Communists, however, moved swiftly to deny him the breathing room he needed to consolidate his defenses.
On 25 March Phu issued a draconian order: His troops would shoot any deserter who was caught committing a crime. He further ordered that all stragglers be rounded up and used to reconstitute two Ranger groups. Further, after learning of the chaos swamping Danang, on the afternoon of 29 March Phu held a staff conference at his headquarters in Nha Trang. He ordered the imposition of strict disciplinary measures throughout II Corps. All soldiers were restricted to base, and military courts would conduct immediate trials—and executions if necessary—of any soldiers who violated military disciplinary regulations. Phu was determined “not to allow a second Danang to happen here.”1 Moreover, to answer the growing chorus calling for his dismissal, Phu informed the Vietnamese press that he had “declared martial law in II Corps. Looters will be executed on the spot . . . Phu has personally directed the . . . Military Court to utilize emergency procedures to try any person who claims to represent the military to extort money from or to harass the civilian population.”2
The Communists were equally determined not to let Phu rally his troops. At its 25 March meeting, the Politburo’s overarching decision was to liberate South Vietnam before the rainy season began, but the meeting also addressed a number of specific issues. These mainly concerned the rapidly accelerating events in I Corps, but the Politburo also commenced planning to complete the conquest of South Vietnam. First, it decided to send Le Duc Tho south to join Pham Hung and Van Tien Dung in directing the forthcoming attack on Saigon. Dung was ordered to rendezvous with Tho at Ban Me Thuot so that he could learn the Politburo’s latest decisions. Pham Hung and Tran Van Tra from the B-2 Front, and Vo Chi Cong and Chu Huy Man from B-1, were also instructed to attend the meeting at Ban Me Thuot.
Further, for the third time that month, Giap sent a cable to Dung ordering him to cease his attack to the coast, and instead turn toward Saigon. Giap wrote: “Concentrate three main-force divisions . . . in the Ban Me Thuot area for rapid reorganization, ready to move out and prepare to attack . . . Saigon. . . . In the Route 7 sector, use only local forces to expand the attack down to Tuy Hoa. In the Route 21 sector, expand your offensive to the east and, depending on your capabilities and if the situation is favorable, move down to take Nha Trang and Cam Ranh.”3
Immediately afterwards, Le Duc Tho sent a follow-up message to Dung. In preparation for his trip to meet Dung, “the other day I sent you a cable discussing the decision by the Politburo and the Central Military Party Committee on implementing Plan One [the attack on Saigon] in the immediate future, and I am sure you understood. Now the extent of the development of your attack has reached the proper level and you should not advance further. Instead, you need to quickly regroup and consolidate your forces and establish solid defenses for the newly captured areas.”4 Tho stated that Danang would fall quickly, enabling PAVN forces to sweep down from the north and finish conquering II Corps. “For that reason, you need to immediately realign your forces so that when I arrive the lead element will be able to move out immediately so that we can implement Plan One as quickly as possible. . . . Currently the situation is developing very favorably for us, it is advancing by leaps and bounds, so at this time when the enemy is frightened, confused, and suffering large-scale disintegration, we must seize the moment and act even more quickly.”
Dung again rejected this plan. While he did not want to be viewed, as Tran Van Tra was, as someone who argued with his superiors, Dung’s instincts told him to finish off the retreating ARVN forces before turning south to attack Saigon. For Dung, the question was: “Should the 320th and 10th Divisions stop chasing down the enemy and shift immediately. . . . Or should we let them continue on into the lowlands, liberating Phu Yen and Khanh Hoa provinces, go on to Nha Trang and Cam Ranh, and then [turn south]?”5Dung believed that his troops could capture the coastal provinces and still meet the Politburo’s timetable for the attack on Saigon. He replied to Giap asking that his “units be allowed to fight on down toward the plains for a few more days . . . we could liberate a number of areas that were crucial . . . [Yet] we could still guarantee that we would meet the Political Bureau’s schedule.” To pacify the Politburo, Dung agreed to send the 316th Division, currently garrisoning Ban Me Thuot, to Tay Ninh province.
The next day the Politburo reluctantly agreed once more. Dung was told to destroy the remaining II Corps forces, but afterwards his forces must be “concentrated and strengthened quickly to move into [III Corps] to strike the enemy’s nerve centers in accordance with the new strategic decisions.”6 On 27 March an elated Dung held a conference with his senior officers and announced that he was authorized to continue the attack to the coast, and that the three B-3 Front divisions would be combined to form a new strategic Army corps: the 3rd Corps. The corps commander would be Vu Lang, and Dang Vu Hiep would be the corps political commissar.
Mission orders soon went out to the three divisions. The 316th would move southwest to Tay Ninh province; the 10th would destroy the 3rd Airborne Brigade near the M’Drak Pass and then press forward to the coast; while the 320th would capture Tuy Hoa.
The 320th Division had the most difficult mission. It was given one week to capture a large area along the coast. It would then return to Ban Me Thuot, and then move south to accomplish its mission. This meant that it needed, as the division history noted, to “clear [Route 7B] to move our tanks, heavy artillery, technical equipment, and supplies down to the jumping-off point for the attack. Route 7[B] from Cung Son to Tuy Hoa had been heavily mined, both by our own local forces as well as by the enemy. If we wished to use this road, it would have to be swept and cleared very carefully. This heavy responsibility was entrusted to the division’s engineer battalion. For several days and nights the engineers worked around the clock . . . to clear the road to enable the division to march into battle. Not a night went by without a mine exploding or without men being killed. The division command group closely monitored the progress of this difficult mission. One night the division commander himself rode in an armored personnel carrier down to the road, driving right behind the engineers’ mine-clearing vehicles to bolster the morale of the troops and to inspect and direct the work of the engineers.”7
As Dung’s troops pressed forward, now for a fourth time, the Politburo again changed its mind. Despite the earlier authorization to destroy II Corps, immediately after the fall of Danang the Politburo reversed itself: “The Central Military Party Committee, with the unanimous agreement of the Politburo, decided to mass all of our units in the southern Central Highlands and rapidly send this force straight down to eastern Cochin China.”8
Accordingly, Dung was supposed to immediately shift the 3rd Corps toward Saigon, while the B-1 Front would attack the ARVN 22nd Division and capture Binh Dinh, using the 3rd and 968th Divisions and Binh Dinh local forces. These would then wheel south on Route 1 and link up with local forces to finish seizing the coast. The Politburo also decided to move the 10th Division south via Route 20. However, the change in plans did not occur until the late afternoon of 29 March, long after the 10th had initiated its campaign to destroy the 3rd Airborne along Route 21 and then advance to the coast.
Once again, Dung quickly cabled Giap, saying that his forces could “annihilate the remaining airborne troops and other enemy troops on Route 21, rapidly advance southward to take Nha Trang and Cam Ranh, and then advance southward along the coast.”9
For the fourth time, Dung’s pleas worked. Giap replied to Dung: “We have discussed this subject with [Le Duan] and have agreed that we must maintain a very flexible policy in order to be able to exploit this opportunity. This means you may mass the 10th Division to quickly destroy the airborne unit and enemy remnants, rapidly capture Nha Trang and Cam Ranh, and then south.” The Politburo’s final decision regarding the 10th Division sealed the fate of ARVN units along the coast. Thrilled at the turn of events, Dung sent Giap a note thanking him.
The 10th Division had its three organic infantry regiments, the 24th, 28th, and 66th, along with tank, anti-aircraft, and artillery units, plus the 25th Regiment, which was newly attached to it. But seizing the M’Drak Pass would not be easy. The pass runs through an arm of the Annamite Mountain chain that separates the Khanh Duong district capital from Ninh Hoa on the coast. The terrain is very rugged, and the road twists and turns through mountain canyons and over numerous bridges and culverts. To delay the PAVN advance, the commander of the 3rd Airborne Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Le Van Phat, instructed his men to destroy the bridges on Route 21 west of the pass after the last escaping ARVN troops had passed through. However, Phat’s belief that destroying the bridges would impede the PAVN advance did not account for the superbly efficient PAVN engineers. As the 10th Division history later recounted, the “engineers and reconnaissance troops quickly completed a road west of the pass . . . and simultaneously widened a footpath from western Khanh Duong . . . to enable trucks to use it. The 24th Regiment, the blocking force that was being sent to take up a position east of the pass, [used] the road completed by the engineers.”10
Given the rugged terrain, an assault straight down the road would be difficult, so the 10th planned to outflank the Airborne defenders. It would send the 24th Regiment looping to block the eastern side of the pass. A second regiment would attack the western entrance. The third regiment would move north and then turn and attack into the middle section of the pass.
Although the Airborne troops were dug in and waiting, Phat soon learned from his reconnaissance teams that he faced superior PAVN forces that were trying to outflank him from two directions. There was little he could do about it. His three battalions simply could not cover the nine-mile pass, plus stop the flanking movements. When a resupply convoy was ambushed on 28 March on the eastern side of the pass, Phat knew that a full-scale attack was imminent. Realizing he could not allow the Communists to cut off his only avenue of retreat, he sent his 2nd Battalion to the eastern end to clear Route 21 back to the Ranger Training Center at Duc My.11 His 5th Battalion continued to guard the pass’s western entrance, while the 6th Battalion held the middle.
Phat’s intuition was correct. At 3:00 A.M. on 29 March, the 10th Division launched a massive artillery assault. For almost six hours the Airborne batteries exchanged fire with the Communist artillery, which mainly consisted of former ARVN howitzers captured at Ban Me Thuot, along with truck-loads of ammunition shipped from the Mai Hac De supply depot there.
At 9:30 A.M. on 30 March, PAVN simultaneously struck each Airborne battalion with a regiment. Fighting raged all day, but the 5th and 6th Battalions, backed by numerous air strikes, held their ground. At the eastern end of the pass, however, the 2nd Battalion suffered heavy losses. A large unit attacked the battalion’s command post, defended by only thirty support personnel. With such a tiny force, the 2nd Battalion commander, Major Tran Cong Hanh, had little hope of holding out. While he managed to beat back the initial assault, he soon heard bullhorns demanding his surrender. He refused, and despite being saddled with non-infantry headquarters personnel, he made a mad dash through enemy lines. For five miles the PAVN forces chased Hanh and his men. Finally, he made radio contact with the brigade deputy commander, Lieutenant Colonel Tran Dang Khoi, who swooped in with helicopters and rescued Hanh and the survivors.12 Hanh’s infantry companies, perched on isolated hilltops in the surrounding hills, were attacked separately by enemy battalions and suffered heavy casualties.
While the Airborne had stopped the initial attack, the 2nd Battalion on the eastern end was surrounded. Notwithstanding the plentiful air support, Phat knew he could not hold without reinforcements. Learning from three prisoners that the 10th Division would commit every soldier it had, together with tanks, to capture the pass, Phat radioed II Corps on the night of 30 March and asked permission to retreat. Phu refused, but told Phat that he was urgently seeking reinforcements for him.
The 10th Division’s signal-intercept unit picked up Phat’s transmission, and, believing he intended to withdraw, the division immediately attacked. Early in the morning of 31 March, one regiment with tanks assaulted the 5th Battalion at the western end. A second regiment attacked the 6th Battalion from the north, while the 24th Regiment moved down from the hills and seized Route 21, cutting off Phat’s brigade. The 72nd Ranger Battalion, 21st Group, re-forming at the Duc My training camp after its retreat from Ban Me Thuot, tried to break through and assist the Airborne. The 21st Ranger Group commander, Lieutenant Colonel Le Qui Dau, confirmed that “I was given orders to place my 72nd Battalion under the operational control of 3rd Airborne Brigade, but it was too late to save the situation, even though we tried very hard. Most of the airborne forces in forward positions were cut off and isolated. During this operation 72nd Battalion suffered significant losses because it had no support other than its own individual heavy weapons, while the enemy’s attack spirit was high and they had ample fire support.”13
The 10th Division history confirms Dau’s description of intense fighting: “At dawn the enemy concentrated their artillery . . to shell the 24th Regiment’s blocking positions. The shelling was coordinated with savage air strikes on these positions. . . . Flight after flight of A-37s took turns dropping bombs and napalm on the regiment’s positions. Enemy infantry made death-defying charges in an effort to push the regiment out of its blocking positions and clear the road.”14 The 10th Division shifted the regiment attacking the 6th Battalion plus four tanks to reinforce the 24th Regiment. Air strikes knocked out the four tanks, and PAVN sent in four armored personnel carriers. The additional troops helped PAVN hold the eastern end of the pass. The 3rd Airborne was cut off and in danger of being overrun.
Phat radioed II Corps all day asking for reinforcements, and Phu was desperately trying to find some. Early in the morning of 30 March, Brigadier General Tran Dinh Tho, the chief of the J-3 (operations) staff of the JGS, called Phu and promised him that “the Marine Division would arrive at Cam Ranh Bay on LSTs that afternoon. The Marines would stay on the Cam Ranh peninsula. One brigade of Marines would be immediately reorganized and re-equipped and sent to reinforce the Khanh Duong front. General Phu greeted this news with great jubilation.”15 Phu’s newfound optimism was short-lived, however, when Brigadier General Phan Dinh Niem, the commander of the 22nd Division, flew in at noon to tell him that the situation in Binh Dinh was critical. Niem’s three regiments were still holding the Communists at bay, but enemy local forces had made a sudden attack into his rear near Qui Nhon and scattered many of the province’s RF troops. Phu told Niem to guard the Qui Nhon waterfront and protect the city.
Later that afternoon, Phu flew to Cam Ranh to meet Lieutenant General Ngo Quang Truong, who had just arrived in the port. Truong had been Phu’s boss in 1972 when Phu commanded the 1st Division. Phu wanted Truong to release the Marines, but Truong refused to speak to him. It was Truong’s strangest action of the war, for without the Marines, Phu had no chance. The main reason was Truong’s anger at Phu for the disastrous retreat from the Central Highlands, which had helped destroy I Corps.
Truong, however, was also depressed and in poor physical condition. According to a CIA report, he required “intravenous injections [and] was suffering from a severe stomach ailment; he also appeared dejected and in poor morale due to the loss of MR-1.”16When the JGS ordered the Marines to disembark at Cam Ranh and told Truong to return to Saigon alone, he refused. He told the ship’s captain “to call the General Staff to ask that the Marines be allowed to return to Saigon along with me for a rest. If this request was refused, I would remain in Cam Ranh with the Marines and would fight at their side.”17 Truong probably feared that if he returned alone, Thieu would arrest him for the loss of I Corps. He wanted to stay with the Marines because they provided him protection. Truong was no coward, but he was not a fool either. The JGS quickly rescinded the order, and told the Marines to get back on the ships and return to Saigon. The next day the Marines sailed away, and Phu’s last hope for reinforcements from outside II Corps vanished with them.
Phu’s desperate search for reinforcements grew even more frantic. He again issued orders to gather every available soldier in the Nha Trang area and form units to help hold the remaining section of the coast. Locally, Phu had only the 40th Regiment, 22nd Division, but it was needed to hold the western outskirts of Nha Trang. Even if the Airborne successfully defended the pass, the 10th Division could bypass it via old logging roads that led directly to the city.
Phu sent Brigadier General Tran Van Cam to Tuy Hoa to organize the defense of that city. Cam was to secure Route 1 from Tuy Hoa to the critical Ca Pass, located eighteen miles south of the town. The Ca Pass is seven miles long, with sheer rock cliffs on one side and the sea on the other. A determined defender backed by air strikes and naval gunfire could easily hold it even against major enemy forces. If Cam held Tuy Hoa and the Ca Pass, Communist units from the north would be unable to advance south. On 30 March, Phu told a visiting Vietnam Press correspondent that Ranger units had turned the Ca Pass into “a strong line of defense.”18
It was a fantasy. Only the battered 34th Ranger Battalion was holding the pass. Despite Phu’s orders, the Rangers who had survived the ordeal on Route 7B had not been reorganized. Many had been sent to the Duc My training center, but the commander of the training center insisted on reforming the original units instead of creating ad-hoc elements to defend the region.
The reorganization of the 23rd Division remnants that made it to Nha Trang after the disastrous attempt to retake Ban Me Thuot was also moving too slowly. They were being grouped at an old Special Forces camp on Route 1 near Cam Ranh. Despite efforts by Colonel Le Huu Duc to turn what was left of the 23rd into a coherent military formation, the battered soldiers were still just a disorganized rabble. In addition, most of Khanh Hoa province’s resources were going into the effort to care for 13,000 civilian refugees being housed at a camp about three miles north of Nha Trang. But whatever the reason for ARVN’s failure to regroup the soldiers who had survived the retreats on Routes 7B and 21—shattered morale, lack of time and resources, or both—that failure would cost the South Vietnamese.
Phu’s efforts to hold the coast began to disintegrate on the morning of 31 March when rockets hit the Duc My training center, setting some of the student barracks on fire. Sensing the Airborne’s imminent defeat, and hoping to save the trainees, the commander of the training center decided to flee. Packing food into several trucks, hundreds of Ranger cadres and students departed that night and began walking toward Nha Trang, which they reached on the morning of 1 April.19 There they were greeted by a rapidly disintegrating city. Late the previous afternoon, rioting had broken out as soldiers flowing in from the ships that had arrived from I Corps began looting and robbing civilians. Seeing the column of retreating Rangers, the thousands of refugees in the temporary holding camps also began pouring into the city. Efforts were made to stop the disorder and to execute undisciplined troops on the spot, but the police were able to stabilize only part of Nha Trang. Any chance of preventing “a second Danang” was slipping away.
A RETREAT TO THE SEA
With no other options, Phu went to Commodore Hoang Co Minh at the 2nd Coastal Zone headquarters in Cam Ranh to discuss plans to retrieve the 22nd Division from Qui Nhon and bring it to Nha Trang. The 22nd was the only viable unit left in II Corps. According to Phu’s biographer, Pham Huan, Phu ordered “the 22nd Division to fall back to Qui Nhon to hold and defend the city, and particularly the military port area, in order to have a route of withdrawal so the division could board Navy ships to be transported down to Khanh Duong, Nha Trang, and Phu Yen.”20 Minh immediately informed Naval Operations in Saigon, which agreed to the plan and sent him the destroyer Tran Nhat Duat (HQ-03) to help ferry the men back from Qui Nhon.
Although Minh had contacted Saigon, however, he was reluctant to go himself. He believed that “if I leave Cam Ranh it would be very dangerous because my presence as the commander was very important.” Minh’s prediction was proven true: “The problem was not fighting; the problem was morale. My staff at Cam Ranh said they needed me very much.”21 This was the predicament many South Vietnamese commanders found themselves in. Their presence reassured their staff, which in turn kept the military operations semi-functional. Yet given the torrid pace of combat operations countrywide, commanders frequently had to leave their base to take direct command of far-flung battles. Since many South Vietnamese believed that a secret deal had been struck with the Communists to partition the country, when the commander left, the staff promptly fled, disrupting communications and leading to more confusion among the combat units. Despite his misgivings, however, Minh gathered all available vessels in the 2nd Coastal Zone and departed that evening.
In Binh Dinh, meanwhile, on 27 March Brigadier General Phan Dinh Niem ordered the 41st and 42nd Regiments to continue defending Route 19. Niem also ordered Colonel Le Cau to withdraw his 47th Regiment from the northern part of the province and establish defenses on Route 1 closer to Qui Nhon. Without any transportation, Cau’s soldiers had to walk the twenty-eight miles to their new position. As his units started withdrawing, the local civilians joined them. Soon his battalion commanders began reporting that it was increasingly difficult to control their troops, as the soldiers were becoming intermingled with the civilians. Cau told his men to move off the road, leaving the hardtop to the civilians.
On 24 March the B-3 Front began shifting units to occupy the coast. Its first move was to order the 968th Division to shift east from Pleiku on Route 19 and, in conjunction with the 3rd Division, to trap and destroy the ARVN 22nd Division.
On 26 March new orders also arrived for the PAVN 3rd Division. The B-1 Front’s instructions to the 3rd Division read as follows: “[The] Party Committee has decided to annihilate or disperse the entire remaining [ARVN forces] in the region and liberate [Binh Dinh] as quickly as possible. This is now a practical fact, not just a possibility. During the course of twenty days and nights of continuous combat the Yellow Star Division has properly accomplished its mission . . . but its percentage of casualties is still too high. The division’s immediate mission is to surround and destroy the 22nd Division, prevent it from escaping, and, fighting alongside local armed forces, stand ready to liberate Qui Nhon.”22
To accomplish this mission, the 3rd Division attempted to cut off the 41st and 42nd Regiments on Route 19 by circling a battalion to their rear and seizing a bridge just behind them. The 3rd also focused on building roads to bring its artillery close to the battlefield to support its attacks against the two ARVN regiments. The efforts to bring artillery forward failed, however, and when the battalion attacked, the 42nd Regiment drove it off, causing heavy casualties. For several days the North Vietnamese continued to attack, but with little success. The failure caused the Yellow Star commander to fly into a rage. Blaming the failed attacks on poor fire support, he relieved the artillery regiment’s commander. He also sacked the transportation battalion commander for not shipping enough ammunition to the front lines.
At the same time, following orders to smash the South Vietnamese defensive line north of Qui Nhon, on 30 March three newly formed local-force regiments attacked RF/PF positions. Most of the RF/PF troops fled or were overwhelmed by the assaults, allowing the Communists to cut Route 1 and block Colonel Cau’s retreat. With the 22nd Division’s rear now in chaos, the PAVN trap was closing. The 968th Division reached an assembly area near Binh Khe on 27 March, and the 3rd Division reinforced the battalion fighting behind the 42nd Regiment.
As the situation in Binh Dinh worsened, at 8:00 P.M. on 30 March Brigadier General Niem called Phu again. Niem reported that almost all the RF units had deserted, PAVN sappers had entered Qui Nhon, and the city was in danger of falling. Phu promptly called the JGS and briefed several senior officers on the rapidly deteriorating situation, but they could offer little help. Phu was faced with a momentous decision. Without outside reinforcements for the Airborne, he believed he had no choice but to retrieve the 22nd, his last organized unit, to reinforce Tuy Hoa and the Airborne on Route 21. That night, according to Pham Huan, while “Phu initially intended to issue orders to 22nd Division to pull back to Qui Nhon . . . to defend the military port and wait for Navy ships to pick the division up and bring it back to help defend the Khanh Duong and Phu Yen fronts, General Tat protested, saying that if we evacuated Qui Nhon, Nha Trang would fall just that much faster. For that reason General Phu hesitated and remained undecided about the decision to evacuate Qui Nhon and bring 22nd Division back on the night of 30 March 1975.”23
The delay was costly, as it allowed the PAVN 3rd Division to close in behind the ARVN regiments on Route 19. Further attacks in Binh Dinh later that night convinced Phu he had to act. At 11:00 A.M. on 31 March, Phu ordered Niem to retreat to Qui Nhon and defend the city. Niem quickly ordered his two regiments on Route 19 to withdraw, but the trap was sprung. PAVN now had a regiment of the 3rd Division behind both the 41st and 42nd Regiments, while the 968th Division was pressing against them from the west. The 41st Regiment commander, Colonel Nguyen Thieu, described what happened to his unit during its retreat eastward to try to link up with the 42nd Regiment:
I assigned 2nd and 3rd Battalions to make a two-pronged attack to clear the road while 1st Battalion served as our rear guard. When the 41st Regiment reached the town of Phu An on Route 19 it clashed with enemy forces. The battalions made a concerted attack, and after half an hour of fighting shattered and dispersed the enemy force at Phu An. At about 5 that afternoon, however, just as it reached [the 42nd Regiment], units of the 3rd Division blocked its way. While 3rd Battalion, 41st Regiment, formed a spearhead that tried unsuccessfully to punch a hole through, 1st Battalion, 41st Regiment, in our rear began to be attacked by the lead units of the enemy’s 968th Division, and enemy artillery began to adjust fire into the area where the troops of 41st Regiment had halted. . . . Because we could not allow our units to suffer continued losses from enemy artillery, 41st Regiment decided to use the firepower of our accompanying platoon of M-113 armored personnel carriers to clear the road while infantry stuck close behind them, expanded outward to cover both sides of the road, and provided security along the route of march. In spite of these efforts, enemy forces pressing in on both our flanks inflicted significant losses on the 41st Regiment. When night fell and it grew completely dark, and when the sound of gunfire faded to a few scattered shots, the units of 41st Regiment resumed their movement eastward to where the 42nd Regiment was located.24
While the 41st Regiment fought its way east along Route 19, the situation in Qui Nhon was deteriorating further. On the morning of 30 March, the commander of the Phu Cat airbase reported that all the RF defenders assigned to the airbase had deserted. Spotting the abandonment, at mid-afternoon on 30 March, Communist local forces attacked the airbase. The base’s Air Force security forces held them off, but with the discovery of more Communist local forces racing to join the fight, the airbase commander phoned Colonel Le Van Thao, commander of the VNAF 92nd Air Wing at Phan Rang, and begged him for help. The enemy would attack that night, and Phu Cat had few defenses.
Thao immediately gathered every available A-37, some forty aircraft, and took off. His mission was tricky at best. He would arrive at night, and the A-37 was not equipped for night missions. Thao, however, had extensively trained his unit to fight at night; it was perhaps the only such unit in the Vietnamese Air Force. He had succeeded in developing an all-weather bombing capacity by creating a method using the plane’s instruments, timing, and a beacon-based navigation system. He would now test that training under the most demanding circumstances, a close air strike at night. His only hope of smashing the attack was to simultaneously unload the bombs of all forty planes directly on the suspected location of the enemy’s assembly area. And the location was right next to the base. If Thao’s timing was off by even a few seconds, his planes would bomb his own people. Even if he did hit the enemy, his forty aircraft carried only two bombs apiece. Each bomb weighed 250 pounds. Taken together, his eighty bombs roughly equaled the destructive punch of one B-52.
As Thao’s formation neared the base, he radioed the tower and confirmed the location to hit. Gripping the stick tightly, as he flew over the spot, he hit the button releasing his bombs and informed his other pilots to drop theirs. He immediately switched to the tower radio frequency and called the tower as he saw the bombs explode. Within seconds the base commander was on the air confirming that he was okay and that Thao’s daring night raid had hit the exact spot. Thao’s men had accomplished one of the most astounding air strikes in the war, a massed formation of forty A-37s concurrently releasing their payload at night without guides on a location that was dangerously close to the pilots’ fellow VNAF personnel.
At dawn the 2nd Air Division hastily abandoned Phu Cat. Only thirty-two aircraft managed to get out, leaving more than fifty others to fall into enemy hands. PAVN forces moved in and captured the airbase by late afternoon on 31 March.
Meanwhile, Le Cau’s 47th Regiment, moving south along Route 1, broke through the local-force blockade and headed toward Qui Nhon. As Cau struggled to control his troops amidst the many civilians retreating with them, his men were attacked a second time. Between the two battles, about half of his regiment was killed or captured. The rest broke into small teams and continued moving south through the countryside toward Qui Nhon, but the 47th Regiment was no longer combat-effective.
On the afternoon of 31 March, Phu briefed President Thieu on the deteriorating Binh Dinh front. Thieu ordered Phu to defend Qui Nhon and prevent any chaos. Meanwhile, to support Commodore Minh’s efforts to retrieve the 22nd Division, earlier that day the new Navy commander, Admiral Chung Tan Cang, assigned Commodore Ho Van Ky Thoai, the I Corps Navy commander, to take command of all naval forces supporting the Qui Nhon battlefield. To reinforce Minh’s flotilla, at noon Cang ordered all VNN ships still picking up refugees off the coast of Danang to sail to Qui Nhon immediately. Despite Thieu’s orders, Phu was under no illusion that the retreating 22nd Division units could prepare an adequate defense of the city against the onrushing PAVN.
In fact, Communist local forces were already closing in on Qui Nhon. The Binh Dinh province history states: “At 10:00 A.M. on 31 March the forward headquarters ordered all district forces to quickly attack and capture their district capitals. Enemy forces . . . hurriedly retreated, and a number of officers and governmental officials fled from Qui Nhon back to Nha Trang. In the face of this favorable opportunity . . . the headquarters of the province military unit issued orders to all forces to besiege and destroy enemy forces and liberate Qui Nhon.”25
At noon on 31 March a Communist local-force regiment poured into the city from the north, brushing aside RF troops holding the outskirts. By 6:30 P.M. it had captured the province headquarters and the city center. A short time later, Niem reported to Phu that enemy troops had taken the city. After receiving the earlier orders to hold the port, Niem had been flying back and forth in his helicopter trying to help his troops, but the situation seemed hopeless. His 47th Regiment was decimated, and with his two other regiments plus his divisional armor still on Route 19, caught between the local forces holding Qui Nhon and the main-force PAVN units pressing from behind, he was faced with the destruction of his beloved 22nd Division. It was too much for Niem. With the city’s fall, and fearing his units would be destroyed, early in the evening a mentally and physically exhausted Niem flew out to a VNN ship and collapsed.
Hope appeared at 9:00 P.M. with the arrival of Minh’s flotilla to rescue what remained of the 22nd Division. Upon being briefed on the current situation, Minh radioed Phu and told him about Niem’s collapse. Listening to the radio at VNN headquarters in Saigon, Navy Captain Do Kiem, the head of operations for the Navy, quickly informed Admiral Cang of the impending disaster. Thinking quickly, Kiem proposed to Cang that with the firepower from the combined naval groups and their better communications, Minh could establish a defensive perimeter and perhaps even retake some of the outlying areas. Cang agreed, and he and Kiem hurried to see Lieutenant General Dong Van Khuyen, chief of staff of the JGS, who accepted the plan. Khuyen promptly visited President Thieu, who signed a decree appointing Minh commander of the Binh Dinh Front. Kiem radioed Minh at 2:00 A.M. on 1 April, telling him that his mission was to hold the city and withdraw the 22nd Division.26
But given the chaos in Qui Nhon and Niem’s collapse, Minh was having difficulty contacting any 22nd command elements. Finally, he reached a logistics officer near the beach who was monitoring the division’s command frequency. As this officer later wrote, Minh “read [a] message informing us that . . . the Joint General Staff had appointed Commodore Hoang Co Minh as acting commander of the 22nd Infantry Division, replacing Brigadier General Phan Dinh Niem, who was being removed for reasons of health. He then told me to immediately report to the Deputy Division Commander that at exactly 12:30 P.M. [Minh] would send in five LCM landing craft. Each LCM was capable of carrying 500 men. Each landing craft would make a number of round trips to take the soldiers out to our warships off the coast. Before boarding the LCMs all soldiers were to throw their weapons and military equipment into the sea.”27 Since the Qui Nhon pier was not strong enough to hold many troops, and since ships had beached many times before on the city’s coastline, the decision was made to load the soldiers from the shore.
More good news came with the arrival in Qui Nhon of the 41st and 42nd Regiments. After continuing along Route 19 all night, early in the morning of 1 April the two regiments and the division’s armored squadron successfully reached the junction of Route 1 and the local road into Qui Nhon. At 11:00 A.M. they were told to move toward the shore and board Navy ships to evacuate. The decision was made to have the 42nd Regiment and the armor lead the way, followed by the artillery, with the 41st Regiment acting as rear guard.
As the first 22nd Division elements reached the outskirts of the city, Communist local forces firing from buildings blocked their path. Colonel Thieu brought up a 105-mm howitzer and began blasting at the enemy positions. Resistance soon crumbled, and the 22nd forces punched through.
Pushing toward the sea, the 41st and 42nd Regiments destroyed two more enemy positions before reaching the beach, where they set up a defense to secure the landing points. The units soon began embarking, but by 7:00 P.M. they had to halt because of heavy enemy fire. At 9:00 P.M., the LSM Ninh Giang (HQ-403) tried to reach the beach, but it was hit by B-40 rockets and was forced to retreat. When Minh directed another ship to beach nearby, it was also hit. Since Minh could not risk the loss of his larger transport ships, he ordered the smaller coastal gunboats to pick up the men. At dawn on 2 April, with PAVN firing at any approaching ship, the word was passed to the remaining ARVN elements to swim out to the ships. The operation lasted until 11:00 A.M. When it was completed, only about half of the two regiments had made it to the ships. Figures on the total number of men picked up vary widely, from a few thousand to a high of seven thousand. And meanwhile, another major city had fallen.
While the ARVN 18th Division would later become renowned for its stalwart defense of Xuan Loc, near Saigon, the 22nd Division, far out of sight of Western reporters, had also accomplished an amazing feat of arms during the 1975 offensive. It maintained unit integrity through twenty-five days of major combat and inflicted heavy casualties on the North Vietnamese. During its retreat, not only did it smash through three Communist roadblocks to reach the sea, its men did not panic or desert. As Major General Homer Smith wrote, “the 22nd Division defended strongly with great perseverance against determined and heavy PAVN attacks. Outflanked, outgunned, and eventually cut off, the 22nd fought its way back to the beaches and was eventually evacuated.”28 The 42nd Regiment’s commander, Colonel Nguyen Huu Thong, after his last man was picked up, waved goodbye, went to a nearby house, and committed suicide. The 47th’s commander, Colonel Le Cau, was moving with his reconnaissance company when he stepped on a land mine. He told his men to leave him, but they refused. They tried carrying him, but were soon surrounded and forced to surrender. Only the 41st Regiment’s commander, Colonel Nguyen Thieu, was rescued with his troops. When the division landed at the port of Vung Tau near Saigon, he helped form the remaining men into two regiments.
As for the PAVN 3rd Division, despite its heavy casualties, its history brags about its victory: “Enemy bodies, vehicles, and artillery lay scattered . . . all the way down to the Qui Nhon docks. . . . The 22nd Division, the long-time combat opponent of the Yellow Star Division through nine long years of ferocious battles, had been destroyed. Binh Dinh Province, the birthplace of the division, had been liberated.”29
THE FALL OF TUY HOA
As Qui Nhon was falling and the regiments of the 22nd were fighting their way to the shore, the PAVN 320th Division—the unit that had chewed up the troops and civilians retreating from Cheo Reo—was finalizing preparations to take Tuy Hoa, 110 miles south of Qui Nhon. The city, built alongside Route 1 near the sea, had a population of roughly 300,000 people, mostly Vietnamese. A large river ran south of the town, and the area surrounding it was mainly rice paddy cut by irrigation canals. Two hills to the north dominate the terrain.
The 320th Division—with three infantry regiments, one tank battalion, and several battalions of anti-aircraft guns, artillery, and engineers—along with the Phu Yen local forces, decided to assault the city in three prongs. The primary assault sector would be from the west into Tuy Hoa itself. The main assault would use two infantry regiments plus field artillery, anti-aircraft battalions, and the tank battalion. Roadblocks would be established north and south of the city along Route 1. An infantry battalion would swing south to block any ARVN reinforcements coming from the Ca Pass area. Local forces would cut Route 1 north of the town and support the two main attack sectors.
Defending the city and lengthy portions of the coast against this onslaught were multiple battalions of Phu Yen Regional Forces and the remnants of the 96th Ranger Battalion, 21st Group. Several RF battalions ringed the city to protect it from attack from either north or south along Route 1. On the western approaches, the RF had built a series of interlocking defensive positions. For fire support, they had a battery of 105-mm guns and some M-113s. Brigadier General Cam had been ordered by Phu to defend the city and prevent PAVN from moving south along Route 1. However, Cam was outmanned and essentially blind, without any intelligence to indicate when and where the Communists would attack.
The 320th’s plan called for its forces to maneuver close to Tuy Hoa by 31 March. On 2 April they would “open fire, attack and liberate the city during daylight hours, then expand the attack to seize the . . . Ca Pass. . . . After capturing the city, all units would be re-supplied with fuel and food rations to be ready to advance as soon as orders were received.”30
The last part of that plan could not be carried out. By the night of 29 March, the PAVN engineers still had not completed rebuilding the bridge across the Ba River. Many of the Communist forces’ supplies were still en route to Tuy Hoa, and some 320th Division units had not yet arrived. Despite this, when a signal intercept indicated that ARVN was preparing to withdraw—which was incorrect—Division Commander Kim Tuan ordered the attack moved up one day. Several elements immediately shifted forward and overran two outlying RF positions. At 5:30 A.M. on 1 April, PAVN artillery began pounding Tuy Hoa. An hour later, the artillery fire lifted, and the tanks and infantry rolled forward. The RF troops offered little resistance against the North Vietnamese regulars. Cam radioed Phu that he was under massive attack. By 7:30 A.M., the North Vietnamese armor was inside the city, poised to attack the sector headquarters. The few Rangers holding the city center fought back, but the headquarters was captured in thirty minutes. By noon, the Communist soldiers had captured Brigadier General Tran Van Cam. He was the first South Vietnamese general officer captured in the 1975 offensive. Turning its forces north and south, the 320th Division was in full control of Tuy Hoa and its outlying districts by 3:00 P.M. on 1 April.
Not stopping there, a battalion of the 320th advanced south. Supported by Phu Yen local forces, it seized control of the Ca Pass. Despite the excellent defensive terrain, the 34th Rangers held out for only a short time. South Vietnamese patrol boats sailing south of Qui Nhon reported to Captain Kiem at the Navy Operations Center in Saigon that convoys of PAVN tanks and trucks were seen driving down Route 1, but that the boats’ short-range guns could not reach these targets. The Navy tried but failed to obtain air support to destroy the bridges and stop the advance. Admiral Chung Tan Cang ordered his larger warships with longer-range guns to bombard and destroy the bridges from Qui Nhon to the Ca Pass, but they were ineffective. Consequently, not only had Route 1 been cleared of ARVN forces all the way to the Phu Yen/Khanh Hoa province border, but more important, several of the natural barriers to invasion from the north—the critical passes on Route 1—were captured. PAVN now had an easy motorway leading direct to Saigon.
THE FALL OF THE COAST
For South Vietnam, 1 April was a decisive day. At dawn, the North Vietnamese 24th and 28th Regiments, 10th Division, supported by tanks and large concentrations of artillery, launched a full-scale assault against the 3rd Airborne Brigade. Within half an hour, the last defensive lines of the Airborne in the M’Drak Pass were crushed. Lieutenant Colonel Le Van Phat ordered his troops to retreat to high ground and wait for helicopter evacuation. The 10th Division took full advantage of the breach in the ARVN lines. As the division history recounts, “3rd Airborne Brigade was destroyed, Ninh Hoa’s western defenses were shattered, and the road to the lowlands was clear. Without a moment’s rest . . . 3rd Battalion, 28th Regiment, reinforced by tanks, anti-aircraft guns, and field artillery, quickly surged forward and launched a coordinated attack with 6th Battalion, 24th Regiment, capturing the Duc My base.”31 The 10th Division spent that night at the Duc My training center.
At II Corps headquarters near the Nha Trang airfield, the South Vietnamese military command was stunned at the rapid disintegration of the ARVN defenses at Tuy Hoa and the M’Drak Pass. At 10:30 A.M., after returning from overflying Tuy Hoa, Phu held a staff meeting with Lieutenant General Pham Quoc Thuan, the commander of the Dong De NCO Academy, and Brigadier General Pham Duy Tat. Pham Huan claims that “Phu requested the generals . . . [to] each handle their own defensive arrangements for their own units. He said all II Corps’s resources would be devoted to the Khanh Duong front. . . . With regard to providing regular units to defend Nha Trang, Phu said that would have to await the arrival of troops from the 22nd Division.”32 Phu sent Tat in a helicopter to the Ca Pass to make contact with the 34th Rangers, but Tat was too late. The Ca Pass, heralded by Phu as a primary defensive position along the coast, had already fallen.
As the meeting was breaking for lunch, an operations officer ran in and reported that reconnaissance aircraft had spotted PAVN tanks at Duc My and Ninh Hoa. In fact, although PAVN tanks had reached Duc My, they were not yet at Ninh Hoa, but it did not matter. The news of the tanks and the destruction of the Airborne defensive line was the final straw at II Corps headquarters. Panic set in, and officers and guards began running for the door.
Unable to halt the fleeing soldiers, Phu stood motionless for a few minutes, trying to think what to do. Like Commodore Hoang Co Minh two days before, Phu was caught in a terrible dilemma. Should he stay at his headquarters and try to establish radio contact with the field units, or should he leave and try to contact them from his helicopter? Phu chose to leave for the front. He jumped into his jeep and drove over to the Nha Trang airfield, where he ordered the base closed to anyone trying to enter. Lieutenant General Thuan soon joined Phu, and they took off in a helicopter to try to contact any units still manning their positions in the Nha Trang area.
With Phu’s departure, the remaining staff officers fled, causing a chain reaction in the combat units. Unable to contact II Corps headquarters for instructions, and with no contingency plans, Colonel Duc decided to withdraw the 23rd Division and the two battalions of the 40th Regiment, 22nd Division. The Regional Forces did the same.
Seeing the collapse of II Corps headquarters, the American consulate also decided to evacuate. It was not pretty. The journalist Arnold Isaacs wrote, “The U.S. consul-general for II Corps, Moncrieff Spear, and his staff also hurriedly left Nha Trang on the afternoon of April 1. As they prepared to go, hundreds of Vietnamese tried to climb over the whitewashed walls . . . the evacuation was so chaotic that more than one hundred Vietnamese consular employees, who had been promised flights to Saigon, were left behind, some of them ordered away from planeside by U.S. officials who trained rifles on them.”33
Despite Phu’s best intentions, the bedlam that had swept Danang was repeating itself in Nha Trang. The city was coming apart at the seams. At mid-morning almost 1,100 soldiers held in the local prison for a variety of crimes overwhelmed their guards and swarmed into the city. They ransacked houses and the market along Nha Trang’s main road. Soon fires were burning in the market. Looters stole cars and bicycles, and many robbed any civilians they could find. The population fled Nha Trang to escape the rampaging criminals. As one ARVN officer leaving with his family later wrote, “The chaotic scene seemed to unfold endlessly as . . . thousands of people poured onto Route 1. . . . Traffic jams blocked movement almost every ten yards. Nha Trang city, once . . . fresh in appearance like a young girl at sweet 16, was already bearing a dismal look. Most of the shops . . . were ruined. Some were still burning; walls of others had collapsed, and their entrance doors were shattered or broken by gunfire . . . the roads and streets were covered with trash and the trunks of fallen trees.”34
Many fled to the city dock, called the Stone Pier, to reach Vietnamese Navy ships. Years later, a woman named Tran Thi Minh Canh, who had lived in Nha Trang, wrote about those days. She related how fear of the Communists drove them to escape: “Tonight we are running in agonizing terror that supersedes all other needs, all other considerations. Others run alongside us but we hardly notice them in our feverish race to the sea. Friends become foes; neighbors become enemies as we rush to reach our salvation. The sea is our only hope. . . . We left with nothing except a few satchels of clothing and as many pieces of jewelry as we could hide on our bodies to trade for food or shelter, or our lives.”35
For the escaping civilians, the nightmare of Hue, Danang, and Chu Lai was being reborn in Nha Trang. The LSM Han Giang (HQ-401), which was docked at the pier, was quickly swamped by hundreds of civilians as they jammed their way on board. As Canh writes, “From somewhere within the deep recesses of memory, inhuman instinct subjugated human conscience, and the law of survival propelled the masses. The weaker fell and were kicked aside by the stronger; the slower became prey to the swift. The screaming and shouting and crying blended together in a single guttural refrain of human desperation . . . [At the ship], the terrified crowd moved as one huge mass, pressing to the loading point with crushing force. Luggage and packages were tossed aside in the frantic rush to safety. . . . Those who did not assert themselves were felled and . . . were trampled to death by the stampede. People clambered aboard as ants over candy. Children were separated from their parents, and then crushed or propelled into the water to be forever lost from this life. On board, the dangers were no less terrifying. We were at the mercy of the masses surging onto the deck. Bodies were kicked about like discarded rag dolls after having been trampled. There was no mercy; no one else mattered to anyone.”36
The ship filled so rapidly that it began to list, forcing the captain to back away from the pier. Seeing the masses of clamoring civilians, and mindful of the terrible tragedy at Danang, the local Navy commander refused to allow any more of his ships to dock at Nha Trang. Soon they weighed anchor and sailed to Cam Ranh.
Although Phu reached the Khanh Duong front, he was unable to contact either the Airborne or any other units defending Nha Trang. Running low on fuel, he headed for Phan Rang, where he then switched to his C-47. Before leaving, however, Phu spoke to Lieutenant General Khuyen at the JGS over the telephone. A screaming match ensued when Khuyen demanded to know why Phu was madly rushing around in the air instead of seeing to the defense of Nha Trang. Slamming the phone down on Khuyen, Phu again flew over the M’Drak Pass, where he managed to briefly contact the 3rd Airborne headquarters. He was informed that the Airborne’s defensive lines had been shattered and it was retreating. The ground station then shut off. Phu’s airplane flew aimlessly overhead for a few minutes and then returned to Phan Rang, where Phu boarded his helicopter and returned to the Nha Trang airbase.
Late in the day, an exhausted Phu entered Brigadier General Nguyen Van Luong’s office at the Nha Trang airbase. Shortly thereafter, Luong and the Nha Trang base commander, Air Force Brigadier General Nguyen Van Oanh, went to Luong’s office looking for Phu. They informed him that Lieutenant General Khuyen had placed them in charge of defending Nha Trang. Phu immediately called Khuyen, who once more chastised him for the rapidly collapsing situation. After a short shouting match, Phu again hung up on Khuyen. He walked out the door, telling “Oanh that he had full authority to take any necessary action in his capacity as battlefield commander.”37 Phu got into his helicopter and flew off to Phan Rang. It was his last act as II Corps commander.
Phu spent the night of 1 April “lying on an army cot without a mattress or a blanket, at the headquarters of a Ninh Thuan province RF battalion assigned to guard the Phan Rang Air Force base. The night was one of rioting, disorder, and looting in the cities of Phan Rang, Cam Ranh, and Nha Trang.”38
Early in the morning of 2 April, Phu left for Phan Thiet to meet with the III Corps deputy commander, Major General Nguyen Van Hieu. Phu, mentally and physically exhausted, stood waiting for Hieu on a hilltop near the city. All that was left from his staff was Pham Huan, two aides, and Colonel Duc, the 23rd Division commander. When Hieu landed, he informed Phu that II Corps was dissolved, and that General Cao Van Vien had ordered Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan provinces incorporated into III Corps. In addition, President Thieu had ordered that ARVN hold Phan Rang, the capital of Ninh Thuan. Phu was to depart at once for Saigon and report to General Vien.
For Major General Pham Van Phu, the calamitous events of March were over, and so was his command. In great despair, he flicked his cigarette to the ground and drew his pistol from its holster. Before Phu could commit suicide, Colonel Duc knocked the revolver from his hand. His aides then escorted him to his helicopter, and they flew to Saigon.39 Most histories state that Phu panicked on 1 April and deserted his post, flying to Saigon to escape the Communist advance. He did not. In reality, Phu had tried desperately to organize a defense of the remaining coastal provinces, but failed because of the relentless PAVN attacks, the broken morale of the ARVN forces, and the inability to simultaneously command three fronts stretching for almost 180 miles.
General Van Tien Dung had made the correct analysis, and his final push had cleared the coast for other PAVN forces to easily advance on Saigon. If Dung had turned his forces around as the Politburo wished, he would have given Phu the breathing room to steady his troops and erect much tougher defenses. The PAVN columns would then have had to fight their way through, delaying the final assault on Saigon. Dung’s choice to first clear away II Corps and then move toward Saigon was one of the most critical, though little-known, strategic decisions of the final offensive.
With the collapse of ARVN defenses, the coast stood wide open. The PAVN command learned from radio intercepts that ARVN forces were withdrawing from Cam Ranh and that on 1 April the II Corps headquarters had fled toward Phan Rang. Further, the “General Staff reported the enemy’s situation to the [10th] Division and urged it to . . . develop its attack as rapidly as possible in the direction of Nha Trang and Cam Ranh. The message stated that if necessary it should send a small unit in advance to prevent the enemy from destroying technical bases and loading people abroad ships.”40 Spurred on by news of the retreating ARVN, on the morning of 2 April the 10th Division tanks surged down Route 21. Shrugging off air strikes, at noon the 10th Division marched into Ninh Hoa. Finding the city already in the hands of an alert Communist local-force unit, the 10th quickly pushed south on Route 1 to seize Nha Trang and Cam Ranh. Although the 10th had to fight its way through some rear-guard Ranger elements on Route 1, by 5:00 P.M. the division was advancing into Nha Trang. Another coastal city had fallen.
At Cam Ranh Bay on 1 April, the Pioneer Commander arrived from Danang. Cam Ranh was supposed to be the safe haven for the South Vietnamese troops and civilians being transported from I Corps by the American Military Sealift Command (MSC). Although the captain repeatedly radioed MSC headquarters about a band of thugs who were terrorizing the people on the ship, no one in Saigon alerted the South Vietnamese military at Cam Ranh. When the ship docked, the thugs disembarked and went on a rampage. They easily overwhelmed the guard force at the ARVN 5th Logistics Center, commandeered a number of vehicles, and shot and seriously wounded the Logistics Center commander, who tried to stop them from stealing his vehicles. The looters formed a column and headed south toward Phan Rang.
Only a few Americans still worked at the once-bustling port of Cam Ranh. They were ordered by the MSC to assist with the refugee evacuation. Given the thugs terrorizing the ships, the Pioneer Commander and the Pioneer Contender were told to drop off their loads of refugees from Danang and continue south. Another MSC ship, the Sgt. Andrew Miller, would pick up the refugees. The Sgt. Andrew Miller arrived the morning of 2 April and began loading from the dock. No panic was displayed, and the worn refugees glumly boarded. Late in the afternoon, the vessel backed away from the pier and moved out to sea. The lines of waiting evacuees, however, continued to lengthen.
Soon another MSC ship, the Greenville Victory, entered the harbor, but it did not pull up to the pier. It anchored in mid-harbor, under orders from MSC headquarters to use a barge fastened to the tugboat Chitose Maru to ferry the refugees to it. However, the pier was ten feet higher than the barge, and when the brightly lit Greenville Victory did not tie up to the dock, the civilians began to panic. As the barge neared the pier, jostling refugees knocked the first row of people into the water, where the barge crushed them. As the barge made contact with the pier, rows of people—the old, the young, women and children—were jostled from the pier, smashing onto the deck of the barge. Screams from the injured and frightened drowned out the voices of the tugboat’s crew as it tried to maintain order.
What had happened in Nha Trang was now repeated in Cam Ranh. Hundreds of people leapt onto the barge. Many were crushed under the weight of so many bodies. When the barge was full, the tugboat pulled away from the dock and headed to the Greenville Victory. There it confronted a new danger. Small vessels trying to reach the MSC ship cut in front of the tug. As the tug turned to place the barge against the ship, its powerful wake swamped some of the smaller boats. Cutting his engine, the captain of theChitose Maru slowly pulled up to the much larger ship. Using cargo nets draped over the side of the Greenville Victory, people from the barge began climbing up the ropes. People from the sampans and other small vessels also tried climbing aboard. Many lost their grip and fell into the sea. Children and infants were thrown from the cargo nets up to the larger ship, but if no one on deck was able to catch them, they fell into the water. Many children and adults were smashed between the two hulls.
The scene was repeated all night. As one American present later wrote: “When the last refugee had left the barge [on the first trip], only the debris-littered deck remained as evidence of the human tragedy the evacuation had become. We agonized over the injury and loss of so many people, and we struggled with the fact that we had no control over the terrible fear that drove the refugees. . . . Returning to the pier, we could only watch again as waves of panic-driven Vietnamese [were] falling, scrambling, shoving, and fighting their way onto the barge. The terrible cacophony of the tug’s engine and horn blaring, people’s screams and cries . . . filled my ears until they hurt. The appalling scenes were nightmarish and our only relief came when the barge was full again.”41 By mid-evening, the Greenville Victory was filled with nine thousand people, and it sailed off. A new ship moved in, the S.S. American Challenger. It continued loading until dawn, when it was replaced by another vessel.
On the morning of 3 April, a 10th Division assault force advanced south on Route 1 to capture Cam Ranh. Despite the VNN’s withdrawal, the South Vietnamese still fought back. As the 10th Division history put it, “Enemy aircraft savagely bombed and strafed our forces in an effort to stop our advance. Pockets of resistance along the sides of the road continuously opened fire on our advancing forces.”42 It was for naught. At 2:00 P.M. on 3 April the huge military port at Cam Ranh was captured. Nothing but a mob of retreating soldiers stood between the 10th Division and the next major town heading south, the port city of Phan Rang. But instead of sending the 10th south on Route 1 to assault the city, Giap ordered it to halt and prepare to move toward Saigon. It would prove a costly mistake.