18
THE FALL OF SAIGON
As the 18th Division pulled out of Xuan Loc, Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Toan finalized his battle plan to protect Saigon. His goal was to defend as far forward as possible, mainly to keep the capital outside the range of the deadly 130-mm guns. Most of his troop strength was focused west, north, and east of the city, leaving the southern approaches relatively open. Realizing that he had few reserves and far too much ground to cover, Toan knew that his only recourse was to defend the main invasion routes and hope for a negotiated settlement.
After the 18th Division’s retreat, Toan moved the unit into the positions held by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Brigade along Route 1 at the town of Trang Bom. The JGS transferred two Marine brigades to Toan’s control: the intact 468th and the reconstituted 258th. Given the chaos at the Danang port and elsewhere, Toan was leery of Marine discipline, so he placed the Marines behind the 18th Division. The 258th held a line running from the Dong Nai River through the town of Ho Nai on Route 1, with the 468th from there south to Route 15. Marine Division Commander Major General Bui The Lan ordered his deputy, Colonel Nguyen Thanh Tri, to command the two brigades while he remained at the port of Vung Tau to reconstitute the rest of the division.
The 1st Airborne Brigade, after retreating from Xuan Loc, remained in Phuoc Tuy province to shield Vung Tau. The 1st Airborne and Phuoc Tuy RF had to defend a huge swath of territory and two major roads: Route 2 coming from Xuan Loc and Route 15 from Saigon. The brigade was placed under the command of Major General Nguyen Duy Hinh, who was in charge of the Phuoc Tuy/Vung Tau front. Hinh had only the Airborne brigade, the 14th Marine Battalion holding Vung Tau, local RF/PF, plus the remnants of his own 3rd Division and bits and pieces of various units continuing to stream in from I and II Corps.
The still intact ARVN 5th Division guarded the northern approaches to Saigon along Route 13, particularly between the Dong Nai and Saigon Rivers. On the western side of Saigon, the 25th Division had its regiments scattered along a line from Tay Ninh to Cu Chi on Route 1, along with the 32nd Ranger Group. Between the 25th and Tan Son Nhut airbase was the recently formed 9th Ranger Group, an untested unit.
South of the 25th Division was the Hau Nghia province RF/PF. Behind them on Saigon’s western outskirts was another recently formed Ranger group, the 8th, along with remnants of the 7th Rangers. South of the city, the rebuilding 22nd Division, assisted by the badly under-strength 6th Ranger Group, was ordered to hold open Route 4 from Ben Luc to My Tho. This mission was critical. If Saigon fell, ARVN had developed preliminary plans to retreat to IV Corps. It would then blow up the Ben Luc Bridge over the Vam Co Dong River to block the PAVN armor. Toan’s last units, the 4th Airborne Brigade and recuperating elements of the other Airborne brigades, held defensive positions closer to the city. The 81st Airborne Rangers and a few Special Forces teams recovered from I Corps were guarding various installations. The Navy would try to interdict the canals and rivers, while the Air Force still flew from Bien Hoa and Tan Son Nhut airbases. To hold Saigon, the South Vietnamese had roughly 60,000 regular RVNAF troops, 40,000 RF plus another 20,000 Popular Force militia, and 5,000 police, totaling 125,000 men. It would not be enough.
PREPARING FOR THE HO CHI MINH CAMPAIGN
Long before PAVN forces captured Phan Rang and Phan Thiet, Dung and the campaign staff had begun developing the plan for the final assault on Saigon. Although two Politburo members, Dung and Pham Hung, were already in the south, Le Duan sent his right-hand man, Le Duc Tho, to oversee the campaign. Apparently Tho’s departure from Hanoi was a dramatic occasion. He later confided to Dung that, just before he left, North Vietnam’s aging President and Politburo member Ton Duc Thang told him, “Do not come home until victory is won.”1
As Dung scrutinized the maps, he realized that his main problems in conquering Saigon were to formulate a suitable attack strategy and to select the most appropriate targets. He did not view the assault as either simple or easy, and his book describes in considerable detail how he attempted to construct the proper strategy for the final attack. Dung claims that he wanted to take Saigon with as little damage to the city and as few casualties to both sides as possible. How much he truly cared about the people of Saigon, however, is open to debate, as is whether the North Vietnamese had agreed to allow the Americans to evacuate with no interference. CIA analyst Frank Snepp recounts signal intercepts on 28 April ordering artillery to shell the heart of Saigon if the Americans were not out by the time Dung’s columns arrived.2 Whether the intercepts were a bluff designed to get the Americans out faster is unknown.
For Dung, the fundamental military problem was, “How should we attack to make the organization of this tremendous unit of enemy troops dissolve and their morale collapse?”3 His question makes it clear that rather than focusing on killing a percentage of the South Vietnamese army, the standard PAVN practice, this time their attack would be aimed directly at the enemy’s heart and brain. Dung wanted the North Vietnamese assault to be unconventional and daring, designed to cause a rapid disintegration. As Dung said, “If our style . . . was not unexpected . . . then the time would drag out . . . and the rainy season would come.” He did not want to give the “political entanglements of the Americans and their protégés around the world time to . . . rescue the [Thieu] regime,” an obvious slap at covert diplomatic efforts to arrange a ceasefire.4
After a close examination of the South Vietnamese defenses, Dung and his campaign staff chose five key objectives whose capture Dung believed would ensure the collapse of the South Vietnamese military and government. They were the Joint General Staff Headquarters, Tan Son Nhut airbase, Independence Palace, the National Police Headquarters, and the Capital Military Zone Headquarters. To achieve that collapse, Dung states, “the campaign headquarters agreed that the method of attack . . . would be to use whatever forces necessary from each direction to encircle enemy forces, isolating them and preventing them from falling back into Saigon; to wipe out and disperse the enemy . . . divisions on the outer defense perimeter. . . . This would open the way for mechanized . . . assault units to advance rapidly along the main roads and strike directly at the five chosen objectives.”5 This was the exact opposite of the strategy used to conquer Ban Me Thuot, which highlights PAVN’s newfound flexibility.
To accomplish this strategy, the People’s Army at the gates of Saigon had a force of five corps comprising fourteen divisions and another ten independent regiments and brigades—not counting the various B-2 Front sapper units. In addition, there were another two divisions operating nearby. While the RVNAF could barely muster 110,000 troops to defend Saigon, according to PAVN figures, “our entire combat forces totaled 270,000 troops (250,000 main force troops and 20,000 local force troops) and 180,000 strategic and campaign-level rear services troops.”6 If that is true, then together with other forces in-country during the Saigon attack, PAVN had more troops in South Vietnam—something close to 550,000—than the Americans did at the height of the U.S. commitment, around 543,000.
From this massive legion, Dung formed five attack prongs, and he assigned primary targets to each of them.7 Striking from the west and southwest would be Group 232, consisting of the 5th, 9th, and 303rd Divisions plus the independent 16th Regiment and the 8th Division. Their mission was to defeat ARVN forces in this area, cut Route 4, and then capture the Capital Military Zone Headquarters and the National Police Headquarters. From the northwest, the 3rd Corps, consisting of the 10th, 316th, and 320th Divisions, the 273rd Tank Regiment, and the 198th Sapper Regiment, would destroy the ARVN 25th Division and capture Tan Son Nhut. From the north, the 1st Corps—the 312th and 320B Divisions and the 202nd Tank Brigade—would annihilate the ARVN 5th Division and then overrun the JGS Headquarters at Tan Son Nhut. From the east, the 4th Corps, with the 6th, 7th, and 341st Divisions, would wipe out the ARVN 18th Division, capture Bien Hoa, and then move on to Independence Palace. On the 4th Corps’s left flank was the 2nd Corps, with the 3rd, 304th, and 325th Divisions and the 203rd Tank Brigade. The 304th Division would take the Armor School at Nuoc Trong, the logistics center at Long Binh, and then, in conjunction with the 4th Corps, secure Independence Palace. The 325th would cut Route 15 and then swing south of Saigon. The 3rd Division would grab Phuoc Tuy province and then move toward Vung Tau. In the Delta, the 4th Division would attack Can Tho. The 324th, 2nd, and 968th Divisions, plus local forces, would guard the newly conquered territories and the North Vietnamese supply lines.
Each corps would organize two types of forces. The first group would carry out the principal attack against the ARVN infantry divisions on the outer perimeter. After the main ARVN units were pinned down, powerful Soviet-style mechanized deep-strike units—combined-arms formations made up of an infantry regiment, armor, artillery, and air-defense units—would race into Saigon to seize the five key nerve centers, whose loss would cause an immediate South Vietnamese collapse. Armor would form the heart of each deep-strike force.
Before launching the strike forces, however, PAVN first had to grab the fourteen bridges leading into Saigon. The area around the city is crisscrossed with rivers and swamps, and Dung had limited ferry capability. What little he had he sent to Group 232, since it had to traverse the extensive marshes between the Cambodian border and the Vam Co Dong River. For Dung, seizing the bridges was almost as important as how and what to attack. Although Tran Van Tra had initially repeated the Tet ‘68 plan and ordered his sapper regiments and the commando cells to seize the five main objectives, on 25 April Dung reversed that order. He told the sappers to instead seize the Saigon bridges. This sudden change raised havoc with the sappers’ planning. More important, timing the bridge attacks was crucial: if the sappers struck too soon, the ARVN forces would decimate them. If they waited too long, ARVN would destroy the bridges. To compensate, Dung gave each corps the authority to decide when to deploy its sappers. The timing of the sappers’ attacks would be based on the rate of advance of the corps they were assigned to support.
But what if the sappers failed? If the ARVN troops retreated into the city and blew up the bridges behind them, PAVN infantry would have to leave their armored vehicles and heavy artillery behind and fight for the capital block by block, house by house. If that happened, Dung realized, “then damage, destruction, and death would be hard to avoid.”8
As senior military commander, Dung had the responsibility of formulating the attack strategy and directing the attack. Given the dearth of Communist documentary information translated into English, most Western authors who have written about the war’s end have incorrectly assumed Dung was the sole designer of the five-target/five-pronged-attack concept for Saigon. He was not, and even Dung stated that the Saigon plan was a collective labor. In fact, the final plan was a modification of the one created in early April by the General Staff’s Major General Le Ngoc Hien. He based it on Giap’s initial guidance, which included the deep-penetration strike concept. This initial plan was set back because of the stiff ARVN resistance at Xuan Loc. Dung also had the combined staffs to help him, and assistance from the General Staff’s Central Cell in Hanoi.
Dung, though, did not mention (nor did Giap in his memoirs, written eighteen years later) that the five targets had also been key objectives in the Tet Offensive, although the 1968 plan had a total of nine primary objectives. This omission by Dung was another irritant to Tra, which he alludes to in his own postwar book. For years Tra had been wedded to the five-prong concept, which he discusses extensively in his memoir. He repeatedly dusted off elements of this 1968 plan—which in turn sprang from a top-secret plan to seize Saigon in 1965, which was aborted after the U.S. introduced large numbers of ground troops—and tried to incorporate it into his 1975 operation. Tra’s account was designed to counter Dung’s claim to authorship of this strategy. Tra also sought to answer his critics by demonstrating that his original 1968 attack strategy, along with his concept of attacking Saigon first in 1975, not only was sound but was the actual basis for the much-vaunted Ho Chi Minh Campaign. Ultimately, how much of the Saigon attack plan was Dung’s, and how much was Le Ngoc Hien’s, a variation of Tra’s, or input from the Central Cell, is not known. However, in Vietnam one does not criticize Politburo members, especially in print. The result was the confiscation and banning of Tra’s manuscript.
As Dung contemplated strategy, he also turned his sights to mobilizing every weapon he could muster. While the South Vietnamese had an Air Force to counter the Communists’ ground superiority, Dung planned on surprising ARVN with his own air strike. On 7 April, Le Ngoc Hien cabled the General Staff that their men had captured a number of aircraft on various airfields throughout South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese Air Force quickly sent mechanics south to repair the captured equipment. Dung wanted to exploit these airplanes, and on 19 April he issued preliminary orders to the Air Defense–Air Force Command to participate in the Ho Chi Minh Campaign. The Air Force Combat Command decided to attack using the captured aircraft, mainly for the element of surprise but also because using their own Soviet-built aircraft might generate a violent American response. On 20 April, five pilots were selected and flown to Phu Cat airbase in Binh Dinh province, where captured A-37s were being restored to operational status. The People’s Air Force history relates that “The entire flight immediately began conversion training from the MiG-17 to the A-37 . . . Air Defense–Air Force Headquarters approved the use of two [VNAF] air force pilots and a number of [VNAF] air force mechanics who had volunteered to assist the revolution to provide guidance to the flight in a number of technical areas and on how to utilize the aircraft.”9 On 24 and 25 April, the pilots flew successful practice flights. On 26 April the VNAF defector, F-5 pilot Nguyen Thanh Trung, was sent to help train the MiG pilots.
Dung knew that the Air Force strike would be a pinprick, but it might temporarily stun the South Vietnamese at a critical moment and contribute to the collapse of morale. His main focus, however, was on air defense. Even though the VNAF had suffered tremendous losses, it had struck hard at Communist forces during the battles for Phan Rang, Can Tho, and Xuan Loc. While Dung planned on shelling the jet airfields to disrupt South Vietnamese air operations, he also wanted the greatest air-defense shield possible. His orders to the air-defense forces were simple and direct: “Mobilize and utilize to the maximum campaign air-defense forces . . . to create a powerful air-defense umbrella over all attack sectors, at the altitudes covered by our different types of weapons and equipment, to overwhelm and suppress the operations of the enemy’s air force and to gain control of the air over the battle area.” Furthermore, “Air defense units should be prepared to engage U.S. aircraft if the U.S. re-intervenes.”10
The People’s Army stripped most of the air-defense shield in North Vietnam, leaving only two air-defense divisions behind to protect the homeland. Everything else was sent south. From the strategic reserve, the 375th Air Defense Division deployed to defend the newly captured cities of Hue and Danang. The 263rd Missile Regiment sent one battalion of SA-2s from Khe Sanh along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to positions on the northern approaches to Saigon. The 365th Air Defense Division, with three AAA (anti-aircraft) regiments, sent one regiment to protect Dalat, another to defend Cam Ranh, and the third, along with a missile regiment, to defend Nha Trang. The 237th AAA Regiment, equipped with radar-controlled, self-propelled ZSU-23s—a weapon that had decimated the Israeli Air Force during the early days of the October 1973 war and that had never been seen in South Vietnam—moved by train from Hanoi to the DMZ, and then continued onward by road.
The remaining air-defense units were assigned to the five corps. The 673rd Air Defense Division with three AAA regiments protected the 2nd Corps. The 71st Air Defense Brigade, consisting of one AAA regiment and six separate AAA battalions, guarded the 4th Corps. The 77th Air Defense Division (one AAA regiment, six separate AAA battalions, and one SA-7 battalion) defended the formations of Group 232. Five AAA regiments shielded the 3rd Corps. The most powerful unit, however, was the 367th Air Defense Division protecting the 1st Corps. It had its own three AAA regiments, another AAA regiment from the 377th Division, plus the enroute ZSU-23s and the SA-2s. Not counting the two air-defense divisions protecting the North Vietnamese logistics tail in the northern half of South Vietnam, the PAVN units advancing on Saigon were protected by the equivalent of five reinforced air-defense divisions. This force totaled nineteen AAA regiments, not including the organic AAA battalion assigned to each infantry division, the equivalent of another five regiments. This shield comprised almost eight hundred anti-aircraft cannon, a regiment of long-range SA-2 missiles, and large numbers of the deadly shoulder-fired SA-7 man-portable missiles. Into this air-defense buzz saw, the VNAF would fling its remaining aircraft in one last desperate attempt to halt the PAVN juggernaut, all the time dodging artillery barrages on its airfields.
Besides deployment of air defense and sappers, terrain analysis, and contingency planning for various South Vietnamese responses, the PAVN campaign staff had an enormous amount of logistics and operational coordination to accomplish in order to meet Le Duan’s deadline of attacking by the end of April. Moving thousands of troops south, formulating the attack plan, presenting and gaining approval for the plan, and then directing the various units to their correct assembly area required a tremendous effort. Logistics was the primary concern.
Fortunately for Dung, the General Staff in Hanoi was handling most of the supply issues. Deputy Chief of Staff Hoang Van Thai not only monitored the southern movement of units like the 1st Corps, he also devoted special attention to furnishing all the supplies the campaign needed, especially artillery and tank shells. PAVN also pressed into service any useful piece of ARVN equipment, which in some units had risen to a sizable percentage of their artillery. The various rear-services groups worked round the clock to move vast quantities of supplies toward the distant battlefield. By mid-April the General Staff reported that 58,000 tons of supplies, including 28,000 already stockpiled at COSVN headquarters, were on hand in B-2. Yet Dung wanted more. After further requests, on 19 April the General Staff sent a cable “informing our commanders that 240 trucks belonging to Group 559 and carrying 13,000 rounds of 130-mm artillery ammunition departed on 17 April, accompanied by 40 trucks carrying tank spare parts and 150 other trucks belonging to the General Rear Services Department. All available. . . mortar ammunition had been collected from warehouses throughout North Vietnam and was on its way south.”11 What is not described is where all this material came from. If Thai had had deep concerns regarding the pre-offensive supply of artillery shells, where did PAVN suddenly get 13,000 rounds of 130-mm shells? Only the Soviets could have provided such ammunition. Regardless, the tremendous efforts of the PAVN staffs and rear-services units were successful. By 25 April all “tasks to provide material-technical support for the campaign had been completed.”12
Supplies were one concern, but Hanoi had another major problem: guarding the newly captured territory, securing the cities, disarming large numbers of South Vietnamese soldiers and police, and protecting against sabotage by die-hard resisters. Thousands of Party and government cadres were sent south to assist in controlling the newly “liberated” areas. Many troops from the dreaded Ministry of Public Security—which during this period was operating under a more innocuous name, the Ministry of the Interior—were deployed along Route 1 to protect the road and track down ARVN holdouts.
Throughout the month of April 1975, both the South Vietnamese and the international press published numerous stories about a potential bloodbath after a Communist victory in South Vietnam. Dung later sneered at the “distorted, deceitful propaganda” put out by the American Embassy and the South Vietnamese regarding supposed “bloodbaths, reprisals, [and] hard labor camps.”13 While there was no organized slaughter, it is clear from the Communists’ own historical records that there was substantial justification for the fears felt by many South Vietnamese. On 5 January 1975, the Ministry of the Interior laid out secret guidelines for dealing with South Vietnamese military and government officials during the coming attacks. “Our policy was to facilitate and clear the way for . . . soldiers and . . . governmental personnel to enter our liberated zones and join the revolution and to punish stubborn leaders (officers from the rank of captain up and . . . government officials from the district level up). The forms of punishment to be administered to those guilty of many crimes was broken down into the following categories: For leaders, they could be killed immediately or arrested, tried, and sentenced to death, imprisonment, or reeducation camps.”14 (Emphasis added.) On 18 April the Ministry updated its prisoner-of-war policy. Deserters or those who surrendered would be given the same “rights” as Communist soldiers. All officers “would be detained for supervision, education, and labor.”15
On 21 April, the Campaign Command finalized the attack plan. The next day, Le Duan sent a cable to his senior officers to inform them that ARVN had detected the movement of PAVN forces toward Saigon, and had adjusted its forces to ensure that Route 4 stayed open. Le Duan was anxious and concerned. He wrote: “The opportune moment to launch the military and political general offensive against Saigon has come. We must race against time, make use of every day, to launch the offensive in time. Taking action at this moment is the surest guarantee of our total victory. Any delay will be detrimental to us, militarily and politically.”16
Later that day, Giap sent clarifying instructions. He also told Dung that the time had come to launch the offensive. The sapper and commando teams had to take the key objectives in a timely manner, and he ordered that whichever column was in the most favorable position should race into Saigon first, regardless of the plan. Giap also believed that if the South Vietnamese forces could not hold Saigon, the GVN would attempt to retreat to Can Tho. Group 232 was given the critical mission of preventing such a retreat.
Since Le Duc Tho was the senior Politburo member present at COSVN, he responded to Le Duan’s message. On 25 April he sent a ten-page cable to Hanoi discussing what had been accomplished during the last several weeks. Tho agreed that the time was ripe to launch an offensive, but he said that because of specific difficulties, they could not attack immediately. First, the recently arrived divisions were still studying the unfamiliar terrain. Second, the material sent from Hanoi on 17 April had not yet arrived, and so ammunition was in relatively short supply. Lastly, the Campaign Command’s analysis of the South Vietnamese defensive strategy indicated that ARVN planned to stop the attackers at a distance from Saigon and, if that failed, to pull back into the city and blow up the bridges behind them. The campaign headquarters was studying these matters intently, and had decided to change strategy and grab the bridges using the sappers.
Furthermore, Tho disagreed with Giap’s analysis that if Saigon fell, the GVN would retreat to Can Tho. He believed that GVN control of the Mekong Delta would collapse once Saigon was captured. In concluding his report, Tho told the Politburo: “You may be at ease. We are taking full advantage of every day and every hour, and within a few more days, after some basic deficiencies are overcome, we will begin the campaign as planned.”17
On 26 April, the Politburo met in special session to hear Le Duc Tho’s report. After carefully reviewing it, Le Duan rose to speak to his fellow revolutionaries. Looking around the room, Le Duan sought their views. The vote was unanimous.
Attack now.
LAUNCHING THE ATTACK
Since Lieutenant General Le Trong Tan’s two corps on the eastern side of Saigon were the greatest distance from their objectives, he requested that his troops open fire first, at 5:00 P.M., 26 April. Dung approved the request, and Tan’s staff quickly prepared attack plans. The 4th Corps would send the 341st Division along Route 1 to seize Trang Bom, and then move to capture the Bien Hoa airbase. The 6th Division would then surge forward and grab the III Corps headquarters and the bridges on Route 1 over the Dong Nai River. This would open the door for the 7th Division to send a deep-penetration column across the Dong Nai River and into Saigon.
The 2nd Corps also had a variety of targets. The 304th Division would attack the Armor School at Nuoc Trung on Route 15 and then turn north along that road toward the supply depots at Long Binh. It would then cross the Dong Nai River bridge and move along the Saigon–Bien Hoa highway into the capital. The 325th Division would capture the district town of Long Thanh south of the Armor School, and then swing south of Saigon along local Route 25 and strike at the Cat Lai ferry just across the Saigon River from the Newport Bridge. The 325th would then deploy its artillery and commence shelling Tan Son Nhut airbase from the opposite side of the city. The 3rd Division would attack Phuoc Tuy province and seize the port city of Vung Tau.
At the designated hour of 5:00 P.M., 26 April, almost twenty battalions of artillery opened fire simultaneously along the eastern front, raining shells onto ARVN positions. An hour later, the 9th Regiment, 304th Division struck the Armor School and captured it. ARVN units from the school, heavily supported by air strikes, counterattacked and recaptured some ground, but they were too few to retake the school. Lieutenant General Toan quickly dispatched reinforcements, a mixed task force including a tank squadron from Khoi’s 3rd Armored, the 7th Airborne Battalion, and the 82nd Border Ranger Battalion. The combined force turned back several other PAVN attacks, and inflicted heavy casualties on the 304th.
On the 304th’s right flank, at 4:00 A.M. on 27 April, the 341st Division charged the ARVN 18th Division holding Trang Bom. The initial attack was repelled, but flanking attacks broke through, and at 8:30 A.M., Trang Bom fell. When the 18th Division retreated, it was ambushed and suffered heavy casualties. Le Minh Dao, newly promoted to major general, was forced to pull his badly damaged unit back to the Long Binh depot to recover. PAVN forces immediately pushed forward to engage the Marines holding the district town Ho Nai, the last town before Bien Hoa.
On the 304th’s left flank, the 325th Division attacked Long Thanh, sending a tank-led infantry battalion racing into the district capital. The first assault barreled into town with little opposition, but instead of melting away at the sight of armor, the RF soldiers broke into small teams and began ambushing the PAVN troops, knocking out two T-54s and killing the commander of the lead infantry battalion. The division commander ordered his columns to retreat and resume the attack at daybreak.
In Phuoc Tuy, the 3rd Division’s plan called for the 12th Regiment to strike south along Route 2, while the 141st Regiment and a tank company would sneak behind ARVN lines and assault the Phuoc Tuy province capital of Ba Ria. They would then continue south on Route 15 and grab the bridge spanning the Co May River, the gateway to Vung Tau. Once the bridge was in PAVN hands, the 2nd Regiment, also reinforced by armor, would make a deep-penetration strike to seize Vung Tau.
The 3rd Division opened fire around 6:00 P.M., 26 April. The tanks drove into Ba Ria, but the infantry was unable to keep up, allowing the South Vietnamese 1st Airborne Brigade to counterattack and drive them out. The next morning, the 141st Regiment attacked again, but the Airborne again repulsed the assault. The PAVN pressure, however, forced Major General Hinh to pull his forces back across the Co May River. Hinh ordered the bridge destroyed, which the Airborne accomplished on the afternoon of 27 April. Two Airborne battalions that were stuck on the Ba Ria side of the river had to walk across marshy salt flats to reach the other side.
The 3rd Division resumed its attack at midnight on 28 April. Throughout the night the 2nd Regiment attempted to cross the Co May, but the Airborne refused to budge. Each side poured artillery fire onto the other’s positions. By dawn, the 3rd Division had managed to slip two infantry companies into a mangrove swamp on the far bank, but they were pinned down and unable to advance.
Taking casualties and stalemated at the river, the 3rd Division sent the 12th Regiment southeast to the coast, commandeered some fishing boats, and snuck across the marsh to a village about four miles south of the bridge. By noon the 12th Regiment had reached Route 15 between the bridge and Vung Tau. With the appearance of enemy soldiers in their rear, and a new attack by the 2nd Regiment, the Airborne were forced to retreat from the bridge. While pulling back they were ambushed. Despite heavy losses, they fought their way to Vung Tau.
At 1:30 A.M., 30 April, the “Yellow Star” Division resumed the attack. It drove into various sections of the Vung Tau peninsula, and by early morning had captured most of the area. Only the city center remained in ARVN hands. Some elements of the Airborne grabbed ships and attempted to flee to the Delta, and others tried to link up with the U.S. evacuation fleet stationed off the coast, while a few unlucky ones continued to hold the town. Despite some scattered die-hard resistance, Vung Tau was captured by 11:00A.M., 30 April. The 1st Airborne Brigade, which had fought heroically at Thuong Duc, Xuan Loc, and Ba Ria/Vung Tau, was destroyed.
North of Saigon, the ARVN 5th Division was positioned astride Route 13. Its main units were dug in at three former American bases: Lai Khe, Ben Cat, and Phu Loi. To defeat the 5th Division, the PAVN plan called for the 1st Corps’s 312th Division to bypass the heavily fortified bases at Lai Khe and Ben Cat, and strike the base at Phu Loi, the one closest to Saigon. Capturing this base would cut off the 5th ARVN. Concurrently, the 320B Division would conduct a deep-penetration strike east of Route 13 along a secondary dirt road called Route 16. To enable the deep-penetration unit to easily advance, the corps engineer brigade secretly constructed a thirty-one-mile road that linked up the 320B’s assembly area with Route 16.
The 312th Division opened fired at 4:30 P.M., 27 April. Two regiments moved forward to assault RF positions and seize road junctions near Phu Loi. At midnight 29 April, the 312th began its assault on Phu Loi. At the same time, the deep penetration column began advancing along the newly built road and reached Route 16. Bypassing RF positions, by dawn on 30 April, the 320B Division had reached the district seat of Tan Uyen, approximately fifteen miles northwest of Bien Hoa. With the 5th Division now bypassed, the ARVN units on Saigon’s northern and eastern approaches were in great danger of being outflanked.
South and west of Saigon, Group 232 was facing major problems. In mid-April the 303rd Division had been pulled back to the newly conquered area west of the Vam Co Dong River near the Cambodian border. The 9th Division was based alongside the 303rd. To enable the two divisions to cross the river, the 303rd Division sent one regiment to the eastern side to secure a bridgehead and clear away RF positions. Fighting for three days, the PAVN troops captured two villages on the eastern bank, opening the way for the follow-on columns to cross the river without opposition.
On the night of 26 April, the 303rd was ordered to cross the Vam Co Dong River. The first rainstorm of the season, however, had turned the road to the crossing into a swampy morass. The tanks and other tracked vehicles churned up the road, making it almost impassable for wheeled vehicles, snarling traffic. A massive convoy soon stretched four miles from the Cambodian border to the river. PAVN troops press-ganged the local population into cutting bushes to place on the road so the vehicles could gain traction.
If traversing the road was difficult, crossing the river was far worse. The engineers put a half float in the middle of the river, and then built ferries to move the vehicles from one bank to the float, and then to the other side. Fortunately for Tra’s troops, the VNAF did not contest the river crossing, enabling the engineers to slowly shuttle vehicles across.
By the morning of 28 April, the 303rd Division had successfully crossed over. It then moved to Route 10 and turned south to attack the Hau Nghia provincial capital, Khiem Cuong. Lieutenant General Toan had earlier reinforced the Hau Nghia RF with M-113s from the 25th Division’s armor squadron, but they were of little help. The 303rd Division commander launched a tank-led attack at dawn on 29 April, and, since the defenders had no anti-tank weapons, the assault quickly penetrated into Khiem Cuong. By 11:30A.M., the RF and the M-113s had abandoned the town and retreated toward Saigon. Hau Nghia province was overrun.
Following on the heels of the 303rd, by nightfall of 28 April, the infantry from the 9th Division had crossed the river, and by late afternoon the next day, the division’s heavy equipment was also across. The 9th formed two attack columns; one regiment headed for Tan Son Nhut, while the second moved east toward Saigon.
South of Saigon, the PAVN 5th Division, still in Long An province, was ordered to cut Route 4 and block any potential retreat from Saigon into IV Corps. Moving forward, a regiment cut the road, but the ARVN 22nd Division swiftly reacted and cleared the roadblock. Massing a second time, at dawn on 28 April, the 5th Division again tried to seize the road. Savage fighting erupted as the 22nd Division cleared the road a second time. The PAVN troops retreated to a nearby village, and fired at vehicles on Route 4 to disrupt traffic.
At midnight, the 5th Division attacked for a third time, finally capturing a bridge on Route 4. Building obstacles and planting mines, the Communist troops were determined to block the only escape route out of Saigon. The 22nd Division fought all day on 29 April to clear the road, but it was unable to dislodge the dug-in enemy.
On Saigon’s northwestern front, the PAVN 3rd Corps also prepared to swing into action. To prevent ARVN forces from falling back from Tay Ninh, the 316th Division would cut Route 22 and also attack the important district town of Trang Bang on Route 1. Once the 316th captured Trang Bang, the PAVN 320th Division would assault the 25th Division headquarters at Dong Du near Cu Chi. With the 25th Division pinned down, the 198th Sapper Regiment would slip past the ARVN defenses and seize two critical bridges near Tan Son Nhut: the Bong Bridge on Route 1, and the Sang Bridge on Route 15. Routes 1 and 15 are the only roads across the flat rice fields into Saigon. After these bridges were captured, the 10th Division would conduct deep-penetration attacks along both roads to grab Tan Son Nhut and the Joint General Staff Headquarters.
The 25th Division commander, Brigadier General Ly Tong Ba, had his 49th Regiment defending Tay Ninh, the 46th Regiment holding Trang Bang, the 32nd Ranger Group keeping Route 22 open, and the 50th Regiment holding Cu Chi. However, Lieutenant General Toan ordered Ba to send his armor squadron and two battalions of the 50th Regiment to bolster both Hau Nghia province and Trang Bang, depleting Ba’s defense at Dong Du. Ba was furious. He had hoped to gather part of his division together at Dong Du and essentially fight a repeat of the 1972 battle of Kontum. Toan’s moves had now stripped Ba of most of his combat power at Dong Du.
The 316th struck at 7:00 A.M., 28 April. Launching attacks along a twenty-mile stretch of Routes 22 and 1, the North Vietnamese troops slowly rolled up RF positions on the roads. They ignored Tay Ninh city, but fierce fighting erupted at the heavily defended town of Trang Bang, as the ARVN 46th Regiment threw back several assaults. The PAVN troops retreated and shelled the town, while continuing to overrun nearby outposts.
Then disaster struck for the South Vietnamese. Worried about his defenses at Dong Du, on the morning of 28 April, Brigadier General Ba recalled his 1st Battalion, 50th Regiment, and the armor, which he had sent out to help defend Trang Bang. What Ba did not know was that the 1st Battalion commander, Major Le Quang Ninh, was a Communist agent. Following a directive given several days before to disrupt his unit’s operations, Ninh used Ba’s order as his opportunity to act. While leading his men back to Dong Du, Ninh stopped and gathered his officers together. Telling them the war was over, Ninh asked them to surrender. After a short discussion, they agreed. It was a devastating blow to local South Vietnamese morale. At 3:00 P.M. the next day, after the North Vietnamese had defeated several efforts to break out of the siege ring, Trang Bang fell.
In the 320th’s sector, the division engineers secretly built a bridge across the Saigon River to enable the unit to cross. By 25 April, the division was across the river and hiding in a base area northwest of Dong Du. The division’s orders were clear: Dong Du must be captured so that the 10th Division could send a deep-penetration assault column along Route 1.
On 28 April, it commenced artillery fire against ARVN positions to soften up the base defenses. At 5:00 A.M., 29 April, two regiments assaulted Dong Du. Although Brigadier General Ba had few combat troops at the base, his soldiers held fast behind their defensive barriers, causing the attackers heavy casualties. The 320th Division commander committed his armor to help break the ARVN resistance, but two tanks were destroyed. Several more assaults were launched, but failed to penetrate the base. Despite the thick defenses, however, there were too few ARVN combat troops to hold such a large base. A final assault seized Dong Du at 11:00 A.M. Brigadier General Ba and several aides escaped, but they were captured later that day.
Despite stubborn resistance at various points, PAVN forces were closing in on Saigon. Early in the morning of 29 April, on orders from the Politburo, Dung launched the deep-penetration strikes. Saigon’s final hours were counting down.
THE LAST EFFORTS
After Thieu’s resignation, President Tran Van Huong asked Prime Minister Nguyen Ba Can to stay on to ensure government continuity. Can agreed to remain until a decision was made as to whether former General Duong Van Minh would assume power. To further assist Huong in forming a new government, it was decided that former President Thieu and former Prime Minister Tran Thien Khiem should leave the country. The U.S State Department queried several countries, but only Taiwan was willing to harbor the two men. During the night of 25 April, Ambassador Graham Martin placed Thieu and Khiem onboard his designated aircraft and had them flown out of Saigon.
However, neither move helped Huong. Under great pressure from both the Americans and the French to resign, Huong convened the National Assembly on the afternoon of 27 April to vote on a successor. After Defense Minister Tran Van Don provided a military briefing detailing the hopeless situation, Huong announced that he was stepping down, and the Assembly elected General Duong Van Minh as the new president. Minh had led the coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, but was overthrown shortly thereafter. Although marginalized since then, he eventually emerged as a leader of the “Third Force.” His main attribute was that the French claimed he was the only man with whom the North Vietnamese would discuss a possible ceasefire.
On the evening of 28 April, Minh and Huong held a ceremony to transfer power. Minh’s urgent goal was to arrange a ceasefire, primarily with the Southern-based Communists, who he believed did not wish to be subservient to Hanoi. He also believed that the Northerners did not want to take over South Vietnam immediately. Minh accepted these fantasies since he maintained radio contact with the other side. Moreover, his younger brother was a PAVN senior officer, and Le Duc Tho had tried to exploit this relationship in 1963 by sending Minh’s brother south to influence Minh. That effort failed.
Before the inauguration, Minh asked General Cao Van Vien to meet him to discuss the military situation. Vien politely declined, claiming he was too busy. In reality, Vien had not forgotten the carbine in his back in November 1963, and he would not help Minh. Shortly before transferring power, Huong accepted Vien’s resignation as chief of the JGS. Within hours, Vien flew out on a helicopter to the U.S. fleet anchored off Vung Tau. Lieutenant General Dong Van Khuyen, Vien’s deputy, left shortly thereafter. With Vien and Khuyen gone, the JGS crumbled.
Minh’s acceptance speech was short. He declared he wanted to reopen negotiations with the PRG, and promised to free all political prisoners, end press restrictions, and form a government that would include all factions. With an eye on the generals, he ordered them to continue defending the remaining land. Finishing, he offered an olive branch to the PRG, asking it to agree to a ceasefire and to join him in working out a political solution based upon the Paris Accords.
Any hope that the Communists might prove amenable to a negotiated settlement with Minh was wishful thinking. Immediately after his inauguration, the COSVN Current Affairs Committee cabled its analysis to the local military commanders: “the American ploy of making Duong Van Minh the President of the puppet government is to open negotiations with us aimed at saving what is left of the Saigon government. However, in reality Duong Van Minh is no longer a representative of the Third Force but instead has become an American lackey who is being used to oppose the revolution. In the current situation, anyone, no matter who he is, who is placed at the head of the puppet government is a lackey of the Americans. We must carry out our unshakable resolve to . . . completely liberate South Vietnam, and reunify our nation.”18
To punctuate that sentiment, Van Tien Dung’s solitary air strike hit precisely at the same moment as Minh’s speech. The PAVN Air Force had put five A-37s captured at Phu Cat airbase into operational status. After flying to Thanh Son airbase at Phan Rang, the planes, one piloted by the defector Nguyen Thanh Trung, departed at 4:25 P.M., 28 April. Reaching Tan Son Nhut shortly after 6:00 P.M., the A-37s dropped their bombs on the surprised South Vietnamese, damaging eleven VNAF aircraft. Several of the A-37s made a second bombing pass, and then they turned back for Thanh Son. Two planes were virtually out of fuel when they reached Phan Rang, but all landed safely. Just as Dung had hoped, the psychological impact on the South Vietnamese Air Force was devastating. Most of the VNAF in III Corps ceased functioning after the raid, and the airmen began escaping to Thailand.
Despite the bombing raid and the heavy fighting, to facilitate his efforts to form a coalition government, Minh immediately sent a letter to Ambassador Martin asking that all DAO personnel leave Vietnam within twenty-four hours. Martin complied, and Colonel Le Gro and Major General Smith began shutting down the office and destroying classified files. Soon the remaining DAO staff joined the ongoing evacuation at Tan Son Nhut.
To reconstitute the military high command, President Minh appointed former II Corps commander Lieutenant General Vinh Loc to replace Cao Van Vien. A relative of former Emperor Bao Dai, Loc had actively supported the coup against President Diem by leading armor units into Saigon. He was not a particularly competent general, and he had been sacked from II Corps after Tet ‘68. But with most of the JGS leadership heading for the American ships, Minh had few options. Minh gave Loc one mission: Hold for two days so that Minh could arrange a peace settlement with the other side.
Loc reached the JGS at 10:00 A.M., 29 April. After cobbling together a makeshift staff, he then phoned several generals who were still commanding their units to get a report on the situation. Unable to contact Lieutenant General Toan in III Corps, he did reach Major General Nguyen Khoa Nam, who still had IV Corps until tight control. Nam agreed to follow Loc’s orders, and to prepare Can Tho as a final bastion for the GVN if Saigon fell.
Minh also brought an old friend out of retirement to help Loc. He asked Brigadier General Nguyen Huu Hanh to come to Saigon from his home in the Delta and work as an assistant to Loc. Hanh had retired as Inspector General of I Corps in early 1974. Previously he had served as commander of the 44th Special Zone in the Delta, where he earned the enmity of Colonel David Hackworth. In his book About Face, Hackworth rightly denigrates Hanh as corrupt and notoriously reluctant to engage the enemy. There was good reason for the latter: Hanh was secretly an agent of the revolution.19 His presence at this juncture would soon prove critical.
As the departure of the Americans quickened, so did the PAVN attack columns. On the eastern front, Lieutenant General Tan deployed the B-2 Front sappers assigned to his command at the same time as his artillery opened fire. Tan’s objective was to capture five critical bridges standing between him and Saigon to prevent ARVN troops from blowing them up. The targets for the sappers assigned to the 4th Corps were the two bridges that crossed the Dong Nai River west of Bien Hoa. The first was the New Bridge, so-called because it carried a new section of road across the Dong Nai River into Bien Hoa. The second bridge, located just south of the New Bridge, was the Ghenh Bridge, which carried both the railroad track and Route 1. For the sappers assigned to the 2nd Corps, the main objective was the bridge on the Dong Nai just west of Long Binh, plus the next two bridges on the Saigon–Bien Hoa highway. The first crosses the Chiec River, and the second is the Newport Bridge, which spans the Saigon River and is the gateway to Saigon.
On 26 April, after Lieutenant General Tan’s artillery fired their opening barrages, the sappers attacked the three Dong Nai River bridges, which were guarded by the 5th Airborne Battalion. The sappers were unable to capture the Dong Nai and New Bridges, but by the early morning of 27 April, they had seized the Ghenh Bridge. The Airborne soon counterattacked and recaptured it. The equally tough sappers charged the bridges several more times, and fifty sappers died over the course of several days trying to retake the Ghenh Bridge. Although the fighting was heavy, control remained firmly in ARVN hands.
Despite the failure of the sappers to grab the bridges, after capturing Trang Bom, the 4th Corps assault column resumed its advance toward the huge military base at Bien Hoa. Only the district town of Ho Nai blocked their path. It sat on Route 1 roughly halfway between Trang Bom and Bien Hoa, and was populated by Catholic refugees from North Vietnam. The town’s name was an anagram of Hanoi, and during the Tet Offensive, the population had fiercely resisted Communist attacks. This time would be no different. The South Vietnamese defenses consisted of local PF forces, an M-48 tank troop from Khoi’s 3rd Armored, and the 6th Marine Battalion, led by Lieutenant Colonel Le Ba Binh. A highly respected career Marine officer, Binh had won the U.S. Silver and Bronze Stars, along with numerous Vietnamese medals. Now he was eagerly awaiting the Communist troops. As part of the 369th Brigade, which had swum out to the ships at Danang, Binh and many of his fellow Marines were enraged over the events in I Corps. They sought nothing less than revenge for the debacle at Danang.20
On the morning of 27 April, Le Ba Binh’s wish was granted. After an extensive artillery barrage, two battalions of the 341st Division and a few tanks probed the Marine lines. Waiting until they were close, Binh ordered his artillery to fire. The exposed attackers were battered; one tank was destroyed and almost thirty soldiers were killed. The 341st units quickly pulled back.
The next day, the 341st resumed the assault. This time it used five tanks and a regiment. The ARVN M-48 tanks quickly destroyed three T-54s, while the Marine artillery pounded the infantry. Local PF troops fired from buildings. Three times the Communist troops charged the Marine lines. Each time they were thrown back. As they retreated, Binh gave them no quarter. He ordered air-burst artillery to rain shrapnel down on the retreating North Vietnamese. When it was over, dozens of bodies littered the ground.
Binh’s stout defense was only one part of the tough Marine response. Each battalion along the defensive front was probed, and every North Vietnamese attack was crushed. Burning tanks and dead bodies littered the ground along the entire Marine line. The stiff resistance shocked Lieutenant General Tan, who was growing concerned about Ho Nai and his other stalled efforts at Nuoc Trong and Long Thanh. The 341st had suffered losses, and had failed to puncture the Marine lines. The 7th Division deep-penetration column was sitting in the rear, unable to advance. Given the tight timetable for entering Saigon, Tan demanded that the 341st seize Ho Nai. On 29 April, the division threw its remaining units into the battle. Closing with Binh’s troops, they managed to punch through one position, but counterattacking Marines drove them out. After two more hours of fighting, Binh’s unit had held for a third time. The 341st was exhausted and unable to break through. Le Ba Binh and his 6th Marines had taken a small measure of revenge for Danang
However, his joy was short-lived. After defeating the third attack, Binh received a message from his commander. His battalion and the rest of the Marine units were ordered to retreat to Bien Hoa and Long Binh. Given the heavy enemy pressure, Lieutenant General Toan wanted to pull in his lines. The night before, he had ordered his corps headquarters to retreat from Bien Hoa to Go Vap, a base closer to Saigon. Bien Hoa airbase had come under heavy shelling, putting the flight line out of operation. Nor could thecorps headquarters effectively operate while under artillery bombardment. At noon on 29 April, Toan met with Brigadier General Tran Quang Khoi, Major General Le Minh Dao, and Colonel Nguyen Thanh Tri to discuss the situation. Toan ordered Dao to defend Long Binh, while Khoi would protect Bien Hoa. The two Marine brigades would leave their positions and one each would be attached to Khoi and Dao.
After giving his orders, Toan then flew out to the U.S. fleet. He claimed he was ordered to fly out and meet with U.S. Marine officers, but in reality he knew that Minh’s ascension to the presidency spelled the end of an anti-Communist South Vietnam. Still, deserting his command was a surprising move by a man considered one of South Vietnam’s toughest generals. With Toan’s departure, and the subsequent breakdown in communications caused by the moving of the III Corps headquarters, overall South Vietnamese command and control evaporated. All units were now essentially fighting alone, with few orders or directions.
Spotting the ARVN retreat, at mid-morning on 29 April, Lieutenant General Tan ordered the 7th Division to send its deep-penetration column forward. With the Marines gone, the PAVN regulars expected no resistance. They were wrong. The Catholic militiamen were not abandoning their town to the Communists. As the lead tanks entered Ho Nai at midnight, several were hit with ant-tank rockets. Machine guns opened up on the exposed infantry. It took the PAVN regulars all night to reduce the town’s defenses. An advance element of the deep-penetration column reached Bien Hoa by dawn, but was blocked by Khoi’s tankers. Lieutenant General Tan decided to shift the 7th Division south to cross the river at Long Binh. Another arm of Dung’s army was closing in on Saigon.
On Saigon’s western front, on the night of 28 April, the 3rd Corps sent the 198th Sapper Regiment to infiltrate behind ARVN lines to capture the Bong and Sang Bridges on Route 1 and Route 15 respectively. The timing of the 198th Regiment’s attack was closely tied to the 10th Division’s mission: when the sappers attacked the bridges, the 10th Division would launch its deep-penetration strikes. Yet the 198th Sappers had to plan their mission with no reconnaissance of the targets, since they had just arrived from the Central Highlands. With only one day to prepare, their only terrain knowledge came from studying maps. If the bridge assaults failed, the 10th Division would be left sitting on Route 1, with its tanks and infantry exposed to air strikes and artillery. It was PAVN’s riskiest maneuver in the entire Ho Chi Minh Campaign.
In fact, the sappers’ lack of familiarity with the area immediately caused problems. The two sapper columns had to find detours around streams and marshes. Several times they were hit by artillery, causing the columns to split up. Only half of the original force reached the bridges by the designated assault time.
Despite the tremendous difficulties, at 3:30 A.M. on 29 April, the sappers attacked the two bridges. After several hours of heavy fighting, the sappers controlled both. At the same time, a group of COSVN sappers snuck close to Tan Son Nhut and launched a surprise rocket attack. At 4:00 A.M., volleys of rockets flashed into the sky and landed on Tan Son Nhut. One of the first rounds killed two American Marine guards, and several others hit the DAO compound. Numerous rockets hit the runways, destroying one American C-130. Soon debris and craters were clogging the tarmac, and air operations were momentarily shut down.
With the capture of the bridges, the 10th Division launched its two deep-penetration strikes. The column on Route 1 comprised the 24th Infantry Regiment, sixteen T-54s and ten K-63 armored personnel carriers, over forty trucks carrying infantry, engineers, and other specialty troops, eight anti-aircraft guns, and an artillery battalion. To surprise the South Vietnamese defenders, the column was using as its lead element five ARVN tanks captured at Cheo Reo. The second column, attacking along Route 15 to the Sang Bridge, consisted of the 28th Infantry Regiment, eleven T-54s, and twelve K-63s, plus an anti-aircraft and artillery battalion and support troops. The 10th Division had massed the most powerful attack force ever assembled by the People’s Army, a tremendous one-two punch designed to knock the South Vietnamese out of the war.
As the attack at Dong Du commenced, the 10th Division ordered the captured ARVN tanks to advance down Route 1. They soon entered the district town of Cu Chi next to Dong Du. Exactly as expected, RF troops holding the town thought these were friendly vehicles, and ran out of their bunkers to greet them. The soldiers were met with cannon fire and machine-gun bullets. The RF scattered, and the captured tanks resumed the advance. Arriving at the Bong Bridge, they stopped to help defend it. Shortly thereafter, the ARVN 25th Division’s M-113 unit, retreating from Hau Nghia province, approached the bridge. The captured tanks opened fire and destroyed numerous M-113s.
With the way clear, the 24th Regiment roared down Route 1. Passing the Bong Bridge, the column fought its way through ARVN defenses at the town of Hoc Mon and several other positions. When the column reached ARVN’s main training center at Quang Trung, the South Vietnamese dragged trucks onto Route 1 to block the road, while the guard force opened fire from blockhouses and other buildings. PAVN engineers used a tank to tow the trucks off the road, and the column commander detached some armor and infantry to attack the base while the rest of the column resumed the advance. By 5:00 P.M., the lead elements had reached the Ba Queo intersection near the airbase.
The easy part was now over. The ARVN 3rd Airborne Battalion, which was only partially reconstituted after the Phan Rang debacle, awaited the PAVN troops at the Ba Queo intersection. Hiding until the lead element was close, the Airborne troops opened fire. After losing three K-63 personnel carriers and over twenty soldiers, the North Vietnamese were forced to halt. Heavy fighting continued until dark, but the 24th Regiment was unable to punch through.
The column attacking on Route 15 departed at 6:00 A.M., 29 April. The 28th Regiment’s new orders were to assault straight down Route 15, enter the airbase, and capture the JGS Headquarters. It was a thirty-one-mile journey to Tan Son Nhut. As the column advanced, artillery fire forced it to split up. Despite mass confusion, elements continued moving forward. An infantry battalion and the lead tanks fought their way past several towns and fortified ARVN positions. By noon they had reached the Sang Bridge, only eight miles from Tan Son Nhut. With no ARVN defenders on the northern side of the airbase, the attackers’ way was clear. Then a minor miracle happened. As the third tank began crossing, the bridge suddenly collapsed. For the Americans still at the airbase, it was the luckiest event of the evacuation. If the 28th Regiment had entered the base while they were still there, numerous U.S. citizens would have been taken prisoner.
After the Sang Bridge collapsed, the 28th Regiment was ordered to turn around and follow Route 8 to Cu Chi, turn onto Route 1, and then back onto Route 15 to resume its mission. By 6:00 P.M. on 29 April the lead elements had passed the Quang Trung Training Center, but they stopped because they were unsure of the right road to Tan Son Nhut. The PAVN commander sent out four armored vehicles to search ahead. RF troops ambushed the element and destroyed it. At 9:00 P.M., with vehicles strung out along Route 1 and with continuing strong ARVN resistance, both strike elements were ordered to halt for the night to resupply. The new assault would commence at 7:15 A.M. on 30 April.
Defending the airbase was the 3rd Task Force of the 81st Airborne Rangers under the command of Major Pham Chau Tai. (The rest of the 81st was defending the Bien Hoa airbase.) On 26 April, Tai and his soldiers were given the mission of guarding the JGS Headquarters. The remnants of the Loi Ho (“Thunder Tigers”) who had escaped from Pleiku joined Tai’s resilient soldiers. Tai placed his own soldiers and the Loi Ho troops in the tall buildings surrounding the main gate into Tan Son Nhut. His Airborne Rangers had plenty of anti-tank rockets and 90-mm recoilless rifles mounted atop the buildings.
On that last night of the Republic of Vietnam, with scenes of chaos at the American Embassy as helicopters lifted people out, the 81st Airborne Rangers, the Loi Ho, and the Airborne at Tan Son Nhut held their positions. Although some senior officers had fled, and large chunks of the Navy had departed that night to prevent their ships from falling into Communist hands, most of the Army and Marines were still in their bunkers, guns pointing forward. In an exchange that night, typical of many others among the RVNAF, Tai called the 81st commander, Colonel Phan Van Huan, for instructions. Even with the PAVN armor close by and expected to attack at first light, Huan’s reply to Tai was straightforward: “The generals may have run, but. . . we cannot simply abandon our homeland to the Communists, so no matter what happens, the 81st Airborne Ranger Group will stay and fight.”21 The 81st would soon prove that Colonel Huan was a man of his word.
At 7:15 A.M., Major General Vu Lang, commander of the PAVN 3rd Corps, gave the order to open fire. The tanks and infantry of the 24th Regiment bypassed Ba Queo and moved toward the Bay Hien intersection, the key road junction less than a mile from the airbase’s main gate. The Airborne and the Loi Ho were waiting for them. As the first two PAVN tanks rumbled down the street leading to the airbase’s main gate, a round from a 90-mm recoilless rifle fired by a Loi Ho officer destroyed the first tank. A shell from an ARVN M-48 tank hit the second T-54. With two tanks burning, the North Vietnamese infantry pushed forward to clear the buildings. The Airborne fought them house to house, but by 8:45 A.M., the Communists’ superior numbers had forced the ARVN troops from Bay Hien.
Reaching the main gate of the airbase, the 10th Division commander ordered an infantry battalion and three tanks to seize it. Charging forward, they ran into the waiting 81st Airborne. Hidden in nearby bunkers and buildings, firing anti-tank rockets and machine guns, the 81st troops destroyed the three lead tanks in rapid fashion and mowed down the infantry. Several times the PAVN troops assaulted the gate, and each time they were thrown back. Snipers began picking off PAVN soldiers, killing over twenty. With three tanks burning in the middle of the street, the local commander brought up an 85-mm anti-aircraft gun to provide direct-fire support to knock out the ARVN heavy weapons. The 81st destroyed it before it even had a chance to set up.
Stalled at the main gate, the 10th Division ordered another infantry battalion and eight more tanks into the assault. As they came down Route 1 to Bay Hien, a VNAF air strike from Can Tho, probably the last of the war, knocked out two tanks. Reaching the gate of Tan Son Nhut at 10:00 A.M., the surviving tanks moved forward. Without much time to discern the ARVN firing positions, the tanks drove straight down the street toward their burning counterparts. As they approached the gate, the 81st Airborne ambushed them. Two more tanks were soon hit and burning. A third tank tried a flanking movement down a side street. Roving 81st Airborne soldiers, screaming “Remember Phuoc Long,” hit it with an anti-tank rocket. Six PAVN tanks now lay immobile and burning, and dozens of dead Communist soldiers lay strewn from Bay Hien to the main gate.
On the southeastern front, the 2nd Corps was again pushing forward. At Long Thanh, when the 325th Division was unable to advance against the local RF defending their homes, the division commander committed his reserve. Fighting house to house, by 4:30P.M., 27 April, his troops held Long Thanh. 2nd Corps Commander Major General Nguyen Huu An ordered the division to cross over Route 15 and follow Local Route 25 to the district town of Nhon Trach. There it would build an artillery position to shell Tan Son Nhut, continue onward to capture the main ammunition staging area at Thanh Tuy Ha, and then move to the Cat Lai ferry near the junction of the Saigon and Dong Nai Rivers. Given the marshy terrain, the 325th commander organized his own deep-penetration column to move swiftly along the road. Placing the 46th Regiment in front with his four remaining tanks, followed by the 101st Regiment, the division commander intended to barrel straight down the road to Nhon Trach.
Departing in the morning of 28 April, the division fought its way through some strong-points, and by late afternoon, the 46th Regiment had captured Nhon Trach. Major General An ordered his 130-mm artillery to move forward. However, they had to fight their way past some RF bunkers, and they lost a dozen men killed. Finally, in the early morning of 29 April, the 130-mm artillery was in position. At 4:30 A.M., shortly after the sappers fired the rockets onto Tan Son Nhut, the 130s opened up. A total of three hundred rounds hit the airbase. The exploding rounds forced the Americans to cancel the use of C-130s to evacuate personnel. From now on, only helicopters could be used.
At dawn, the 46th Regiment resumed the advance. It attacked the ammunition dump at Thanh Tuy Ha. After an all-day battle, the 46th Regiment finally took the fort. That night, the 325th Division advanced to the river and prepared to cross the next morning. The third arm of Van Tien Dung’s army had now reached the outskirts of Saigon.
As the PAVN units closed in, it was critical for them to prevent ARVN from blowing up the bridges. While Dung’s main strategy of pinning down the ARVN forces on the outskirts had turned out well, the sappers had been only partially successful, having failed to grab the bridges on the eastern side of Saigon. Here is when the Communists’ old agent, Brigadier General Nguyen Huu Hanh, suddenly proved invaluable. On the afternoon of 29 April, Hanh “ordered all units that they were not to destroy any bridges. If any unit wanted to destroy a bridge, it first had to receive permission from the JGS.”22 Further, in the early hours of 30 April, a series of orders were issued to the 18th Division and to the two Marine brigades. Although Khoi states there was no change in his orders to hold Bien Hoa, Dao’s 18th Division was told to retreat from Long Binh and take up new positions on the west bank of the Dong Nai River, while the Marines were ordered to return to their main base just east of Saigon. The Airborne troops guarding the Dong Nai River bridges also retreated around midnight on 29 April. These orders completely destabilized South Vietnamese defenses along Saigon’s eastern side. Who gave these orders remains unknown, although Dao claims it was Lieutenant General Vinh Loc. The author suspects the culprit was Nguyen Huu Hanh, but to the author’s knowledge, Hanh has never claimed credit for this. Regardless, with the Dong Nai River bridge at Long Binh now undefended, the sappers grabbed it.
During the night, President Minh had moved to Independence Palace. He planned on inaugurating his new Cabinet, and arranging for peace negotiations with the Communists. However, by early morning 30 April, Minh knew that his last peace overtures had been rejected. Gathering his staff at 8:30 A.M., Minh believed that his only hope of preventing the destruction of Saigon was to surrender to the PRG, trusting that the North Vietnamese would allow the Southerners to assume power. Minh made a tape recording ordering ARVN forces to cease fire and await the arrival of the PRG forces. Lieutenant General Loc, upon arriving at the Palace, decided the situation was hopeless and fled to the Navy docks, catching one of the last ships. Following Minh’s lead, Brigadier General Hanh issued a similar order in the name of the JGS. He then personally took Minh’s announcement to the Saigon radio station and told the personnel there to play it repeatedly. As ARVN troops across the area heard this broadcast, they began to melt away.
At Tan Son Nhut, as burning PAVN tanks blocked the main gate, Major Tai became aware of Minh’s broadcast ordering all ARVN forces to cease fire and await the PRG forces. Leaving the gate area, Tai returned to find a deserted JGS Headquarters. Walking into the building, he placed a call to Minh. Brigadier General Hanh answered the phone. When Tai asked to speak to Minh, Hanh handed the phone to the president. After introducing himself, Tai asked Minh for instructions. Minh told him to prepare to surrender, and that enemy tanks were approaching the Palace.
In a response that is as famous among South Vietnamese expatriates as Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe’s legendary retort of “Nuts!” during World War II is among Americans, Tai told Minh, “If Viet Cong tanks are entering Independence Palace we will come down there to rescue you, sir!”23 Astonished at Tai’s reckless courage, Minh essentially told him no, and hung up.
Despite his audacious proposal, Tai realized he had no choice. Calling his commanders together, he told them that the battle was over, and ordered them to pull back from the gates. Most of his men were outraged, and some continued fighting until they ran out of ammunition. Nonetheless, with the burning tanks having been pulled away from the gate, the PAVN tanks and infantry poured into Tan Son Nhut. By 11:30, it was over.
The two 10th Division deep-penetration columns had conducted a fast-paced assault over thirty miles, fighting part of the way, but it had been costly. Of the twenty-six North Vietnamese armored vehicles that began the assault with the 24th Infantry, half were destroyed at the gates of Tan Son Nhut.
On the eastern front, with ARVN units retreating, Lieutenant General Tan told Nguyen Huu An to cross into Saigon, seize Independence Palace, and end the war. With the way now clear, An gave the order to launch the 2nd Corps deep-penetration column. It consisted of the 203rd Tank Brigade, the 66th Regiment, 304th Division, an artillery battalion, and an AAA battalion, with the 18th Regiment, 325th Division, in reserve. Rumbling north on Route 15, at 4:00 A.M., 30 April, a massive line of four hundred vehicles reached Long Binh. Linking up with the COSVN sappers who had just grabbed the Dong Nai River bridge, the 203rd commander explained that his infantry was well behind the lead tanks, and he was uncertain how to get into Saigon. Since the sapper commander lived in Saigon, he offered to lead the tanks into the city and to have his sappers mount the tanks and serve as infantry. The 203rd commander accepted his offer, and at 6:00 A.M., the first tanks began crossing the bridge. It was twelve miles from the bridge to Independence Palace.
As the column pushed down the highway, the first serious resistance was at the Thu Duc Officers’ School. Heavy fire erupted on the lead vehicles. The battalion commander dispatched several tanks to deal with the situation; one was destroyed before the ARVN defenses were silenced. When An reached the Thu Duc school, he chastised the lead battalion commander for not bypassing the school. Resuming the assault, another sapper group finally captured the Chiec River bridge, but lost over fifty men seizing it. Other sapper elements tried to capture the Newport Bridge, but the 12th Airborne Battalion, 4th Airborne Brigade, repulsed them.
The 12th Airborne had prepared for the PAVN assault. It had blocked the road with dirt-filled barrels, slowing down the advancing troops, and now its artillery fire began hitting the column. Even so, the lead tank battalion and some sappers reached the Newport Bridge around 9:00 A.M. ARVN tanks immediately opened fire, destroying the lead T-54 and killing the PAVN tank battalion commander. Pinned down and unable to advance, the deep-penetration column backed up behind the lead tank. Nguyen Huu An tried maneuvering his engineers and infantry across the bridge, but the Airborne kept up a heavy rain of shells. Several ARVN tanks were hit after An ordered his artillery into a direct-fire mode to clear out the enemy armor.
Fighting continued for an hour, with the 12th Airborne dug in on one side, and the PAVN 203rd on the other. Suddenly the Airborne gave way, as the battalion commander heard Minh’s address on the radio. Although the Airborne had wired the bridge with almost four thousand pounds of explosives, luckily for Nguyen Huu An, upon hearing Minh’s order, the 12th Battalion deputy commander tossed the electric detonator into the river.
By 10:30, the column had crossed the Newport Bridge and entered Saigon. The lead T-54 destroyed a couple of M-113s at another small bridge. As it continued into the city, it was hit by an anti-tank rocket fired from the second story of a building and lay burning in the street. The next tank in line fired a round into the building and kept moving. Finally arriving at Independence Palace, this tank got lost and circled around the building. The next tank, #843, reached the main gate. Attempting to break into the grounds, it got its gun barrel stuck in the iron gate. The next tank, #390, pushed past its stuck comrade and raced onto the palace grounds around 11:30 A.M. The 4th Company, 4th Tank Battalion, 203rd Tank Brigade, was the first unit inside the grounds of Independence Palace. Sappers and tank crewmen leaped off the tanks. Some raced to the palace to replace the South Vietnamese flag with the revolution’s flag. Others marched upstairs to the conference room where Minh and his Cabinet were waiting for them. The long war was finally over.
AFTERMATH
The joyful reactions of Communist officers and senior political figures celebrating the defeat of South Vietnam has been widely publicized, while almost nothing has been written about the reactions of our allies. The rapid collapse of South Vietnam, combined with the fierce fighting of the final days, left most officers and men in complete shock. Total RVNAF casualties in the battle for Saigon are unknown, but were certainly not light. The fighting during the last days destroyed many units; very few did not sustain heavy losses.
For example, the 82nd Border Ranger Battalion, which had walked out of Quang Duc back in March only to end up in the hell of Xuan Loc, was pressed into the fight at Nuoc Trong. Out of the 410 men who began walking from Quang Duc, only sixty men and four officers survived those battles to retreat across the New Bridge on the morning of 30 April. Shortly thereafter, they ran into a Communist ambush, and the remainder of the unit was wiped out. Only Major Vuong Mong Long and a handful of men escaped death. The 25th Division and the two newly formed Ranger groups were destroyed. The 5th Division, cut off from Saigon, surrendered en masse.
On that fateful morning, many poignant scenes played out across Saigon. Brigadier General Tran Quang Khoi was moving his 3rd Brigade back across the New Bridge in a valiant attempt to rescue Saigon when he heard Minh’s initial ceasefire order over the radio. His troops were perilously close to a head-on collision with the PAVN 1st Corps deep-penetration column, which was about three miles away on Route 13. Upon hearing the broadcast, Khoi halted his unit and gave the men permission to disband. He got in a car and drove to his home in the lower Delta.
Major General Le Minh Dao’s 18th Division, which had fought so gallantly at Xuan Loc, was struggling to organize a defense along the Saigon–Bien Hoa highway when Dao learned of the news. He also disbanded his unit, donned civilian clothes, and tried to escape to IV Corps, although most of IV Corps surrendered or disbanded throughout the day.
Colonel Nguyen Thanh Tri’s Marines were gathered at their main base several miles from the New Bridge when he heard Minh’s surrender broadcast. Tri also disbanded his unit, and then he went to a relative’s house nearby.
Colonel Phan Van Huan and the men of the 81st Airborne Rangers played out perhaps the most moving scene. Huan had been ordered to move his men across the New Bridge on 29 April and set up positions near Thu Duc. After crossing the bridge, he unsuccessfully attempted to contact various headquarters. On the morning of 30 April, his men learned of the surrender order. Gathering them together, Huan gave a short speech: “We were born in South Vietnam, and it was our duty to defend the South. Now we have been defeated, and, bitterly, we must follow the order issued by President Minh to turn in our weapons to the Viet Cong. My brothers, we . . . have fought side by side for many long years. At this historic moment, we must demonstrate that we are a disciplined unit. . . . [We will] march toward Saigon in order to contact a [PAVN] unit to turn in our weapons. I want you all to remember that you are not guilty of any crime, because you are following my orders. I am prepared to accept the guilt and I will lead the way. If the enemy shoots at us, I will be the first man hit.”24
Shouldering their weapons, lining up four abreast in a column stretching almost half a mile long, the two thousand men of ARVN’s most elite unit began marching along the highway toward Saigon. As promised, Colonel Huan was in the first row. Civilians lined the road to watch them. Many offered drinks to the men. Soon Huan saw ARVN soldiers walking from Saigon, clad only in their underwear and carrying their personal documents. When Huan asked them why they were dressed like that, they replied that the Communists had forced them to take off their clothes, turn in their weapons, and walk home.
Soon a Communist officer and troops met Huan on the highway. Huan told the officer his men were prepared to turn over their weapons, but they would not undress. If ordered to do so, they would refuse, and a firefight would break out. The Communist officer relented, and the soldiers of the 81st stacked their arms and dispersed. It was the final unit in Saigon to lay down its weapons.
While the U.S. Embassy had made much of intelligence rumors that, after victory, the North Vietnamese would engage in wholesale slaughter, there were no mass killings of the sort perpetrated in Hue in 1968. Retribution, though, was still heavy. Reports of executions abound. The 32nd Ranger Group, attempting to retreat from Tay Ninh on 29 April, was blocked on Route 1 by the 316th Division. One battalion, the 38th Rangers, refused to surrender, and fought until the end. According to Ranger sources, the battalion commander, Major Tran Dinh Tu, was promptly executed. In a well-publicized example, Colonel Ho Ngoc Can, the province chief of Chuong Thien and Soldier of the Year in 1972, also refused to surrender. He fought until he ran out of ammunition. He was also executed shortly thereafter. Numerous police officers and police chiefs, particularly in the villages, were shot to death by vengeful partisans.
While the total number of executions remains unknown, revenge killings were not the Communists’ main plan. There is no doubt, as seen in the 5 January document from Hanoi’s Ministry of the Interior (Public Security), that the Communists planned to incarcerate large numbers of RVNAF officers. The prison system soon known as the Bamboo Gulag sprouted up across the countryside. Hundreds of thousands of military and civilian prisoners worked hard labor in the jungle with little food, medicine, or clothing. The death toll was in the thousands. Many officers holding the rank of major or higher were not released until 1987. Included in this group were Colonel Tri of the Marines and Colonel Huan of the 81st Airborne. The more recalcitrant were severely punished, especially those whose units fought until the end. Khoi, Dao, and two other generals were not released until 1992, seventeen years after the war’s end. They were the last four general officers held.
Most Western journalists portrayed RVNAF officers as deserting their men in droves. In reality, very few regular Army or Marine officers commanding troops during the final days left their soldiers. While some younger officers deserted, most mid- and upper-level commanders stayed with their men. For example, not one Ranger-group or battalion commander deserted his men. Of the senior officers who escaped at the end, Lieutenant Generals Truong and Thi, for example, were no longer commanding units. Most of the senior officers who left the country early held staff positions. Unfortunately, Lieutenant General Toan and some others did desert, leaving an indelible stain on South Vietnam’s image.
Some chose a path other than escape or prison. The commanders of the ARVN 5th and 7th Divisions committed suicide, as did two corps commanders—Major General Nam in IV Corps, and Major General Phu. Nam’s deputy, Brigadier General Le Van Hung, also killed himself. Many lower-ranking officers and enlisted soldiers did as well.
Despite the popular conception that the final battle for Saigon was an easy affair, the generals of the People’s Army disagree. In a commentary after the war, the commander of the 10th Division, Senior Colonel Ho De, acknowledged the heavy fighting that the 24th Regiment’s deep-penetration column faced. He admitted that the column lost 185 men dead and wounded, and that “The entire division (including attached units) suffered more than 400 casualties. These numbers demonstrate that the attack to liberate Saigon was not conducted down a ‘red carpet’ laid out for us by the enemy, as many people mistakenly believe.”25
That misperception was widespread after the war. Since Saigon was captured with little damage, many Vietnamese light-heartedly remarked that PAVN had taken Saigon “without breaking a light bulb.” In perhaps the most telling comment about the cost of the final battle, Major General Hoang Dan, deputy commander of the PAVN 2nd Corps, stated: “Back then, I told people, ‘If anyone says that we attacked and captured Saigon without breaking a single light, I will give him a shovel and have him dig the graves of our dead.’ During our attack on Saigon, our 2nd Corps lost more than 400 men, so I wonder how people can write such things.”26 In fact, Communist troop casualties for the last few days of fighting were high. According to a post-war study of the last stages of the war, “our main force units lost more than 6,000 men killed and wounded and almost 100 of our military vehicles were destroyed, including 33 tanks and armored personnel carriers.”27
Frankly, the cost to both sides would have been much higher if Duong Van Minh had not essentially declared Saigon an open city, and then formally surrendered after the tanks reached Independence Palace. South Vietnamese units were still putting up stiff resistance in many places, but without high-level command and control, they were simply delaying the inevitable. Even if Lieutenant General Toan had stayed until the end, or if President Thieu had appointed Lieutenant General Truong to command the final battle, PAVN commanders were prepared to send infantry into the city and fight for it block by block. If that had occurred, Saigon would have been destroyed. While many South Vietnamese despise Minh for surrendering, at best the RVNAF had twenty-fours of organized resistance left. Retreating to IV Corps was not a particularly viable option.
As has been shown, the impact of U.S. congressional restraints on aid devastated America’s ally. Claims that the White House started asking for reduced budgetary amounts disregard the rationale for that reduction: RVNAF expenses were expected to lessen dramatically because of the cease-fire. But the ceasefire never materialized, and Congress cut the funds anyway in maddening tandem with the escalating combat. A second argument—that some aid monies remained unspent at the end—is oblivious to the budgetary and supply process. And both contentions ignore the wider ramifications: that each side rightly interpreted the aid reductions and congressional mandates preventing the re-introduction of airpower as America shedding itself of South Vietnam. Simply put, congressional actions crushed South Vietnamese morale and emboldened the North Vietnamese. The weakening of South Vietnam that resulted from these actions was one of two primary factors in Hanoi’s decision to resume offensive operations. The other was Hanoi’s conclusion that it had a small window in which to act, before the U.S. and the GVN recovered from their “internal contradictions.” Congress, relentlessly pressured by anti-war crusaders, cut aid and eliminated American military action at precisely the moment the Politburo viewed as its last, best chance to win the long war. These two actions must be considered among America’s worst foreign-policy fiascos of the twentieth century.
Assertions that Hanoi received substantially less aid than Saigon are also disingenuous. U.S. intelligence possessed few facts about the size and true costs of Soviet Bloc and Chinese exports to North Vietnam, and thus its studies on this aspect were pure guesswork. Even if we did know the precise amounts, the costs of the two military systems are not comparable. The RVNAF was a much more expensive military to maintain. Personnel costs (salaries, health care, family housing, food, training, etc.) were far higher on the South Vietnamese side. The Communists’ weapons (rifles, ammunition, tanks, etc.) were mass-manufactured by government entities, not by private firms concerned about their profit margins. Soviet Bloc weaponry was also simpler to maintain, another reason aid monies to North Vietnam could go much further. American material (helicopters, trucks, airplanes, gear) reflected the disparity between American and Soviet/Chinese military doctrine, which dramatically affected weapon costs. We built the RVNAF in our image, which meant greater reliance on firepower and machines than manpower. Lastly, the South Vietnamese had to guard everywhere, all the time, while the Communists could maintain relatively smaller forces that they could mass at will.
What is also clear is that the Communists, soon after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, quickly and secretly moved to break them. Over two years, the North Vietnamese massed an army in the South in complete contradiction of a solemn agreement. Yet aside from the massive ceasefire violation, from a purely military perspective, the strike at Ban Me Thuot must be considered among the most brilliant strategic choices of the war. Moreover, while ARVN lines were repeatedly broken by armor thrusts, it was PAVN staff work at the strategic level, and effective command and control at the unit level, that placed Communist units at the correct location to turn the tide of battle. Despite many personal rivalries and animosities between individual Communist generals, the PAVN senior command structure functioned well.
The 1975 offensive highlighted the two main South Vietnamese military vulnerabilities. The first was Thieu’s design of a weak Joint General Staff and independent corps, which prevented a coordinated response to a countrywide assault. Without strong military leadership and centralized planning at the JGS level to oversee the country’s defenses, Thieu’s decisions were compounded by poor oversight at key spots such as II Corps. Yet even with a better organizational structure, the South Vietnamese could not defend everywhere. Because of the country’s geographical features—not because of a lack of RVNAF willingness to fight—U.S. airpower was needed to stem a major offensive.
The second problem, then, was the RVNAF’s lack of reserves and the lack of adequate firepower to stem an initial and massive assault. After the Paris Accords, with the GVN’s main reserve units pinned down in I Corps, the threat of U.S. air and naval firepower was South Vietnam’s reserve. When Congress eliminated that threat, the South Vietnamese moved too slowly to activate new reserves. Even if they had, though, there was no money to purchase new weapons, and fuel reductions and lack of spare parts had decimated the VNAF’s airlift capability. The South Vietnamese would have been unable to move large reserve units even if they had possessed them.
In the final analysis, there is nothing unambiguous about the Vietnam War. The post-war deliberations over American strategy have not provided flawless answers to difficult political/military questions, or remedies for the consequences of intense passions. Many U.S. decisions can be questioned, as can the choices made by President Thieu. Second-guessing is the fate of those who govern. While South Vietnam’s government and armed forces were flawed, they were not the despotic police state and tin-pot military demonized by the Left around the world. One lesson Americans should understand from the defeat of South Vietnam is that multiple domestic and international concerns greatly shaped our policy towards that distant land. Nevertheless, we have not come to terms with the rancorous discourse over Vietnam that so deeply shook our country. Perhaps the question that remains most contentious is whether or not our domestic deliberations obstructed the effective conduct of foreign policy and, hence, decisively harmed the national interest.
Possibly only in America do moral and humanitarian philosophies both underpin and constrict our country’s actions. America’s greatness is not strictly evidenced by our industrial output or military strength, but by our underlying values. Pragmatism will never be our sole guide. We entered the war for many reasons, but one was to help the South Vietnamese people preserve their freedom. Those who claim the war was unwinnable and defeat was a result of historical conditions arising from de-colonization and a relentless urge for Vietnamese unity blithely ignore another reality: many Vietnamese did not want to be subjected to the deprivations of Communism. Why is their desire for freedom not seen as valid, their viewpoint dismissed? That millions of people fled in terror before the Communist advance, and then escaped in droves after the war, reveals the depth of their aspirations, a desire America tried to develop and protect. We should not be ashamed of that impulse.
The South Vietnamese were far from the incompetent bunglers so often depicted. Many of them demonstrated incredible courage, even in hopeless situations such as the battles of Tan Son Nhut, Ho Nai, and many others. By 1973, the South Vietnamese military, despite numerous internal and economic issues, had developed into a fighting force quite capable of defeating the North Vietnamese. If it had been adequately supplied, and with steady American post-ceasefire support, the outcome of the war might have been vastly different. Unfortunately, history does not offer “do-overs,” only perspective.