Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, the dramatic conclusion to America’s longest war at that time. On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese forces captured South Vietnam’s capital, leading to the formal reunification of Vietnam under communist rule the following year.
The final chapter of the Vietnam War unfolded with shocking speed. What American and South Vietnamese leaders had believed might last into 1976 collapsed within weeks. After capturing major cities including Hue and Da Nang in March, North Vietnamese forces launched their final assault on Saigon, renaming it the “Ho Chi Minh Campaign” in honor of their revolutionary leader.
Loren Jenkins, then a reporter for Newsweek and later NPR’s foreign editor, witnessed the chaotic final days firsthand.
“The North was beginning to fold up what little South Vietnamese resistance there was, and moving South was a big crowd of refugees trying to flee the north,” Jenkins recalled. “It was just slowly unrolling, we knew it was going to end. In Saigon, there was nothing to stop them.”
As North Vietnamese forces closed in, the United States launched Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation in history. Over April 29-30, more than 7,000 people—including Americans, South Vietnamese officials, and third-country nationals—were airlifted from Saigon to U.S. Navy ships offshore.
Outside the embassy walls, hundreds of desperate Vietnamese who had worked with Americans sought evacuation, hoping to escape the retribution they feared would come.
Inside, American officials burned sensitive documents and prepared for the final evacuation from the embassy roof.
The North Vietnamese advance proved unstoppable. Despite establishing five centers of resistance around Saigon, South Vietnamese forces rapidly collapsed. On the morning of April 30, North Vietnamese tanks breached the city’s defenses and headed toward the Presidential Palace.
In one of the most iconic moments of the war, Tank 843 crashed through the palace’s side gate, followed shortly by Tank 390 smashing through the main entrance. Lieutenant Bui Quang Than raised the Viet Cong flag atop the structure at 10:24 a.m., and South Vietnamese General Duong Van Minh surrendered unconditionally.
Jenkins witnessed the final American departure before dawn that morning. “The ambassador lowered the flag around 4 a.m. in the morning, who folded it into a nice triangle, moved up with a secretary and his pet dog to the roof. He got in one helicopter, put the secretary in the dog and another, and they flew off. And then a couple of us journalists that were still there. We flew off in the helicopter after.”
The fall of Saigon ushered in dramatic changes.
The city was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and hundreds of thousands fled the country, many as “boat people” facing perilous journeys across the South China Sea. For Vietnam, it marked the beginning of unified communist rule; for America, the painful end to a costly war that claimed more than 58,000 American lives and an estimated 3 million Vietnamese lives.
Fifty years later, the images of that day—helicopters lifting evacuees from rooftops, tanks smashing through palace gates, desperate civilians crowding evacuation points—remain powerful symbols of an era’s end.