(29 Apr 2025)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam – 30 April 1975
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1. Various of military helicopter evacuation from roof of US embassy
UPSOUND (English): "Saigon April 30th, eight o’clock. The last American helicopter on the roof of the American embassy prepares to life off the last of the evacuees fleeing before the advancing Communist armies."
2. Various of people on streets
UPSOUND (English): "Back in the city, normal patterns of behaviour broke down, in a climate of every man for himself, American homes, offices and stores were looted of everything.
3. Various of discarded weapons and tanks
UPSOUND (English): The discarded equipment even ran to tanks, some damaged, but some also abandoned intact by their crews as they fled before the Communists
4. Various of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong tanks and troops moving through streets
UPSOUND (English): And then, shortly after midday, came the climax of thirty years of fighting, the first North Vietnamese troops entered the city, packed into trucks that flew the red and blue flag of the Communist Provisional Revolutionary Government, The PRG."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam – April 1975
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5. Various of people being evacuated from US embassy in Saigon
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam – April 1975
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6. Various of people trying to board boats
UPSOUND (English): "Those who failed on that last day to get a place on the helicopters and who had reason to fear the Communist takeover made for the only route that still offered a chance of escape – the Saigon River. Hundreds scrambled in panic onto any boats they could reach, not caring how they got aboard or what they left behind."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Newport Bridge, Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam – April 1975
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7. Various of troops fighting on bridge
8. Wide of soldier carrying wounded comrade
9. Various soldiers carry wounded children away from fighting
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam – 30 April 1975
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10. Various of helicopter pulling away from US embassy, carrying Vietnamese refugees
STORYLINE:
LEAD IN:
Wednesday (April 30) marks 50 years since the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War.
STORYLINE:
On the morning of 30 April 1975 – as North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops drew closer – helicopters landed on the roof of the US embassy in Saigon.
In what became the biggest helicopter evacuation in history, ‘Operation Frequent Wind’ carried over 1,000 Americans to safety.
Over 5,000 Vietnamese and other foreigners were also flown away, boarding US carriers in the South China Sea.
The US role in the Vietnam War had officially ended in 1973, but the conflict between North and South Vietnam raged on until Saigon fell.
As the last solitary helicopter motored across the Saigon sky, it left behind abandoned military equipment, thousands of South Vietnamese begging for rescue, and a city that would never be the same again.
Two hours after the last helicopter left, Saigon’s government surrendered, ending a conflict that claimed millions of lives.
Saigon was later renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the country’s revolutionary leader – it’s now the biggest Vietnamese city and the country’s major economic hub.
The collapse of South Vietnam actually begun nearly two months before its surrender.
Thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians fled, clogging highways and putting themselves in harm’s way of North Vietnamese guns.
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