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The Fall of Saigon on the 30^th of April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam War. The war had been fought by communist forces attempting to overthrow the South Vietnamese state and unite the country under the rule of Communist Party of Vietnam since 1955. From 1964 onward, the U.S. entered the conflict in a full military capacity in an attempt to defend their allied regime in South Vietnam. By 1973, the U.S. had signed a peace deal which both the North and South Vietnamese states were parties to. In spite of this supposed end of hostilities, fighting between the communists and South Vietnam resumed shortly afterwards. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong insurgency in the South planned one final offensive for the Spring of 1975 in an attempt to finish the war. Whereas the communist leadership had expected the offensive to take up to two-years, in fact the South Vietnamese state was to last less than two months in the face of the attack. The sudden collapse of the state and military apparatus caught most by surprise, and led to the frantic evacuation of U.S. personnel and citizens, as well as Southern Vietnamese and other allied nationalities, out of Vietnam.

The evacuation of Saigon and Operation Frequent Wind

Over the course of the month of April 1975, the U.S. Air Force evacuated almost 7,000 U.S. citizens and approximately 45,000 citizens of other countries, mainly South Vietnamese who had worked with the U.S. authorities. As the communist forces advanced towards Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, fear began to spread among supporters and officials of the South Vietnamese regime about how they would be treated if the city were to be captured. Many worried that they would be killed or tortured, leading them to try to flee from the country. At the same time, the U.S. Defense Attaché Office (DAO) began evacuating non-essential personnel at the beginning of the month. The extent of the collapse of the South Vietnamese state became evident with the flight of President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu to Taiwan on April 21^st. The Air Force picked up the pace of evacuations in the following days, as more and more people turned up at the DAO's compound, as well as the U.S. embassy, seeking to be flown out of the city by helicopter. Operation Frequent Wind is perhaps the most well remembered of these evacuations, as the U.S. Air Force frantically flew almost 7,000 people out of Saigon on April 29^th and 30^th. The images broadcast in the media of desperate people crowding into the U.S. embassy in an attempt to get on the last flights out of the city have since become iconic representations of the failure of the United States' intervention in Vietnam to ensure the survival of the South Vietnamese state. The remaining members of the South Vietnamese government surrendered on April 30^th, marking the end of almost 20 years of civil war in the country.