Fall of Saigon
North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon as the last US helicopters evacuated the American embassy
April 30, 1975
The Last Days of South Vietnam
In April 1975, North Vietnamese forces launched a final offensive against South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese military, demoralized and undersupplied after American withdrawal, collapsed rapidly. City after city fell within weeks. By late April, North Vietnamese tanks were closing in on Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese government fell apart as officials fled and military discipline crumbled. Thousands of South Vietnamese who had worked with the Americans desperately sought evacuation, knowing what capture might mean for them and their families.
Helicopters from Rooftops
On April 29 and 30, 1975, the United States conducted Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation in history. American military helicopters flew continuously from the U.S. Embassy and other locations, ferrying American personnel and thousands of Vietnamese evacuees to ships waiting offshore. Iconic photographs showed crowds on rooftops waiting to board helicopters as the city fell. Approximately 7,000 people were evacuated by helicopter in the final 18 hours. Thousands of others escaped by boat. On April 30, a North Vietnamese tank crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace, symbolically ending the war.
After the Fall
Vietnam was reunified under communist rule in 1976 as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of former South Vietnamese officials, military officers, and others were sent to "re-education camps," some for years. Over a million Vietnamese fled the country as "boat people" in the years that followed, seeking refuge in neighboring countries and eventually resettling across the world. The war's end marked a profound defeat for U.S. foreign policy and influenced American military strategy for decades. Use the date calculator to measure how long the Vietnam War lasted from the first major U.S. involvement.