On April 30, 1975 the city of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was taken by the army of North Vietnam, ending the conflict that had grown out of the Vietnamese war for independence from France and a proxy war for the conflict between the US and the Soviet Union.
The United States’ large scale military presence in Vietnam had ended in 1973 when a peace agreement was signed between communist North Vietnam and the American backed South Vietnam. There were still many Americans in South Vietnam, however. As the North Vietnamese army began closing in on the city in early March, the Americans and many South Vietnamese who were associated with them or the government began to flee the city on commercial airline flights.
The People’s Army of Vietnam shelled the city heavily and by the end of April the airport’s runways were no longer usable. The final evacuation would have to be by helicopter. Dubbed “Operation Frequent Wind,” the final American evacuation of Saigon was the largest helicopter evacuation in history.
