Battle of Xuan Loc

The last major battle of the Vietnam War was fought at Xuan Loc, only 37 miles east by northeast of Saigon. In April 1975 the town was the eastern anchor of South Vietnam’s final line of defense against the North Vietnamese rush to the capital. That line ran west through Bien Hoa just north of Saigon, to Tay Ninh, near the Cambodian border. Once it broke, Saigon was doomed and with it the Republic of Vietnam itself.

When the North Vietnamese Army attacked Xuan Loc (pronounced Swan Lock) on April 9, the communists and almost everyone else expected the Army of the Republic of Vietnam’s 18th Division to collapse like a house of cards, as had so many other ARVN units during the NVA’s massive Spring Offensive of 1975. But ARVN forces under Brig. Gen. Le Minh Dao fought fiercely in a last-ditch effort to save their country. By the time Xuan Loc did fall 12 days later, most of the world was amazed at how well the ARVN had fought, and the NVA had paid a far steeper price than it expected. Indeed, the valiant stand at Xuan Loc by heavily outnumbered ARVN soldiers echoes the famed sacrifice of King Leonidas’ 300 Spartans facing Xerxes’ Persian masses at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Greece. The Persians then marched south and captured Athens.

Fall of Saigon

The South Vietnamese stronghold of Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City) falls to People’s Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong on April 30, 1975. The South Vietnamese forces had collapsed under the rapid advancement of the North Vietnamese. The most recent fighting had begun in December 1974, when the North Vietnamese had launched a major attack against the lightly defended province of Phuoc Long, located due north of Saigon along the Cambodian border, overrunning the provincial capital at Phuoc Binh on January 6, 1975. Despite previous presidential promises to provide aid in such a scenario, the United States did nothing. By this time, Nixon had resigned from office and his successor, Gerald Ford, was unable to convince a hostile Congress to make good on Nixon’s earlier promises to rescue Saigon from communist takeover.

This situation emboldened the North Vietnamese, who launched a new campaign in March 1975. The South Vietnamese forces fell back in total disarray, and once again, the United States did nothing. The South Vietnamese abandoned Pleiku and Kontum in the Highlands with very little fighting. Then Quang Tri, Hue, and Da Nang fell to the communist onslaught. The North Vietnamese continued to attack south along the coast toward Saigon, defeating the South Vietnamese forces at each encounter.

The South Vietnamese 18th Division had fought a valiant battle at Xuan Loc, just to the east of Saigon, destroying three North Vietnamese divisions in the process. However, it proved to be the last battle in the defense of the Republic of South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese forces held out against the attackers until they ran out of tactical air support and weapons, finally abandoning Xuan Loc to the communists on April 21.

Having crushed the last major organized opposition before Saigon, the North Vietnamese got into position for the final assault. In Saigon, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned and transferred authority to Vice President Tran Van Huong before fleeing the city on April 25. By April 27, the North Vietnamese had completely encircled Saigon and began to maneuver for a complete takeover.

When they attacked at dawn on April 30, they met little resistance. North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace and the war came to an end. North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin accepted the surrender from Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had taken over after Tran Van Huong spent only one day in power. Tin explained to Minh, “You have nothing to fear. Between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. Only the Americans have been beaten. If you are patriots, consider this a moment of joy. The war for our country is over.”

Ho Chi Minh Campaign

Despite the 1973 Paris Peace Accords cease fire, the fighting had continued between South Vietnamese forces and the North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam. In December 1974, the North Vietnamese launched a major attack against the lightly defended province of Phuoc Long, located north of Saigon along the Cambodian border. They successfully overran the provincial capital at Phuoc Binh on January 6, 1975.

Iron Triangle Battle

The Battle of the Iron Triangle took place on May 16, 1974, when the 9th Division of the Vietnam People’s Army backed by a small contingent of tanks launched an attack on Rach Bap, took possession of An Dien and pushed south towards Phu Cuong.

The ARVN battled with NVA tanks on June 4 and inflicted heavy casualties on the NVA forces. Six weeks after the ARVN regrouped and reinforced they drove the NVA from its stronghold, Rach Bap. The ARVN retook Rach Bap on November 20 unopposed. No US ground forces took part in the 1974 Battle of the Iron Triangle, as most of them had already been withdrawn from the conflict-torn region due to the policy of Vietnamization undertaken by the Nixon Administration in 1969.

Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge was a brutal regime that ruled Cambodia, under the leadership of Marxist dictator Pol Pot, from 1975 to 1979. Pol Pot’s attempts to create a Cambodian “master race” through social engineering ultimately led to the deaths of more than 2 million people in the Southeast Asian country. Those killed were either executed as enemies of the regime, or died from starvation, disease or overwork. Historically, this period—as shown in the film The Killing Fields—has come to be known as the Cambodian Genocide.

Mayaguez

The Mayaguez incident took place between Kampuchea (now Cambodia) and the United States from 12 to 15 May 1975, less than a month after the Khmer Rouge took control of the capital Phnom Penh ousting the U.S.-backed Khmer Republic. After the Khmer Rouge seized the U.S. merchant vessel SS Mayaguez in a disputed maritime area, the U.S. mounted a hastily-prepared rescue operation. U.S. Marines recaptured the ship and attacked the island of Koh Tang where it was believed that the crew were being held as hostages.

Encountering stronger than expected defenses on Koh Tang, three United States Air Force helicopters were destroyed during the initial assault and the Marines fought a desperate day-long battle with the Khmer Rouge before being evacuated. The Mayaguez’s crew were released unharmed by the Khmer Rouge shortly after the attack on Koh Tang began. It was the last battle of the Vietnam War and the names of the Americans killed, including three Marines left behind on Koh Tang after the battle and subsequently executed by the Khmer Rouge, are the last names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Military Women

In 1975, then-President Gerald R. Ford signed Public Law 94-106 for women to be admitted to the all-male military colleges. The freshman class began in the summer of 1976 and graduated in spring 1980.

Prior to this, the Womens’ Army Auxiliary Corps (Army), Women Accepted for Voluntary Military Service (Navy), WASP (Womens Airforce Service Pilots), Women Marines (WM), and SPARS (Coast Guard) were the military branches that women were accepted into. In 1975, women were integrated into the US Army, US Navy, US Marine Corps, US Air Force, and the Coast Guard.

Operation Babylift

Operation Babylift was the name given to the mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to the United States and other western countries (including Australia, France, West Germany, and Canada) at the end of the Vietnam War, on April 3–26, 1975. By the final American flight out of South Vietnam, over 3,300 infants and children had been evacuated, although the actual number has been variously reported. Along with Operation New Life, over 110,000 refugees were evacuated from South Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War. Thousands of children were airlifted from Vietnam and adopted by families around the world.

Boat People

With the images of Vietnam still fresh on their minds, Americans in the mid-1970s were confronted with horrifying news footage of half-starved Vietnamese refugees reaching the shores of Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines on small, makeshift boats. Many of the men, women, and children who survived the perilous journey across the South China Sea were rescued by passing ships. Over one million boat people from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam were eventually granted asylum in the United States and several other countries. Most were lost at sea, thousands of others perished of disease, starvation, and dehydration, or were murdered by pirates. This final chapter in the history of the Vietnam War would live in the collective memory of an entire generation. Personal accounts of the refugees’ hardships and courage would inspire countless books, movies, websites, documentaries, magazine articles, and television news reports in the United States. For years to come, the boat people would serve as an enduring testimony to the tragic aftermath of America’s defeat in Vietnam.

President Nixon Resigns

In an evening televised address on August 8, 1974, President Richard M. Nixon announces his intention to become the first president in American history to resign. With impeachment proceedings underway against him for his involvement in the Watergate affair, Nixon was finally bowing to pressure from the public and Congress to leave the White House.

“By taking this action,” he said in a solemn address from the Oval Office, “I hope that I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.”

Remains Recovery

As of 22 August 2022, 1,854 Americans remain unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, many of them pilots believed lost on land or over the ocean. Some 600 of those are believed to be lost at sea are not expected to be recovered.

The task force was created in response to presidential, congressional and public interest, and made possible by increasing cooperation between the target countries, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, according to the program. The United States spends about $20 million annually on recovery operations in those countries.

The task force has more than 180 investigators, analysts, linguists and other specialists representing all four services and Department of Defense civilian employees. Teams of more than 90 visit Vietnam four or five times each year for monthlong operations. They do investigations, archival research, an oral history program and remains recovery operations.

“Often times you excavate a site, you know which airplane it is, you may even find a dog tag of the serviceman, but you do not find his remains,” says Greer. “So you keep looking, you move your excavation 20 yards to the south, or the west, or you find villagers who say, ‘yes, we pulled him out of the cockpit and buried him over here.'”

The task force’s operations are supported by casualty resolution specialists and anthropologists from the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, representatives of the Defense POW/MIA office, and personnel from U.S. Pacific Command.

Task force teams also work with recovery officials from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Of the 2,583 American originally missing in 1975, most of the unaccounted-for, 1,923 of them, were lost in Vietnam, either on land or over water off the Vietnamese coast. Another 569 were lost in Laos, 81 in Cambodia and 10 in China.
Ordnance demolition specialists are important components of the teams, clearing recovery areas of land mines, bomblets from U.S. B-52s, and other unexploded ordnance. Other perils of the recovery missions include disease and wildlife, in particular a snake called the bamboo viper.

Skylab Space Station

1973 – Skylab By 1973, the MOL was little more than a memory to the few Americans who knew about it. But as the potential to sustain human life in space increased, so did the desire to develop a manned space station. A special advisory group to President Richard Nixon offered suggestions for such a station, which was to be occupied permanently, as part of a post-moon-landing plan for American space travel. Using some remaining hardware from the soon-to-be-cancelled Apollo program, NASA developed Skylab, which launched in May. Skylab remained in orbit for six years, and experiments conducted aboard the craft obtained vast amounts of scientific data and demonstrated that humans could live and work productively in space for months at a time.

1974 – Space weapons Illustrating the Cold War’s true potential dangers, both the United States and the Soviet Union made covert plans to bring weapons ranging from cannons to laser guns into space. In 1974, the Soviet Union launched the Salyut 3 space station, code-named Almaz, which secretly carried a 23-mm Nudelmann aircraft cannon. According to Soviet cosmonauts, tests run on this very first space gun were a success—the cannon even destroyed a target satellite. Although Almaz tracked several American spacecraft, including Skylab, the Soviets never attacked any of them. More benign Soviet stations such as the Salyut 4 were utilized in research and tests similar to those conducted on Skylab.

July 1975 – Apollo-Soyuz Marking a temporary thaw in the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union embarked on their first joint space venture in July 1975. Astronauts and cosmonauts docked the last Apollo spacecraft with the Soviet vessel Soyuz, and the crews visited each other’s craft and shared meals. At ground control centers in Moscow and Houston, scientists cooperated in tracking data and communications. Although tensions between the two nations remained—the 1980s saw President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” plans to intercept Soviet missiles from space, for instance—Apollo-Soyuz set the stage for later collaborative space efforts, including the International Space Station. This research facility, currently being assembled in orbit, will be open to cosmonauts and astronauts worldwide.