Tank 843 of the North Vietnamese Army crashed through the wrought-iron gates of Independence Palace, and soldiers raised the Viet Cong flag from the balcony. South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh, who had held office for only two days, surrendered on live radio. The war that had drawn in over half a million American troops and killed roughly 58,000 of them, alongside millions of Vietnamese, was over. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.
The final 24 hours had been chaos. American helicopters flew round-the-clock evacuations from the U.S. Embassy roof and rooftops across the city, ferrying out diplomats, journalists, and desperate South Vietnamese who feared reprisal. Marines pushed people off skids as choppers overloaded; some Vietnamese who had worked with Americans were left behind, a wound that would never fully heal for the evacuees who escaped and the families who did not.
At the palace, President Minh waited with his cabinet, having assumed power specifically to negotiate a surrender. When Colonel Bui Tin, the ranking North Vietnamese officer present, entered, Minh reportedly said, 'I have been waiting since early this morning to transfer power to you.' Bui Tin replied that there was no power left to transfer—'You cannot give up what you do not have.'
Images of the tank crashing through the gate became one of the 20th century's defining photographs, an emblem of American military failure and Vietnamese reunification after three decades of war against France and then the United States.
Key people: Duong Van Minh