22 Gia Long Street (Pittman Apartments), Saigon

The photograph that isn't of the embassy

The most reproduced image of the fall of Saigon — Hubert van Es's photograph of a CIA Air America Huey helicopter on a rooftop, with a ladder of evacuees climbing up to it — has been universally misattributed for fifty years as "the evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon".

It is not.

The building in the photograph is 22 Gia Long Street, an apartment building 700 metres from the embassy, used as housing for CIA staff and other US government employees.

The rooftop pad in the photograph is the elevator-machine-room penthouse on top of the apartment building. The actual US Embassy evacuation was a much larger operation a few blocks away, also conducted that day, but the rooftop scene is the image that became iconic.

Operation Frequent Wind

Operation Frequent Wind — the helicopter evacuation of US personnel and Vietnamese collaborators from Saigon — was launched at 10:51 local time on 29 April 1975.

Signalled across US Armed Forces Radio Saigon by Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" played at full volume. The prearranged signal that meant leave immediately.

For the next 19 hours, US Marine helicopters from the Seventh Fleet offshore flew 682 sorties, evacuating 7 014 people. 1 373 Americans. 5 595 Vietnamese. 46 third-country nationals.

The operation was the largest helicopter evacuation in history.

People left behind

The famous photograph captures one of the most ethically complex images of the war.

A long line of Vietnamese — embassy employees, intelligence informants, friends and family members — queuing on a ladder for a helicopter that would carry only 12 to 14 people at a time.

The CIA had been compiling lists of South Vietnamese to be evacuated who were judged at high risk under the incoming Communist government. Former interpreters. Military officers. Journalists. Dissidents. The lists ran to 130 000 names.

Only about 40 000 were actually evacuated.

The remaining 90 000 — many of whom appeared on the queues van Es photographed that afternoon — were left behind when the helicopters stopped flying. Their subsequent fate ranged from execution to long-term imprisonment in "re-education camps", in some cases lasting 17 years.

The last marines off the embassy roof

At 04:58 local time on 30 April 1975, the last helicopter — call sign Lady Ace 09 — lifted off the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon carrying Ambassador Graham Martin and the embassy duty staff.

Eleven Marine Security Guards remained on the embassy roof for several more hours, defending against the crowd of Vietnamese who had broken into the compound.

The last Marine — Sergeant Juan Valdez — boarded Swift 2-2 at 07:53, ending the American presence in Vietnam.

North Vietnamese tanks broke through the gates of the Presidential Palace at 11:30 that morning. The Vietnam War was over. The Communist government renamed Saigon as Ho Chi Minh City the following year.