Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Wednesday, April 30, 1975. The Fall of Saigon.

Saigon fell to the NVA.

Gen. Dũng received orders from the Politburo to attack and take Saigon, which was surrounded except on approaches from the sea. Early in the morning NVA sappers tried to take the Newport Bridge but were repulsed by ARVN Airborne. An armored battle ensued, holding the bridge.

NVA armor then attacked Tan Son Nhut, which was defended by ARVN Rangers. An armored battle ensued there as well. A pitch battle broke out, but the NVA overcame the ARVN.

At 10:24 South Vietnamese President Minh surrendered unconditionally, although the ARVN continued to fight at the Newport Bridge, unaware of the surrender. They stopped fighting upon learning of the surrender.

The surrender was announced to the nation at 2:30.

I, General Duong Van Minh, president of the Saigon administration, appeal to the armed forces of the Republic of Vietnam to laydown their arms and surrender unconditionally to the forces of the Liberation Army of South Vietnam. Furthermore, I declare that the Saigon government is completely dissolved at all levels. From the Central government to the local governments must be handed over to the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam.

Duong Van Minh on the transcript written by Bùi Văn Tùng

This was followed by:

We, the representatives for the forces of the Liberation Army of South Vietnam, solemnly declare that the City of Saigon was completely liberated. We accepted the unconditional surrender of General Dương Văn Minh, the president of the Saigon administration.

Bùi Văn Tùng.

In the Mekong Delta, the ARVN actually fought on for a day thereafter. Upon learning of the unconditional surrendered, they abandoned the ARVN or surrendered to VC forces that they outnumbered.

ARVN generals Le Van Hung, 42, Tran Van Hai, 50, Le Nguyen Vy, 42, and Pham Van Phu, 46, committed suicide.

Brig Gen. Pham Duy Tat, the ARVN officer known for his hopelessly naive cheerful attitude in Ken Burn's documentary on the Vietnam War, survived but would serve 17 years in a Communist reeducation camp. Upon being released, he relocated to the United States, passing away in 2019.

ARVN generals, Le Van Hung, Tran Van Hai, Le Nguyen Vy, and Pham Van Phu, committed suicide.

Operation Frequent Wind concluded.

Over 7,000 people were evacuated.

Last Marines out. Both are wearing tropical combat uniforms which have been altered to be short sleeved, something never officially authorized. The one in front carries a M1 or M2 carbine in addition to his M16A1 rifle, probably an embassy weapon.

This date has been widely marked in Vietnam this year, as well as the Vietnamese Diaspora community in the US, which naturally view it differently. Celebrations have been taking place in Vietnam. Indeed, a rather odd video clip of young women, very contemporarily addressed, watching a parade in Hanoi in which the Chinese Army was participating, shows them yelling catcalls at the Chinese troops of Chinese PLA honor guards get catcalls of "老公，老公！" (husband, husband!).

I don't get it, but perhaps if a Vietnamese person stops in, they'll explain it.

Anyway, a momentous day in history, certainly for Vietnam, but also for the United States.

Haste: Operation Frequent Wind and the Fall of Saigon
April 29, 2025 by Jacob Wilson, posted in Cold War, Combat Cameramen, Films, Military, Motion Pictures, Video Recordings, Vietnam War

Monday, April 30, 1945. Adolf Hitler commits suicide.

A post war PPK, the same type of pistol that Hitler used to end his life.

The man responsible for the deaths of millions in Europe, Adolf Hitler committed suicide with a .32 ACP PPK. His wife of one day, Eva Braun, also killed herself. Both deaths occurred around 3.30 p.m..

Their bodies were taken outside of the bunker, liberally doused with gasoline, and burned in a pit.

The Red Army was less than 500m from the Führerbunker. Soviet troops reached the Reichstag.

Karl Dönitz and Joseph Goebbels took on Hitler's former roles as Head of State and Head of Government of Germany in accordance with his wishes.

Such was the engine of the German state that, even though the Nazis would never have come to power without Hitler, and the war would never have occurred without Hitler, the war nonetheless continued on without him.

The Battle of Bautzen ended in a localized German victory.

The U-879, U-1107 and U-326 were all sunk.

Actors Osvaldo Valenti and Luisa Ferida were killed by Italian partisans due to their links to fascism.

Last edition:

Sunday, April 29, 1945. Dachau.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Adolf Hitler, Dachau, Eva Braun, German SS, Italian partisans, Italy, Netherlands, Operation Chowhound, Operation Manna, Royal Air Force, The Holocaust, U.S. Air Force

Friday, April 30, 1915. Events on either side of Turkey.

The Royal Navy Division landed at Gallipoli.

15,000 Armenian refugees were allowed into Van on the thesis that it would strain the city's food supply.

Last edition:

Thursday, April 29, 1915. Things in Africa and Arabia.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, British Empire, German Empire, German Kriegsmarine, Italian Army, Italian Empire, Italy, Libya, World War One

Monday, April 30, 1900. Casey Jones

Illinois Central Railroad engineer John Luther "Casey" Jones managed to slow a passenger train he was driving down sufficiently so that he was the only one killed in a collision with two stalled freight trains at Vaughan, Mississippi.

The event was memorialized in the Balled of Casey Jones.

From Uncle Mike:

April 30, 1900: The Legend of Casey Jones

President McKinley signed into law "An act to provide a government for the Territory of Hawaii" making citizens of Hawaii citizens of the United States.

Last edition:

Sunday, April 29, 1900. Robbing the Tipton train.

Labels: 1900, 1900s, Crime, Railroads, The Wild Bunch, Tipton Wyoming, Union Pacific Railroad, Wyoming

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Tuesday, April 29, 1975. The start of Operation Frequent Wind.

The order was given to carry out Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation of Americans and some South Vietnamese from the country.

Marine Corps Security Guards Corporal Charles McMahon and Lance Corporal Darwin L. Judge became the last American servicemen to be killed in Vietnam. They were killed by North Vietnamese artillery fire.

Their bodies were left behind and the North Vietnamese buried them in a Saigon cemetery. The bodies were returned to the US on February 22, 1976.

Last edition:

Monday, April 28, 1975. Ordering the ARVN to hold on.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, Dương Văn Minh, North Vietnamese Air Force, Saigon Vietnam, South Vietnam, South Vietnamese Air Force, The Fall of Saigon, Vietnam War

Sunday, April 29, 1945. Dachau.

U.S. troops liberated Dachau. In outrage over what they discovered, some SS Guards were executed along with the camp commandant.

Hitler married Eva Braun, his long time mistress.

Braun had been in a relationship with Hitler for a long time. She was a photographer by picked up trade and relatively young when she met Hitler. She had already attempted suicide twice in her relationship with the dictator by this point in time.

Braun's family survived the war. Her mother Franziska, died aged 91 in January 1976. Her father, Fritz, died in 1964. Her sister Gretl, left a widow by the execution of Fegelein, gave birth to a daughte on May 5 1945 and later married Kurt Beringhoff, a businessman. She died in 1987. Braun's elder sister was not part of the Hitler inner cricle and Ilse died in 1979.

Hitler's German Shepard Blondi was given cyanide capsules as a test of their lethality and died.

Germans signed the terms of surrender in Italy and Austria which provided that the fighting would end on May 2. This effected the surrender of 1,000,000 Axis troops.

The Battle of Collecchio ended in Allied victory.

SS Obergruppenführer Matthias Kleinheisterkamp committed suicide after being captured by Soviet troops.

Italian fascist Achille Starace was killed by Italian partisans.

The Allies began dropping food to the people of the Netherlands:

29 April 1945

Last edition:

Saturday, April 28, 1945. The fate of the fascists.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Army, Battle of Berlin, Berlin Germany, boats and ships, Clara Petacci, Eva Braun, German SS, Italian partisans, Italy, Mussolini, Philippines, Red Army, World War Two

Thursday, April 29, 1915. Things in Africa and Arabia.

Senussi rebels defeated a force of Italians at Gasr Bu Hadi, Libya.

Italy was not yet a combatant in the Great War.

A small force of British colonial troops defeated a much larger German force at a fort in British Nigeria.

Survivors of the SMS Emden arrived in Al Wajh on the Red Sea where they'd connect with the Hejez railway.

Last edition:

Tuesday, April 27, 1915. Advance at Gallipoli.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Austro Hungarian Navy, boats and ships, French Navy, Gallipoli, Mormon, religion, The family, Turkey

Sunday, April 29, 1900. Robbing the Tipton train.

Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan, Ben “The Tall Texan” Kilpatrick and William Cruzan, all of The Wild Bunch, robbed the Union Pacific near Tipton, Wyoming.

This is not the more famous robbery that happened that same year in August.

Last edition:

Friday, April 27, 1900. Root: You've got to fight, for your right, to . . . .

Labels: 1900, 1900s, Elihu Root, Puerto Rico, the spoken word, U.S. Grant, William McKinley

Monday, April 28, 2025

More proof I'm culturally clueless.

Me: "Why is her album called Cowboy Carter?"

Long Suffering Spouse: "Because her last name is Carter.".

Me: "I had no idea".

Also, she's not country, and I don't even like country.

Monday, April 28, 1975. Ordering the ARVN to hold on.

U.S Consul Francis Terry McNamara met with ARVN Major General Nguyễn Khoa Nam about the plans to evacuate U.S consulate employees, some American civilians and some Vietnamese employees by boat. General Nam didn't want any members of the ARVN to be included, so they could remain and fight.

A North Vietnamese air raid on Tan Son Nhut Air Base caused half of the fixed winged aircraft to be evacuated from the air base.

The RVNAF launched a helicopter attack on VC troops who were attempting to occupy the Newport Bridge, which was followed by a ground attack.

President Dương Văn Minh made an inaugural speech about the struggle of the South Vietnam military and finding ways for the peace to end the war. He ordered the ARVN to hold all remaining ground and urged the South Vietnamese to stay in the country pending a ceasefire which he promised would keep South Vietnam separate from the north.

Last edition:

Sunday, April 27, 1975. Big Minh takes charge.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Dương Văn Minh, North Vietnamese Army, Personalities, South Vietnam, Trần Văn Hương, Vietnam War, Vietnamese Diaspora

Saturday, April 28, 1945. The fate of the fascists.

From Uncle Mike:

April 28-30, 1945: The Ends of the Dictators

Mike is covering two fateful days ine one post, April 28, when Mussolini was executed by Italian Partisans, and April 30, when Hitler killed himself. In both instances they took a "significant other" with them, in Mussolini's case, that being his current mistress, Clara Petacci, age 33.

Mussolini and Petacci had been caught trying to cross into Switzerland by partisans, who executed them the following day. They were shot, and then their bodies hung upside down.

Mussolini had been the first of the fascist dictators to hold power. There had always been opposition to the one time socialist turned fascist, but armed Italian opposition only came about after the Allies had landed on Italian territory. As with France, whose resistance swelled as it became obvious that the Allies would land, Italian opposition was heavily dominated by the far left, but there were other elements in it as well. Mussolini, as already noted, had once been a member of the far left as well, and it's probable, frankly, that amongst those who watched and cheered his death were those who had once cheered him.

Often missed, Nicola Bombacci, Alessandro Pavolini and Achille Starace were also executed at the same time. Nicola Bombacci was an Italian Marxist revolutionary and later a fascist politician. The others were prominent fascists.

Like Eva Braun, there's little to note about Petacci, other than that she was loyal, like Braun, to her dictator until death. In Mussolini's case, that was not true of his spouse, whom he left when he left.

The U.S. Fifth Army took Alessandria and Vicenza.

Hitler ordered Himmler to be arrested, learning of his effort to make a deal in the West.

German and Soviet troops fought on in Berlin, where the Red Army was within a mile of the Fuhrerbunker.

The eccentric Rupprecht Gerngroß lead a military uprising against the Nazis in Munich, which failed.

Teh U-56 was sunk in an RAF raid on Kiel.

Hitler's brother in law, notorious SS figure Hermann Fegelein, was executed. He was planning on taking off with what he could.

The 8th Army took Digos in the Philippines.

Last edition:

Friday, April 27, 1945. Mussolini captured by Partisans, Second Austrian Republic comes into being.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Allies, Army, Artillery, Austria, German SS, Heinrich Himmler, Italian partisans, Italy, Mussolini, Personalities, Philippine Resistance, Philippines, Red Army, The Holocaust, World War Two

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Novemdiales

We, or at least the Apostolic Christian world, is in the Novemdiales, that being a nine day period of mourning which commenced yesterday, with the funeral Mass for Pope Francis.

The whole world is also in the period of rampaging inaccurate punditry about who will be the next Pope.

Nobody knows who is going to be the next Pope. It could be one of the people mentioned, or might be somebody nobody has ever heard of. Even if it is somebody nobody has every heard of, the Press will pretend like they've heard of him after the fact.

It's also a series of days in which anti Catholics will increasingly attack the Catholic Church, with those attacks being particularly strong in the United States, and particularly coming from both secular atheists and a certain branch of Evangelical Protestants, although certainly not all of them by any means. I've already seen one such post loudly complaining that the whole world takes note of a passing Pope while the death of a local pastor is ignored.

Well, there's a reason for that.

The speculation will continue until the shoes of the fisherman are filled, and his seat taken. During the interregnum the speculation will be rampant, and it will be for a time thereafter as well.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Related Threads:

From City Father:

What's Next?

Sunday, April 27, 1975. Big Minh takes charge.

Minh in 1964.

Duong Van Minh, "Big Minh" was unanimously elected as President of South Vietnam by the South Vietnamese National Assembly, and authorized to negotiate a peace agreement with the Viet Cong and with North Vietnam. "

Tran Van Huong refused to step aside as President, however.

A career Army office, Minh had joined the French Army early in World War Two and had been captured by the Japanese. He subsequently joined the French supported Vietnamese National Army and became aprionser of the Viet Minh. After the Paris Peace Accords he's advocated for Vietnam to be reunited as neither a right wing or Communist nation. He was regarded as a friendly South Vietnamese politician by the Communists and therefore was allowed to return to his villa after the South Vietnamese surrender, which he orchestrated. In 1983 he moved to France, and then in 1988 to the US. He remained silent about the war after the 1975 surrender.

He died in 2001, unlamented by the Vietnamese diaspora, who blamed him for the South Vietnamese surrender.

The NVA took Nam Yet Island, Ba Ria Town, and the entire Phuoc Tuy Province.

Last edition:

Saturday, April 26, 1975. The attack on Saigon begins.

Labels: 1960s, 1968, 1970s, 1975, Growing up in the 1970s, NVA, Saigon Vietnam, South Vietnam, South Vietnamese Air Force, television, The Fall of Saigon, Vietnam War

Blog Mirror: Fanta and Nazi Germany

Fanta and Nazi Germany

Friday, April 27, 1945. Mussolini captured by Partisans, Second Austrian Republic comes into being.

Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by partisans while attempting to cross into Switzerland.

The Red Army took Potsdam, Prenzlau, Angemunde and Tempelhof airfield.

US troops liberated Kaufering concentration camp.

The Western Allies rejected Himmler's peace offer for the Germans to lay down their arms in the west and sent a reminder that the German surrender was to be unconditional.

One of the interesting things here is that its not entirely clearly that the Western Allies understood the offer the way it was made. Theoretically, it might have been possible to accept the offer as a largescale troop surrender which, while it would have ended fighting in the west, it would not have ended the war against Germany.

The U.S. Fifth Army reached Genoa, Italy, which was mostly already liberated by Italian partisans.

SS architect Hans Schleif committed suicide at age 43. Schleif had been involved in removing cultural material from Poland, but he oddly never really seemed to be fully on board with the worst elements of Nazism. His death was probably needless, but he probably would have served time after the war.

Former Austrian chancellor Karl Renner set up a provisional government composed of Social Democrats, Christian Socialists, and Communists and proclaimed the reestablishment of Austria as a democratic republic. This became the Second Austrian Republic, which remains today.

US and Philippine forces commenced the Battle of Davao. US forces took Baguio.

U.S. troops firing a pack howitzer in the Philippines, April 27, 1945.

Thursday, April 26, 1945. Petain arrested.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Battle of Berlin, Berlin Germany, Dachau, German SS, Italian partisans, Italy, Operation Exodus, Philippe Pétain, Prisoners of War, Rationing, Red Army, Vichy France, War Crimes, World War Two

Tuesday, April 27, 1915. Advance at Gallipoli.

Allied forces advanced two miles at Gallipoli.

The French cruiser Léon Gambetta was sunk in the Mediterranean off Santa Maria di Leuca, Apulia, Italy by Austro-Hungarian submarine SM U-4 with the loss of 684 of her 821 crew.,

The captain of the submarine was Georg von Trapp of what would become the Von Trapp Family Singers.

The Mormon (LDS) Church established the practice of Family Home Evening. Apparently the night is now on any convenient day, but most Mormons continue to use Monday as the day.

Last edition:

The American people will, within a few years, have to either abandon the Monroe doctrine, or fight for it, and we are not going to abandon it. If necessary we will fight for it, but unless there is greater diligence in legislation, in the future than in the past, when the time comes it may find us unprepared.

The audience was stunned.

Newly appointed Governor of Puerto Rico Charles Herbert Allen arrived at San Juan on the USS Dolphin.