550 occupants of the French Embassy in Phnom Penh crossed into Thailand. They included 300 Khmer Muslims.
The People's Republic of China and the European Community agreed to establish trade and diplomatic relations.
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Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
550 occupants of the French Embassy in Phnom Penh crossed into Thailand. They included 300 Khmer Muslims.
The People's Republic of China and the European Community agreed to establish trade and diplomatic relations.
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Hang Thun Hak, 48 year old former radical Socialist Prime Minister of Cambodia was executed by the Khmer Rouge. He'd been in the far left himself and had contacts with the Khmer Rouge, none of which saved him, with execution of left wing radicals actually being common amongst Communist.
The NVA took Phan Thiết.
Van McCoy released The Hustle.
ZZ Top released Fandango!
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Khmer Rouge cadres marched into Phnom Penh, forced all residents out of their homes, marched them into the countryside, and began mass murders.
Around 2,000,000 Cambodians would die during the Cambodian genocide which only ended when the Vietnamese Army conquered Cambodia during the Cambodian Vietnamese War.
A CIA spy inside the North Vietnamese government inner circle informed the US Embassy in Saigon that the North would not negotiated, which was pretty obvious by this point anyway.
The last flight of the RAAF out of Vietnam took place, thereby taking a total of 270 Vietnamese civilians to Thailand.
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Operation Eagle Pull took place with the US closure of its Cambodian embassy and the insertion of 180 Marines into Phnom Penh to start the evacuation of US civilians. Approximately 300 people were evacuated, of which 82 were Americans.
Deputy Prime Minister Sisowath Sirik Matak refused to leave, stating in a letter to the American Ambassador, "I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion....I have only committed this mistake of believing in you, the Americans."
The ARVN deployed aircraft against NVA units at Xuan Loc, with the South Vietnamese air force flying up to 120 sorties per day.
Six Catholic civilians are killed in a Ulster Volunteer Force gun and grenade attack on Strand Bar in Belfast, North Ireland
Josephine Baker died at age 68.
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North Vietnam took control of the Spratly Islands, which had been controlled by the Republic of Vietnam. The landing forces consisted of NVA special forces, but the islands were lightly defended. Interestingly, Communist Vietnam today still recognizes a South Vietnamese defense of the islands against China, which are also claimed by China, as heroic.
While portrayed in Vietnamese propaganda as a great victory, the operation was only a success due to the extreme distress that South Vietnam was then in, and the fact that the U.S. Navy didn't intervene. Additionally, and importantly, the islands had no strategic value to the ongoing offensive, but with South Vietnam collapsing, the North Vietnamese no doubt correctly guessed that if they did not take the islands, China would.
I should note that this is somewhat confusing, as there are numerous small islands in the chain, and not all of them are occupied by the Vietnamese.
Some tourism of the islands takes place today.
A White House conversation took place regarding Operation Eagle Pull.
President: I would like to be brought up to date on where we are and what we are going to do. We will restrict ourselves to Cambodia. I am optimistic and I think we will make it.
Schlesinger: “Eagle Pull” will commence at 0900 local. They will be on the ground one hour and 20 minutes total. It will be completed by 11:30 p.m. our time if all goes well.
There’ll be 33 helicopters, including three for search and rescue. The first twelve will hold 346 Marines.
President: Will Long Boret go?
Kissinger: “Eagle Pull” will collapse the Government. Even if Long Boret doesn’t, enough of his people will go that it will collapse.
President: Do we know if there will be much fighting? There will be a crowd gathering, but there is a better than 50% chance of getting out without fighting.
Brown: There will be air cover but it will only return fire if fire is directed on the evacuation and only to protect the evacuation. The helicopters will come in a stream from the Carrier Ubon and peel off from hold points. We can do it all in one lift unless there are too many Khmer.
Schlesinger: We must do it all in one lift.
Brown: The Khmer have quite a lift capability of their own.
Kissinger: Do the Khmer think it is over or is this an American decision?
Brown: It is a U.S. decision. Our intelligence thinks tomorrow will be the last day, but probably it would come on the 13th, an auspicious time.
President: There will be air cover?
Buchen: Yes. They will be under positive control all the time and under FAC.
President: By what authority is this being done?
Schlesinger: The rescue operation is to protect American lives, any fire is to protect American lives and Khmer evacuation is incidental to the American evacuation.
Buchen: Yes. The Khmer evacuation is incidental.
Marsh: We would use the same force anyway, wouldn’t we?
Schlesinger: If we had gotten it down to 50 Americans, we would have used a much smaller force and got them out in 10 minutes.
Kissinger: I think we should say we are stretching the law so we don’t run counter to the President’s request of last night.2
Rumsfeld: Don’t use “incidental”—because there are five times as many Khmers and it will be seen as a subterfuge.
Schlesinger: The original list contained 50 Khmer. That has swollen to 1,100. It is there we might be vulnerable.
President: I would think there would be a crowd gathered.
Schlesinger: We can use Red Cross agents. And they have C130’s.
Buchen: Why do we take them out then?
Schlesinger: Ask State.
Kissinger: It was assumed that the airfield would be unusable. We didn’t want to pull the plug by talking to them about evacuation.
[The statements to be read and given to Congress were reviewed.]
President: There is no connection between this and the Vietnam evacuation. There is no connection at all. This is a unique situation.
Brown: Unless we give orders, the Marine Commander may load up with Khmer and leave the Marines, thus necessitating a second flight.
President: I agree. The Commander should be told that all Americans must be aboard the last chopper.
The ARVN put up still resistance at Xuan Loc.
A unique flight:
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Cambodian Prime Minister Long Boret met with representatives of the Khmer Rouge in Thailand.
Wives of Air Force men stationed in Japan volunteered to assist in Operation Babylift.
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President Ford ordered the evacuation of Americans from Phnom Penh.
Operation Babylift began as a U.S. effort to bring South Vietnamese orphans to the United States. Widely lauded today (it would be unlikely to take place, frankly, under the current administration), there was some criticism at the time on the assertion that not all the children were actually orphans, and that it was a cultural based decision given that young people were being taken out of their native land to avoid communism.
Gen. Weyand met with President Thiệu in Saigon and promised more American aid to South Vietnam, but declined Thiệu's request for a renewal of American bombing of North Vietnamese forces. As they both well knew, without U.S. air support there was no hope for the ARVN.
South Vietnamese Prime Minister Trần Thiện Khiêm resigned. He would take up exile in France and then the United States, converting to Catholicism there. He died in 2021.
Israel and South Africa signed SECMENT, a secret mutual defense agreement.
Bobby Fischer refused to play a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, and thereby ceded the title of chess champion.
Actress Mary Ure, most famous for her role in Where Eagles Dare, and the wife of Robert Shaw, died of an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates at age 42.
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The ongoing collapse in South Vietnam was increasingly spreading to neighboring Cambodia, where Neak Leung fell to Khmer Rouge after fierce Cambodian resistance. cutting off a supply route to Phnom Penh from South Vietnam.
Cambodian President Lon Nol went into exile, being succeeded by Saukaum Khoy. He'd spend the rest of his life in Hawaii.
Qui Nhơn in South Vietnam fell to the NVA giving the communists control of half of South Vietnam's landmass.
South Vietnamese Gen.hú departed Nha Trang secretly by helicopter after having previously refused requests from his men to retreat from the city. The American Consul General in Nha Trang, Moncrieff Spear, ordered the evacuation of American personnel from the city, leaving behind about 100 of the consulate's Vietnamese employees and one of the five Marine Security Guards, Sergeant Michael A. McCormick by accident.
McCormick was later able to leave Nha Trang on a CIA Air America helicopter.
The bicentennial "Freedom Train" began its tour of the United States starting with a display in Wilmington, Delaware.
The Khemr Rouge cut off supply lines to Phnom Penh.
John N. Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman were found guilty on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal.
Robert Mardian was found guilty on one count of conspiracy.
Queen Elizabeth II conferred knighthood on Charlie Chaplin, P. G. Wodehouse, Roger Bannister, and Gary Sobers.
I would have passed on Chaplin.
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US bombing of Cambodia halted, bringing to an end US combat operations in Southeast Asia.
The last raid was flown by two A7's flying out of Korat Air Base in Thailand.
When I was a National Guardsman, I had the interesting experience of having had a Colorado Air National Guard A7 roll over upside down above me as I was driving a Jeep attempting to clear an artillery location. The pilot spotted me from quite high as I was driving around a curve and went into a dive, while still upside down, and came right over the top of me as I drove around the curve. Had it been an actual conflict, I and everyone in the Jeep would have been killed.
On the same day, the USS Constellation departed Yankee Station, a fixed point off of the coast of North Vietnam.
Nixon addressed the nation on Watergate for the first time, asking the country to look forward rather than backwards, and declaring he had no knowledge of the events until after they had occured.
A rock band by the name Sick Man of Europe renamed itself Cheap Trick.
Khemer Air Force pilot Cpt. So Patra, son-in-law of former King Norodom Sihanouk, bombed the presidential palace in Phnom Penh, killing 36 people. He then flew his T-28 to Hainan Island, a Chinese possession.
Arrests followed.
A large release of the few remaining US POWs in Vietnam began, including the release of Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm of the U.S. Air Force.
A remarkable photograph, it depicts Stirm's 15-year-old daughter greeting her father with the rest of the family behind them.
Stirm had already received a Dear John letter from his wife, Loretta, informing him of her intent to divorce him. They did divorce. She died in 2010 from cancer.
His children all had the Pulitzer Prize winning photographs hanging in their homes. He couldn't bear to.
Lex Anteinternet: April 30, 1970. The Incursion into Cambodia: Well remembered, but not well remembered accurately, on this day in 1970 President Richard Nixon announced that Republic of Vietnam and the ...On May 1, 1970, US troops entered Cambodia in Operation Rock Crusher. The operation sent the 1st Cavalry Division, which was famously air mobile in Vietnam, i.e., "air cavalry", the 11th Armored Cavalry REgiment, the ARVN 1st Armored Cavalry Regiment and the ARVN 3d Airborne Brigade into Cambodia following a massive B-52 air strike.