VIETNAM: 25 YEARS AGO PILOT NGUYEN THANH TRUNG DROPPED BOMBS ON SAIGON'S PRESIDENTIAL PALACE CAUSING THE EVENTUAL ENDING OF VIETNAM WAR

Record ID: 552242

  • Title: VIETNAM: 25 YEARS AGO PILOT NGUYEN THANH TRUNG DROPPED BOMBS ON SAIGON'S PRESIDENTIAL PALACE CAUSING THE EVENTUAL ENDING OF VIETNAM WAR
  • Date: 4th April 2000
  • Summary: HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM (RECENT) (REUTERS) SCU (SOUNDBITE) (English) TRUNG SAYING: "And before I drop the bomb I think 'Dad, the thing is now, the time is now to do what I promised to you 13 years ago.' Now I do it and I don't care about what happened to me."
  • Embargoed: 19th April 2000 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: HO CHI MINH CITY (SAIGON), VIETNAM
  • Country: Vietnam
  • Topics: Conflict,History,Politics,People
  • Reuters ID: LVAA38QGLR8IB98RYU4J8U28D6SS
  • Story Text: Twenty-five years ago, a South Vietnamese Air Force Lieutenant dropped his payload on Saigon's presidential palace in a raid that symbolised the end of the U.S.-backed regime.
    For decades, Nguyen Thanh Trung (pronounce: Nguwin Tang Chung) was considered the Vietnam War's most infamous defector.
    But he wasn't.As Vietnam prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War much of the intrigue behind one of the world's deadliest conflicts is now coming to light.
    The former presidential palace, now renamed the reunification palace, and once the heart of South Vietnam's wartime capital, is a place to which Nguyen Thanh Trung often returns.
    The grounds may be tranquil these days, but the reminders of a turbulent past loom large.
    It was here on April 8, 1975, as communist forces were closing in on Saigon, that Trung bombed the presidential palace in a desperate bid to end the war.
    Now, as Vietnam prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the end of the conflict, Trung -- labelled the war's most prominent defector -- has revealed he was in league with the Viet Cong all along.
    Trung's father had been murdered by South Vietnamese troops in 1963, his mutilated body thrown into the muddy Mekong River as a warning to others.Trung, then Ding Khac Chung, was only 14.
    "I promise with my father that some day, I don't know what day, some day if it happens that I have the opportunity I will bring that bomb and drop it to the palace to stop the war as soon as possible," he recalls today.
    Trung had been on a routine flight north of Saigon when he grabbed his chance.It had been four years in planning, but he had only 10 seconds in which to act, flying around the city to the south and dropping four 500-lb (227-kg) bombs on his target.
    "Before I dropped the bombs I think 'Dad, the thing is now, the time is now to do what I promised to you 13 years ago'."
    Although no one was killed in the attack, it left a deep psychological scar on a weakening regime.Adding insult to injury was the fact that Trung had been trained as a fighter pilot on airbases in the United States.
    Little more than two weeks after Trung's raid on the palace, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu fled the country, saying he hoped his departure would end decades of war in Vietnam.
    But Trung was not finished yet.He began training communist pilots for an assault on Saigon's Tan Son Nhat airport.He wanted to send a message to the 3,000 American advisers remaining in Vietnam.He wanted them out.
    On April 28, 1975, he led a small squadron of communist planes in bombing the airport.That night the American evacuation was in full swing.Communist forces rolled into Saigon where their tanks smashed down the palace gates on April 30, 1975.The war was over.
    Twenty-five years later Trung remains philosophical about his actions.A hero in communist Vietnam, but a traitor to the vanquished, Trung says history will be his judge.
    "Maybe 25 more years, history will make a final conclusion about what happened," he says.
    Today, Trung is a senior pilot for national carrier Vietnam Airlines, plying routes to Europe, Japan and Australia.
    But the one-time fighter pilot still harbours one hope.
    He hopes to pilot the first Vietnam Airlines commerical flight to the United States when the two former foes eventually open direct air links.
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