With the fall of Saigon imminent, the South Vietnam correspondent for the New York Times filed this report on April 28th 1975:
“A heavy column of black smoke rose over the edge of Saigon today as advance Communist forces moved close to the city limits.
South Vietnamese Air Force helicopters fired rockets into the Communist positions on the Saigon River at Newport, a former United States port complex on the road to Bien Hoa. The Communists fired back with AK-47 automatic rifles, and the noise was clearly audible inside the city.
Only a few lightly armed South Vietnamese combat policemen and militiamen guarded the road on the northeastern edge of the city. They made no effort to dig in, and several Government officers simply stood around watching the helicopters firing at the Communist forces.
Seize End of Bridge
The Communist troops, who had seized the far side of the Newport Bridge over the Saigon River, were believed to be part of major North Vietnamese units moving rapidly toward Saigon from Bien Hoa, 15 miles to the northeast. Another group of Communist troops reportedly had occupied a crossroads two miles beyond the bridge on the way to the biggest South Vietnamese ammunition dump, at Cat Lai.
The Communist advance blocked all traffic at the large Hang Xanh intersection, the main gateway to Saigon from the north. Combat policemen wearing flak jackets, helmets and mottled green and brown uniforms stood behind barbed-wire barricades, forcing all traffic back into the city. It was the closest fighting to Saigon since the Communists’ Tet and spring offensives of 1968.
The Communist troops this morning apparently had only small arms and no mortars or antiaircraft guns. If they had fired a few mortar shells into the city, it appeared that the few nervous Government soldiers would have instantly fled.
According to soldiers along the road, the huge column of smoke came from a gasoline storage dump operated by the United States Agency for International Development. It was unclear whether it had been set afire by the Communists or by South Vietnamese artillery after the Communists had entered the area.
During the morning Government helicopters hovered over the edge of Saigon, firing rockets that made a heavy wooshing sound and left trails of brown smoke. But the rockets did not seem to have any effect on the Communist troops, who kept firing back with their AK-47 rifles.
The Newport base complex that came under attack was built by the United States Navy and housed a large commissary that Americans used for their food shopping. Several American ships had been standing by at Newport to help if needed in the evacuation of Americans and Vietnamese from Saigon.”