THE FALL OF SAIGON 50 YEARS LATER

Starved of American support, the Republic of Vietnam was swept away by an unstoppable invasion

- WORDS: MIGUEL MIRANDA

With the Paris Peace Accords a done deal by January 1973 and all US troops departed two months later, fresh plans were drawn up in Hanoi. This time, with the failures of the 1968 and 1972 offensives in mind, the communist generals were confident a multi-pronged assault could end the war and achieve unification. Opposing them was a paper tiger stocked to the brim with the fruits of the American military-industrial complex: M48 Patton tanks and F-5A/B fighter jets, to name but a few. All in all, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) counted 800,000 soldiers and more than 1,000 tanks and 1,400 artillery pieces, including 80 enormous M107 6.9in (175mm) self-propelled howitzers. They were supported by a sizable navy and southeast Asia's largest air force, but these advantages were endangered by the absence of American engineers and technicians. The climax of the Vietnam War was at hand.

North Vietnam had a year-and-a-half to prepare without interference. A surprising feat was the construction of a pipeline that reached the 17th parallel to fuel the truck fleet delivered by their Soviet allies. The mislabelled 'Ho Chi Minh Trail' snaking along the Cambodian frontier was enlarged too. Having proven impervious to US bombing and ground incursions, the trail was a masterfully concealed network of roads for moving entire divisions and their logistics train on wheels and by foot.