Last flight from Saigon
QUESTION There is an iconic photo of a helicopter rescuing people during the fall of Saigon. Was it on the roof of the U.S. Embassy or another building?
Despite this famous photograph being widely captioned as the U.s. embassy building, this is not the case.
it was an apartment building for the employees of the U.s. Agency for international Development at 22 Gia Long street (now Ly tu trong).
the people fleeing were Vietnamese employees. the last helicopter out of the city would leave 12 hours later.
the picture was taken by Hubert Van es, a Dutch photographer for the news agency United press international, on April 29, 1975, from the roof of his hotel half a mile away.
the previous day, U.s. president Gerald Ford had given the order for Operation Frequent Wind — the final evacuation.
A coded message to flee went out on the radio ‘the temperature in saigon is 105 degrees and rising’ followed by the wistful strains of White Christmas.
Graham A. Martin, the U.s. ambassador to south Vietnam, had delayed the final evacuation in the vain hope that the U.s. president would rescue the collapsing south Vietnamese army.
He had assumed that the U.s. Air Force could use tan son Nhut Air Base to rescue the last few thousand Americans left in the city. But as the North Vietnamese Army closed in on saigon, shelling rendered the base inoperable.
U.s. personnel and local officials had to be rescued by helicopter, which seriously limited the scale of the evacuation and meant many of the Vietnamese who had helped the Americans were left behind.
thomas polgar, the saigon CiA station chief, lived in the building at Gia Long street. He realised the lift shaft on the roof could support a Bell Huey helicopter landing in an emergency.
Just before he destroyed the building’s cable-sending machine, he typed this dispatch: ‘this will be final message from saigon station, it has been a long and hard fight and we have lost.’
CiA employee O. B. Harnage is believed to have piloted the final helicopter flights from the rooftop.
Alan Summers, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs.
QUESTION How did plans to prevent a German invasion in World War II herald the arrival of avocets in Britain?
tHe avocet is an elegant black and white wader with an upturned beak that it sweeps from side to side in the mud, searching for food.
the breed disappeared from our shores in the mid-19th century as a result of habitat loss and bird egg collecting.
According to Alan Humphreys in a 1948 Daily Mail article, is the Avocet Here to stay?: ‘the last known breeding place for the bird before it disappeared was salthouse, Norfolk, where the people hastened its end by using the eggs for a much-liked local pudding.’
shortly after World War ii, a handful of avocets were found on the suffolk coast: four pairs near thorpeness and another four in Havergate island.
these areas had been flooded to prevent a German invasion, making them ideal nesting grounds for the birds.
Furthermore, avocets had been forced from the Netherlands due to damage by the Germans, travelling 100 miles across the North sea.
it was a cause for national celebration. Humphreys reported: ‘in a suite of oldfashioned offices...a group of men are anxiously waiting to hear of an air invasion of Britain.
‘the news will come to them from watchers along the east Anglian coast, who are keeping as alert a look-out as they did in 1940 for the Germans.
‘But this time, instead of looking for aircraft with black markings, they are hoping to see streamlined Recurvirostra avosetta, which have white, as well as black, markings. Unlike the Luftwaffe, these invaders will be most welcome.’
the RSPB leased 1,500 acres of land from the Ogilvie family near thorpeness to establish the Minsmere nature reserve.
However, avocets struggled to get established there until Bert Axell was appointed as warden in 1959. He revolutionised the management of the site by creating a ‘scrape’, shallow lagoons ideal for wading birds.
By 1963, the avocets began breeding in earnest. A pair lays two eggs a year, and as the population grew, birds moved to other parts of the country.
there are now more than 400 avocets on Minsmere and 1,500 breeding pairs in Britain. the avocet was adopted as the RSPB logo in 1970.
Olwen Hudson, Canterbury, Kent.
QUESTION Did the British benefit from captured German scientists and technology at the end of World War II in the way the U.S. and Russia did?
IN THE post-war scramble, the best scientific minds were a valuable asset. they would enhance military capacity as well as denying their expertise to the other side. the battle for their services was an early indicator of the Cold War.
Operation surgeon was the British effort to recruit former Nazi scientists in the aeronautical and rocket weapons programmes. However, it was outmuscled by the U.s. Operation paperclip and its soviet counterpart, Operation Osoaviakhim.
the British drew up a list of 1,500 scientists and technicians they wanted to liberate from Germany, but were outbid by the soviets. salaries ranging from 800 to 8,000 Reichmarks a month were offered compared to Britain’s paltry 400 Reichmarks a month.
it’s estimated that Britain managed to attract 100 German scientists compared with 2,500 hired by the USSR and the U.s., a clear sign of the waning power of the Union Flag.
James Hood, Milton Keynes, Bucks.