Look up at the roof of this apartment block. One of the most reproduced photographs of the twentieth century was taken here, and almost everyone has misunderstood it.

1The photo

On 29 April 1975, as North Vietnamese troops closed in on the city, the United States launched Operation Frequent Wind, the helicopter evacuation of its staff and thousands of Vietnamese. That day the Dutch photographer Hubert van Es, working for UPI, photographed from a nearby building an Air America Huey helicopter perched on the lift housing of this roof, with a line of people climbing a narrow ladder.

2The mistake

The building was then the Pittman Apartments, at number 22 Gia Long Street. It housed employees of the US aid agency, USAID, and its top floor was reserved for a senior CIA officer. Van Es filed the photo with an accurate caption, but UPI's Tokyo office changed it to “evacuation of employees of the US embassy”. The embassy was in fact almost a kilometre away. The photographer tried for years to correct the error, without success.

One of the most famous images of the war shows something other than what almost everyone thinks they see.

After 1975 the street was renamed Lý Tự Trọng, after a young communist executed by the French.

3What to look for

  • The lift housing on the roof.
  • The ladder leading up to it, the one in the photo.
  • The cathedral towers, very close by, where you are heading next.
View from the roof of 22 Gia Long towards Saigon's cathedral
From the rooftop you can see the cathedral towers.

Documented

Hubert van Es's authorship, the date of 29 April 1975 and the change of caption in Tokyo were explained by the photographer himself in several articles.

Oral tradition

The idea that the picture shows the roof of the US embassy is a captioning error that became popular belief.

Sources and credits

Hubert van Es, “Thirty Years at 300 Millimeters”, The New York Times (29 April 2005); English Wikipedia, “22 Gia Long Street”; Vietnamese Wikipedia, “Chiến dịch Gió lốc”.

Photos:

  • The apartment building at 22 Lý Tự Trọng, with the lift housing on its roof: Nic saigon, CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • View from the roof of 22 Gia Long towards Saigon's cathedral: Prince Roy, CC BY 2.0.

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