April 17, 2000
The Defector
By DAVID LIEBHOLD
Early in the morning of April 8, 1975, while most Saigonese were on their way to work, a South Vietnamese pilot named Nguyen Thanh Trung stole an American F-5 fighter plane and dropped two bombs through the roof of the Presidential Palace. It was the most spectacular defection of the war and a harbinger of the North Vietnamese victory three weeks later. "It was a major nail in the coffin, psychologically," recalls Gil J. Watts, a former G.I. who was running a business in the city at the time.
The bombing gained Trung a place of honor in the newly unified communist state--and a successful career. Today, at 52, he is the chief pilot for Vietnam Airlines, flying a Boeing 767 on international routes. Trung claims he planned the bombing for 12 years, to avenge the death and desecration of his father, a Viet Cong member, at the hands of the South Vietnamese army. In May 1969, he had secretly joined the Viet Cong--just a day before enlisting in South Vietnam's air force.
Sneaking away with the F-5 was not easy, since even the smallest sorties involved three jets. "After we had been cleared for takeoff, I gave the leader the signal for electrical trouble," says Trung, pouring tea in the sitting room of his modest home in Ho Chi Minh City. "He signaled back that I should stay behind." When the other two aircraft had taken off, Trung waited 10 seconds and then departed himself. He headed for downtown Saigon and destroyed the center of the palace. (President Nguyen Van Thieu escaped unhurt.)
Mission accomplished, Trung flew north and landed the plane at a Viet Cong-controlled airstrip in Phuc Long province, near the Cambodian border. He was taken by jeep into the jungle, where he changed into a Viet Cong uniform. Two days later he was made a captain and presented with a radio. "I don't feel very proud about my role in the war," says Trung. "I just did the correct thing to end the war and the killing as quickly as possible."
With reporting by Ken Stier/Ho Chi Minh City