1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing

The 1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing in Saigon was an aerial attack on February 27, 1962 by two dissident Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots, Nguyen Van Cu and Pham Phu Quoc. The pilots targeted the Independence Palace, the official residence of the President of South Vietnam, with the aim of assassinating President Ngo Dinh Diem and his immediate family, who acted as his political advisors.

The pilots stated later that their assassination attempt was in response to Diem's autocratic rule, in which he focused more on remaining in power than on confronting the Vietcong. Cu and Quoc hoped that the airstrike would expose Diem's vulnerability and trigger a general uprising but this failed to materialise. One bomb penetrated a room in the western wing where Diem was reading but it failed to detonate, leading the president to claim that he had "divine protection". With the exception of Diem's sister-in-law Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu, who escaped with minor injuries, the Ngo family were unscathed; however, three palace staff died and another 30 were injured. Afterwards, Cu managed to escape to Cambodia, but Quoc was arrested and imprisoned.

In the wake of the airstrike, Diem became hostile towards the American presence in South Vietnam. Diem claimed that the American media was seeking to bring him down and he introduced new restrictions on press freedom and political association. The media speculated that the United States would use the incident to justify the deployment of combat troops to South Vietnam though, in the event, the US remained circumspect. Domestically, the incident was reported to have increased plotting against Diem by his officers.Karnow, pp. 280–281.] Tucker, p. 302.] Langguth, pp. 163–164.]

Planning

Cu was the second son of Nguyen Van Luc, a leader of the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD, Vietnamese: "Vietnamese Nationalist Party"), a nationalist party which opposed the Diem regime. At one point, Diem had briefly jailed Luc for engaging in "anti-government activities".cite web|title=Durable Diem| url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,939947-2,00.html| publisher="Time" |date=1962-03-09 |accessdate=2008-04-09] The VNQDD planned that Cu along with Quoc, another pilot from the same squadron, would attack the Independence Palace on February 27. Ironically, Quoc had recently been personally commended by Diem for his conduct in combat. Cu recruited Quoc by claiming that all the armed services and the United States were aware of the plot, showing him a "Newsweek" article critical of Diem as "evidence".Langguth, p. 99.] Years after the airstrike, Cu blamed Diem's treatment of opposition parties as the motivation for his attack. He believed that Diem had prioritised remaining in power over fighting the Vietcong and that, for six years, Cu had been denied promotion because of Diem's obsession with hindering political opponents. Cu criticised the American government for its support for Diem, which he felt had stifled the war effort, saying that "the Americans had slammed the door on those of us who really wanted the fight against the communists".

Attack

Quoc and Cu, who were trained in France and the United States, respectively, were given orders to fly from Saigon to the Mekong Delta in an early morning mission against the Vietcong. Instead of proceeding south as ordered, they changed course to attack the Independence Palace, the official presidential residence. At around 07:00, the French colonial-era palace was engulfed in flame as Quoc and Cu—flying American-built A-1 Skyraiders (A1H/AD-6 variant) single-seater bombers—attacked with bombs and napalm before strafing the presidential compound with rocket and machine-gun fire. The duo continued their runs for 30 minutes before units loyal to the president arrived and launched a counterattack. Taking advantage of poor weather and low cloud cover, the two pilots circled the palace at altitudes of around convert|150|m|ft|abbr=on, periodically diving out of the clouds to re-attack before darting back into them. The airstrike caught the Saigon garrison off guard and, in the confusion, they were unable to determine whether the aircraft were acting alone or with ground forces. Loyalist tanks and armoured personnel carriers rushed to their battle stations and anti-aircraft batteries opened fire, nearly hitting the loyalist aircraft from Bien Hoa in pursuit of the two rebel planes. Two tanks and a number of jeeps armed with 50-calibre machine guns patrolled the smoke-filled streets as a precaution.Jones, pp. 162–163.]

The first convert|500|lb|abbr=on bomb penetrated a room in the western wing where Diem was reading a biography of George Washington. The bomb failed to detonate, which gave Diem enough time to seek shelter in a cellar in the eastern wing. He was joined there by his elder brother Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu—who sustained an arm fracture while running toward the cellar,—and their children. Elsewhere within the palace, three servants and guards were killed, and about thirty more staff were injured. Outside the palace grounds, an American contractor died after falling from a rooftop where he had been watching the bombing. Despite the confusion, most of the city's inhabitants went about their usual business, indifferent to the chaos. The attack lasted 30 minutes and although they carried enough bombs to level the palace, the pilots did not expend all their munitions. Quoc's aircraft was damaged by fire from a minesweeper, forcing him to eject over the Saigon River and land in Nha Be. After his arrest by a nearby naval patrol, he reportedly asked " [d] id I kill that filthy character?" Cu believed the attack had been successful and managed to safely flee to Cambodia. Commenting on the skills of the attackers, a US Air Force officer opined that " [w] ith that weather, they did a hell of a job".

Aftermath

In a brief radio address after order had been restored, Diem dismissed the attack as an "isolated act" and attributed his escape to "divine protection". He visited the soldiers wounded in the attacks, and also promised the rebel pilots' colleagues that they would not bear any responsibility for the bombing. American President John F. Kennedy promptly sent a message denouncing the attack as a "destructive and vicious act", and expressed relief that Diem was "safe and unharmed". US ambassador Frederick Nolting determined that the attack had been the result of "two isolated cases" and opined that the incident did not represent widespread dissatisfaction with the regime. The absence of a Vietcong reaction led Nolting to label the bombing as a "limited scope, anti-Communist assassination attempt". The National Assembly, Diem's rubber stamp legislative body, urged the president to "take drastic measures against irresponsible elements". General Duong Van Minh, the presidential military advisor, attributed the assault to "disgruntled pilots", and noted that no hostile troop movements had occurred.Hammer, p. 137.] The Civil Guard had remained loyal and its commander ordered his airborne forces to take over Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Quoc was imprisoned for his actions, while Cu remained in exile in Cambodia where he worked as a language teacher. After Diem's assassination in November 1963, Quoc was released from prison and Cu returned from exile, and they resumed service in the air force.

Diem reaction

During Nolting’s first meeting with Diem after the assassination attempt, the president adamantly asserted that the media was responsible for the bombing. He pointed to the "Newsweek" article and other "derogatory articles in the press", using them to justify his claim that "the Americans were supporting the revolution". Diem declared that while some journalists were portraying the bombing as a wake-up call he saw it as "a warning to them—an indicator of the danger of their irresponsibility [in fomenting disorder] ".Jacobs, pp. 131–132.]

In a later meeting with General Paul D. Harkins, head of the US military mission to Vietnam, Diem joked: "I shouldn't have put him in the air force, because I had put his father in jail years ago". Diem went on to predict that "sometime I'm going to get shot right in the back of the neck. Sometime they'll get me that way". He was shot dead after a successful coup in 1963. Diem reacted to the assassination attempt by cracking down on political dissidents and further tightening control of the press. [Tucker, p. 405.] Off the record, one official admitted that " [w] e don't even talk about freedom of the press or ask for other liberties any more ... [Diem] had completely surrounded himself in a protective oligarchy". Nhu justified anti-opposition restrictions, remarking that " [t] here's always going to be an opposition. If we take these people in, there will be another opposition springing up, because they are controversial men." Madame Nhu added, " [y] ou open a window to let in light and air, not bullets. We want freedom, but we don't want to be exploited by it."Warner, p. 92.]

US reaction

The attack generated speculation that the US would respond by deploying combat troops in South Vietnam. At that time, US military personnel officially held only advisory capacities. In the response to media concerns about the stability of the Diem government, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk denied that the US had plans to deploy combat forces. He also ruled out negotiations with the Vietcong, saying "the root of the trouble" was communist violations of the Geneva Accords. United States Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith lobbied Kennedy against the deployment of combat troops, believing that it would lead to endless South Vietnamese requests for more troops. Galbraith further believed that wasting US resources in the jungles of Vietnam would be playing into the hands of the Soviet Union. According to one US observer, the palace bombing provoked "full scale plotting against Diem". Galbraith noted that " [w] hen the man in power is on the way down, anything is better" and considered that any change in South Vietnamese leadership would bring an improvement.

Notes

References

*cite book| title=A Death in November| authorlink=Ellen Hammer |first=Ellen J.|last=Hammer| year=1987 |publisher=E. P. Dutton|isbn=0-525-242104
*cite book| first=Seth |last=Jacobs| year=2006| title=Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America's War in Vietnam, 1950–1963| publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers| isbn=0-7425-4447-8
*cite book| first=Howard |last=Jones| year=2003| title= Death of a Generation| publisher=Oxford University Press| isbn=0-19-505286-2
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*cite book| title=Our Vietnam| first=A. J. |last=Langguth |year=2000 |publisher=Simon and Schuster | isbn=0-684-81202-9
*cite book|title=Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War| first= Spencer C. |last=Tucker |year=2000 |publisher=ABC-CLIO| isbn=1-57607-040-0
*cite book| title=The Last Confucian| first=Denis |last=Warner| year=1963 |publisher=Macmillan