Battle of Saigon (1955)
| Battle of Saigon | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 VNASupported by  United States CIA
|
Bình Xuyên Supported by  SDECE
|
||||||
The Battle for Saigon was a month-long battle between the Vietnamese National Army of the State of Vietnam (later to become the Army of the Republic of Vietnam) and the private army of the Bình Xuyên organised crime syndicate. At the time, the Bình Xuyên was licensed with controlling the national police by Emperor Bảo Đại, and Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm issued an ultimatum for them to surrender and come under state control. The battle started on April 27, 1955 and the VNA had largely crushed the Bình Xuyên within a week. Fighting was mostly concentrated in the inner city Chinese business district of Cholon. The densely crowded area saw some 500-1000 deaths and up to 20,000 civilians made homeless in the cross-fire. In the end, the Bình Xuyên were decisively defeated, their army disbanded and their vice operations collapsed.
On the midnight of 29–30 March, explosions rocked Saigon as the Bình Xuyên responded to Diệm's removal of its police chief. 200 Bình Xuyên troops launched an attack on VNA headquarters. The clashes were inconclusive, with the VNA suffering six deaths to their opponents' 10, but by sunrise, the bodies of civilians littered the sidewalk.
The final battle between Diệm's VNA and the Bình Xuyên began on April 28 at mid-day. After initial small-arms fire and mortar exchanges, the VNA resorted to the heaviest artillery in its arsenal. This coincided with growing calls from within the Eisenhower administration to oust him because Eisenhower believed that he was unable to subdue the Bình Xuyên and unify the country. By evening, a large part of the inner city was engulfed in house-to-house combat. By the morning of April 28, the fighting had driven thousands of civilians onto the streets. A square mile of the city, around the densely populated inner-city Chinese district of Cholon where the Bình Xuyên had a stronghold, became a free-fire zone. Artillery and mortars leveled the poor districts of the city, killing five hundred civilians and leaving twenty thousand homeless. Observers described that fighting from both sides as lacking strategy and relying on brute-force attrition tactics. One of the few maneuvers that were considered tactical was an attempt by the VNA to cut off Bình Xuyên reinforcements by demolishing the bridge across the Saigon-Cholon canal. This was made moot when the Bình Xuyên threw pontoon bridges across the canal. It appeared that the conflict would be determined by the side which was able to absorb the greater number of losses. Approximately 300 combatants were killed in the first day of fighting.
...
Wikipedia