Answer:
or Americans, the lasting image of the end of the Vietnam War came from the nightly news. On April 29, 1975, television showed the evacuation of Saigon as U.S. Marine helicopters swooped down to the U.S. Embassy and the roof of a nearby CIA safe house to rescue the last 1,000 Americans in the city and some 6,000 Vietnamese and their families who worked for them.
But there was another evacuation that didn't get as much attention. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese found other ways to escape in those frenzied few days. They left in boats and helicopters and headed to the South China Sea. They didn't know if North Vietnamese jets would sink their boats or shoot the helicopters out of the sky.
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They did know that the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet was out there, somewhere, and they headed out to the ocean hoping to be rescued.
One of those U.S. Navy ships was a small destroyer escort, the USS Kirk. As the evacuation began, the Kirk's military mission was to shoot down any North Vietnamese jets that might try to stop the Marine helicopters. The North Vietnamese planes never came.
The approximately 260 officers and men of the USS Kirk weren't prepared for what happened next.
Explanation:
