wFrom: Ken Kalish

wtSent: November 5, 2013

Subject: Rockets Hit National Assembly Building in Saigon, August 1968

Rusty memory. I don’t recall the second hit, but I was probably absorbed in tracking launch sites. Sometimes those rockets would fizzle and drop into the river.

Ken

wFrom: Jim White

wtSent: November 9, 2013

Subject: The Navy is no Longer Wooden?

Regarding Ken Kalish's reference to the wooden Navy's trick of bracketing your mortar fire for accuracy, the Army was still doing it in 1954 and I really don't that the Navy still had many wooden ships around. But maybe they did. The following clipping is from the Stars & Stripes for November 8, 2013. Ain't rapid technological progress just great!

Jim

wFrom: Mike McNally

wtSent: November 5, 2013

Subject: Rockets Hit National Assembly Building in Saigon, August 1968

This link should lead to a Google newspaper page containing information and a photo re rockets hitting the National Assembly building in downtown Saigon. The AP story appeared in an American newspaper on 22 August 1968.

Mike

wFrom: Dick Ellis

wtSent: November 5, 2013

Subject: Rockets Downtown Saigon

I just did some further research and found a big rocket attack May 19th, 1968 which was Ho Chi Minh's 78th birthday...that may have been it.... I would have sworn it was before not after Tet.... I do remember going over there and it had burned about 4-square blocks and looked like Berlin. I have a 16mm film of it...called "When Saigon Slept."

Dickie

wFrom: Ann Kelsey

wtSent: November 5, 2013

Subject: Rockets Downtown Saigon

That happened in '70 too. They were aiming for the Presidential Palace but overshot and the rocket hit the Library Service Center which was on the corner of Nguyen Du and Le Van Duyet. It destroyed the in-country shelf list (inventory of all books in the freestanding libraries on catalog cards). Ironically it happened during National Library Week. Must be karma.

Ann

wFrom: Dick Ellis

wtSent: November 5, 2013

Subject: Rockets Downtown Saigon

I am getting so senile in my old age.... I think it was before Tet so it must have been Oct or Nov of 1968. They told us they were fired from across the river. There was a run about this time that they fired rockets into town about once or twice a week for a month.

Dickie

wFrom: Ann Kelsey

wtSent: November 5, 2013

Subject: Rockets Downtown Saigon

Do you remember the date this happened?

Ann

wFrom: Ken Kalish

wtSent: November 5, 2013

Subject: Tom Firchow's Photos

It was a 122 and it did come from across the river. It had all of the usual features -- bright take-off, wobbly apogee, and a lucky landing. Things came out as lucky as could be expected. Had it gone further it would have had a possible hit [on] a hotel, and had it fallen shorter it would have been landing in shops or that other hotel, the name of which escapes me. Of course it might also have struck that awful statue.…

Ken

wFrom: Dick Ellis

wtSent: November 4, 2013

Subject: Rockets Downtown Saigon

This is a 122-mm rocket ( one of about 4 that night if I recall) that hit between the big "down-town" market and the Key Son. It burned about 4-square blocks. We watched from the top of the hotel. I have other photos taken the next day but they are all in slides. Were on page three of my webpage that was lost to archives. [I.E., Actually lost to the demise of Geocities.com. JimW]

Dickie

wFrom: Rick Fredericksen

wtSent: November 4, 2013

Subject: Tom Firchow's Photos

Ken, do you recall...was it a 122mm fired from across the river?

Rick

wFrom: Ken Kalish

wtSent: November 4, 2013

Subject: Tom Firchow's Photos

I saw the rocket come in that night. I thought it was going to land on the Caravelle. The closest one could come to aiming those things was the wooden Navy trick of bracket and halve. Lay one short and one long, then put one in the middle.

Ken

wFrom: Rick Fredericksen

wtSent: November 4, 2013

Subject: Tom Firchow's Photos

Some very nice pics here! (I never knew the National Assembly building was hit by a rocket.)

Rick

Tom Firchow submitted some of his photos of Saigon in November 2013.

One of them showed the National Assembly Building with a new roof on the right side (as you face the building).

Saigon Rocketed in 1968

November 2013

AFVN Group Conversations

wFrom: Rick Fredericksen

wtSent: November 5, 2013

Subject: Rockets Hit National Assembly Building in Saigon, August 1968

Nice link! Two rockets! That's quite a hole in the roof. Imagine the view if you were having a night cap at the Continental. OR, for the civilian correspondents with roof-level offices in the Caravelle. I can't believe I never knew this. I bet some VC got an award.

Rick