Communist bomber hero's sights on US

HO CHI MINH CITY - Nguyen Thanh Trung was a South Vietnamese Air Force pilot and secret member of the Communist Party when he flew his United States-built F-5 warplane over Saigon to drop two bombs through the roof of the presidential palace.

That was on April 8, 1975, three weeks before North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the same palace, South Vietnam surrendered and the Communist Party's 30-year war for a reunited and independent country was over.

Now Trung is deputy director-general of Vietnam Airlines and hopes he will be the pilot of the carrier's first commercial flight to the US, the one-time enemy that trained him first as a war pilot and later to fly Boeing 777 passenger jets.

Vietnam Airlines hopes to inaugurate its first direct flight to the US late this year. "I really hope that maybe I'm the first to fly into San Francisco," Trung said in front of his old F-5 in the grounds of the old presidential palace, now a revolutionary museum.

It's all a long way from the day 30 years ago when the Communist Party told him it was finally time to bomb the palace as the North Vietnamese Army launched a campaign in the Central Highlands that began the collapse of the demoralised southern forces and led to the war's end on April 30.

Trung had joined the South Vietnam Air Force with instructions from the party to become the best pilot he could be and await orders.

After Trung dropped two bombs through the roof of the palace he flew his plane into a "liberated zone" where a runway had been prepared. He was proclaimed a national hero.

- REUTERS