Two dissident Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots bomb the Independence Palace in Saigon in a failed attempt to assassinate South Vietnam President Ngô Đình Diệm.
On 27 February 1962, the Independence Palace in Saigon, South Vietnam, was bombed by two dissident Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots, Second Lieutenant Nguyn Vn C and First Lieutenant Phm Ph Quc. The pilots targeted the building, the official residence of the President of South Vietnam, with the aim of assassinating President Ng nh Dim and his immediate family, who acted as political advisors.
The pilots later said they attempted the assassination in response to Dim's autocratic rule, in which he focused more on remaining in power than on confronting the Vietcong, a MarxistLeninist guerilla army who were threatening to overthrow the South Vietnamese government. C and Quc hoped that the airstrike would expose Dim's vulnerability and trigger a general uprising, but this failed to materialise.
One bomb penetrated a room in the western wing where Dim was reading but failed to detonate, leading the president to claim that he had "divine" protection. With the exception of Dim's sister-in-law Madame Nhu, who suffered minor injuries, the Ng family were unscathed. Three palace staff died and 30 were injured. Afterwards, C escaped to Cambodia, but Quc was arrested and imprisoned.
In the wake of the airstrike, Dim became hostile towards the American presence in South Vietnam. Dim 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; in the event the U.S. remained circumspect. Domestically, the incident was reported to have increased plotting against Dim by his officers.
The South Vietnam Air Force, officially the Republic of Vietnam Air Force (RVNAF; Vietnamese: Không lực Việt Nam Cộng hòa, KLVNCH; French: Force aérienne vietnamienne, FAVN) (sometimes referred to as the Vietnam Air Force or VNAF) was the aerial branch of the Republic of Vietnam Military Forces, the official military of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) from 1955 to 1975.
The RVNAF began with a few hand-picked men chosen to fly alongside French pilots during the State of Vietnam era. It eventually grew into the world's fourth largest air force at the height of its power, in 1974, just behind the Soviet Union, the USA and China. Other sources state that VNAF was the sixth largest air force in the world, just behind the Soviet Union, the USA, China, France and West Germany. It is an often neglected chapter of the history of the Vietnam War as they operated in the shadow of the United States Air Force (USAF). It was dissolved in 1975 after the Fall of Saigon; many of its members emigrated to the United States.