HONG KONG — Hugh Van Es, a Dutch photojournalist who covered the Vietnam War and recorded the most famous image of the fall of Saigon in 1975 — a group of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop — died Friday morning in Hong Kong, his wife said. He was 67.
Van Es died in Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, the city where he had lived for more than 35 years. He suffered a brain hemorrhage last week and never regained consciousness, said his wife, Annie.
Hospital officials declined to comment.
Slender, tough-talking and always ready with a quip, Van Es was considered by colleagues to be fearless and resourceful. He remained a towering figure after the war in journalism circles in Asia, including his adopted home in Hong Kong.
“Obviously he will be always remembered as one of the great witnesses of one of the great dramas in the second half of the 20th century,” said Ernst Herb, president of Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondent Club.
Van Es arrived in Hong Kong as a freelancer in 1967, joined the South China Morning Post as chief photographer, and got a chance the following year to go to Vietnam as a soundman for NBC News, which he took.
After a brief stint, he joined The Associated Press photo staff in Saigon from 1969 to 1972 and then covered the last three years of the war from 1972 to 1975 for United Press International.
His photo of a wounded soldier with a tiny cross gleaming against his dark silhouette, taken 40 years ago this month, became the best-known picture from the May 1969 battle of Hamburger Hill.
His wife said in an e-mail to friends that he was proudest of the pictures he took during the Hamburger Hill battle — not the evacuation photo.
Van Es’ shot of the helicopter escape from a Saigon apartment rooftop on April 29, 1975, became a stunning metaphor for the desperate U.S. withdrawal and its overall policy failure in Vietnam. The photo earned Van Es considerable fame, but in later years he told friends he spent a great deal of time explaining that it was not a photo of the U.S. Embassy roof, as was widely assumed.
The image gained even greater iconic status after it was featured incorrectly as the embassy roof in the musical “Miss Saigon.”
