Saigon, South Vietnam, Feb. 27, 1962: A tank can be seen moving toward the Presidential Palace in Saigon, and a Jeep already is standing in front of the palace gates, as smoke and flames billow out of the west wing of the palace after it was hit during the Feb. 27, 1962 surprise strafing-bombing attack. The attack — carried out by two dissenting Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots — killed three and wounded 30.

Stars and Stripes photographer Al Chang — in Saigon on another assignment that day — happened to be near the presidential palace early morning and rushed to the scene to document it.

Although his original negatives are not in Stars and Stripes’ archives, we do have three of the six original photo prints of the images that ran in the paper. The prints were created by Stars and Stripes Pacific’s photo department at the time to run in the print newspaper and are often the only images we have of much of Pacific Stars and Stripes’ news photography from the years prior to 1964 as the vast majority of pre-1964 Stars and Stripes Pacific negatives and slides were unwittingly destroyed by poor temporary storage in 1963.

Check out the images of the other two prints found, as well as the original published photo spread here.

Looking for more Stars and Stripes’ coverage of the early days of the US involvement in Vietnam? Subscribe to Stars and Stripes’ historic newspaper archive! We have digitized our 1948-1999 European and Pacific editions, as well as several of our WWII editions and made them available online through https://starsandstripes.newspaperarchive.com/