1975 Vietnamese Map of the Central Highlands Campaign during the Vietnam War

This is a 1975 Vietnamese map of the Central Highlands Campaign during the Vietnam War. The map depicts the region from Kiến Đức to the South China Sea and from Công Tum to Đà Lạt and Cam Ranh. North Vietnamese troop movements are illustrated by what and yellow arrows, with the advances from March 4 until March 18th denoted by the white arrows and the movements from March 22 until April 3 shown by the yellow arrows. Red flags indicate North Vietnamese units of varying strength, while blue flags, and the corresponding blue zones, indicate South Vietnamese units and occupied areas.

Campaign 275, or the Central Highland Campaign

Illustrating the beginning of the 1975 Spring Offensive, the battles illustrated here were part of Campaign 275, or the Central Highland Campaign, a campaign with the goal of capturing the Tây Nguyên region of South Vietnam, known in the west as the Vietnamese Central Highlands. Launched on March 4, South Vietnamese forces were caught off-guard, even though they had received correct information on the location of the beginning of the campaign. Major General Phạm Văn Phú, the commander of the South Vietnamese army, did not believe the information he was receiving that the North's target was Buôn Ma Thuột, because he believed it would be Pleiku, where his headquarters was located. By the time Phú realized his error, it was too late to save Buôn Ma Thuột, as North Vietnamese forces had advanced even further, effectively cutting off the town. Nonetheless Phú believed that abandoning Pleiku in an attempt to retake Buôn Ma Thuột was the best strategy. However, this strategy required him to lead a corps-sized force 160 miles over a largely unknown road cut through the jungle and the mountains to the coastal city of Nha Trang for the proposed counterattack. This effort, predictably, failed, as North Vietnamese forces soon discovered the force retreating from the Highlands. In what soon became known as the 'convoy of tears', only 20,000 of the retreating 60,000 troops from Pleiku made it to the coast, while only half of the estimated 180,000 civilians survived. These successes and the ones that followed directly influenced the North Vietnamese decision to push for Saigon in the spring of 1975, which ended the Vietnam War.