Bruce Dunning has died. The CBS News correspondent, best known for his gripping report on the chaotic end to the Vietnam War, was 73.
He died Monday in Manhattan from injuries he received in a fall, according to CBSNews.com.
Asia became a focal point for Dunning's more than three decades in the news business. He reported on that part of the world for CBS, as a man in the field, rising to become Asia bureau chief in 1989. He was also the news network's first China-based reporter, helping to establish CBS' Beijing bureau in the early '80s.
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His legacy rests on a gripping report Dunning filed in 1975 from the Da Nang airfield, where CBS camera's captured Vietnamese military deserters clawing at a U.S. plane, desperate to be let inside. The plane had been charged with rescuing women and children, but the bulk of its passengers were armed militants.
"The heavily armed men were menacing," Dunning said in the narration. "They left their wives, their children, their aged parents on the runway while they forced their own way on board. A rabble of young enlisted men."
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CBS anchor Dan Rather began the report by noting, "Da Nang has become a Dunkirk." The shots of throngs of terrified Vietnamese citizens became enduring images of a war that had long ago lost popular support in the United States.
Dunning's "Back from Da Nang" was named one of the 100 greatest news stories by Columbia University's School of Journalism.
Dunning is survived by his life partner, Tetsunori Kawana; a brother, Alan, and his sister-in-law, Anne.