Lownds also rejected a proposal to launch a helicopter extraction of the survivors. The figures of 5,500 NVA dead and 1,000 U.S. dead yield a ratio of 5.5:1. server. After a ten-day battle, the attackers were pushed back into Cambodia. The North Vietnamese lost as many as 15,000 casualties during the siege of Khe Sanh. The Marine defense of Khe Sanh, Operation Scotland, officially ended on March 31. [86] The command and control arrangement then in place in Southeast Asia went against Air Force doctrine, which was predicated on the single air manager concept. Besieged, Khe Sanh could only be resupplied by air. [120], On 23 February, KSCB received its worst bombardment of the entire battle. newsletter for the best of the past, delivered every Monday and Thursday. That appraisal was later altered when the PAVN was found to be moving major forces into the area. Once the aircraft touched down, it became the target of any number of PAVN artillery or mortar crews. This article was written by Peter Brush and originally published in the June 2007 issue of Vietnam Magazine. The Marines found a solution to the problem in the "Super Gaggle" concept. Unlike the Marines killed in the same place in January, since Operation Scotland had ended, the four Lima Company Marines who died in this attack on Hill 881 North were excluded from the official statistics. For them, the battle started when the North Vietnamese attacks began in January. Thirty-three ARVN troops were also killed and 187 were wounded. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. [153][154] The gradual withdrawal of US forces began during 1969 and the adoption of Vietnamization meant that, by 1969, "although limited tactical offensives abounded, US military participation in the war would soon be relegated to a defensive stance. Battle of Hamburger Hill The 29 th North Vietnam Army had entrenched themselves on Hamburger Hill in South Vietnam; a joint US-South Vietnamese force was ordered to remove them. The opportunity to engage and destroy a formerly elusive enemy that was moving toward a fixed position promised a victory of unprecedented proportions. The Operation Scotland tactical area of responsibility (TAOR) was limited to the area around Khe Sanh along Route 9 in western Quang Tri province. [143][144], On 15 April, the 3rd Marine Division resumed responsibility for KSCB, Operation Pegasus ended, and Operation Scotland II began with the Marines seeking out the PAVN in the surrounding area. [75], Niagara I was completed during the third week of January, and the next phase, Niagara II, was launched on the 21st,[76] the day of the first PAVN artillery barrage. MACV therefore initiated an operation to open Route 9 to vehicle traffic. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. [35], American intelligence analysts were quite baffled by the series of enemy actions. Home > Features > Battle of Khe Sanh > View All. Site will be misbehaving during our migration to new (better!) [95], It still came as a shock to the Special Forces troopers at Lang Vei when 12 tanks attacked their camp. On 18 January, Westmoreland passed his request for Air Force control up the chain of command to CINCPAC in Honolulu. The battalion was assaulted on the night of 23 January by three PAVN battalions supported by seven tanks. NVA casualties were more than 200. McNamara's thinking may have also been affected by his aide David Morrisroe, whose brother Michael Morrisroe was serving at the base. Once the base came under siege, a series of actions were fought over a period of five months. By the end of January 1968, he had moved half of all US combat troops, nearly 50 maneuver battalions, to I Corps. The platoon withdrew following a three-hour battle that left six Marines dead, 24 missing, and one taken prisoner. While climbing, the C-123 was struck by several bursts of heavy machine gun and recoilless rifle fire. The Hill Fights: The First Battle of Khe Sanh by Murphy, Edward F However, North Vietnamese sources claim that the Americans did not win a victory at Khe Sanh but were forced to retreat to avoid destruction. By the middle of January 1968, some 6,000 Marines and Army troops occupied the Khe Sanh Combat Base and its surrounding positions. At 04:15 on 8 February under cover of fog and a mortar barrage, the PAVN penetrated the perimeter, overrunning most of the position and pushing the remaining 30 defenders into the southwestern portion of the defenses. Of the 24 Americans at the camp, 10 had been killed and 11 wounded. For most of the battle, low-lying clouds and fog enclosed the area from early morning until around noon, and poor visibility severely hampered aerial resupply. [131], Planning for the overland relief of Khe Sanh had begun as early as 25 January 1968, when Westmoreland ordered General John J. Tolson, commander, First Cavalry Division, to prepare a contingency plan. At around 10:00, the fire ignited a large quantity of explosives, rocking the base with another series of detonations. At 0330 hours, soldiers of the NVA 6th Battalion, 2nd Regiment, 325C Division, attacked the Marines on Hill 861. They were not included in the official Khe Sanh counts. Air Power in the Siege of Khe Sanh - HistoryNet The official figure of 205 KIA only represents Marine deaths in the Operation Scotland TAORthat is, Marines killed in proximity to the Khe Sanh Combat Base during the period from November 1, 1967, to March 31, 1968. For a succinct overview of the creation of the CIDG program and its operations. The ground troops had been specially equipped for the attack with satchel charges, tear gas, and flame throwers. How Many Were Really Killed at Khe Sanh? | RealClearHistory [88] Westmoreland was so obsessed with the tactical situation that he threatened to resign if his wishes were not obeyed. Westmoreland echoed this judgment in his memoirs, and, using exactly the same figures, concluded that the North Vietnamese had suffered a most damaging and one-sided defeat. 239240. [78], Thus began what was described by John Morocco as "the most concentrated application of aerial firepower in the history of warfare". It was a bad beginning to a long 77-day siege. [140] Total US casualties during the operation were 92 killed, 667 wounded, and five missing. WALKI NA WZGRZU: PIERWSZA BITWA KHE SANH Edwarda F. Murphy'ego - twarda okadka w bardzo dobrym stanie | Books & Magazines, Books | eBay! [57][58] They were assisted in their emplacement efforts by the continuing bad weather of the winter monsoon. These forces, including support troops, totaled 20,000 to 30,000. [23][Note 2], James Marino wrote that in 1964, General William Westmoreland, the US commander in Vietnam, had determined, "Khe Sanh could serve as a patrol base blocking enemy infiltration from Laos; a base for operations to harass the enemy in Laos; an airstrip for reconnaissance to survey the Ho Chi Minh Trail; a western anchor for the defenses south of the DMZ; and an eventual jumping-off point for ground operations to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Route 9, the only practical overland route from the east, was impassable due to its poor state of repair and the presence of PAVN troops. The Tet Offensive was about to begin. According to Ray Stubbe, a U.S. Navy chaplain during the siege and since then the most significant Khe Sanh historian, the 205 figure is taken only from the records of the 26th Marine Regiment. As early as 1962, the U.S. Military CommandVietnam (MACV) established an Army Special Forces camp near the village. As a result, 65% of all supplies were delivered by paradrops delivered by C-130 aircraft, mostly by the USAF, whose crews had significantly more experience in airdrop tactics than Marine air crews. The fire of PAVN antiaircraft units took its toll of helicopters that made the attempt. The NVA surrounded Khe Sanh in an attempt to force the Marines to break out of their fighting positions, which would make it easier to engage and destroy them. If that failed, and it did, they hoped to attack American reinforcements along Route 9 between Khe Sanh and Laos. [69] The Marine Direct Air Support Center (DASC), located at KSCB, was responsible for the coordination of air strikes with artillery fire. 129131. [34] The heaviest action took place near Dak To, in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum. On June 28, a Communist spokesman claimed the Americans had been forced to retreat and that Khe Sanh was the gravest tactical and strategic defeat for the U.S. in the war. Khe Sanh Incident - force.com Khe Sanh - Location, Vietnam War & Who Won - HISTORY The explanations given out by the Saigon command were that "the enemy had changed his tactics and reduced his forces; that PAVN had carved out new infiltration routes; that the Marines now had enough troops and helicopters to carry out mobile operations; that a fixed base was no longer necessary. [24], The plateau camp was permanently manned by the US Marines in 1967, when they established an outpost next to the airstrip. [128] Also, Marine Lieutenant General Victor Krulak seconded the notion that there was never a serious intention to take the base by arguing that neither the water supply nor the telephone land lines were ever cut by the PAVN. [59], During the rainy night of 2 January 1968, six men dressed in black uniforms were seen outside the defensive wire of the main base by members of a listening post. During the 1968 Tet Offensive, as many as 30,000 Communist Vietnamese forces surrounded roughly 6,000 U.S. marines defending a combat base on .. Week of February 21 Amid heavy shelling, the Marines attempted to salvage what they could before destroying what remained as they were evacuated. "[28], As far as Westmoreland was concerned, however, all that he needed to know was that the PAVN had massed large numbers of troops for a set-piece battle. Ten American soldiers were killed; the rest managed to escape down Route 9 to Khe Sanh. Even so, Westmoreland insisted for it not only to be occupied by the Marines but also for it to be reinforced. [112][113][114] In addition, over 100,000 tons of bombs were dropped until mid-April by aircraft of the USAF, US Navy and Marines onto the area surrounding Khe Sanh. [145], Author Peter Brush details that an "additional 413 Marines were killed during Scotland II through the end of June 1968". Sporadic actions were taken in the vicinity during the late summer and early fall, the most serious of which was the ambush of a supply convoy on Route 9. [74], During January, the recently installed electronic sensors of Operation Muscle Shoals (later renamed "Igloo White"), which were undergoing test and evaluation in southeastern Laos, were alerted by a flurry of PAVN activity along the Ho Chi Minh Trail opposite the northwestern corner of South Vietnam. The fighting was heavy. American intelligence estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 PAVN troops were killed during the operation, equating to up to 90% of the attacking 17,200-man PAVN force. Additionally, the logistical effort required to support the base once it was isolated demanded the implementation of other tactical innovations to keep the Marines supplied. For additional reading, see: Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sanh, by John Prados and Ray W. Stubbe; and the official Marine Corps history, The Battle for Khe Sanh, by Moyers S. Shore II. These Are Some of the Most Iconic Battles the US Marines Ever Fought Beginning in October 1967, the Communists greatly increased their forces in the Khe Sanh area to total two infantry divisions, two artillery regiments and an armored regiment. If firepower determined the outcome of the fight, it was airlift that allowed the defenders to hold their positions. He believed that was proved by the PAVN's actions during Tet. [64], The main base was then subjected to an intense mortar and rocket barrage. [100][Note 6], Lownds infuriated the Special Forces personnel even further when the indigenous survivors of Lang Vei, their families, civilian refugees from the area, and Laotian survivors from the camp at Ban Houei Sane arrived at the gate of KSCB. Two days later, the PAVN 273rd Regiment attacked a Special Forces camp near the border town of Loc Ninh, in Bnh Long Province. Contribute to chinapedia/wikipedia.en development by creating an account on GitHub. "[103] The Bru were excluded from evacuation from the highlands by an order from the ARVN I Corps commander, who ruled that no Bru be allowed to move into the lowlands. This fighting was heavy, involving South Vietnamese militia as well as U.S. Army MACV advisers and Marines attached to a Combined Action Company platoon. [40] The 2nd and 3rd battalions of the 3rd Marine Regiment, under the command of Colonel John P. Lanigan, reinforced KSCB and were given the task of pushing the PAVN off of Hills 861, 881 North, and 881 South. A myth has grown up around this incident. Two Marines died. PAVN forces were driven out of the area around Khe Sanh after suffering 940 casualties. "[160] That has led other observers to conclude that the siege served a wider PAVN strategy by diverting 30,000 US troops away from the cities that were the main targets of the Tet Offensive. Cushman, the new III MAF commander, supported Westmoreland perhaps because he wanted to mend Army/Marine relations after the departure of Walt. This base was to serve as the western anchor of Marine Corps forces, which had tactical responsibility for the five northernmost provinces of South Vietnam known as I Corps. The border battles, however, had two significant consequences, which were unappreciated at the time. A historian, General Dave Palmer, accepted that rationale: "General Giap never had any intention of capturing Khe Sanh [it] was a feint, a diversionary effort. [96], The Marines at Khe Sanh had a plan in place for providing a ground relief force in just such a contingency, but Lownds, fearing a PAVN ambush, refused to implement it. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Lownds feared that PAVN infiltrators were mixed up in the crowd of more than 6,000, and lacked sufficient resources to sustain them. The enemy by my count suffered at least 15,000 dead in the area.. Background [ edit] The 1968 Battle of Khe Sanh was the longest, deadliest and most controversial of the Vietnam War, pitting the U.S. Marines and their allies against the North Vietnamese Army. Naval aircrews, many of whom were redirected from Operation Rolling Thunder strikes against North Vietnam, flew 5,337 sorties and dropped 7,941 tons of ordnance in the area. This caused problems for the Marine command, which possessed its own aviation squadrons that operated under their own close air support doctrine. With a view to gain the eventual approval for an advance through Laos to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail, he determined that "it was absolutely essential to hold the base." [37] He was vociferously opposed by General Lewis W. Walt, the Marine commander of I Corps, who argued heatedly that the real target of the American effort should be the pacification and protection of the population, not chasing the PAVN/VC in the hinterlands. Early in the war US forces had established a garrison at Khe Sanh in Quang Tri province, in the . See also Pisor, p. 108. In fact, neither side won a resounding victory. Additionally, Shore argued that the "weather was another critical factor because the poor visibility and low overcasts attendant to the monsoon season made such operations hazardous. "[105] There had been a history of distrust between the Special Forces personnel and the Marines, and General Rathvon M. Tompkins, commander of the 3rd Marine Division, described the Special Forces soldiers as "hopped up wretches [who] were a law unto themselves. During one 8-hour period, the base was rocked by 1,307 rounds, most of which came from 130-mm (used for the first time on the battlefield) and 152-mm artillery pieces located in Laos. The PAVN 130mm and 152mm artillery pieces, and 122mm rockets, had a longer range than the Marine artillery support which consisted of 105mm and 155mm howitzers. The United States and its South Vietnamese allies pulled many huge offensive . Less likely to be mentioned is the final high-casualty engagement between units of the U.S. infantry and the North Vietnamese Army. Hundreds of mortar rounds and 122-mm rockets slammed into the base, levelling most of the above-ground structures. These combined sources report a total of 354 KIA. The base was officially closed on July 5. Historians have observed that the Battle of Khe Sanh may have distracted American and South Vietnamese attention from the buildup of Viet Cong (VC) forces in the south before the early 1968 Tet Offensive. Listen Now. [62], On 20 January, La Thanh Ton, a PAVN lieutenant from the 325th Division, defected and laid out the plans for an entire series of PAVN attacks. The Marine garrison was also reinforced, and on November 1, 1967, Operation Scotland began. The Laotians were overrun, and many fled to the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei. [94] Although the PAVN was known to possess two armored regiments, it had not yet fielded an armored unit in South Vietnam, and besides, the Americans considered it impossible for them to get one down to Khe Sanh without it being spotted by aerial reconnaissance. The deaths of U.S. Air Force personnel, estimated between five and 20, are also omitted. On March 6, two U.S. Air Force C-123 cargo airplanes departed Da Nang Air Base en route to Khe Sanh. They asked what had changed in six months so that American commanders were willing to abandon Khe Sanh in July. A closer look at the Khe Sanh body count, however, reveals anything but a straightforward matter of numbers. [87], Heated debate arose among Westmoreland, Commandant of the Marine Corps Leonard F. Chapman Jr., and Army Chief of Staff Harold K. Johnson. If a battle tallied a sufficiently favorable body count ratio, American commanders declared victory, as they did after Khe Sanh. Ho Chi Minhs oft-quoted admonition to the French applied equally to the Americans: You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win. The calculation by Stubbe that approximately 1,000 Americans died on the Khe Sanh battlefield is especially compelling, given that Stubbes numbers are accompanied by names and dates of death. After a ten-day battle, the attackers were pushed back into Cambodia. On that day, Tolson ordered his unit to immediately make preparations for Operation Delaware, an air assault into the A Shau Valley. How many white soldiers died in Vietnam? - 2023 A smaller slice of the action saw Americans on the receiving end, defending some firebase or outpost. . The Marines, fearing an ambush, did not attempt a relief, and after heavy fighting the camp was overrun. As a result, "B-52 Arc Light strikes originating in Guam, Okinawa, and Thailand bombed the jungles surrounding Khe Sanh into stubble fields" and Khe Sanh became the major news headline coming out of Vietnam in late March 1968. Ray Stubbe has published a translation of the North Vietnamese history of the siege at Khe Sanh.
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