Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2021 i Vietnam

President Lyndon B. Johnson approved the start of a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam in March 1965 following several Viet Cong attacks targeting American personnel in South Vietnam. The bombing program, code-named “Rolling Thunder,” was launched to destroy the North’s industrial base and transportation system with a campaign of gradually escalating airstrikes. Faced with losing its power grid, manufacturing plants, storage depots and major bridges, Ho Chi Minh’s government would eventually sue for peace, Johnson believed. Rolling Thunder divided North Vietnam into seven zones known as route packages. The 7th/13th U.S. Air Force in Thailand flew missions in two zones covering most of the country’s northern and western parts of North Vietnam. Carrier-based aircraft from the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet operated in four zones that stretched across the central…

She wore a breezy skirt and gently leaned toward the officer as she talked her way out of a speeding ticket. All my dad’s friends loved talking with her. All her friends loved laughing with her. I watched the swarm of people she could command with her raspy Marilyn Monroe-like voice. At dinner one day she said some random person asked to photograph her—in a swimsuit. I never had the guts to flirt with men the way she could. He wore a button-down shirt with a pocket full of pens and was always working on something that needed to be fixed. He barely noticed people in the room. He had a heart attack, and this is all he told us: “I just felt sick to my stomach and tripped taking…

During the Vietnam War, the skies were filled with fast jet fighters, huge bombers, droning transports and thudding helicopters. They were hard to miss. Other aircraft, less noticed but no less important, provided neither guns, nor bombs or transportation but something that was just as crucial to men fighting the ground war—a pair of eyes in the sky. These planes, piloted by forward air controllers, flew above the battlefield looking for enemy forces and then directed bombers or fighters to strike them. The Vietnam War’s FACs were the legacy of a concept that originated during the Civil War. In 1862, the Union Army used hydrogen-filled balloons to scout and report the positions of Confederate troops and artillery on the York-James Peninsula in Virginia. Aerial observers were also in the open…

First in a series of four photo features on U.S. Special Operations units in Vietnam. US. Army Special Forces, popularly known as Green Berets, became famous for their exploits in Vietnam but trace their roots to World War II’s 1st Special Service Force (which had an arrowhead-shaped shoulder patch adopted by the Vietnam generation), the Office of Strategic Services and Alamo Scouts. In June 1952 the 10th Special Forces Group was formed under the command of Col. Aaron Bank. The unit was reorganized in May 1960 as the 7th Special Forces Group. Formed too late to play a significant role in the Korean War, the Special Forces honed their skills and doctrine in the crucible of Vietnam. Directly subordinate to U.S. Special Operations Command, the Special Forces troops were ready…

“He’ll never walk again.” That was the 1966 diagnosis of a soldier whose broken body was evacuated to Fort Sam Houston in Texas. An adviser to Vietnamese soldiers, he had stepped on a mine and suffered grievous wounds. He was at the hospital to be treated and receive a medical discharge. Life had often been difficult for Raul Perez “Roy” Benavidez, born in Cuero, Texas, on Aug. 5, 1935. His father, a Mexican farmer, died from tuberculosis when Roy was 2 years old. His mother, a Yaqui Indian, suffered the same five fate years later. Roy was raised by his grandparents. His youth included instances of racial prejudice, picking crops in California and Washington, and struggles in school. Benavidez dropped out at 15 to help support his family. At 17…

As a “point man,” for half of my time in Nam, I was interested in reading your article [“Walking Point With the Red-catchers,” by Tom Brooks, April 2021]. It didn’t mention the relationship between the point man and his cover. My cover man and I were bonded to each other. He was my eyes to the front, and I was his eyes to the ground. He stayed less than 6 feet behind me. The two of us were in front of our group and used hand signals to warn of any dangers. While I was looking for booby traps, used trails and recent signs of enemy activity, he was scanning the area. The two of us traded off our jobs. We trusted each other with our lives, so one can…

“I think we have all underestimated the seriousness of this situation. Like giving cobalt [radiation] treatment to a terminal cancer case. I think a long protracted war will disclose our weakness, not our strength. The least harmful way to cut losses in SVN [South Vietnam] is to let the government decide it doesn’t want us to stay there.” —Deputy Secretary of State George Ball, in response to a question posed by President Lyndon B. Johnson at a July 21, 1965, meeting with advisers, according to minutes of the meeting. Johnson asked: “Can westerners, in absence of intelligence, successfully fight orientals in jungle rice-paddies?” Leroy Manor, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general best known for leading the 1970 Son Tay raid to rescue American captives in North Vietnam, died Feb.…

The wars in Indochina were fought with a dizzying array of international weaponry, ranging from homemade Viet Cong pistols and rifles to mammoth U.S. “Daisy Cutter” bombs capable of creating widespread destruction. Among the weapons to see combat in Vietnam was the Chinese Type 79 submachine gun, unfamiliar to most Americans because it was fought in a different Vietnam war—one waged between erstwhile allies Vietnam and China after U.S. forces left. On Feb. 17, 1979, the Chinese sent some 200,000 troops into Vietnam in response to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia to overthrow Pol Pot’s Chinese-allied Khmer Rouge government. Another sore spot was the Vietnamese seizure of the Spratly Islands, a contested archipelago. That war was the first test for the Chinese 1979 Nianshi Chongfeng Qiang (1979 year type submachine…

Dong Ba Thin Base Camp, the site of a sapper attack on Nov. 30, 1969, was part of a massive complex of Army, Navy and Air Force facilities nestled around Cam Ranh Bay. Units at Dong Ba Thin at the time of the attack included the 18th Combat Engineer Brigade and several Army aviation operations involving a variety of aircraft. I have distinctive memories of that night, Nov. 30, 1969. First, time seemed to slow down. That often happens to people in life and death situations. A person’s reflexes become extraordinarily sharp. After the life and death experience is over, sometimes the person’s mind goes into a kind of mental fog, which in my case lasted about a week. I was not supposed to be in that situation. I was…

Echoes of Our War: Vietnam Veterans Reflect 50 Years Later By Robert L. Fischer BookCrafters, 2020 Ten Vietnam veterans, members of a group of Marine vets from all recent wars who meet for lunch monthly at a steakhouse near Denver, ruminate on their wartime service and the war itself in Echoes of Our War: Vietnam Veterans Reflect 50 Years Later. Retired Marine Col. Bob Fischer, a 1955 Naval Academy graduate who served as an adviser to a South Vietnamese marine battalion in 1966-68, selected these 10 veterans—nine Marines and a Navy corpsman—to share their stories because, he writes, “it is time to examine and reevaluate precisely what happened to them and the many thousands who served honorably in a confusing war that was anything but honorable.” Fischer had significant help…

The number of American troops killed or wounded during the Vietnam War totaled 211,523—about 6.2 percent of the 3.4 million who served in Southeast Asia during the years 1955 to 1975. The tally of deaths reached 58,220, a combination battle deaths and deaths from other causes, such as accidents and illness, about 1.7 percent of those who served. BATTLE DEATHS 47,434 1.4% NONMORTAL WOUNDINGS 153,303 4.5% OTHER DEATHS 10,786 0.3% Number of deaths, followed by percent of 3.4 million who served from 1955 to 1975 NOTE: THE NUMBER FOR WOUNDINGS EXCLUDES 150,341 NOT REQUIRING HOSPITAL CARE; SOURCE: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, “AMERICA’S WARS,” NOVEMBER 2020…

May 1 Amtrak, officially the National Railroad Passenger Corp., runs its first train: a 12:05 a.m. departure from New York for a trip to Philadelphia, one of 184 trains a day for the government owned and subsidized service created by the Rail Passenger Service Act passed in October 1970. May 3 Proclaiming “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government,” protesters tried to block rush-hour traffic in Washington but were overwhelmed by police and military forces. About 7,000 were arrested. Demonstrations through May 5 raised the total to more than 12,000, the largest mass arrest in U.S. history. May 5 William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist is released. In the novel, 11-year-old Regan MacNeil is possessed by a demon, and a priest, Father Damien Karras, tries to drive…

On June 15, 1965, the U.S. Army introduced a new approach in combined-arms warfare when it established the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), which redefined the cavalry concept to supplant horses with UH-1 Iroquois “Huey” helicopters. The division used coordinated air assault troops, artillery and helicopters in scouting, transport and ground attack roles to outmaneuver, encircle, fix and destroy enemy forces. Deployed by itself or in cooperation with other U.S. Army and South Vietnamese units, the Air Cav offered unprecedented mobility to the allied forces in Vietnam. U.S. intelligence estimated in July 1965 that 7,500 North Vietnamese Army soldiers were in South Vietnam—distinct from 245,000 South Vietnamese communist guerrillas, or Viet Cong. In November 1965 the 1st Cav had its first head-on encounter with the NVA. The bloody four-day battle in…

Who Will Go: Into the Son Tay POW Camp By Terry Buckler (with Cliff Westbrook, foreword by Roger H. C. Donlon) Palmetto Publishing, 2020 In a variation of an old medical joke, the bottom line of Who Will Go: Into the Son Tay POW Camp is this: “The operation was a success…but the patient was a ‘no show.’” Author Terry Buckler gives readers an inside view of the meticulous planning, execution and disappointing outcome of the famous Nov. 21, 1970, Operation Ivory Coast, the U.S. Air Force-Army Special Operations mission targeting North Vietnam’s Son Tay prisoner of war camp 23 miles west of Hanoi. Buckler, a U.S. Special Forces sergeant, was the youngest participant in the raid, conducted to free the POW camp’s 65 American captives—who, unfortunately, had been moved…