Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2024 i Vietnam

Readers of Vietnam magazine will recall our Spring 2023 “Reflections” story featuring the recollections of Laurel Lea Schaefer-Bozoukoff, Miss America 1972, of her wartime tour of Vietnam and Thailand to entertain troops with the USO. In the story, “The Last Miss America in Vietnam,” Laurel described the three-week tour, the joys she found among the soldiers and sailors, even amid the perils of an active war zone, and the powerful effect it had on her. Laurel’s story caught the eye of the Vietnam Veterans of America. On Aug. 12, 2023, the VVA awarded Laurel their prestigious “President’s Award for Supporting the Troops in Vietnam” at their national convention in Orlando, Fla., in recognition of Laurel’s continuing efforts on behalf of the men and women of the military. Laurel’s appreciation for…

REFLECTIONS Willie Johnson was a 35-year-old African American from South Carolina with a wife and six kids. What did I, a 20-year-old single white kid from Quincy, Mass., have in common with him, other than being stationed in Vietnam with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment? Well, living with someone in an Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicle (ACAV) for five months will make for close relationships. Willie was a career soldier, our first sergeant, a leader, advisor, confessor, and friend. He was firm but fair and full of life. He taught me to play pinochle, a card game I never played before and have never played since. I never called him Willie, but always “Top.” He was killed by a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) a few feet from me. On March 5,…

On March 30, 1972, the aging revolutionaries in Hanoi’s Politburo abandoned the strategy of protracted struggle and launched an all-out conventional invasion of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). By mid-April, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) had committed its entire combat capability—14 divisions, 26 separate infantry regiments, and 1,200 tanks, plus all its artillery regiments and engineer battalions. The NVA also introduced weapons heretofore not seen in Vietnam: large formations of T-54 tanks; AT-3 Sagger anti-tank missiles; and SA-7 shoulder-fired, heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles. Fighting raged in Quang Tri province near the DMZ, in An Loc 60 miles from Saigon, and in the Central Highlands, threatening Kontum City. The U.S. press named it the Easter Offensive since it began on Holy Thursday, the first day of Easter celebrations for South Vietnam’s Catholic…

In 1964, the Republic of Korea (ROK) dispatched soldiers to assist the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) in its fight against communism. Recovering from its own terrifying and bloody brush with communist aggression just a decade prior, ROK President Park Chung-Hee offered to help his ally, the United States, prevent another Asian country from turning “Red.” That first brigade of engineers, doctors, and military police grew to two Army infantry divisions and a Marine brigade within two years, fighting in some of the nastiest campaigns of the war. By the time ROK forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, over 320,000 Korean troops had rotated through the war zone—the second largest foreign contingent in the war after the U.S. Korean troops in Vietnam left behind over 5,000 dead, 11,000 wounded, and a…

“The great appeal of Batman, the new television series, is that the acting and the plot and dialogue are all terrible,” snipes Dick Schaap in the Miami Herald. The highly-entertaining series runs three seasons, with scripts centered around a deep and colorful roster of villians, including The Riddler (Frank Gorshin), The Catwoman (Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt), The Penguin (Burgess Meredith), and—Holy Hypothermia!—Mr. Freeze (Eli Wallach). Awarded the Grammy for “Best New Artist,” Tom Jones bursts on the scene with “It’s Not Unusual” and the Burt Bacharach-penned “What’s New Pussycat?”—launching a decades-long career which will include a string of chart-topping hits, two popular television variety shows bearing his name, and several Las Vegas residencies. Among his numerous film roles and cameos, often playing himself, he appeared in Tim Burton’s 1996 feature…

TACTICS Land mines were used by all sides during the Vietnam War and caused significant casualties. In 1965 alone, more than one-third of U.S. Marine Corps casualties were caused by mines and explosive booby traps. A modern land mine is a concealed explosive device emplaced under, on, or even above the ground to kill or wound enemy troops, or destroy or disable vehicles. The land mines of the Vietnam era were triggered by direct contact or command-detonated by wire. The most common contact triggers were pressure or pull (tripwire). Anti-personnel mines used a combination of blast and fragmentation effects. Most anti-vehicular mines used blast effect. Land mines are most effectively used in fixed defenses or for “area denial.” Rather than serving as a barrier to enemy movement, the purpose of…

In the words of one gunship navigator, Fairchild AC-119s “resembled a black and green Hostess Twinkie with wings.” Some nicknamed the aircraft the “Dollar 19.” The Air Force called them fixed-wing gunships. Enemy forces in the war feared these “dragon ships” with their tremendous firepower. However referenced, AC-119G “Shadows” and AC-119K “Stingers” were C-119 cargo aircraft converted to gunships in the late 1960s. Flown by skilled airmen and supported by exceptionally dedicated ground crew, these aircraft were highly effective during the war. The roots of the Shadow and Stinger gunships go back to Sherman Fairchild, an entrepreneur from the Golden Age of Aviation who founded many companies, including Fairchild Aviation. Fairchild produced aircraft such as the C-82 Packet, designed to replace early World War II transport aircraft such as the…

The Sniper: The Untold Story of the Marine Corps’ Greatest Marksman of All Time By Jim Lindsay, foreword by Chuck Mawhinney. St. Martin’s Press, 2023, $38.82 MEDIA DIGEST Fans of sniper stories will likely be excited to read this account of the life of Chuck Mawhinney, the top scoring U.S. Marine sniper to date. Mawhinney joined the U.S. Marines at age 18 and served in Vietnam from 1967-69, where he made 103 confirmed kills over a period of 16 months, killing four enemies a week on average. The book, penned by writer Jim Lindsay based on in-depth interviews with Mawhinney, is written in a down-to-earth style that is easy to read. Readers will feel like they are getting to know Mawhinney as they progress through the book, which recounts the…

This formerly classified analysis of media coverage on the Vietnam War was prepared by famed journalist and war correspondent Edward R. Murrow for U.S. National Security Advisor Mc-George “Mac” Bundy in 1963. In the document, Murrow arrived at the conclusion that major media in most other countries around the world displayed virtually no support or sympathy for the government of Ngo Dinh Diem, with the exception of the staunchly anti-communist South Korea, the Philippines, and to a lesser extent Thailand. Bundy served as a presidential advisor until retiring from the role in 1966.…

ARSENAL Shortly after 2:00 a.m. local time on June 4, 1972, just a few miles off the North Vietnamese coast, U.S. Navy Lt. Melvin S. Dry and three naval special warfare personnel departed the USS Grayback (LPSS-574) aboard a Mark VII Swimmer Delivery Vehicle (SDV). Dry intended to reconnoiter the beach area where his team was to rendezvous with a group of escaped American prisoners-of-war (POWs). But a combination of stronger than expected offshore currents and the Mark VII’s limited battery capacity forced him to abandon the mission 1,000 feet from shore. A Navy helicopter ultimately sunk the SDV with miniguns to prevent it falling into enemy hands [see our story on p. 20], before delivering Dry and the rest of the operations team to USS Long Beach (CGN-9), the…

At around noon on May 2, 1972, two SR-71 Blackbirds dropped to 75,000 feet and flew separate Mach 2.5 passes over Hanoi, delivering two sonic booms within 15 seconds of each other. Their mission was vital and their timing critical. A third SR-71 had orbited offshore as a spare in case something forced one of the others to abort. The planes’ pilots and crew didn’t know the mission’s purpose, but executed it perfectly. The mission was repeated two days later. The SR-71s had flown through the world’s most densely defended air space to deliver a message from America’s National Command Authority to a group of U.S. prisoners-of-war (POWs) held inside North Vietnam’s Hoa Lo Prison, better known as the “Hanoi Hilton.” The message consisted of two dots for the letter…

F-8 Crusader, Vietnam 1963-1973 By Peter E. Davies, Osprey Publishing, 2023, $23 Among the many myths and legends to emerge from the Vietnam War was that the U.S. Navy’s Vought F-8 Crusader was “the last of the gunfighters” and the only air superiority fighter of its time. Although the Crusader did pack four Colt-Browning Mark 12 20mm cannons at a time when other American fighters were relying on air-to-air missiles, its cannons were unreliable and virtually all Crusader victories over its Mikoyan-Gurevich-designed opposition were achieved using AIM-9 heat-seeking missiles. It is true, however, that the Crusader established the highest kill-to-loss ratio over Vietnam, destroying 14 MiG-17s and four MiG-21s for the loss of three F-8s—all to the older but agile MiG-17s. The second of the downed Crusader pilots, Cdr. Dick…