Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i Vietnam

At 6:30 in the morning on May 12, 1966, a 14-man reinforced squad from Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, left the company perimeter near the village of Bao Tran, about 15 miles southwest of Da Nang, on a routine security patrol in a broad valley east of the Vu Gia River. A May 11 intelligence report stated that a company from a Viet Cong battalion had moved into Do Nam, a hamlet near a small finger lake, about a mile northeast of Bravo Company’s position. About an hour later, the Marine squad, designated BP10, approached a village and came under small-arms fire from the east. The squad, led by Sergeant Dallas Young, responded with 20 rounds of small-arms fire and five rounds from an M79 grenade launcher. It…

Uncertain about the impact of bombing Cambodia in Operation Breakfast, launched March 17, 1969, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, evaluated attack options against North Vietnam itself. They were determined to demonstrate resolve after the Post-Tet Offensive [Communist attacks on targets near Saigon and Da Nang on Feb. 22, 1969, following the February 17 Tet celebration of the lunar new year], eager to seize the strategic initiative, intent on intimidating Hanoi and convinced of the possibility of persuading Moscow to cooperate [in pressuring North Vietnam to negotiate a peace agreement.] Though they judged domestic and international conditions unsuitable for direct and dramatic military steps against North Vietnam in March and into April, planning went ahead for possible escalatory measures in the near future. Their preparation and…

Drummer Bobby Colomby is one of the founders of Blood, Sweat & Tears, a groundbreaking band whose sound combines jazz with rock. BS&T was formed in 1967 with Al Kooper as lead singer. The next year its second album, with Canadian David Clayton-Thomas the lead singer, rose to No. 1 and won the Grammy for Album of the Year, beating The Beatles’ Abbey Road. The album included megahits “Spinning Wheel” and “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.” Blood Sweat & Tears is still performing with a new generation of musicians—more than 175 have played with the band over four decades. Colomby, who now owns the Blood, Sweat & Tears franchise, reminisced about the band’s early years. The band’s name: I am playing in Washington, D.C., with Odetta, and someone phoned…

Trade Deal Could Boost Vietnam On paper Vietnam could be a big winner under the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal reached Oct. 5, 2015, by Vietnam, the United States and 10 other countries on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. The deal—which still must be approved by Congress and the legislatures of the other participants—cuts tariffs, reduces other barriers to trade and includes provisions on labor rights and environmental protection. The terms of the TPP will likely shift much of Vietnam’s international trade away from China, not a party to the deal, and toward the United States, the country’s second-biggest trading partner. For example, taxes on seafood imported from Vietnam would be eliminated, and taxes on Vietnamese goods exported to the United States would be cut. By one estimate Vietnam’s…

DSHKM 38/46 12.7MM MACHINE GUN Weight with wheeled mount: 350 lbs. Overall length: 64 in. Barrel length: 42.1 in. Rate of fire: 600 rounds per minute Empty weight: 74.96 lbs. Operation Lamar Plain from May 15 to Aug. 14, 1969, a follow-up to the Battle of Hamburger Hill in the A Shau Valley, annihilated the North Vietnamese 2nd Regiment. In the end, 497 enemy soldiers were dead, including the regiment’s commander, and 21 were prisoners. The Americans reported 126 dead and 404 wounded. Added to the human toll were three Hughes OA-6A light observation helicopters destroyed, four brought down but recoverable, three Bell UH-1Hs downed and so many other helos damaged that by the end of the first week the 101st Airborne Division reported only one OA-6 and two Bell…

When John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, he was faced with a multitude of problems concerning Vietnam. His military advisers in Saigon were asking for American combat troops and large increases in aviation support. While the president was reluctant to commit combat troops, he did authorize teams of U.S. Special Forces to be strategically placed throughout South Vietnam. But it was not until mid-1961 that Kennedy approved any increases in aviation forces. These came in the form of one Marine Corps helicopter squadron flying the Sikorsky H-34 and five Army transportation companies that flew the Piasecki H-21. Since Army helicopters are named after Indian tribes, the aircraft was officially called the H-21 Shawnee, but because of its fuselage shape it was more commonly referred to as the “Flying…

Pierre Fauroux was born in 1921. He graduated from the French Military Academy at St. Cyr in 1942, when France’s Vichy government was dominated by Germany. In 1943 he escaped from France via Spain and joined the Free French movement based in Britain. Trained by the British in special operations, he parachuted into France in June 1944 during the D-Day invasion. At the end of 1944 the restored French government sent Fauroux to Indochina to prepare for the return of French forces at the end of the war. He participated in many clandestine reconnaissance missions until he returned to France in late 1946. Fauroux returned to Indochina in 1952 as the executive officer of a parachute battalion and fought at Dien Bien Phu, a French defeat that set in motion…

A Failure of Leadership in South Vietnam Uphill Battle: Reflections on Viet Nam Counterinsurgency by Frank Scotton, Texas Tech University Press, 2014 Was the Vietnam War essentially “unwinnable” because of the incorrigibly venal, consistently corrupt and—worst of all—egregiously incompetent South Vietnamese government officials and senior military commanders? Frank Scotton, a former foreign service officer who spent at least part of every year from 1962 to 1975 in Vietnam working for the United States Information Agency, thinks so. In his extensive and detailed memoir, Uphill Battle: Reflections on Viet Nam Counterinsurgency, Scotton looks back on the 1975 fall of Saigon and the final North Vietnamese offensive that quickly overwhelmed the U.S.-trained and -equipped Army of the Republic of Vietnam. He concludes: “There really never had been anything wrong with the courage…