Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2022 i Vietnam

FEEDBACK In the February 2022 article on Pan American airlines’ involvement in and support of the U.S. interest in the Vietnam War (“Pan Am’s War,” by Jim Trautman), one important detail was omitted. As a former member of the Air Force Postal and Courier Service, first at Cam Ranh Bay, then at Tan Son Nhut, I remind you that Pan Am provided another important and significant service: They were one of the two commercial airlines that brought mail from the States to GIs in-country; the other being Flying Tiger. They deserve our thanks and appreciation for that too. Jim Amado Utica, New York The article by Jim Trautman was well-deserved recognition for Pan Am’s service. Little known also is their training of military personnel in celestial navigation and routing in…

The handwriting was on the wall—the nightly TV news showed we were losing the Vietnam War. North Vietnamese forces were closing in on Saigon and military bases in the area. It was only a matter of days before the North’s complete takeover. REFLECTIONS At Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon, it was cloudy on April 20, 1975. I could only imagine the terror and fear across town near Bien Hoa Air Base, the other major Air Force installation in the area. My fear increased as each mortar shell landed and the concussions of exploding rounds shook the ground violently. I always wondered if the next one had my name on it. At that point I had been in the Air Force 16 years. I was a technical sergeant stationed…

resident Richard Nixon’s daily briefing on Dec. 20, 1971, reported a buildup of North Vietnamese troops above the Demilitarized Zone and southbound troop movements on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The North Vietnamese air force was moving units south, including the newly established 927th Fighter Regiment, equipped with MiG-21PFM fighter jets. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Thomas Moorer had advised Nixon in November that Hanoi’s air defense units were attacking AC-130 Spectre gunships and B-52 Stratofortess bombers supporting Laotian Maj. Gen. Vang Pao’s forces fighting communist Pathet Lao insurgents. Realizing that Hanoi intended to start an offensive in 1972, Nixon ordered the armed services to reinforce their air power in Indochina. That same day Moorer approved airstrikes against military targets up to the 20th parallel, essentially all targets south…

MEDIA DIGEST In the late 1990s, prompted by the popularity of the film Saving Private Ryan and the push to build the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, the realization that America’s World War II generation was rapidly disappearing entered the nation’s collective consciousness. In virtual panic mode, multiple efforts erupted via websites and other media to capture the wartime stories and accounts of surviving veterans before it was too late. Today, a generation or more later, the focus on preserving veterans’ memories inevitably has shifted to another vanishing warrior cohort—those who fought our war in Vietnam. Although approximately 9 million Americans served worldwide on active duty in U.S. military forces during the Vietnam War era (1954-75)—around 10 percent of the corresponding age group—only about 3…

HALL OF VALOR In World War I, the U.S. Army established the Citation Star, which in 1932 became the Silver Star, its third highest award for combat heroism. The Silver Star was authorized for the Navy and Marine Corps in August 1942. In World War I and early World War II, Marines serving in the Army could be awarded the Silver Star by the Army. Since the end of World War II, 141 Marines earned an Army Silver Star. Most were awarded during the Korean War when Marine and Army units had combined operations. Since that time, just 17 Marines have received a Silver Star from the Army. One warrior is possibly the only person awarded a Silver Star from the Navy as a Marine who went on to receive…

The Australian government has committed $6 million to fund a commemorative program that honors Vietnam veterans on the 50th anniversary marking the end of Australian involvement in Vietnam, according to Andrew Gee, Australia’s minister for veterans’ affairs and defense personnel. Commemorations will begin in January 2023—50 years after the Jan. 11, 1973, announcement that Australian combat operations in Vietnam had ended, although some soldiers remained behind to guard the embassy in Saigon until the beginning of July. A total of 60,000 Australians served in Vietnam. The country suffered 521 killed and 3,000 wounded. The 50-year anniversary of the war’s end is “a very important milestone,” Gee said Jan. 12 on The Ray Hadley Morning Show on Australian radio. Gee, whose uncle served at Nui Dat, a base near Saigon, in…

During the late morning hours of July 1, 1970, five 82 mm mortar rounds struck Fire Support Base Ripcord in northern South Vietnam. Small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades followed. Defending the base’s perimeter, Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Airborne Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, engaged North Vietnamese Army troops about 700 yards away. Thus began the 23-day battle for Ripcord, one of the last major battles between the U.S. and North Vietnamese armies, which ended when American forces were ordered to evacuate. The fighting sometimes pitted individual American companies against two NVA battalions. The American platoons’ M60 machine guns played a decisive role in those fights. ARSENAL The M60, introduced in 1957, incorporated features of the German MG-42 machine gun and FG-42 assault rifle. It fired over an open bolt, used…

On March 30, 1972, some 30,000-40,000 North Vietnamese Army regulars streamed southward across the Demilitarized Zone and eastward from Laos in a strike against the recently formed 3rd Infantry Division of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Over the next month this force in northern South Vietnam would involve three divisions and two dozen independent regiments supported by 200 tanks, long-range 130 mm artillery guns and air defense units. About 60 miles to the south, another North Vietnamese division headed toward Hue. The March 30 attack marked the opening of the North Vietnamese Spring-Summer Offensive of 1972 (Chien dich Xuan he 1972). The offensive consisted of a three-pronged assault that hit South Vietnam in its northern, central and southern regions. The goal was to destroy as many ARVN forces…

The experiences of U.S. infantrymen in Vietnam are told in many ways: through personal memoirs, media accounts, oral histories—and the government’s own reports. Historian Chris McNab mined those reports to produce The U.S. Army Infantryman Vietnam Pocket Manual, which reprints declassified primary documents such as field manuals, weapons manuals, intelligence analyses and after-action reports, including those with “lessons learned” sections. This article features two lessons-learned sections, with introductions by McNab. The Vietnam War, and the diligent efforts of archivists, has left us with a vast archive of U.S. Army infantry after-action reports, many of which conclude with a “lessons learned” section that summarized the tactical knowledge acquired from the particular operation. The following report was part of a broader compilation of these reports. The explanatory document that introduces the report…

This excellently illustrated book is a guide to American vehicles and heavy weapons used by the Army and Marines Corps between 1965 and 1973 when ground combat units were in Vietnam. Vehicles & Heavy Weapons of the Vietnam War is the first in a series on Vietnam War weapons, vehicles, aircraft and naval vessels used by U.S. forces. Author David Doyle is no stranger to Vietnam War vehicles. A military vehicle collector, Doyle proudly owns 10 Vietnam-era vehicles and received the 2015 Bart Vanderveen Award from the Military Vehicle Preservation Association. He has written more than 100 books on U.S. military vehicles. The wealth of material in this book is divided into three major sections. The first two are dedicated to wheeled tactical vehicles and tracked combat vehicles. The…

Attrition was an important part of Gen. William Westmoreland’s approach, but never to the exclusion of other methods. Some have portrayed the 1964-68 leader of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam as an unimaginative officer who failed to grasp the complexities of the war. They say Westmoreland fixated on enemy body counts and failed to pursue alternative strategies that would have produced better results. Having researched and written about the Vietnam War for more than 20 years, I am convinced that Westmoreland pursued the most logical and sophisticated strategy that he or any other U.S. commander could follow given the inherent limitations on his authority. In military affairs, attrition is one of several basic approaches nations or leaders can employ to defeat their enemy. In its most basic form, attrition is…

Close to enemy sanctuaries north of the Demilitarized Zone and in neighboring Laos, Quang Tri province was a constant battleground. North Vietnam’s Communist Party Politburo members called it the “blazing front.” Today the old citadel fortress in Quang Tri city, the capital of South Vietnam’s northernmost province, is a memorial park dedicated to the North Vietnamese Army’s 1975 victory over the so-called “Saigon regime and its imperialist allies.” The town and citadel were restored in the early 1980s when Communist Party Secretary Le Duan designated Quang Tri a “valiant revolutionary city.” It is a popular attraction for school children, aging NVA veterans and foreign tourists. Tour guides extol the heroism of the citadel’s communist defenders during the 1972 Spring-Summer Offensive and decry the tonnage of American bombs dropped, calling it…

owever much combat troops dominated the news during the Vietnam War, the grunts knew they owed much to the vast armada of support troops who backed them up. The battlefield heroism performed in the rainforests and the highlands would have been impossible without the weapons and ammunition to fight, or the food to sustain those who fought. All of those supplies had to be shipped or flown over thousands of miles to the main bases, then distributed by truck or aircraft to the scattered posts where they were most needed. Before that work could be done, the main base facilities had to be established, built up by Army engineers or the legendary Navy construction battalions, abbreviated CBs, or more colloquially, the Seabees. Those facilities had to be periodically maintained and…

Every unit sent to Vietnam deserves an official historian like Don Snedeker, who has served in that capacity for the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment for more than 30 years. Snedeker’s previous book, The Blackhorse in Vietnam, is a comprehensive history of the regiment from the time it arrived in-country in September 1966 to spring 1972 when it was deactivated during the drawdown of U.S. forces. Snedeker, an officer in the Blackhorse Regiment after he arrived in Vietnam in December 1969, continues to put his three decades of work as the unit’s historian to good use in his new book, Blackhorse Tales, which he calls a “companion volume” to the previous work. In this exhaustively researched book, Snedeker tells the stories of scores of individual Blackhorse troopers, replete with photographs, drawings…