Overnight, they were moved to a temporary position a short distance from the perimeter and from there, some of the Laotians were eventually evacuated, although the majority turned around and walked back down Route 9 toward Laos. Many of the artillery and mortar rounds stored in the dump were thrown into the air and detonated on impact within the base. [166] This view was supported by a captured North Vietnamese study of the battle in 1974 that stated that the PAVN would have taken Khe Sanh if it could have done so, but there was a limit to the price that it would pay. Hernandez was killed. The Pegasus force consisted of the Army 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) plus the 1st Marine Regiment. [117][20] The PAVN acknowledged 2,500 men killed in action. 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. The main US forces defending Khe Sanh Combat Base (KSCB) were two regiments of the United States Marine Corps supported by elements from the United States Army and the United States Air Force (USAF), as well as a small number of Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops. The Khe Sanh battlefield was considerably more extensive from the North Vietnamese perspective than from that of the U.S. Marine Corps, both geographically and chronologically. [22] The camp then became a Special Forces outpost of the Civilian Irregular Defense Groups, which were to keep watch on PAVN infiltration along the border and to protect the local population. On 22 March, over 1,000 North Vietnamese rounds fell on the base, and once again, the ammunition dump was detonated. 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. The Marine defense of Khe Sanh, Operation Scotland, officially ended on March 31. 1st Marine Aircraft Wing records claim that the unit delivered 4,661 tons of cargo into KSCB. 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. Military History Institute of Vietnam, p. 222. Due to severe losses, however, the NVA abandoned its plan for a massive ground attack. For a succinct overview of the creation of the CIDG program and its operations. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. A Look at the Damage from the Secret War in Laos, How Operation Homecoming Was Sprung into Action to Repatriate American POWs, The Viet Cong Were Shooting Down Americans From a Cave Until This GI Stopped Them, https://www.historynet.com/recounting-the-casualties-at-the-deadly-battle-of-khe-sanh/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, When 21 Sikh Soldiers Fought the Odds Against 10,000 Pashtun Warriors, Few Red Tails Remain: Tuskegee Airman Dies at 96. The attacks hindered the advancement of the McNamara Line, and as the fighting around Khe Sanh intensified, vital equipment including sensors and other hardware had to be diverted from elsewhere to meet the needs of the US garrison at Khe Sanh. Two days later, the PAVN 273rd Regiment attacked a Special Forces camp near the border town of Loc Ninh, in Bnh Long Province. [165], Another interpretation was that the North Vietnamese were planning to work both ends against the middle, a strategy that has come to be known as the Option Play. 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. The 324th Division was located in the DMZ area 1015 miles (1624km) north of Khe Sanh while the 320th Division was within easy reinforcing distance to the northeast. Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! The Marines, fearing an ambush, did not attempt a relief, and after heavy fighting the camp was overrun. The Hill Fights: The First Battle of Khe Sanh by Murphy, Edward F According to the official Marine Corps history of the battle, total fatalities for Operation Scotland were 205 friendly KIA. The Marines recorded an actual body count of 1,602 NVA killed but estimated the total NVA dead at between 10,000 and 15,000. What was a major Battle in the Vietnam War? - 2023 Battlefield boundaries extended from eastern Laos eastward along both sides of Route 9 in Quang Tri province, Vietnam, to the coast. The site linked to another microwave/tropo site in Hu manned by the 513th Signal Detachment. They asked what had changed in six months so that American commanders were willing to abandon Khe Sanh in July. First had been Operation Full Cry, the original three-division invasion plan. [95], It still came as a shock to the Special Forces troopers at Lang Vei when 12 tanks attacked their camp. Khe Sanh - Location, Vietnam War & Who Won - HISTORY For seven weeks, American aircraft dropped from 35,000 to 40,000 tons of bombs in nearly 4,000 airstrikes. [109], The resupply of the numerous, isolated hill outposts was fraught with the same difficulties and dangers. 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. The Marine Corps casualty reporting system was based on named operations and not geographic location. Battle of Khe Sanh: American Casualties : Showing All Results. During the 66-day siege, U.S. planes, dropping 5,000 bombs daily, exploded the equivalent of five Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs in the area. [9], The precise nature of Hanoi's strategic goal at Khe Sanh is regarded as one of the most intriguing unanswered questions of the Vietnam War. Background [ edit] On July 11, the Marines finally left Khe Sanh. What did the 25th Infantry do in Vietnam? - 2023 Soon after, another shell hit a cache of tear gas, which saturated the entire area. [93] At 18:10 hours, the PAVN followed up their morning mortar attack with an artillery strike from 152mm howitzers, firing 60 rounds into the camp. 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. Known as the McNamara Line, it was initially codenamed "Project Nine". They were not included in the official Khe Sanh counts. [170][140], One argument that was then leveled by Westmoreland and has since often quoted by historians of the battle is that only two Marine regiments were tied down at Khe Sanh, compared with the several PAVN divisions. Strategically, however, the withdrawal meant little. Only those killed in action during Operation Scotland, which began on November 1, 1967, and ended on March 31, 1968, were included in the official casualty count. [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. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. . The last of the American casualties were finally lifted off Hill 861 on March 17. 3% were Asian, 7 or . Stubbe examined the command chronologies of the 1st and 2nd battalions, 26th Marines, plus the after-action reports of the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines; 1st Battalion, 9th Marines; 1st Battalion, 13th Marines; and more than one dozen other units, all present at Khe Sanh under 26th Marine operational control. [132], On 2 March, Tolson laid out what became known as Operation Pegasus, the operational plan for what was to become the largest operation launched by III MAF thus far in the conflict. The 26th Marine Regiment (26th Marines) is an inactivated infantry regiment of the United States Marine Corps. [57][58] They were assisted in their emplacement efforts by the continuing bad weather of the winter monsoon. On 8 February 1971, the leading ARVN units marched along Route 9 into southern Laos while the US ground forces and advisers were prohibited from entering Laos. Marine Khe Sanh veteran Peter Brush is Vietnam Magazines book review editor. [67], At the same time as the artillery bombardment at KSCB, an attack was launched against Khe Sanh village, seat of Hng Ha District. Cushman was appalled by the "implication of a rescue or breaking of the siege by outside forces. A limited attack was made by a PAVN company on 1 July, falling on a company from the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, who were holding a position 3km to the southeast of the base. On April 6, a front-page story in The New York Times declared that the siege of Khe Sanh had been lifted. The microwave/tropo site was located in an underground bunker next to the airstrip. Setting out from Ca Lu, 10 miles east of Khe Sanh, Pegasus opened the highway, linked up with the Marines at Khe Sanh, and engaged NVA in the surrounding area. The site was first established near the village and later moved to the French fort. The pallet slid to a halt on the airstrip while the aircraft never had to actually land. Of the 24 Americans at the camp, 10 had been killed and 11 wounded. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. 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. On April 20, Operation Prairie IV began, with heavy fighting between the Marines and NVA forces. The Americans had forewarning of PAVN armor in the area from Laotian refugees from camp BV-33. [90], The Tet Offensive was launched prematurely in some areas on 30 January. He gave the order for US Marines to take up positions around Khe Sanh. [51] Other concerns raised included the assertion that the real danger to I Corps was from a direct threat to Qung Tr City and other urban areas, a defense would be pointless as a threat to infiltration since PAVN troops could easily bypass Khe Sanh, the base was too isolated, and the Marines "had neither the helicopter resources, the troops, nor the logistical bases for such operations." The tower at Khe Sanh instructed the pilot to take evasive action and go around for another approach. 26th Marine Regiment (United States) - Wikipedia [102], The Lao troops were eventually flown back to their homeland, but not before the Laotian regional commander remarked that his army had to "consider the South Vietnamese as enemy because of their conduct. 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. [1], The PAVN claim that they began attacking the withdrawing Americans on 26 June 1968 prolonging the withdrawal, killing 1,300 Americans and shooting down 34 aircraft before "liberating" Khe Sanh on 15 July. Battle of Khe Sanh begins - HISTORY In response, US forces were built up before the PAVN isolated the Marine base. [128] They also reported 1,436 wounded before mid-March, of which 484 men returned to their units, while 396 were sent up the Ho Chi Minh Trail to hospitals in the north. The Marines at Khe Sanh Combat Base broke out of their perimeter and began attacking the North Vietnamese in the surrounding area. [137] Opposition from the North Vietnamese was light and the primary problem that hampered the advance was continual heavy morning cloud cover that slowed the pace of helicopter operations. Upon closer analysis, the official figure does not accurately portray even what it purports to represent. Air Power in the Siege of Khe Sanh - HistoryNet 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. newsletter for the best of the past, delivered every Monday and Thursday. Once the base came under siege, a series of actions were fought over a period of five months. The NVAs main command post was located in Laos, at Sar Lit. today! The Americans wanted a military presence there to block the infiltration of enemy forces from Laos, to provide a base for launching patrols into Laos to monitor the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and to serve as a western anchor for defense along the DMZ. The United States and its South Vietnamese allies pulled many huge offensive . Ten more Marines and 89 NVA died during this period. About two hours later, an NVA artillery barrage scored a hit on the main ammunition dump at Khe Sanh Combat Base, killing Lance Corp. Jerry Stenberg and other Marines. 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. The Marine garrison was also reinforced, and on November 1, 1967, Operation Scotland began. Since the official duration of the battle ends even earlier than the termination of the siege itself, a wider definition of the Khe Sanh battlefield to include Operations Scotland, Pegasus and Scotland II also seems reasonable. [33], On 27 October, a PAVN regiment attacked an Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) battalion at Song Be, capital of Phc Long Province. [34] The heaviest action took place near Dak To, in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum. Of the 4953 Navy and Air Force casualties, both officer and enlisted, 4, 736 or 96% were white. "[97], Ladd and the commander of the SOG compound (whose men and camp had been incorporated into the defenses of KSCB) proposed that, if the Marines would provide the helicopters, the SOG reconnaissance men would go in themselves to pick up any survivors. A 77 day battle, Khe Sanh had been the biggest single battle of the Vietnam War to that point. Two further attacks later in the morning were halted before the PAVN finally withdrew. The border battles, however, had two significant consequences, which were unappreciated at the time. On the morning of 22 January Lownds decided to evacuate the remaining forces in the village with most of the Americans evacuated by helicopter while two advisers led the surviving local forces overland to the combat base. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. A closer look at the Khe Sanh body count, however, reveals anything but a straightforward matter of numbers. The low figure often cited for US casualties (205 killed in action, 443 wounded, 2 missing) does not take into account U.S. Army or Air Force casualties or those incurred during Operation Pegasus. [43] Lieutenant General Robert E. Cushman Jr. relieved Walt as commander of III MAF in June. Battle of Dak To in the Vietnam War - ThoughtCo An additional 413 Marines were killed during Scotland II as of the end of June 1968. Name State Date War Branch; 1: Steven Glenn Abbott . Westmoreland believed that the latter was the case, and his belief was the basis for his desire to stage "Dien Bien Phu in reverse. On July 10, Pfc Robert Hernandez of Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, was manning an M-60 machine gun position when it took a direct hit from NVA mortars. The Marines were extremely reluctant to relinquish authority over their aircraft to an Air Force general. However, even if Westmoreland believed his statement, his argument never moved on to the next logical level. [125], By mid-March, Marine intelligence began to note an exodus of PAVN units from the Khe Sanh sector. [64], The main base was then subjected to an intense mortar and rocket barrage. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. While suffering less significant casualties (around 10,000 dead), ARVN units had only turned back the attacking PAVN forces with massive American air support. [110], As more infantry units had been assigned to defend KSCB, artillery reinforcement kept pace. Khe Sanh Incident - force.com [172], On 30 January 1971, the ARVN and US forces launched Operation Dewey Canyon II, which involved the reopening of Route 9, securing the Khe Sanh area and reoccupying of KSCB as a forward supply base for Operation Lam Son 719. [12], Following the closure of the base, a small force of Marines remained around Hill 689 carrying out mopping-up operations. Whether the destruction of one battalion could have been the goal of two to four PAVN divisions was debatable. According to the official PAVN history, by December 1967 the North Vietnamese had in place, or within supporting distance: the 304th, 320th, 324th and 325th Infantry Divisions, the independent 270th infantry Regiment; five artillery regiments (the 16th, 45th, 84th, 204th, and 675th); three AAA regiments (the 208th, 214th, and 228th); four tank companies; one engineer regiment plus one independent engineer battalion; one signal battalion; and a number of local force units. The heavy reliance on American airpower was an ominous sign for Vietnamization and . The official North Vietnamese history claimed that 400 South Vietnamese troops had been killed and 253 captured. [79] On an average day, 350 tactical fighter-bombers, 60 B-52s, and 30 light observation or reconnaissance aircraft operated in the skies near the base. Westmoreland planned on Khe Sanh being relieved and then used as the jump-off point for a "hot pursuit" of enemy forces into Laos. Westmoreland was replaced two months after the end of the battle, and his successor explained the retreat in different ways. [142], Lownds and the 26th Marines departed Khe Sanh, leaving the defense of the base to the 1st Marine Regiment. New material will be added to that page through the end of 2018. At 00:30 on 21 January, Hill 861 was attacked by about 300 PAVN troops, the Marines, however, were prepared. [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. The Vietnam War: 11 Major Battles - warhistoryonline According to Gordon Rottman, even the North Vietnamese official history, Victory in Vietnam, is largely silent on the issue. This, however, did not prevent the Marine tanks within the perimeter from training their guns on the SOG camp. Minor attacks continued before the base was officially closed on 5 July. The origin of the combat base lay in the construction by US Army Special Forces of an airfield in August 1962 outside the village at an old French fort. [133] The Marines would be accompanied by their 11th Engineer Battalion, which would repair the road as the advance moved forward. By comparison, according to another Army general, a 10:1 ratio was considered average and 25:1 was considered very good. The Marines and their allies at Khe Sanh engaged tens of thousands, and killed thousands, of NVA over a period of many weeks. Among the dead Marines was 18-year-old Pfc Curtis Bugger. Things heated up for the air cavalrymen on 6 April, when the 3rd Brigade encountered a PAVN blocking force and fought a day-long engagement. [105] At 07:40, a relief force from Company A, 2nd Platoon set out from the main base and attacked through the PAVN, pushing them into supporting tank and artillery fire. In fact, neither side won a resounding victory. WALKI NA WZGRZU: PIERWSZA BITWA KHE SANH Edwarda F. Murphy'ego - twarda okadka w bardzo dobrym stanie | Books & Magazines, Books | eBay! [119] By 11:00, the battle was over, Company A had lost 24 dead and 27 wounded, while 150 PAVN bodies were found around the position, which was then abandoned. [125] The 325C Divisional Headquarters was the first to leave, followed by the 95C and 101D Regiments, all of which relocated to the west. [123][124], Nevertheless, the same day that the trenches were detected, 25 February, 3rd Platoon from Bravo Company 1st Battalion, 26th Marines was ambushed on a short patrol outside the base's perimeter to test the PAVN strength. From the Hu site the communication signal was sent to Danang headquarters where it could be sent anywhere in the world. [164] He cited the fact that it would have taken longer to dislodge the North Vietnamese at Hue if the PAVN had committed the three divisions at Khe Sanh to the battle there instead of dividing its forces.