The NVAs main command post was located in Laos, at Sar Lit. [140] Total US casualties during the operation were 92 killed, 667 wounded, and five missing. Hernandez was killed. [29], During the second half of 1967, the North Vietnamese instigated a series of actions in the border regions of South Vietnam. Taking a larger but more realistic view, the Khe Sanh campaign resulted in a death toll of American military personnel that approached 1,000. Declassified documents show that in response, Westmoreland considered using nuclear weapons. Marines stayed in the area, conducting operations to recover the bodies of Marines killed previously. Since the Marines on board were not yet officially attached to the 26th Marine Regiment, their deaths were not included in the official Khe Sanh count, nor were the several other deaths associated with aircraft crashes. However, the PAVN committed three regiments to the fighting from the Khe Sanh sector. [10] Once the news of the closure of KSCB was announced, the American media immediately raised questions about the reasoning behind its abandonment. [42], In the wake of the hill fights, a lull in PAVN activity occurred around Khe Sanh. The withdrawal of the last Marines under the cover of darkness was hampered by the shelling of a bridge along Route 9, which had to be repaired before the withdrawal could be completed. The enemy by my count suffered at least 15,000 dead in the area.. On June 19, 1968, another operation began at Khe Sanh, Operation Charlie, the final evacuation and destruction of the Khe Sanh Combat Base. The distinctions between Operations Scotland, Pegasus and Scotland II, while important from the command perspective, were not necessarily apparent to individual Marines. The Marines and their allies at Khe Sanh engaged tens of thousands, and killed thousands, of NVA over a period of many weeks. [62], On 20 January, La Thanh Ton, a PAVN lieutenant from the 325th Division, defected and laid out the plans for an entire series of PAVN attacks. Historian Ronald Spector, in the book After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam, noted that American casualties in the 10 weeks after the start of Operation Pegasus were more than twice those officially reported during the siege. Five days later, the final reinforcements arrived in the form of the 37th ARVN Ranger Battalion, which was deployed more for political than tactical reasons. [152] The Marines occupied Hill 950 overlooking the Khe Sanh plateau from 1966 until September 1969 when control was handed to the Army who used the position as a SOG operations and support base until it was overrun by the PAVN in June 1971. During the course of the siege, the U.S. Air Force dropped five tons of bombs for each of the estimated 20,000 attacking NVA troops. There are still debates about the true number of casualties, but estimates range that 1,000 to 3,500 US soldiers died, and a secret report from the US Military Assistance Command, Vietnam,. Even so, Westmoreland insisted for it not only to be occupied by the Marines but also for it to be reinforced. [98] The Marines continued to oppose the operation until Westmoreland actually had to issue an order to Cushman to allow the rescue operation to proceed. The platoon withdrew following a three-hour battle that left six Marines dead, 24 missing, and one taken prisoner. During the 1968 Tet Offensive, as many as 30,000 Communist Vietnamese forces surrounded roughly 6,000 U.S. marines defending a combat base on .. Week of February 21 In an unconventional war without conventional frontlines, statistics became the most critical measure of progress. Strategically, however, the withdrawal meant little. Officer casualties of all branches were overwhelmingly white. The Marines knew that their withdrawal from Khe Sanh would present a propaganda victory for Hanoi. [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. Military History Institute of Vietnam, p. 222. Five more attacks against their sector were launched during March. The assault began on 10 May 1969 w ith the 101st Airborne Division and troops of the 9th M arine Regiment, the 5 th Cavalry Regiment, and the 3 rd ARVN Regiment. 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. [53] Two divisions, the 304th and the 325th, were assigned to the operation: the 325th was given responsibility for the area around the north, while the 304th was given responsibility for the southern sector. 3% were Asian, 7 or . [104] Ladd, back on the scene, reported that the Marines stated, "they couldn't trust any gooks in their damn camp. SOG Reconnaissance teams also reported finding tank tracks in the area surrounding Co Roc mountain. [115] This equates to roughly 1,300 tons of bombs dropped daily 5 tons for every one of the 20,000 PAVN soldiers initially estimated to have been committed to the fighting at Khe Sanh. [43] Lieutenant General Robert E. Cushman Jr. relieved Walt as commander of III MAF in June. The aircrew then had to contend with antiaircraft fire on the way out. North Vietnamese Army gained control of the Khe Sanh region after the American withdrawal. To support the Marine base, a massive aerial bombardment campaign (Operation Niagara) was launched by the USAF. The attack was to have been supported by armor and artillery. The Battle of Khe Sanh (21 January 9 July 1968) was conducted in the Khe Sanh area of northwestern Qung Tr Province, Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), during the Vietnam War. That afternoon, as a rescue force was dispatched to the village, Army Lt. Col. Joseph Seymoe and other soldiers died when their helicopter was attacked. Then, on the morning of 6 February, the PAVN fired mortars into the Lang Vei compound, wounding eight Camp Strike Force soldiers. The North Vietnamese lost as many as 15,000 casualties during the siege of Khe Sanh. [138], On the following day, the 2nd Brigade captured the old French fort near Khe Sanh village after a three-day battle. Westmoreland had been forwarding operational plans for an invasion of Laos since 1966. MACV therefore initiated an operation to open Route 9 to vehicle traffic. At 1530 hours the first C-123, with 44 passengers and a crew of five, began to land. [82], By the end of the battle, USAF assets had flown 9,691 tactical sorties and dropped 14,223tons of bombs on targets within the Khe Sanh area. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. [47][Note 3] Westmoreland regarded the choice as quite simple. Military History Institute of Vietnam, pp. Twenty-five USAF personnel who were killed are also not included. Although the camp's main defenses were overrun in only 13 minutes, the fighting lasted for several hours, during which the Special Forces men and Bru CIDGs managed to knock out at least five of the tanks. The PAVN claim that during the entire battle they "eliminated" 17,000 enemy troops, including 13,000 Americans and destroyed 480 aircraft. [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. A press release prepared on the following day (but never issued), at the height of Tet, showed that he was not about to be distracted. Name State Date War Branch; 1: Steven Glenn Abbott . 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. The Battle of Khe Sanh began on January 21, 1968, when forces from the People's Army of North Vietnam (PAVN) carried out a massive artillery bombardment on the U.S. Marine garrison at Khe Sanh, located in South Vietnam near the border with Laos. [27][28] The Marines' defensive system stretched below the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) from the coast, along Route 9, to Khe Sanh. American commanders considered the defense of Khe Sanh a success, but shortly after the siege was lifted, the decision was made to dismantle the base rather than risk similar battles in the future. The Marine garrison was also reinforced, and on November 1, 1967, Operation Scotland began. The Marine defense of Khe Sanh, Operation Scotland, officially ended on March 31. [122], In late February, ground sensors detected the 66th Regiment, 304th Division preparing to mount an attack on the positions of the 37th ARVN Ranger Battalion on the eastern perimeter. The NVA surrounded Khe Sanh in an attempt to force the Marines to break out of their fighting positions, which would make it easier to engage and destroy them. Of the 24 Americans at the camp, 10 had been killed and 11 wounded. The PAVN, however, were not through with the ARVN troops. Dien Bien Phu would loom large for the rest of the war, especially during the Battle of Khe Sanh. [147] The official closure of the base came on 5 July after fighting, which had killed five more Marines. Battle of Khe Sanh The attack finally came on January 21, 1968, when PAVN forces began a massive artillery bombardment of Khe Sanh, hitting the base's main store of ammunition and destroying. [58] These tactics were reminiscent of those employed against the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, particularly in relation to entrenching tactics and artillery placement, and the realization assisted US planners in their targeting decisions. But Pisor also pointed out that 205 is a completely false number. One had to meet certain criteria before being officially considered KIA at Khe Sanh. The US command in Saigon initially believed that combat operations around KSCB during 1967 were part of a series of minor PAVN offensives in the border regions. [32], Westmoreland responded by launching Operation Neutralize, an aerial and naval bombardment campaign designed to break the siege. 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. [153][154] The gradual withdrawal of US forces began during 1969 and the adoption of Vietnamization meant that, by 1969, "although limited tactical offensives abounded, US military participation in the war would soon be relegated to a defensive stance. They produced a body count ratio in the range between 50:1 and 75:1. [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. U.S. battles of the war in Vietnam had young GIs or Marines humping into the boonies in search of the enemy. The site linked to another microwave/tropo site in Hu manned by the 513th Signal Detachment. Due to the nature of these activities, and the threat that they posed to KSCB, Westmoreland ordered Operation Niagara I, an intense intelligence collection effort on PAVN activities in the vicinity of the Khe Sanh Valley. [12], Following the closure of the base, a small force of Marines remained around Hill 689 carrying out mopping-up operations. [167], Another theory is that the actions around Khe Sanh and the other battles at the border were simply feints ands ruse meant to focus American attention and forces on the border. . During one 8-hour period, the base was rocked by 1,307 rounds, most of which came from 130-mm (used for the first time on the battlefield) and 152-mm artillery pieces located in Laos. Battlefield boundaries extended from eastern Laos eastward along both sides of Route 9 in Quang Tri province, Vietnam, to the coast. [173][174], After the ARVN defeat in Laos, the newly-reopened KSCB came under attack by PAVN sappers and artillery and the base was abandoned once again on 6 April 1971.[175][176]. The Battle of Ban Houei Sane, not the attack three weeks later at Lang Vei, marked the first time that the PAVN had committed an armored unit to battle. [70] The Marines and ARVN dug in and hoped that the approaching Tt truce (scheduled for 2931 January) would provide some respite. Enemy artillery rounds slammed into the runway. [34] The heaviest action took place near Dak To, in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum. It was a two-part battle which took place from November 14 to 18, 1965 at the la Drang Valley, South Vietnam. Only nine US battalions were available from Hue/Phu Bai northward. It was the only time Americans abandoned a major combat base because of enemy pressure. Westmoreland was replaced two months after the end of the battle, and his successor explained the retreat in different ways. 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. A smaller slice of the action saw Americans on the receiving end, defending some firebase or outpost. [58] The USAF delivered 14,356 tons of supplies to Khe Sanh by air (8,120 tons by paradrop). The Marines fought long, hard and well at Khe Sanh, but they sacrificed in much greater numbers than has been acknowledged by official sources. If a battle tallied a sufficiently favorable body count ratio, American commanders declared victory, as they did after Khe Sanh. "[168][Note 7], Marine General Rathvon M. Tompkins, the commander of the 3rd Marine Division, pointed out that had the PAVN actually intended to take Khe Sanh, PAVN troops could have cut the base's sole source of water, a stream 500 m outside the perimeter of the base. This is also the position taken in the official PAVN history but offers no further explanation of the strategy. [33] The PAVN fought for several days, took casualties, and fell back. [93], The situation changed radically during the early morning hours of 7 February. Naval aircrews, many of whom were redirected from Operation Rolling Thunder strikes against North Vietnam, flew 5,337 sorties and dropped 7,941 tons of ordnance in the area. The Battle of Khe Sanh's initial action cost the Marines 12 killed, 17 wounded and two missing. Ten American soldiers were killed; the rest managed to escape down Route 9 to Khe Sanh. [89] As a result, on 7 March, for the first time during the Vietnam War, air operations were placed under the control of a single manager. A decision then had to be made by the American high command to commit more of the limited manpower in I Corps to the defense of Khe Sanh or to abandon the base. The most controversial statistic in Vietnam was the number of killed in action (KIA) claimed by each side. Many American casualties were caused by the 10,908 rounds of rockets, artillery and mortars the North Vietnamese fired into the base and hill positions. Let me caution everyone not to be confused. The plane, piloted by Lt. Col. Frederick J. Hampton, crashed in a huge fireball a few miles east of Khe Sanh, killing all aboard. He made his final appearance in the story of Khe Sanh on 23 May, when his regimental sergeant major and he stood before President Johnson and were presented with a Presidential Unit Citation on behalf of the 26th Marines. Of the 4953 Navy and Air Force casualties, both officer and enlisted, 4, 736 or 96% were white. [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. [105], Lownds estimated that the logistical requirements of KSCB were 60 tons per day in mid-January and rose to 185 tons per day when all five battalions were in place. What is the 25th Infantry known for? The Soviet-built PT-76 amphibious tanks of the 203rd Armored Regiment churned over the defenses, backed up by an infantry assault by the 7th Battalion, 66th Regiment and the 4th Battalion of the 24th Regiment, both elements of the 304th Division. [120], On 23 February, KSCB received its worst bombardment of the entire battle. At about 0640 hours the NVA 7th Battalion, 66th Regiment, 304th Division, attacked the Huong Hoa District headquarters in Khe Sanh village. From the Hu site the communication signal was sent to Danang headquarters where it could be sent anywhere in the world. The monumental Battle of Khe Sanh had begun, but the January 21 starting date is essentially arbitrary in terms of casualty reporting.
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