server. Name State Date War Branch; 1: Steven Glenn Abbott . The Marines at Khe Sanh Combat Base broke out of their perimeter and began attacking the North Vietnamese in the surrounding area. Ten more Marines and 89 NVA died during this period. [39], On 24 April 1967, a patrol from Bravo Company became engaged with a PAVN force of an unknown size north of Hill 861. 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. The battle of Khe Sanh: A history of the Vietnam War - Washington Post The Tet Offensive was about to begin. The site linked to another microwave/tropo site in Hu manned by the 513th Signal Detachment. [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. [96], The Marines at Khe Sanh had a plan in place for providing a ground relief force in just such a contingency, but Lownds, fearing a PAVN ambush, refused to implement it. [36], Things remained quiet in the Khe Sanh area through 1966. The Marines withdrew all salvageable material and destroyed everything else. 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. [43] Lieutenant General Robert E. Cushman Jr. relieved Walt as commander of III MAF in June. "[149], While KSCB was abandoned, the Marines continued to patrol the Khe Sanh plateau, including reoccupying the area with ARVN forces from 519 October 1968 with minimal opposition. [93], The situation changed radically during the early morning hours of 7 February. It was a two-part battle which took place from November 14 to 18, 1965 at the la Drang Valley, South Vietnam. [133] The Marines would be accompanied by their 11th Engineer Battalion, which would repair the road as the advance moved forward. The PAVN infantry, though bracketed by artillery fire, still managed to penetrate the perimeter of the defenses and were only driven back after severe close-quarters combat. Indeed, had enemy forces not been at Khe Sanh, they could have joined the NVA and VC who occupied Hue, a much more important strategic target. Battlefield boundaries extended from eastern Laos eastward along both sides of Route 9 in Quang Tri province, Vietnam, to the coast. Minor attacks continued before the base was officially closed on 5 July. The Pegasus force consisted of the Army 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) plus the 1st Marine Regiment. The Tet Offensive - Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund As journalist Robert Pisor pointed out in his 1982 book, The End of the Line: The Siege of Khe Sanh, no other battle of the entire war produced a better body count or kill ratio than that claimed by the Americans at Khe Sanh. Its main objectives were to inflict casualties on US troops and to isolate them in the remote border regions. [1] According to Brush, it was "the only occasion in which Americans abandoned a major combat base due to enemy pressure" and in the aftermath, the North Vietnamese began a strong propaganda campaign, seeking to exploit the US withdrawal and to promote the message that the withdrawal had not been by choice. Two days later, the PAVN 273rd Regiment attacked a Special Forces camp near the border town of Loc Ninh, in Bnh Long Province. [71][72], Nine days before the Tet Offensive broke out, the PAVN opened the battle of Khe Sanh and attacked the US forces just south of the DMZ. For example, I served with a Marine heavy mortar battery at Khe Sanh during the siege. Of the 500 CIDG troops at Lang Vei, 200 had been killed or were missing and 75 more were wounded. 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. They fixed the attention of the American command on the border regions, and they drew American and ARVN forces away from the coastal lowlands and cities in preparation for the Tet Offensive. The badly-deteriorated Route 9 ran from the coastal region through the western highlands and crossed the border into Laos. It is difficult to support the claim of an overwhelming American victory at Khe Sanh based solely on the ratios derived from the official casualty count. They were not included in the official Khe Sanh counts. [127] At 08:00 the following day, Operation Scotland was officially terminated. Journalist Richard Ehrlich writes that according to the report, "in late January, General Westmoreland had warned that if the situation near the DMZ and at Khe Sanh worsened drastically, nuclear or chemical weapons might have to be used." Once the aircraft touched down, it became the target of any number of PAVN artillery or mortar crews. Following a rolling barrage fired by nine artillery batteries, the Marine attack advanced through two PAVN trenchlines, but the Marines failed to locate the remains of the men of the ambushed patrol. This, however, did not prevent the Marine tanks within the perimeter from training their guns on the SOG camp. The monumental Battle of Khe Sanh had begun, but the January 21 starting date is essentially arbitrary in terms of casualty reporting. This is the battles end date from the North Vietnamese perspective. Both sides have published official histories of the battle, and while these histories agree the fighting took place at Khe Sanh, they disagree on virtually every other aspect of it. However, North Vietnamese sources claim that the Americans did not win a victory at Khe Sanh but were forced to retreat to avoid destruction. [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. On June 28, a Communist spokesman claimed the Americans had been forced to retreat and that Khe Sanh was the gravest tactical and strategic defeat for the U.S. in the war. Taking a larger but more realistic view, the Khe Sanh campaign resulted in a death toll of American military personnel that approached 1,000. This is also the position taken in the official PAVN history but offers no further explanation of the strategy. In 1966 the Marines built a base adjacent to the Army position, and organized their combat activities around named operations. The relief of Khe Sanh, called Operation Pegasus, began . [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. [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. Less likely to be mentioned is the final high-casualty engagement between units of the U.S. infantry and the North Vietnamese Army. [67], At the same time as the artillery bombardment at KSCB, an attack was launched against Khe Sanh village, seat of Hng Ha District. Then, on the morning of 6 February, the PAVN fired mortars into the Lang Vei compound, wounding eight Camp Strike Force soldiers. [23][Note 2], James Marino wrote that in 1964, General William Westmoreland, the US commander in Vietnam, had determined, "Khe Sanh could serve as a patrol base blocking enemy infiltration from Laos; a base for operations to harass the enemy in Laos; an airstrip for reconnaissance to survey the Ho Chi Minh Trail; a western anchor for the defenses south of the DMZ; and an eventual jumping-off point for ground operations to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Battle of Dak To in the Vietnam War - ThoughtCo 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. You could lose it and you really haven't lost a damn thing. 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. For additional reading, see: Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sanh, by John Prados and Ray W. Stubbe; and the official Marine Corps history, The Battle for Khe Sanh, by Moyers S. Shore II. The platoon withdrew following a three-hour battle that left six Marines dead, 24 missing, and one taken prisoner. In the aftermath, the North Vietnamese proclaimed a victory at Khe Sanh, while US forces claimed that they had withdrawn, as the base was no longer required. At dawn on 21 January, it was attacked by a roughly 300-strong PAVN battalion. In the US, the media following the battle drew comparisons with the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which proved disastrous for the French. By the end of January 1968, he had moved half of all US combat troops, nearly 50 maneuver battalions, to I Corps. [28], In early December 1967, the PAVN appointed Major General Tran Quy Hai as the local commander for the actions around Khe Sanh, with Le Quang Do as his political commissar. [97] During a meeting at Da Nang at 07:00 the next morning, Westmoreland and Cushman accepted Lownds' decision. 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. In 1970, the Office of Air Force History published a then "top secret", but now declassified, 106-page report, titled The Air Force in Southeast Asia: Toward a Bombing Halt, 1968. During aerial resupply:1 KC-130, 3 C-123 ARVN losses: 229 killed, 436 wounded (not including CIDG, RF/PF and SOG losses)CIDG losses: 1,000 1,500 killed or missing, at least 250 captured (in Lang Vei), wounded unknown[16] Kingdom of Laos: Unknown. The dead men have been described as wearing Marine uniforms; that they were a regimental commander and his staff on a reconnaissance; and that they were all identified, by name, by American intelligence. Later, the 1/1 Marines and 3rd ARVN Airborne Task Force (the 3rd, 6th, and 8th Airborne Battalions) would join the operation. The legendary siege at Khe Sanh occurred in 1968, but during the spring of 1967, the United States Marines fought in northwestern Quang Tri Province in what became the first stage of the Khe Sanh battles. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. The NVAs main command post was located in Laos, at Sar Lit. Just days before, as the Army of the . Murphy 2003, pp. These combined sources report a total of 354 KIA. It claimed, however, that only three American advisors were killed during the action. On April 6, a front-page story in The New York Times declared that the siege of Khe Sanh had been lifted. TBKQS / Trung tm TBKQS - BQP - H Ni: QND, 2004. [128] Also, Marine Lieutenant General Victor Krulak seconded the notion that there was never a serious intention to take the base by arguing that neither the water supply nor the telephone land lines were ever cut by the PAVN. Ten American soldiers were killed; the rest managed to escape down Route 9 to Khe Sanh. The next operations were named Crockett and Ardmore. The village of Khe Sanh was the seat of government of Hng Hoa district, an area of Bru Montagnard villages and coffee plantations about 7 miles (11km) from the Laotian frontier on Route 9, the northernmost transverse road in South Vietnam. After a ten-day battle, the attackers were pushed back into Cambodia. After its adoption, Marine helicopters flew in 465 tons of supplies during February. Khe Sanh - Location, Vietnam War & Who Won - HISTORY Battle of Khe Sanh : American Casualties We have 535 casualty profiles listed in our archive. [158] The question, known among American historians as the "riddle of Khe Sanh," has been summed up by John Prados and Ray Stubbe: "Either the Tet Offensive was a diversion intended to facilitate PAVN/VC preparations for a war-winning battle at Khe Sanh, or Khe Sanh was a diversion to mesmerize Westmoreland in the days before Tet. 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 The tower at Khe Sanh instructed the pilot to take evasive action and go around for another approach. With Khe Sanh facing a full-scale. Johnson backed the Marine position due to his concern over protecting the Army's air assets from Air Force co-option. 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. Additionally, the logistical effort required to support the base once it was isolated demanded the implementation of other tactical innovations to keep the Marines supplied. It was a bad beginning to a long 77-day siege. [32], Westmoreland responded by launching Operation Neutralize, an aerial and naval bombardment campaign designed to break the siege. [38], Westmoreland won out, however, and the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment (1/3 Marines) was dispatched to occupy the camp and airstrip on 29 September. The report, originally classified as secret, noted that intelligence from many sources indicated conclusively that the North Vietnamese had planned a massive ground attack against the base. [141] Because of the close proximity of the enemy and their high concentration, the massive B-52 bombings, tactical airstrikes, and vast use of artillery, PAVN casualties were estimated by MACV as being between 10,000 and 15,000 men. Khe Sanh Incident - force.com The Marines suffered 155 killed in action and 425 wounded. [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. Battle of Hamburger Hill The 29 th North Vietnam Army had entrenched themselves on Hamburger Hill in South Vietnam; a joint US-South Vietnamese force was ordered to remove them. Mobile combat operations continued against the North Vietnamese. While climbing, the C-123 was struck by several bursts of heavy machine gun and recoilless rifle fire. Operation Pegasus, begun the day after Scotland ended, lasted until April 15. A secret memorandum reported by US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, sent to US President Lyndon B. Johnson on 19 February 1968, was declassified in 2005. During the darkness of January 20-21, the NVA launched a series of coordinated attacks against American positions. The First Battle of Khe Sahn - HistoryNet Due to severe losses, however, the NVA abandoned its plan for a massive ground attack. The village, 3km south of the base, was defended by 160 local Bru troops, plus 15 American advisers. Two days later, US troops detected PAVN trenches running due north to within 25 m of the base perimeter. As early as 1962, the U.S. Military CommandVietnam (MACV) established an Army Special Forces camp near the village. [140] Operation Scotland II would continue until 28 February 1969 resulting in 435 Marines and 3304 PAVN killed. Cushman, the new III MAF commander, supported Westmoreland perhaps because he wanted to mend Army/Marine relations after the departure of Walt. Only nine US battalions were available from Hue/Phu Bai northward. [61] To cover a defilade near the Rao Quan River, four companies from 2/26 were immediately sent out to occupy Hill 558, with another manning Hill 861A. "[136], Regardless, on 1 April, Operation Pegasus began. He has published over 20 books including: How to Survive Anything, Anywhere. Rod Andrew, Jr., a history professor at Clemson University and colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, has written an easily read and thoroughly . These Are Some of the Most Iconic Battles the US Marines Ever Fought . [57][58] They were assisted in their emplacement efforts by the continuing bad weather of the winter monsoon. Not including ARVN Ranger, RF/PF, Forward Operation Base 3 U.S. Army, Royal Laotian Army and SOG commandos losses. [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. "[106] At the end of January, Tompkins had ordered that no Marine patrols proceed more than 500 meters from the Combat Base. Marine Corps aviators had flown 7,098 missions and released 17,015tons. Enemy artillery rounds slammed into the runway. See also Pisor, p. 108. [27][28] The Marines' defensive system stretched below the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) from the coast, along Route 9, to Khe Sanh. This marked the first time that all three battalions of the 26th Marine Regiment had operated together in combat since the Battle of Iwo Jima during the Second World War. 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. [63] Hills 881 South, 861, and the main base itself would be simultaneously attacked that same evening. The Hill Fights: The First Battle of Khe Sanh by Murphy, Edward F 239240. Lownds also rejected a proposal to launch a helicopter extraction of the survivors. [129][130] Nevertheless, according to Tom Johnson, President Johnson was "determined that Khe Sanh [would not] be an 'American Dien Bien Phu'". In his memoirs, he listed the reasons for a continued effort: Khe Sanh could serve as a patrol base for blocking enemy infiltration from Laos along Route 9; as a base for SOG operations to harass the enemy in Laos; as an airstrip for reconnaissance planes surveying the Ho Chi Minh Trail; as the western anchor for defenses south of the DMZ; and as an eventual jump-off point for ground operations to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for The Hill Fights: The First Battle of Khe Sanh by Murphy, Edward F. (mass_market) at the best online prices at eBay! The 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment (2/1 Marines) and the 2/3 Marines would launch a ground assault from Ca Lu Combat Base (16km east of Khe Sanh) and head west on Route 9 while the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Brigades of the 1st Cavalry Division, would air-assault key terrain features along Route 9 to establish fire support bases and cover the Marine advance. 216217. [80] Westmoreland had already ordered the nascent Igloo White operation to assist in the Marine defense. 6,000 men North Vietnamese Vo Nguyen Giap Tran Quy Hai Approx. Westmoreland planned on Khe Sanh being relieved and then used as the jump-off point for a "hot pursuit" of enemy forces into Laos. [Note 5] This event prompted Cushman to reinforce Lownds with the rest of the 2nd Battalion, 26th Marines. The 26th Marine Regiment (26th Marines) is an inactivated infantry regiment of the United States Marine Corps. The distinctions between Operations Scotland, Pegasus and Scotland II, while important from the command perspective, were not necessarily apparent to individual Marines. Gordan L Rottman, Osprey Campaign 150: The Khe Sanh 1967-68, p. 51. Westmoreland believed that the latter was the case, and his belief was the basis for his desire to stage "Dien Bien Phu in reverse. 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. Lownds feared that PAVN infiltrators were mixed up in the crowd of more than 6,000, and lacked sufficient resources to sustain them. The Marines knew that their withdrawal from Khe Sanh would present a propaganda victory for Hanoi. The Battle of Khe Sanh: The Vietnam War - WorldAtlas [110], As more infantry units had been assigned to defend KSCB, artillery reinforcement kept pace. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group, microwave/tropospheric scatter technology, "The Battle of Khe Sanh 40th Anniversary: Casualties in May 1968", "The Battle of Khe Sanh 40th Anniversary: Casualties in June 1968", https://web.archive.org/web/20080215233328/http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/vietnam_war/3029941.html?featured=y&c=y, https://www.historynet.com/recounting-the-casualties-at-the-deadly-battle-of-khe-sanh/, https://www.historynet.com/the-withdrawal-from-khe-sanh/?f, "Khe Sanh: 6,000 Marines Dug In for Battle", "The US's secret plan to nuke Vietnam, Laos", "Memorandum for the President, 19 February 1968", "Battlefields of Khe Sanh: Still One Casualty a Day", "The US Army Quartermaster Air Delivery Units and the Defense of Khe Sanh", "5 things you didn't know about Khe Sanh", "Operational Report Lessons Learned, Headquarters, 8th Battalion 4th Artillery, Period Ending 30 April 1971", "Narrative of Events of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) During LAM SON 719", United States Army Center of Military History, Bibliography: The Tet Offensive and the Battle of Khe Sanh, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Khe_Sanh&oldid=1142289112. 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. . 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. NVA casualties were more than 200. On March 6, two U.S. Air Force C-123 cargo airplanes departed Da Nang Air Base en route to Khe Sanh. [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. [25], In the winter of 1964, Khe Sanh became the location of a launch site for the highly-classified Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group. Dien Bien Phu would loom large for the rest of the war, especially during the Battle of 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. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Additionally, Shore argued that the "weather was another critical factor because the poor visibility and low overcasts attendant to the monsoon season made such operations hazardous. Tolson was not happy with the assignment, since he believed that the best course of action, after Tet, was to use his division in an attack into the A Shau Valley. Among the dead Marines was 18-year-old Pfc Curtis Bugger. [55] They were supported logistically from the nearby Ho Chi Minh Trail. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, then began planning for incursion into Laos, and in October, the construction of an airfield at Khe Sanh was completed. [94] Although the PAVN was known to possess two armored regiments, it had not yet fielded an armored unit in South Vietnam, and besides, the Americans considered it impossible for them to get one down to Khe Sanh without it being spotted by aerial reconnaissance. Westmoreland echoed this judgment in his memoirs, and, using exactly the same figures, concluded that the North Vietnamese had suffered a most damaging and one-sided defeat. Two further attacks later in the morning were halted before the PAVN finally withdrew. [147] The official closure of the base came on 5 July after fighting, which had killed five more Marines. 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. In the coming days, a campaign headquarters was established around Sap Lit. Khe Sanh was situated on Route 9, the major east-west highway. Contribute to chinapedia/wikipedia.en development by creating an account on GitHub. Armies and Commanders Allies General William Westmoreland Colonel David Lownds Approx. 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. An additional 413 Marines were killed during Scotland II as of the end of June 1968. [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. [37] He was vociferously opposed by General Lewis W. Walt, the Marine commander of I Corps, who argued heatedly that the real target of the American effort should be the pacification and protection of the population, not chasing the PAVN/VC in the hinterlands. This article was written by Peter Brush and originally published in the June 2007 issue of Vietnam Magazine. [78], Thus began what was described by John Morocco as "the most concentrated application of aerial firepower in the history of warfare". The launching of the largest enemy offensive thus far in the conflict did not shift Westmoreland's focus away from Khe Sanh. [111] The base could also depend on fire support from US Army 175-mm guns located at Camp Carroll, east of Khe Sanh. At about 0640 hours the NVA 7th Battalion, 66th Regiment, 304th Division, attacked the Huong Hoa District headquarters in Khe Sanh village. Marines remained around Hill 689, though, and fighting in the vicinity continued until 11 July until they were finally withdrawn, bringing the battle to a close.