Marine strength in Vietnam peaked in September 1968 at over 85,500 Marines, more than had served ashore at either Iwo Jima or Okinawa. The research for this After Action Report included OPERATIONAL REPORTS, DAILY STAFF JOURNALS and DUTY OFFICER S LOGS at the Battalion, Brigade and Division levels located in the National Archives and Records Administration, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001. This was about 40% of the Force Logistic Commands ammunition. Infantry would come in to provide security. These losses, unfortunately, were not reflected proportionately in the estimate of the enemys remaining strength in ICTZ. The new bridge, designed to be monsoon-proof (but lacking sufficient length during periods of high water), completed a direct highway link between Da Nang and An Hoa. In Vietnam, from 1 January 1961 through 9 December 1972, enemy action had caused the death of 1 2,936 Marines28.4% of the 45,915 U. S. killed or dead as the result of enemy action. A regimental-size base camp was found and destroyed. And finally, the 7th Marines, with its CP at Baldy, continued to work its battalions in the Que Sons and Que Son valley. The whole ASP went up, 38,000 tons of ammunition, valued at approximately $75 million, was destroyed, along with 20,000 drums of fuel. Radio operators in Vietnam, 1969 | Stars and Stripes On 9 May, while Daring Rebel was rampaging on Barrier island, the 5th Marines, now commanded by William J. Zaro, intercepted a large enemy force attempting to cross the "Arizona territory. This familiar area was not only a much-traveled route for the enemy as he debouched from the mountains but also the site of rice and com "markets from which he drew his sustenance. There was also to be full-fledged recruitment for the People's Self Defense Force (PSDF). On 10 May, the Northern Artillery Cantonment was transferred to the government of Vietnam as was Camp 14, which had been the picturesque and comfortable base camp for the now-departed 3d Battalion, 1st Marines. On 1 June the transfer of Marble Mountain Air Facility by Colonel Streets MAG-16 to the U. S. Army was completed and the last members of the Group headquarters were on their way to Santa Ana where MAG-16, like MAG-11, would be assigned to the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing. Brigade 258 was now moved into the My Chanh line west of Brigade 369s positions. General Zais asked the 1st Marine Division to assist in getting things going. "Gatling Gun in a chin turret gave it significantly more firepower than the original Cobras 7.62-mm. Another 93 were MIA8.0% of the 1,156 Americans missing in action. The companion Infantry Company Intensive Pacification Program was given the more manageable title of Combined Unit Pacification Program, or CUPP, Company M, 1st Marines, had expanded its share of the program to eight hamlets around Hill 55. Base Area 611 did not go long unattended. There were not enough of these 59-man cadres to go around so the number of teams available was doubled by halving the size to 30 men and assigning to each team a Regional Force, Popular Force, or National Police Field Force6 platoon to perform the security function. During the Vietnam War, the 101st Airborne Division fought in several major campaigns and battles, including the Battle of Hamburger Hill in May 1969. The number of infantry battalions (more properly thought of as the equivalents of a rifle company) was believed to have grown from 89 to 97. The clearing zone and border surveillance zone would be under the ARVN field commander. A man was not held for the duration; he served his time and then was discharged. In the three-day attack by fire, 11,346 artillery rounds were shot and 141 tons of bombs dropped. The Corps' peak strength during Vietnam was 317,400, far under the peak of 485,113 reached in World War II, but during the six years of Vietnam some 730,000 men and women served in the Corps as opposed to some 600,000 in World War II. On 29 March, the 38th NVA Regiment surfaced for the first time in months. All of this caused a last minute reshuffling of units as III MAF geared itself for a longer stay in-country than planned. It was a fine bright morning with a fresh breeze blowing. The Division had no responsibility for the Da Nang vital zone itself. Preparations for the Marines' share of the third increment of U. S. withdrawal also began in January. Go to https://www.militaryvideo.com/ to. Some 1,500 enemy were thought to be in the objective area, members mostly of the 38th NVA Regiment, the 577th Rocket Battalion, and the 490th Sapper Battalion. Brigade 369 took up a line along the My Chanh river which marks the boundary between Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces. On 15 March, the 3d Marines, under Colonel Paul D. LaFond had begun Maine Crag south of Khe Sanh (where the Laotian border makes a curious loop, creating a salient). Firebase Airborne was a U.S. Army firebase located west of Hu overlooking the A Shau Valley in central Vietnam. Jimi Hendrix served with the 101st for about a year before he was honorably discharged from the Army in 1962. Operation Apache Snow - Wikipedia The new system attempted to measure political, social, and economic gains as well as physical security. 101st Airborne Division Soldiers in famous Vietnam photo interviewed Ibid. machine gun and 40-mm. The soldiers of the North Vietnamese 29th Regimentbattle-hardened veterans of the Tet Offensivebeat back another attempt by the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry on May 14. In the face of the four-battalion attack, the North Vietnamese retreated to sanctuary areas in Laos. to 57-mm. Screaming Eagle, 101st Airborne Division Tet 68-69 New home for MAG-11 would be El Toro where it would become part of the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing. Firebase Airborne | Military Wiki | Fandom General Lam then began Hoang Dieu 101 which the Marines joined on 17 December. The great change in the Combined Campaign Plan for 1971 was the conceptual one that substituted "tactical areas of interest" (TAOI) for "tactical areas of responsibility. Open fire," it was said, was to be from 2300 on the 28th to 0200 on the 29th. The joint Army-Marine effort had killed 239 enemy. (General Cushman, after his return to the States, would become the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and, on 1 January 1972, the 25th Commandant of the Marine Corps. . The Sea Cobras first combat mission was flown 2 March with Lam Son 719 providing a relatively high intensity ground fire environment. But the first the III MAP subordinate commanders and their staff knew officially about the impending incursion into Laos was on 30 January when they were briefed on the essentials of the operation. His base area was also well-seeded with light antiaircraft weapons. This operation was directed by Brigadier General Regan Fuller from his Task Force Hotel headquarters at Vandegrift Combat Base. Raymond Davis, now a four-star general and Assistant Commandant, was visiting and had lunch with Company F south of the Song Cau Do, close to where the 9th Marines had first crossed the river in July 1965. The total area was 1,054 square miles. (Assault) underwent a similar transformation and was redesignated as the 159th Combat Aviation Brigade. Before the end of the year the Marines would have 24 Cobras in-country, they would have flown over 20,000 missions, most of them as transport helicopter escorts or for close-in supporting fires, and would more than have proved their worth. The 3d VNMC Battalion was holding the bridgehead at Dong Ha and on 2 April, as the enemy's armored column reached the bridge, Captain John W. Ripley, the battalion's advisor, personally blew up that structure and won himself the Navy Cross. The one named operation still underway was Imperial Lake. 16 In microcosm, Thanh My illustrates the command and control problems of the Vietnam War, wherein cooperation had to be substituted for unity of command. Nevertheless, both are big, cumbersome guns. On 6 April, MAG-15, commanded by Colonel Keith OKeefe, was ordered to move with two F-4J squadrons to Da Nang. From the Wing, vmFA-334 departed with its F-4J McDonnell Phantoms for Iwakuni in Japan, and HMM-165, with its CH-46A helicopters, left for Futema on Okinawa. Company M, 1st Marines, stayed in place with its CUPPs near Hill 55 but operational control reverted from the 5th Marines to the 1st Marines, Company M getting back to its parent regiment after a lapse of nearly a year. This meant drawing in a little tighter towards Da Nang, The 1st Marines turned over their old CP on Hill 55 (which had been a Marine regimental command post since being occupied by the 9th Marines in the spring of 1966) to the 51st ARVN Regiment and moved to the CP vacated by the 26th Marines close to the Division headquarters. The 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam - 101 Vietnam Veterans The recruiting base was more urban than rural and the objectives more psychological than military. Its new base would be Iwakuni, Japan. ANGLICO teams were involved in all four military Regions but most were working in Military Region 1. The purpose, of course, was to destroy enemy base camps and caches and in this the operation was reasonably successful. As a percentage of their demographic group, the Vietnam era Veterans are now dying off faster than the WWII Veterans due to Agent Orange. As the Marines area of operations had contracted, the focus of the operation had shifted from the Que Sons to Charlie Ridge. On that day, the 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, the last infantry battalion in the field, stood down. After that, the sorely-mauled 90th NVA withdrew into the hills to regroup. Route 535 goes south and joins Route 534. Once, however, a location was labeled on "LZ or "FSB the appellation tended to stick, as in the case of Baldy which had grown into a full-fledged brigade or regimental-size combat base and Ross which easily accommodated a battalion. With the 7th Marines going home, the 5th Marines picked up its CUPP mission, replacing Company A, 7th Marines, with Company G, 5th Marines, along the road from Ba Ren Bridge to Baldy to Ross. Arthur Wiknik. On 7 September, the 1st Ranger Group was moved into Brigade 147's positions, freeing 147 to attack Quang Tri from the northeast. The area actually lay in the Korean TAOR and security was to be provided by the Koreans, the ARVN, and the RF and PF. Most of these Marines, as they went up the ship's gangplank or the aircraft's ramp on their way home, probably left Vietnam with a feeling that they and the Marine Corps had done the job assigned to them. There was also a Marine advisory unit of about 60 officers and men with the Vietnamese Marine Corps which had grown to a three-brigade light division. The soldiers renamed it Hamburger Hill. Shortly after midnight the enemy attempted to seize the two highway bridges which carry Route One over the Song Cau Do in Hoa yang district south of Di Nang airfield. Vietnam 40 years later: 101st Airborne Division veteran recalls Most important of all, perhaps, was that the landings not only kept the amphibious art alive, but also actually advanced it by providing testing and training in a combat environment. On June 9, 1969, after weeks of bitter fighting, the 101st Airborne saw victory on the horizon by Ed Sherwood 2/4/2022 Soldiers of the 101st Airborne reposition and clean an 81 mm mortar during Operation Lamar Plain, undertaken to thwart an enemy advance on Tam Ky. (Casemate Publishers) In Phase III, I Corps would conduct systematic search-and-destroy action in Ba e Area 604 in the vicinity of Tchepone. Lam Son 719 was to be a spoiling action co offset what increasingly appeared to be an intention on the enemy's part to launch a large-scale offensive into the northern provinces of Military Region I. It also would yield some spectacular intelligence finds as to the Viet Cong infrastructure in Quang Nam province. 12 Both Baldy and Ross had long since, outgrown their original respective designations as a "landing zone and a "fire support base. A landing zone, by definition, is simply a place where aircraft can land. 302-303. The Wing at the time of the change in command had six aircraft groups with 26 flying squadrons and was operating from five major airfields. Colonel Owen V. Gallentines Provisional MAG-39 at Quang Tri was deactivated. HMM-164, another medium helicopter squadron, went to Okinawa along with HMH-462, a CH-53 squadron. MAG-15 headquarters and VMFA-232 followed on 20 June. On 12 June, the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines teamed up with a task force from the 1st Brigade, 5th U. S. Mechanized Division, near Khe Sanh itself for Operation Utah Mesa. PHOTOS: On this day May 11, 1969 - The Denver Post To fill in behind the two battalions of the 5th Marines which had gone south to Baldy and Ross, the area of operations for Colonel Paul X. Kelleys 1st Marines was extended to include Charlie Ridge, Hill 37 at Dai Loc, and Hill 65 in the Thuong Due corridor. 101st Airborne Vietnam 1969 DVD - YouTube The enemy had reverted almost completely to guerrilla and terrorist activity. On 22 August, the last two Force Engineer Battalions, the 9th and most of the 7th, had begun embarkation. Perhaps the most famous 101st Airborne alum is also one of the greatest guitarists ever. Everything south of Phase Line Blue, a line drawn along the Vu GiaThu Bon rivers was now the responsibility of (or, in the new terminology, "of interest to) the Army. At home, their successor, the LVTP-7, was beginning to come off the assembly lines. As September began, Brigade 258 was on the Divisions left front, Brigade 147 on the right; the brigades separated by the Vinh Dinh river. Behind a curtain of 200 rounds of mortar fire, two companies of sappers came into the hamlet, shooting, throwing grenades, and dropping satchel charges into the villagers' bunkers. A Year In Vietnam With The 101st Airborne: 1969-1970 The monsoon rains had begun, the ground was bull-dozed into a sea of red mud, and the engineers barely got their heavy equipment out before the rains made the road and Liberty Bridge impassable. The building block for this program was the combining of a specially selected and trained Marine rifle squad with a Popular Force platoon so as to enhance hamlet and village security. recoilless rifles was fast nearing the end of its service life and the possibility of the enemy using armor was increasingly remote), the 1st Tank Battalion (less one company of M-48 medium tanks which would remain in-country), the 3d Amphibian Tractor Battalion (six LVTH-6 tractors mounting 105-mm. Tube life was originally 300 rounds; this has now been improved to 1,200 rounds as compared to the M53s tube life of 700 rounds. As a 101st Airborne Screaming Eagle Sapper 326 Combat . The 120-bed hospital, beautifully designed and of masonry and tile construction, was probably the finest children's hospital outside of Saigon. The North Vietnamese re-occupied Hamburger Hill a month later. Bloody 10-day battle at "Hamburger Hill" begins - History The second article in the series appeared in Naval Review 1969 and covered the events of 1967, a year which saw Marines fighting in all five provinces of I Corps Tactical Zone and III MAF grown to the equivalent of a field army with the 1st and 3d Marine Divisions, and the U. S. Armys Americal Division, supported by 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, under its operational control.
