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. Unlike the official figures, Stubbes database of Khe Sanh casualties includes verifiable names and dates of death. [15], Unknown (1,602 bodies were counted, US official public estimated 10,00015,000 KIA,[19][20] but MACV's secret report estimated 5,550 killed as of 31 March 1968)[1]. Site will be misbehaving during our migration to new (better!) Military History Institute of Vietnam, pp. The official statistics yield a KIA ratio of between 50:1 and 75:1 of North Vietnamese to U.S. military deaths. [59], During the rainy night of 2 January 1968, six men dressed in black uniforms were seen outside the defensive wire of the main base by members of a listening post. 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. [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. Military History Institute of Vietnam, p. 222. In March 1968, an overland relief expedition (Operation Pegasus) was launched by a combined MarineArmy/ARVN task force that eventually broke through to the Marines at Khe Sanh. The Marines knew that their withdrawal from Khe Sanh would present a propaganda victory for Hanoi. The Laotians were overrun, and many fled to the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei. Once the base came under siege, a series of actions were fought over a period of five months. With a view to gain the eventual approval for an advance through Laos to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail, he determined that "it was absolutely essential to hold the base." [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]. [12] With the abandonment of the base, according to Thomas Ricks, "Khe Sanh became etched in the minds of many Americans as a symbol of the pointless sacrifice and muddled tactics that permeated a doomed U.S. war effort in Vietnam". 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 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. These forces, including support troops, totaled 20,000 to 30,000. [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. By late January 1967, the 1/3 returned to Japan and was relieved by Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines (1/9 Marines). The 26th Marines were activated in 1944 and fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II and were activated again on 1 March 1966, and fought in the Battle of Khe Sanh during the Vietnam War . "[160] That has led other observers to conclude that the siege served a wider PAVN strategy by diverting 30,000 US troops away from the cities that were the main targets of the Tet Offensive. The North Vietnamese lost as many as 15,000 casualties during the siege of Khe Sanh. [86] The command and control arrangement then in place in Southeast Asia went against Air Force doctrine, which was predicated on the single air manager concept. For a succinct overview of the creation of the CIDG program and its operations. 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. [1], The evacuation of Khe Sanh began on 19 June 1968 as Operation Charlie. 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. Army Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Ladd (commander, 5th Special Forces Group), who had just flown in from Khe Sanh, was reportedly, "astounded that the Marines, who prided themselves on leaving no man behind, were willing to write off all of the Green Berets and simply ignore the fall of Lang Vei. 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. "[162] Those who agree with Westmoreland reason that no other explanation exists for Hanoi to commit so many forces to the area instead of deploying them for the Tet Offensive. 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. Hundreds of mortar rounds and 122-mm rockets slammed into the base, levelling most of the above-ground structures. As early as 1962, the U.S. Military CommandVietnam (MACV) established an Army Special Forces camp near the village. The exact number of casualties suffered by both sides during the Khe Sanh battle is very difficult to ascertain, given that in many cases the two warring factions provided their own disparate counts. 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. Khe Sanh was one of the most remote outposts in Vietnam, but by January 1968, even President Lyndon Johnson had taken a personal interest in the base. 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. 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. The next operations were named Crockett and Ardmore. Two days later, the PAVN 273rd Regiment attacked a Special Forces camp near the border town of Loc Ninh, in Bnh Long Province. "[73], Nevertheless, ultimately the nuclear option was discounted by military planners. For them, the battle started when the North Vietnamese attacks began in January. The Battle of Khe Sanh began Jan. 21, 1968, with inconclusive ground activity by US and North Vietnamese patrols. He has published over 20 books including: How to Survive Anything, Anywhere. 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. . [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. Listen Now. [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. In an unconventional war without conventional frontlines, statistics became the most critical measure of progress. A victory for the Americans and South Vietnamese, the Battle of Dak To cost 376 US killed, 1,441 US wounded, and 79 ARVN killed. Taking a larger but more realistic view, the Khe Sanh campaign resulted in a death toll of American military personnel that approached 1,000. Dr. Chris McNab is the editor of AMERICAN BATTLES & CAMPAIGNS: A Chronicle, from 1622-Present and is an experienced specialist in wilderness and urban survival techniques. 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. Lownds also rejected a proposal to launch a helicopter extraction of the survivors. "[91][92], Not much activity (with the exception of patrolling) had occurred thus far during the battle for the Special Forces Detachment A-101 and their four companies of Bru CIDGs stationed at Lang Vei. On 22 March, over 1,000 North Vietnamese rounds fell on the base, and once again, the ammunition dump was detonated. 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. [120], On 23 February, KSCB received its worst bombardment of the entire battle. The Marines and their allies at Khe Sanh engaged tens of thousands, and killed thousands, of NVA over a period of many weeks. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, then began planning for incursion into Laos, and in October, the construction of an airfield at Khe Sanh was completed. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. 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. The Armys 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), with more than 400 helicopters under its control, conducted airmobile operations deeper into enemy-controlled areas. By the middle of January 1968, some 6,000 Marines and Army troops occupied the Khe Sanh Combat Base and its surrounding positions. These combined sources report a total of 354 KIA. The Operation Scotland tactical area of responsibility (TAOR) was limited to the area around Khe Sanh along Route 9 in western Quang Tri province. They were not included in the official Khe Sanh counts. Battle of Khe Sanh "What had been a combat base looked like rubble." A US Marine carries an American flag on his rifle during a recovery operation 6 miles south of Khe Sanh, Vietnam, June 17 . [80] Westmoreland insisted for several months that the entire Tet Offensive was a diversion, including, famously, attacks on downtown Saigon and obsessively affirming that the true objective of the North Vietnamese was Khe Sanh. The site was first established near the village and later moved to the French fort. Its main objectives were to inflict casualties on US troops and to isolate them in the remote border regions. I suspect he is also trying to draw everyone's attention away from the greatest area of threat, the northern part of I Corps. 3% were Asian, 7 or . While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. PAVN forces were driven out of the area around Khe Sanh after suffering 940 casualties. On Easter Sunday, April 14, the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines (3/26), assaulted Hill 881 North in order to clear the enemy firing positions. 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. The Marines, whose aircraft and doctrine were integral to their operations, were under no such centralized control. It claimed, however, that only three American advisors were killed during the action. The 26th Marine Regiment (26th Marines) is an inactivated infantry regiment of the United States Marine Corps. Marine Khe Sanh veteran Peter Brush is Vietnam Magazines book review editor. "[103] The Bru were excluded from evacuation from the highlands by an order from the ARVN I Corps commander, who ruled that no Bru be allowed to move into the lowlands. [131], Planning for the overland relief of Khe Sanh had begun as early as 25 January 1968, when Westmoreland ordered General John J. Tolson, commander, First Cavalry Division, to prepare a contingency plan. [171] When Hanoi made the decision to move in around the base, Khe Sanh was held by only one or two American battalions. [99] The relief effort was not launched until 15:00, and it was successful. 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. [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. "[84], Meanwhile, an interservice political struggle took place in the headquarters at Phu Bai Combat Base, Saigon, and the Pentagon over who should control aviation assets supporting the entire American effort in Southeast Asia. Only nine US battalions were available from Hue/Phu Bai northward. The September bombardments ranged from 100 to 150 rounds per day, with a maximum on 25 September of 1,190 rounds. [34] The heaviest action took place near Dak To, in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum. 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. server. During the darkness of January 20-21, the NVA launched a series of coordinated attacks against American positions. The Marines withdrew all salvageable material and destroyed everything else. [47][Note 3] Westmoreland regarded the choice as quite simple. Nevertheless, the US commander during the battle, General William Westmoreland, maintained that the true intention of Tet was to distract forces from Khe Sanh. The presence of the PAVN 1st Division prompted a 22-day battle there and had some of the most intense close-quarters fighting of the entire conflict. The PAVN claimed that Khe Sanh was "a stinging defeat from both the military and political points of view." Marines stayed in the area, conducting operations to recover the bodies of Marines killed previously. How many American soldiers died in the Battle of Ia Drang? If that failed, and it did, they hoped to attack American reinforcements along Route 9 between Khe Sanh and Laos. 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. A 77 day battle, Khe Sanh had been the biggest single battle of the Vietnam War to that point. The Marines suffered 155 killed in action and 425 wounded. [75] On 22 January, the first sensor drops took place, and by the end of the month, 316 acoustic and seismic sensors had been dropped in 44 strings. The advance would be supported by 102 pieces of artillery. The combat losses in February and March 1967 were a prelude to the "First Battle of Khe Sanh," one of the Vietnam War's hardest-fought battles, . [108] The most dramatic supply delivery system used at Khe Sanh was the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System, in which palletized supplies were pulled out of the cargo bay of a low-flying transport aircraft by means of an attached parachute. The link-up between the relief force and the Marines at KSCB took place at 08:00 on 8 April, when the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment entered the camp. Because of washed-out bridges and heavy enemy activity, however, the only way for Americans to get to Khe Sanh was by helicopter or airplane. [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. [85] Westmoreland had given his deputy commander for air operations, Air Force General William W. Momyer, the responsibility for coordinating all air assets during the operation to support KSCB. Of the 500 CIDG troops at Lang Vei, 200 had been killed or were missing and 75 more were wounded. One of the first enemy shells set off an explosion in the main ammunition dump. [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. [140] Operation Scotland II would continue until 28 February 1969 resulting in 435 Marines and 3304 PAVN killed. Due to severe losses, however, the NVA abandoned its plan for a massive ground attack. Not including ARVN Ranger, RF/PF, Forward Operation Base 3 U.S. Army, Royal Laotian Army and SOG commandos losses. "[136], Regardless, on 1 April, Operation Pegasus began. 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. 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. 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. [111] The base could also depend on fire support from US Army 175-mm guns located at Camp Carroll, east of Khe Sanh. Of the 24 Americans at the camp, 10 had been killed and 11 wounded. 216217. [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. On January 14, Marines from Company B, 3rd Recon Battalion, were moving up the north slope of Hill 881 North, a few miles northwest of Khe Sanh Combat Base. WALKI NA WZGRZU: PIERWSZA BITWA KHE SANH Edwarda F. Murphy'ego - twarda okadka w bardzo dobrym stanie | Books & Magazines, Books | eBay! At 21:30, the attack came on, but it was stifled by the small arms of the Rangers, who were supported by thousands of artillery rounds and air strikes. [20] These figures do not include casualties among Special Forces troops at Lang Vei, aircrews killed or missing in the area, or Marine replacements killed or wounded while entering or exiting the base aboard aircraft. At least 852 PAVN soldiers were killed during the action, as opposed to 50 American and South Vietnamese. 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. Click to View Online Archive The Battle of Khe Sanh was conducted northwestern Quaag Tri Province, South Vietnam, between January 21 and July 9, 1968 during the Vietnam War. [125], By mid-March, Marine intelligence began to note an exodus of PAVN units from the Khe Sanh sector. [125] On the night of 28 February, the combat base unleashed artillery and airstrikes on possible PAVN staging areas and routes of advance. [70] The Marines and ARVN dug in and hoped that the approaching Tt truce (scheduled for 2931 January) would provide some respite. [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. Background [ edit] Even so, Westmoreland insisted for it not only to be occupied by the Marines but also for it to be reinforced. North Vietnamese Army gained control of the Khe Sanh region after the American withdrawal. The aircrew then had to contend with antiaircraft fire on the way out. Five Marines were killed on January 19 and 20, while on reconnaissance patrols. In 1966 the Marines built a base adjacent to the Army position, and organized their combat activities around named operations. On April 6, a front-page story in The New York Times declared that the siege of Khe Sanh had been lifted. [127] At 08:00 the following day, Operation Scotland was officially terminated. U.S. Marines and their allies killed thousands of NVA, but to solve the riddle of Khe Sanh, you have to recount the numbers. The attack was to have been supported by armor and artillery. As a result, 65% of all supplies were delivered by paradrops delivered by C-130 aircraft, mostly by the USAF, whose crews had significantly more experience in airdrop tactics than Marine air crews. [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. 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. Westmoreland believed that the latter was the case, and his belief was the basis for his desire to stage "Dien Bien Phu in reverse. [57][58] They were assisted in their emplacement efforts by the continuing bad weather of the winter monsoon. The distinctions between Operations Scotland, Pegasus and Scotland II, while important from the command perspective, were not necessarily apparent to individual Marines. This is the battles end date from the North Vietnamese perspective. [80] Westmoreland had already ordered the nascent Igloo White operation to assist in the Marine defense. It was later renamed "Dye Marker" by MACV in September 1967, just as the PAVN began the first phase of their offensive by launching attacks against Marine-held positions across the DMZ.