The Viet Cong had constructed some sort of headquarters compound, or staging area, or supply depot or maybe even an officers club. Most attacks centered on military targets near Saigon and Da Nang and were quickly beaten off. NEW on HistoryNet: Attack on Long Binh, a 1969 Viet Cong attack on a US logistics base in Vietnam #VietnamWar http://trib.al/poYUWdo Dailymotion, Interestingly, the only thing that came readily to mind was a small sign I discovered at one of the outdoor latrines set back in the woods: ALL TERDS [sic.] Stephen Hugh Lane SP5 Lead Clerk Jan 1969 to Sep 1970, MOS 67N20 has checked in and joined the 3/4 Cav Chapter. In the attack on Bien Hoa Air Base the PAVN lost 264 killed and 87 captured while ARVN losses were 10 killed and US. Numerous bases were attacked, these attacks were all beaten back but did inflict casualties and reinforced the fact that PAVN/VC forces were able to mount attacks at will. Unfortunately, the reporting was delayed and did not reach Long Binh until the morning of 22 February 1969, the day the defector warned the attacks were set to begin. Bucks County Pennsylvania United States USA, Del Rio Texas Laughlin Air Force Base USA, Roxborough Pennsylvania United States USA, U-Tapao Royal Thai Air Force Base Thailand. My driver arrived at the usual time, a little before sundown, on Feb. 22, for my 12-hour graveyard shift at the 1st Logistics Command headquarters. Upon arrival, we observed a large battle going on in the south and east perimeters of the base, Carpenter said. With no friendly troops visible between me and the battle, into my M16 went the magazine of tracers in preparation for a confrontation with anyone who might break through that wall of gunfire, something at which the Viet Cong were quite adept. [4]:99100, PAVN/VC retreating to the south from Da Nang were intercepted by elements of the 1st Marine Regiment and ARVN 1st Battalion, 51st Regiment 11km south of Da Nang losing 139 dead in 3 days of fighting. This site uses cookies to improve your experience and to help show content that is more relevant to your interests. I was a 2nd Lieutenant, on my second night in Vietnam when the attack on Long Bing Post began at 2 AM. Excerpt from 1st Aviation Brigade Newsletter: The VC attack at Long Binh was directed at the 12th Combat Aviation Group and II Field Force Vietnam. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Nov. 17, 2000. Aerial view of Long Binh Post in Vietnam. A U.S. 2nd Field Force soldier poses. remembrance of shared experience. Banned from the Long Binh O'Club: The Club was a . You can imagine how frightful that was to the mind of a 6-year-old. The Viet Cong were no longer in the tunnels around Long Binh, most probably having taken the subway back to the main tunnel complex at Cu Chi. (On earlier AC-47s, one of the guns had been mounted in the door.) Hc_Thn. Soldiers lined inside the building waiting for their number. Sorry, Dad, I couldnt make that happen.. [4]:100, After dawn on 23 February a VC unit was detected near the Ha Vang District and the Marine security force killed 6 and captured 2 and forced the rest of the unit to retreat into a cemetery where they were attacked by the ARVN 21st Ranger Battalion the next day losing a further 57 killed. more independent documentary Letters from Long Binh. The gunship, situated on the lawn of the museum, was dedicated in October 2004. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Inbound, Carpenter had called for an ambulance and a medevac helicopter to meet them on the ramp. A battalion of the 274th Viet Cong Main Force (VCMF) Regiment of the 5 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) Division, attacked the southern perimeter of Long Binh Post. In the interest of security - and to ease communications - the army centralized Saigon's American forces in 1967 by stationing them all at an enormous compound built just outside of the city. A three-second burst would saturate an area the size of a football field. ARVN psychological operations units broadcast repeated loud-speaker appeals and warnings, and all of the remaining villagers and several wounded PAVN/VC evacuated out of Thai Riep. Jim Van Eldik is a retired Army lieutenant colonel. As noted, the 277th S&S BN (DS) stationed in Long Binh became the superior command 30 August 1968, physically arrived in Tay Ninh by early January 1969 and remained in Tay Ninh until mid July 1970 {approximate} when it was re-assigned to Di An {near Saigon} - (see 1970 History, where the 228th was for all intent and purposes reduced to a . Passing of colors to the new commander. 1971 serving with the 95th Military Police Battalion. After years of Army training one cannot help but itch for a shot at the enemy, especially when all the advantages are on ones own side. . View of surrounding areas. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. At that instant the flare separated and ignited in the air, but clear of the aircraft.. maxhightForP2 = 14168; YouTube, I crawled to the location of the flare. Tet 1969 refers to the attacks mounted by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and Viet Cong (VC) in February 1969 in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, one year after the original Tet Offensive. I heard that five American soldiers were killed and some 30 wounded. My Lightboxes | Shortly, another mortar battery began firing. It weighed 27 pounds. He delivered the keynote address. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. Bruce Stern at his desk in Long Binh, circa 1968-69. . On top of that came the domino theory of 1954, invented by then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Once the sun came up, a troop of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment found 139 dead enemy soldiers, Tran, who was from the Haiphong area of North Vietnam, had high expectations for a victory in the attack, according to an interview in, On the other hand, one is left to ponder what affect seeding the battlefield or, even better, seeding the, https://www.historynet.com/long-binh-battle/, 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. 20 July 1969 circa - Mortar attack on base camp A-414 Thanh Tri. More recently, Enlisted Heritage Hall obtained a surplus C-47 and converted it to a mock-up of an AC-47, with the colors and markings that Spooky 71 bore in February 1969. The three guns were mounted in window ports, just forward of the open cargo door. The remaining elements of the company were held in ready reserve. Tet offensive attack on Long Binh and Bien Hoa, 31 January 1968: Date: 31 January-2 February 1968: Location: Bien Hoa, Bien Hoa Air Base and Long Binh Post, South Vietnam. He was filling in for a loadmaster who had taken his place when he was sick. Week of December 12-18, 2021: Heroism Amidst an Ambush, December 17, 1968. Hugging the deadly device to his body, he dragged himself back to the rear of the aircraft and hurled the flare through the open cargo door. The idea seemed absurd! The soldiers with old (MPC) currency notes takes the receipt and proceeds towards the next officer. I try to control what I say, although for the most part, Im very quiet. Danil_1969 4 ting trc. For my personal defense, I relied upon a somewhat rusty M16 kept around the office. It was an unlucky hit. As far as political considerations go, he hardly seemed interested in building a communist utopia at all. Viet Cong attack on Tan Son Nhut Air Base (1966) From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. 5 Lt xem. The squad came under an immediate rain of grenades, automatic weapons fire and rocket propelled grenades from an entrenched enemy platoon hidden in the top of the berm. I couldnt walk. Thoughts now turned to what we should do if we came face to face with the enemy. "On the second firing pass, the mortars firing on Long Binh were silenced." The attack lifted momentarily, and the gunship began dropping flares to provide illumination . The resultant damage was a hole two feet in diameter through the wing and over 3,500 shrapnel holes riddling the fuselage, said Lt. Col. Robert A. Davidson, commander of the AC-47 forward operating location at Bien Hoa. He was the center of much attention but also the victim of bureaucracy. Scenes of Viet Cong bodies around the perimeter of the base.Please Note! center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places on June 8, 1972. (Vietnam War period). Photo courtesy of Tom Lefavour and taken around October 1969. Remember: Using others' images on the web without their permission may be bad manners, or worse, copyright infringement. The pilot was Maj. Kenneth B. Carpenter, flying his first combat mission as aircraft commander. Beyond that was an open area where tanks were patrolling back and forth, apparently looking for VC who had squirreled themselves down into rat holes trying to avoid the tanks. "Project CHECO Southeast Asia Report #105 - Special Report: The Fourth Offensive - 23 February-3 April 1969", Cold War International History Project's Cold War Files, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tet_1969&oldid=1142428918, This page was last edited on 2 March 2023, at 09:26. Near Saigon, the VC made attacks on Long Binh and Bien Hoa. Tran Van Thiet, 19, had been left behind. I am the historian for the 11th Armored Cavalry Veterans of Vietnam and Cambodia (11th ACVVC). But now the tough Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army itself were coming. He will look for photos. The 64-year-old Army veteran died suddenly of a heart attack. ), and that the VC suffered heavy casualties that day, with about only 6 VC left after the shooting stopped, and these were taken prisoner. Two of the pockets were destroyed by the next morning resulting in the capture of the acting commander of the 141st Regiment. The occupants were helplessly slammed against the floor and fuselage like so many rag dolls., At that moment, a loud explosion was heard and a bright flash filled the aircraft, said Maj. William P. Platt, the navigator. We're weird, he said. The intense heat of the flare would burn rapidly through the aluminum floor of the cargo bay and drop on the empennage control cables, destroying them and causing the aircraft to go out of control. SSG Richard E, Slaven died from his wounds the next day. Members of the 1st Squadron 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, surround their M551, Air Droppable Assault Vehicle as they wait for the word to move out, 23 February 1969 Overview; The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launch artillery attacks on over 100 population centers and military . [Three] thousand rounds a minute was more than sufficient.. .Anyway, the U.S. effort in Vietnam was (believe it or not) ultimately successful, for at the end, it was politically untenable for the Soviet Union to establish at Cam Ranh Bay its coveted "warm water" nuclear submarine base --- which, to my thinking, was what Vietnam was all about. 30. The attack lifted momentarily, and the gunship began dropping flares to provide illumination requested by a nearby ground unit. Retired Army Col. Paris Davis, 83, stood in the East Room of the White House on Friday as President Joe Biden draped the Medal of Honor around his neck, nearly six decades after he saved the lives of three fellow troops during the Vietnam War.. The deployment, which began March 1, is part of an exercise dubbed Agile Reaper 23-1. Convoy of M-113 ARCs and M-551 assault vehicles move out of camp and drive along road. The ARVN units swiftly moved into blocking positions, and by daybreak, the PAVN/VC were surrounded. Soldiers walk around outside the headquarters. Most estimates put the Viet Cong deaths at over 100. We heard later that the VC who attacked were trained as something akin to Peace Corps workers in North Vietnam, but when they arrived in South Vietnam, they met with a VC commander who told them that there was only one more small pocket of corrupt "fat desk soldiers" to root out in order to rid South Vietnam completely of U.S. soldiers. The miniguns fired four rounds of invisible ball bullets followed by one tracer round, but the bullets came so fast they looked like a continuous red stream. Result: United States and South Vietnam victory: Belligerents Among those present was Carpenter, the commander of Spooky 71, now retired and living in Marshall, Tex. But a battle was waiting instead. 25/26 January 1969. Levitow and one of the gunners, Sgt. I am interested in corresponding with any Black Scarf soldiers who . Over time, the Department of Defense plans to turn. He decided to try a different specialty after an experience in which the power was not turned off when I thought it was turned off, so he cross trained as a loadmaster. 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. His grieving son had no option but to file away those unanswered questions forever. Location: Long Binh Vietnam. Perhaps a word of explanation is in order on how I and all the others in our mix of volunteers and draftees ended up in this hot, smelly, unsafe corner of the world. Textual Records: Correspondence and daily journal, 1972-73. DaNang Ammo Dump April 27 1969. As Levitow dragged one of the other airmen toward the center of the cabin, he saw the flare between No. In another scene, a large crane is used to stack shells in the ammunition dump. Seventh Air Force, among others, expressed concern that transmissions might be intercepted and give warning of the gunships approach to the enemy. The airplane made it over the minefield and onto the overrun, just barely. Spookys operators had successfully resisted pressure to change the call sign. He had a serious leg wound and was evacuated to the field hospital across the street from my barracks. The point man for Team #75, SP/4 Cressman, tripped a Viet Cong antipersonnel mine on the trail that runs down from the south side of the hill to the Buong River. Soldiers counting the notes. The Tet 1969 offensive was carried out mostly by Viet Cong irregulars. (Lt. Cdr. The attack continued into 27 February when the Marines overran the PAVN resulting in a total of more than 200 killed. Landing short would have been a disaster. 45th Air Ambulance Medical Company helipad Long Binh, November 1969.jpg 1,820 1,434 . Soldiers of the 221st Signal Company Vietnam have military payment certificates (MPC) exchanged at their headquarters in Long Binh Vietnam as part of a country wide general order. He reported to the 3rd Special Operations Squadron at Nha Trang in July 1968 and was assigned to the squadrons forward operating location at Bien Hoa. For reasons unknown, it had not been emptied when the AC-47 went to Vietnam. Nov. Dec. CRITICALPAST.COM: The view is from the compound of the 20. Intelligence had indicators of the pending attacks. Between 1970 and 72 my father wound up in Vietnam as a civilian aircraft mechanic, working on helicopters. The series of assaults met heavy resistance by the battalion of PAVN who had turned the villagers sandbagged shelters into a series of well-fortified defensive positions. Many of the tracers bounced off the ground like rubber balls. More than 100 individual and crew-served weapons were captured. South Vietnamese woman 1969 Sep 15, 2017. . Nothing was more effective than a gunship in breaking up such attacks. 11 November SP/4s Jared Kelley and John R. Klemm, tend to their gear during a recon mission in the Tactical Area Of Responsibility. The Tet lunar new year of 1968the one history remembershad seen large-scale coordinated attacks on cities, provincial capitals, and bases all over South Vietnam. If your URL is correct, you'll see an image preview here. Shot up and near stalling, Spooky approached Bien Hoa in the dark. [4]:99, Before dawn on 23 February, the first day of Tt, the PAVN/VC fired 25 122mm rockets at Da Nang's deep water port hitting an ARVN ammunition dump and a fuel tank farm at Da Nang Air Base and cause minor damage to an A-6A and 6 helicopters at the Air Base. The flare posed a deadly danger in several ways. Is it possible Tran and his friends would have simply elected to return to North Vietnam and forgotten the idea of an attack on Long Binh altogether? Pan Am had a ticket office on base. Small-arms fire opened up in his path. . On July 1, an article titled "Libya and Syria: When Anti-Imperialism Goes Wrong" was published on the North Star website, signed by "Pham Binh of Occupy Wall Street, Class War Camp." The article argues that imperialist interventions in Libya and Syria are justified because they are demanded by forces the author calls revolutionary. My hope was that no more than one or two VC would reach my position.