Vietnam Autumn 2022

Spring High The Air Force Operation That Failed Big

HOMEFRONT Rolling Stones’ hits rated among greatest

CHARGE! DA NANG OUTPOST, 1967

MARINE PATTON TANKS ATTACK ENEMY INVADERS

From Unknown To Known

Arlington National Cemetery controversy

‘Angels of War’

Nurses endured enemy fire to save lives AUTUMN 2022 HISTORYNET.com

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AUTUMN 2022

ON THE COVER

An M48A3 Patton tank is on the move in Vietnam in 1967.

CO RENTMEESTER/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/SHUTTERSTOCK INSET: JEFF HOCHBERG/GETTY IMAGES.

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‘GOING WEIGHTLESS IN A TANK’

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

When a Marine infantry platoon was in danger, Marine tankers drove to them so fast over rough ground that a man inside floated up to the top of the tank. By Samuel N. Thomas Jr.

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6 Feedback Letters 8 Intel Autumn Briefing 14 Reflections

The Collapsing Pyramid of Valor 18 Arsenal The M54 Gun Truck

20 Homefront

What’s Your Favorite Song?

58 Media Digest Reviews 64 Hall of Valor

R. Steve Ritchie

38

“What did they think this was— an air show?”

—See story, page 38

A HARD AND CRUEL TRUTH

Air Force F-105D planes went into North Vietnam to destroy enemy surface-to-air missiles. The American raid didn’t go as expected. By Mark Carlson

30

THE UNKNOWN WHO WASN’T

The remains of a Vietnam War casualty buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier were steeped in controversy.

By James H. Willbanks

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

46 A HEALING FORCE

Among the first in Vietnam and the last to leave, nurses fought to save lives even when it endangered theirs.

By Tom Edwards

52

ARMORED CAVALRY

Heavily armored and gunned troop carriers, developed during the Vietnam War, aggressively pursued enemy forces.

By Jon Guttman and David T. Zabecki AU T U M N 2 0 2 2

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MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER

AUTUMN 2022 VOL. 35, NO. 2

CHUCK SPRINGSTON EDITOR ZITA BALLINGER FLETCHER SENIOR EDITOR JERRY MORELOCK SENIOR EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR DAVID T. ZABECKI EDITOR EMERITUS HARRY SUMMERS JR. FOUNDING EDITOR BRIAN WALKER GROUP DESIGN DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JON C. BOCK ART DIRECTOR GUY ACETO PHOTO EDITOR

DEADLY MISSION

F-105D Thunderchief fighterbombers lined up at Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base, like the ones shown above, took off on July 27, 1965, for an attack on North Vietnamese surface-to-air missile sites—an attack that went horribly wrong. To learn more about “the Thuds,” visit Historynet.com and search: “Thunderchief.”

Through firsthand accounts and stunning photos, our website puts you in the field with the troops who fought one of America’s most controversial wars.

HISTORYNET Sign up for our FREE weekly e-newsletter at: historynet.com/newsletters

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Brewing Controversy Regarding “Did Local Beer Contain Formaldehyde?” by Erik Villard (Intel, A Controversial Question, June 2022), an equally improbable rumor was that soft drinks and beer sold by kids on the roadside contained ground-up glass to kill unwary GIs. Alan Hubner Houston Beer and soda cans with pull tabs were not allowed for our forces in Vietnam. I was in the 25th Military Police Company, 25th Infantry Division, 1968-69, and we FEEDBACK were told that the “pull tab,” unlike the modern “pop top” cans, had a rubberlike membrane on the underside which could be flexed enough to allow a hypodermic needle to be inserted and chemical or biological agents to be injected without depressurizing the contents. If you just barely lifted the tab, you could see the membrane of stretchy material under the aluminum. Like P-38 C-ration can openers, church keys were ubiquitous.

Michael Meacham Phoenix

Hendrix Critics Regarding “Rock ’n’ Rolling Paratrooper,” by Fred L. Borch (Reflections, June 2022), about Jimi Hendrix’s entry into 101st Airborne Division as a way to escape jail and his early discharge after pretending to be gay: Of all the men who served wearing the 101st patch and the thousands who died wearing it, you did them a great disservice and dishonor by printing the story of Jimi Hendrix. I served with the division from 1963 until 1966 and served with the 1st Brigade in Vietnam 19656

Interesting that Jimi Hendrix’s crime was described as “riding in a stolen car,” sugarcoating his actual crime of grand theft auto. Twice!

The fact that he only served 10 months of his three-year enlistment speaks very poorly of him, considering he was looking at 10 years in prison. If he had been given the choice of serving 10 months in prison over three years in the Army, does anyone doubt that he’d choose prison? And he publicly hid the reason for his discharge, choosing to blame it on a fictitious injury [broken ankle from a jump]. He deserves no praise or admiration!

Rick Robinson Hampton Bays, New York Corrections The article “Fighters of the Mountains” in the December 2021 issue incorrectly stated that Capt. Ronald Shackleton was the first Special Forces A-team commander to arrive at Buon Enao in December 1961. In fact, it was Capt. Larry Arritola and his Detachment A-35 who arrived in December 1961 to comprise the initial American Special Forces element in the village.

A photo in the article “Never Been Bombed Like They Are Going to Be Bombed” in the April 2022 issue incorrectly identified the aircraft and Navy attack squadron on carrier USS Constellation. The plane was an A7 Corsair II. The attack squadron was VA-146.

Email your feedback on Vietnam magazine articles to Vietnam@historynet.com, subject line: Feedback. Please include city and state of residence.

Dear Vietnam readers: Beginning with this issue, Vietnam is moving to a quarterly publication schedule.

But worry not: We will extend existing subscriptions, so you’ll get all the issues for which you paid. Meanwhile, we’ve made exciting improvements, with other surprises in the works—all in the aim of giving our valued readers even more than before: • We’ve redesigned our website to make it more compelling, active and easier to search. Two million users visit every month. Check us out at Historynet.com.

• And we’re offering a subscribers-only email newsletter, Vietnam Monthly Disptach, which includes fresh material not available elsewhere. Soon subscribers will also have exclusive access to special on-line content with the insight, excitement and quality you expect from Vietnam.

• Lastly, we’re going to digitize all back issues of Vietnam, going back to our debut issue in 1988.

This unprecedented resource will soon be available to subscribers.

We’ll keep you up to date.

If you aren’t a subscriber, go to Shop.Historynet. com and sign up today so you don’t miss a thing. If you are a subscriber, thank you— and stand by for great things to come.

Please reference the terms and conditions of your subscription for additional details on magazine delivery.

HARRY HALLMAN

66. If you want names of men the American people should read about and remember, contact me I’ll send you the names of the men we lost. Never have I bragged about Hendrix serving in the same division. That part of the unit history doesn’t need to be publicized.

John E. Pagel Glendora, California

VIETNAM

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Shi Se

A commission renaming bases honoring Confederates recommends that Georgia’s Fort Benning take the name of Vietnam War commander Hal Moore.

Fort Hood, Texas—Fort Cavazos

The fort’s new namesake, Gen. Richard E. Cavazos, served in Korea and Vietnam. In Korea he commanded a company of Puerto Rican soldiers and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest valor award. In Vietnam, he led the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, and received another DSC. In 1982, Cavazos became the first Hispanic American four-star general.

Fort Lee, Virginia—Fort Gregg-Adams

Fort Benning, Georgia—Fort Moore

The new name honors Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife, Julia. Moore, who also fought in Korea, became famous for his leadership of 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), in the 1965 Battle of Ia Drang, the first large battle between the U.S. and North Vietnamese armies.

His book, written with journalist Joe Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once … and Young, was a bestseller. Julia Moore persuaded the Pentagon to deliver casualty notices in a more compassionate manner. The couple were active in military family support programs.

8

The renaming is a tribute to Col. Van T. Barfoot, a Choctaw Indian from Mississippi who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. In World War II he received the Medal of Honor for single handily taking out three German machine gun nests and a tank in one day. In Vietnam, he flew Army helicopter combat missions and earned multiple awards of the Air Medal.

Fort Rucker, Alabama—Fort Novosel

This switch honors Army aviator Michael J. Novosel Sr., who flew B-29 bombers in World War II, served with the Air Force stateside during the Korean War and went to Vietnam twice as an Army Huey helicopter pilot flying medevac missions. On his second tour, with the 82nd Medical Detachment as a chief warrant officer 4, Novosel’s heroic evacuation of wounded South Vietnamese troops was recognized with the Medal of Honor.

—Zita Ballinger Fletcher

VIETNAM

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HUM IMAGES/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

F

ive men who served in the Vietnam War are in line to have U.S. Army bases named in their honor, according to a list released May 24 by a commission Congress established in 2021 to rename bases that commemorate Confederate officers.

The Naming Commission received more than 34,000 submissions for new names at nine forts. The commission must present its recommendations to Congress before Oct. 1, 2022. Here are the five recommendations for forts to be renamed for Vietnam veterans:

Fort Pickett, Virginia—Fort Barfoot

COURTESY OF THE MOORE FAMILY; INSET: U.S. ARMY

NEW BASE NAMES HONOR VIETNAM SERVICE MEMBERS

This name recognizes Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg, who served in Korea and Vietnam, and Lt. Col. Charity Adams, of World War II. Both worked in critical supply and support services. Gregg, one of the first Black officers in a desegregated Army, commanded the 96th Supply and Service Battalion in Vietnam and rose to deputy chief of staff of logistics for the Army. In 1944 Adams commanded the first unit of Black women overseas, the 6888th Central Postal Directory in England.

A CON T R OV ER SI A L QU EST ION

A SERIES EXAMINING CONTENTIOUS ISSUES OF THE VIETNAM WAR BY ERIK VILLARD The United States consistently identified corruption—defined here as efforts of government officials to enrich themselves or close associates using public funds—as one of the most pervasive problems within the South Vietnamese government.

Leaders in Saigon found it hard to build popular support when the economic and political system appeared to be rigged in favor of a small, well-connected elite.

The Viet Cong made corruption a central theme, promising to eliminate all profiteers and dishonest officials once they seized power.

Corruption sapped South Vietnam’s military strength when senior officials pocketed money or resources meant for the armed forces, set up rolls of “ghost soldiers” to collect the pay for nonexistent troops, took bribes in exchange for contracts or put personal connections above proven abilities when they doled out jobs.

The massive infusion of U.S. dollars into South Vietnam between 1965 and 1974 fed the corruption. During that period, the United States provided an average of $1.5 billion in economic and military assistance each year to a country whose annual gross domestic product averaged about $10 billion. As in Iraq and Afghanistan more recently, the attempt to build a stable government in a poor, war-torn region requires a vast amount of money and often enriches the well-connected instead of funding crucial needs.

It is difficult to determine the extent that corruption weakened South Vietnam.

Between 1963 and 1967, when the South Vietnamese political landscape was in turmoil, American officials pushed anticorruption measures as a priority for “winning hearts and minds” and thus winning the war. During the Tet Offensive of January-February 1968, the communists attempted to cripple the new government of President Nguyen Van Thieu, who became head of state in 1967. In the wake of the crisis, Thieu tamped down on corrupt activities within the military and helped the South Vietnamese armed forces emerge stronger than before.

Some corrupt South Vietnamese of-

ficials went to prison, but kickbacks, skimming and insider dealing remained until the fall of Saigon in 1975.

The 1973 Arab oil embargo, aimed at supporters of Israel, raised the price of oil and created inflation around the globe that hurt Western economies and countries they backed more than it hurt communist countries. Inflation’s effect on the U.S. government’s budget was one of the factors in the aid reduction to South Vietnam in 1974. With inflation and aid cutbacks, Thieu’s government struggled to fund its military. Rampant inflation was more destructive than corruption. The final blow was the North Vietnamese blitzkrieg of early 1975.

Corruption continued to be a major problem even after the communists took power. In 2021, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, which rates countries for corruption on a sale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean) placed Vietnam at 39— a slight improvement from its score of 31 a decade earlier. South Vietnam may have had a problem with corruption, but the communist government has proved to be no more honest.

HUM IMAGES/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

COURTESY OF THE MOORE FAMILY; INSET: U.S. ARMY

Was the South’s Government Corrupt?

Dr. Erik Villard is a Vietnam War specialist at the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.

President Nguyen Van Thieu, who tried to reduce corruption in the military, meets with President Richard Nixon on Midway Island in 1969. Billions of dollars in U.S. aid were an enticing target for corrupt officials.

AU T U M N 2 0 2 2

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Fan Favorites 1972

Highest Rated TV Shows (1972-73 season) 1.

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Top Albums

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HARVEST, Neil Young TAPESTRY, Carole King AMERICAN PIE, Don McLean TEASER AND THE FIRECAT, Cat Stevens HOT ROCKS 1964-1971, The Rolling Stones KILLER, Alice Cooper FIRST TAKE, Roberta Flack AMERICA, America MUSIC, Carole King MADMAN ACROSS THE WATER, Elton John

Top Grossing Films (Domestic box office, in 1972 dollars)

Bestselling Fiction

Top Singles

Bestselling Nonfiction

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ALL IN THE FAMILY (season 3) CBS SANFORD AND SON (season 2) NBC HAWAII FIVE-O (season 5) CBS MAUDE (season 1) CBS BRIDGET LOVES BERNIE (season 1) CBS THE NBC SUNDAY MYSTERY MOVIE (season 2) NBC THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW (season 3) CBS GUNSMOKE (season 18) CBS THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY (season 19) NBC IRONSIDE (season 6) NBC THE GODFATHER . . . . . . . . . . . . $133,698,921 THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE . . . . . . $93,300,000 WHAT’S UP DOC? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $57,142,740 DELIVERANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $46,122,355 DEEP THROAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $45,000,000 JEREMIAH JOHNSON . . . . . . . . . . $44,693,786 CABARET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $41,326,446 THE GETAWAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $36,734,619 LAST TANGO IN PARIS . . . . . . . . . . $36,144,824 LADY SINGS THE BLUES . . . . . . . . . $19,726,490

THE FIRST TIME EVER I SAW YOUR FACE, Roberta Flack ALONE AGAIN (NATURALLY), Gilbert O’Sullivan AMERICAN PIE, Don McLean WITHOUT YOU, Harry Nilsson THE CANDY MAN, Sammy Davis Jr. I GOTCHA, Joe Tex LEAN ON ME, Bill Withers BABY DON’T GET HOOKED ON ME, Mac Davis BRAND NEW KEY, Melanie DADDY DON’T YOU WALK SO FAST, Wayne Newton

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JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL, Richard Bach AUGUST 1914, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn THE ODESSA FILE, Frederick Forsyth THE DAY OF THE JACKAL, Frederick Forsyth THE WORD, Irving Wallace THE WINDS OF WAR, Herman Wouk CAPTAINS AND THE KINGS, Taylor Caldwell TWO FROM GALILEE, Marjorie Holmes MY NAME IS ASHER LEV, Chaim Potok SEMI-TOUGH, Dan Jenkins THE LIVING BIBLE, Kenneth Taylor I’M OK, YOU’RE OK, Thomas Harris OPEN MARRIAGE, Nena and George O’Neill HARRY S. TRUMAN, Margaret Truman DR. ATKINS’ DIET REVOLUTION, Robert C. Atkin BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS MENU COOK BOOK THE PETER PRESCRIPTION, Laurence J. Peter A WORLD BEYOND, Ruth Montgomery JOURNEY TO IXTLAN, Carlos Castaneda BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS LOW-CALORIE DESSERTS

CHART SOURCES: TV SHOWS: CTVA-THE CLASSIC TV ARCHIVE/NIELSEN RATINGS; FILMS: THE NUMBERS (MOVIE BUSINESS WEBSITE); SINGLES: BILLBOARD, YEAR-END CHARTS, HOT 100 SONGS; ALBUMS: BILLBOARD, YEAR-END CHARTS, BILLBOARD 200 ALBUMS; FICTION: LITERARY HUB/PUBLISHERS WEEKLY; NON-FICTION: LITERARY HUB/PUBLISHERS WEEKLY; RECORD: GUY ACETO COLLECTION; TV: NBCUNIVERSAL VIA GETTY IMAGES; BOOKS: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES; GODFATHER PHOTO 12/ALAMY: ALBUMS: GUY ACETO COLECTION

What the Vietnam War generation was watching, reading and listening to 50 years ago

VIETNAM

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Vietnam. He retired from the Army in 1994 as a sergeant major.

—Zita Ballinger Fletcher

12

shot down. “Scared or not scared,” he said in a 2016 interview with FOX 26 News (KMPH-TV) in Fresno, “I didn’t know life or death. You only know the now.” Vang immigrated to the United States in 1980, where he became a pillar of his local Hmong community.

He spearheaded successful efforts to create a Hmong language program in the Fresno Unified School District.

—Zita Ballinger Fletcher

CANLEY: U.S. MARINE CORPS; STUMPF: MEDAL OF HONOR MUSEUM; VANG: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES

John L. Canley, a Marine awarded the Medal of Honor in 2018 for actions in Vietnam 50 years earlier during the battle of Hue, died May 11, 2022, at age 84 in Bend, Oregon. Canley, born Dec. 20, 1937, in Caledonia, Arkansas, enlisted in the Corps in 1953. Canley served in South Korea and Japan before he went to Vietnam, where he was deployed three times. In January 1968 Canley was a gunnery sergeant for Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. He led his Marines through a series of intense fights with North Vietnamese Army troops attacking the city. Canley repeatedly ran through enemy fire and carried wounded Marines to safety. In 1970 he was awarded the Navy Cross, the second-highest valor award for Marines, recognizing his heroism at Hue. The men Canley commanded felt he should have received the Medal of Honor and in 2005 began a campaign to get his medal upgraded. They succeeded. Canley was presented with the Medal of Honor on Oct. 17, 2018.

He became the first living Black Marine to receive the country’s highest military decoration. Others were awarded it posthumously. Canley retired from the Marines as a sergeant major in 1981 and made his home in Oxnard, California.

—Military Times

Kenneth E. Stumpf, whose leadership of his Army squad under enemy fire in Vietnam resulted in a Medal of Honor, died April 23, 2022, in Tomah, Wisconsin. He was 77.

Stumpf, born in Neenah, Wisconsin, on Sept. 28, 1944, was drafted into the Army in 1965. He volunteered to go to Vietnam. On April 25, 1967, Stumpf, a specialist 4, was told to take his squad from 3rd Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, and hunt for enemy combatants nearby in Quang Ngai province in northern South Vietnam. The squad had walked only a short distance when enemy bunkers opened fire. Three of Stumpf’s men were severely wounded and separated from the others. “I told the guys, ‘I’m going to get my men,’” he recalled later. Stumpf ran through enemy fire three times to rescue them. He then organized an attack on the bunkers and personally destroyed one as he charged it throwing grenades. Stumpf received his Medal of Honor on Sept. 19, 1968. He was discharged in 1967, but later reenlisted and served two more tours in

Nhia Long Vang, a former major in an anticommunist force in Laos and prominent Hmong community leader in Fresno, California, died on March 2, 2022. No age was given. He and others in the Hmong ethnic group were trained by the CIA for covert operations against the North Vietnamese in Laos from 1961 to 1975 during what’s been called the “Secret War.” Vang served in the Special Guerrilla Unit and carried out reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines.

He went undercover to seek out targets for U.S. bombing missions and rescued American pilots whose planes had been

VIETNAM

VIEP-221000-INTEL.indd 12

7/5/22 9:05 AM

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President Lyndon B. Johnson talks with four Medal of Honor recipients at the White House on May 14,1968. From left are Air Force Capt. Gerald O. Young, Navy Petty Officer 1st Class James E. Williams, Marine Sgt. Richard A. Pittman and Army Spc. 5 Charles C. Hagemeister.

THE COLLAPSING PYRAMID OF VALOR EMPHASIS ON THE MEDAL OF HONOR UNDERMINES VIETNAM VETERANS’ LEGACY OF VALOR Today, sadly, a vast number of Americans seemingly have heard of only one valor award—the Medal of Honor. This narrow-minded focus unfairly diminishes the honors of Vietnam veterans and others awarded different valor medals. Ask the “person on the street” to name another medal awarded for heroism besides the Medal of Honor. Perhaps some people will think of “the Purple Heart,” awarded for wounds or death REFLECTIONS in combat. Only a few would be able to cite the armed services’ second-highest valor award, the Army’s Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy/Marine Corps’ Navy Cross, the Coast Guard Cross, or the Air Force/Space Force Cross.

The Silver Star might vaguely “ring a bell” with some, but many would likely be hard-pressed to describe its significance and probably wouldn’t know it is the third-highest valor award for all military services. The military’s Bronze Star Medal and Commendation Medal with “V” (for valor) devices are arguably beyond the ken of most Americans.

Yet the heroism those awards represent is no less deserving of recognition than the valor of the celebrated few who have received the Medal of Honor. Although the Medal of Honor is appropriately placed atop the “Pyramid of Valor” all valor awards reflect the bravery, blood and sacrifice of 14

America’s finest, often earned at the price of their lives in desperate combat with communist forces in Vietnam and other foes elsewhere.

As a result of the general public’s unfamiliarity with the military and a focus on the Medal of Honor, the carefully crafted Pyramid of Valor is collapsing into a single “all or nothing” award.

Some people believe that a service member’s heroism must be rewarded with the Medal of Honor to be properly recognized, and therefore the family or other advocates will call for a medal upgrade by claiming that the courage and sacrifice of someone previously recognized with the Distinguished Service Cross, Navy Cross or Silver Star is being unfairly denied the Medal of Honor.

Those whose knowledge of military awards is limited to the Medal of Honor think even the nation’s second-highest valor awards, the service crosses, are somehow insufficient recognition.

AP PHOTO

By Jerry Morelock

VIETNAM

VIEP-221000-REFLECTIONS.indd 14

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Distinguished Service Cross

Siver Star

Distinguished Flying Cross

Medal of Honor Awards

Anything less than the Medal of Honor is considered an insult to the service member’s valor, an “injustice” or not equal to the heroic actions that took place. This attitude diminishes the true heroism of tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans whose valor was justly recognized by TOTAL MEDALS medals less prestigious than the Medal of Honor.

The Medal of Honor, created in 1861 during the Civil INDIVIDUALS War, was first presented in March 1863 to six members of Andrews’ Raiders, who captured a Confederate train U.S. CIVIL WAR in Georgia in 1862, an action re-created in the 1956 film The Great Locomotive Chase. (Some acts of valor that took place prior to the Andrews’ raid were recognized SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR with the Medal of Honor after the war.)

The Medal of Honor was the only valor award a heroic service member could receive and wear on his chest WORLD WAR I from the Civil War until the Distinguished Service Cross was established in January 1918 in the midst of World WORLD WAR II War I. The other valor recognitions during that period were limited to a “mention in dispatches” and a written KOREAN WAR “certificate.” Thus, if a medal was to be awarded, it had to be the Medal of Honor, regardless of circumstances and VIETNAM WAR the degree of valor exhibited.

Of the 3,530 Medals of Honor awarded up to 2021, more than 2,000 of them were presented before World AFGHANISTAN WAR War I for a variety of acts such as capturing enemy flags, rescuing comrades under fire, standing steadfast in IRAQ WAR the face of an enemy attack and delivering dispatches CURRENT AS OF JUNE 30, 2022. through hostile territory. That wide range of heroics, ranging from true blood sacrifices “above and beyond the call of duty” to relatively mundane but nonetheless valorous acts, convinced U.S. military authorities that a hierarchy of valor recognition was necessary to ensure that a fair and equitable system of medals was created.

The Pyramid of Valor began to take shape just as the U.S. entered World War I when the military and Congress added not only the Distinguished Service Cross but also other awards for heroism that didn’t quite meet the Medal of Honor’s exceptionally high bar.

3,530 3,511

1,523 110

126 472

146

262 20 8

Second tier: The Distinguished Service Cross, created in 1918; Navy Cross, 1919; Air Force Cross,1960.

Third tier: Silver Star, established in 1918 as the Army’s Citation Star, became the Silver Star in 1932 (available for the Air Force after it became a separate service); authorized for the Navy and Marine Corps, 1942.

Fourth tier: Distinguished Flying Cross, all services, for aerial 16

Purple Heart

Air Medal

Commendation Medal

achievement or valor, created in 1926, retroactive to 1918; Bronze Star, 1944, for meritorious achievements or valor.

Fifth tier: Purple Heart, created by George Washington in 1782 as the Badge of Military Merit for “meritorious action” but little used and converted in 1932 to a medal honoring the wounded and killed.

Sixth tier: Air Medal, established in 1942 for aerial achievement or valor.

Seventh tier: Commendation Medal, for meritorious achievement, service or valor, introduced in the Navy (and Marines) in 1944, in the Army in 1945 and the Air Force in 1958.

Medals that may be awarded for either achievement or valor (the Bronze Star, Commendation Medal, etc.) include a “V for valor” device when presented for heroism.

All of our Vietnam War heroes who earned any of those medals should be remembered for their courage and sacrifice—not simply the one in 10,000 whose actions resulted in an award of the Medal of Honor. The attitude that somehow the Medal of Honor is the only worthwhile valor medal is a regression to 1861 when it was just that: “one or none” and egregiously unfair to history and our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

Don’t let a tunnel-like focus on the Medal of Honor lead us to unfairly ignore the valor of heroes whose bravery was recognized “only” with awards of the Distinguished Service Cross (or Navy, Air Force variants), Silver Star, Bronze Star/Commendation Medal with “V” device or Purple Heart. All those heroes must be celebrated and honored. V —Jerry Morelock is senior editor of Vietnam magazine.

Do you have reflections on the war you would like to share?

Email your idea or article to Vietnam@historynet.com, subject line: Reflections

HISTORYNET ARCHIVES

Medal of Honor

VIETNAM

VIEP-221000-REFLECTIONS.indd 16

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Sh Se

Personal touch

Crews not only customized their vehicles but also named and decorated them.

Long-haul talker

A 16-foot antenna enabled the crew to stay in radio contact with headquarters and units that could provide help if needed.

Flexible firepower

The trucks were mounted with two to four M2 and M60 machine guns and sometimes XM134 miniguns.

Covering the crew

Armor consisted of available materials, such as steel airfield landing mats, salvaged armor plates and even sandbags.

Driver protection

Welded plates and layered glass shielded the driver and truck commander.

Spread the weight

The vehicle’s 10 wheels distributed the weight among three axles.

THE M54 GUN TRUCK On Sept. 2, 1967, a Viet Cong company ambushed an 8th Transportation Group truck convoy outside Pleiku in South Vietnam’s Central Highlands. The truckers’ pre-deployment trainers instructed them to travel close together for mutual support and stop to fight if ambushed, which made all 37 trucks stationary targets inside the enemy’s kill zone. As a consequence, 30 trucks were damaged or destroyed, seven Americans were killed and 17 wounded. The Army responded by changing its convoy tactics and creating gun trucks, which innovative GIs transformed with ad hoc changes into even better combat vehicles.

The M54 5-ton gun truck was the most common transport vehicle converted.

ARSENAL The first conversions used a truck-bed mounted compartment for two machine guns. The crews usually placed an M60 7.62 mm forward and an M2 .50-caliber in the rear. Early gun compartments had double walls constructed of 2-inch-by-12-inch planks with sandbags placed between the walls. Quarter-inch steel plates were mounted on the cabin doors and the windshield.

Crews constantly modified and improved their trucks according to their imaginations and construction skills. Airfield landing mats replaced wooden planking in most gun compartments by 1970.

Many carried additional M60s and M2s on ring and pintle mountings. Some even had a commander’s cupola mounted on an M113 armored personnel carrier hull installed over the truck bed.

Typically, one gun truck was assigned for every 10 transport trucks. During ambushes, the gun trucks responded to enemy fire while the convoy accelerated through the attack site. By 1969, more than 100 gun trucks served with the Army’s eight transport battalions in Vietnam. They saw extensive combat in a war where there were no front lines and nearly every highway was a potential danger zone. Two Army gun truck crewmen, Sgt. William W. Seay and Spc. 4 Larry G. Dahl, were awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for heroism in fights against enemy forces that ambushed their convoys. V 18

Crew: Five to seven Basic vehicle: M54 5-ton truck Length: 24 ft., 11 in.

Weight: 26,400 lbs.

Axles/wheels: One axle with two wheels, two axles with four wheels each Engine: 210 horsepower diesel Max. speed: 52 mph Max range: 280 miles Armament: One to two M60 7.62 mm machine guns, one to two M2 .50-caliber machine guns, one XM134 7.62 mm minigun

GREGORY PROCH

By Carl O. Schuster

VIETNAM

VIEP-221000-ARSENAL.indd 18

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HOMEFRONT

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE SONG? Simon and Garfunkel

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin

The Beatles

In September 2021 Rolling Stone magazine released an update of its 2004 and 2010 lists of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” as determined by a poll of more than 250 artists, musicians, producers, critics, journalists and people prominent in the music industry. The earliest year on the list is 1937. The most recent is 2020.

The years 1965 through 1972 supplied 135—nearly 30 percent—of the 500 songs regarded as the greatest, including “Respect” which was selected as the top song on the list.

ʼ65 No. 4

“Like a Rolling Stone”

ʼ66 ʼ67 ʼ68 No. 11

“God Only Knows”

Bob Dylan

The Beach Boys

OTHERS IN TOP 100 No. 31 “Satisfaction,” The Rolling Stones, No. 43 “My Girl,” The Temptations, No. 54 “The Tracks of My Tears,” Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, No. 72 “Yesterday,” The Beatles, No. 83 “Desolation Row,” Bob Dylan, No. 98 “In My Life,” The Beatles

OTHERS IN TOP 100 No. 34 “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” James Brown, No. 53 “Good Vibrations,” The Beach Boys

20

No. 1

“Respect”

Aretha Franklin OTHERS IN TOP 100 No. 7 “Strawberry Fields Forever,” The Beatles, No. 14 “Waterloo Sunset,” The Kinks, No. 24 “A Day in the Life,” The Beatles, No. 38 “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” Otis Redding, No. 78 “Reach Out (I’ll Be There),” The Four Tops, No. 81 “I’m Waiting for the Man,” The Velvet Underground, No. 90 “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman,” Aretha Franklin

No. 40

“All Along the Watchtower” Jimi Hendrix

OTHERS IN THE TOP 100 No. 58 “The Weight,” The Band, No. 89 “Hey Jude,” The Beatles

VIETNAM

VIEP-221000-HOMEFRONT-BW.indd 20

7/5/22 8:51 AM

Jimi Hendrix

Joni Mitchell

A radio service the military set up in Vietnam played songs from home to troops in the field, like these soldiers listening in 1966.

ʼ69 No. 13

“Gimme Shelter”

The Rolling Stones OTHERS IN THE TOP 100 No. 70 “Suspicious Minds,” Elvis Presley

ʼ70 ʼ71 ʼ72 No. 66

“Bridge Over Troubled Water” Simon and Garfunkel

OTHERS IN THE TOP 100 None

FROM LEFT: MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; FRANK NOWIKOWSKI/ ALAMY; PICTORAL PRESS, LTD/ALAMY; AP PHOTO/OLIVER NOONAN; KING COLLECTION/AVALON/GETTY IMAGES; KING COLLECTION/AVALON/GETTY IMAGES

VIEP-221000-HOMEFRONT-BW.indd 21

No. 6

“What’s Going On” Marvin Gaye

OTHERS IN THE TOP 100 No. 19 “Imagine,” John Lennon, No. 26 “A Case of You,” Joni Mitchell, No. 57 “Family Affair,” Sly and the Family Stone, No. 61 “Stairway to Heaven,” Led Zeppelin, No. 84 “Let’s Stay Together,” Al Green

No. 12

“Superstition” Stevie Wonder

OTHERS IN THE TOP 100 No. 47 “Tiny Dancer,” Elton John, No. 86 “Tumbling Dice,” The Rolling Stones

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‘GOING WEIGHTLESS IN A TANK’

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By Samuel N. Thomas Jr.

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TANKERS BOUNCED ALONG AT BREAKNECK SPEED TO SAVE FELLOW MARINES

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An M48A3 tank supports Marines ready to attack North Vietnamese soldiers near the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Vietnam in June 1968. The previous year, a unit of the Marines’ 1st Tank Battalion, which escorted infantrymen on patrol in the 1st Marine Division, rushed into the dark night to battle enemy forces about to overrun a platoon base.

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Just after midnight on Jan. 15, when the tank crews at the command post were sleeping “we started hearing mortars and artillery and crap like that,” recalled Lance Cpl. Rick Lewis, the gunner on C-23. The explosions were quickly followed by the faint sounds of gunfire.

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he firing and explosions were coming from a platoon patrol base known as the Desert Position or Sand Dunes, a few miles southwest of Marble Mountain, near the hamlet of Khai Tay. The platoon patrol base was one of several set up inside a crescent-shaped zone guarding southern approaches to Da Nang and dubbed the Mortar Belt because the North Vietnamese Army continually conducted rocket and mortar attacks on air facilities at Da Nang and Mable Mountain. The Marine patrol bases were respon-

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MAP: JON C.BOCK

Sgt. John Bartusevics, in charge of three tanks in Charlie Company when a nearby platoon was attacked on Jan. 15, 1967, waited and waited for orders to assist. Then he decided he couldn’t wait any longer.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: AP PHOTO/DANA STONE; THIS PAGE: VIA JOHN BARTUSEVICS

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ate in the afternoon of Jan. 14, 1967, three tanks with the Ace of Spades painted on their hulls rolled into the command post for the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, near Cau Ha, about 15 miles southeast of Da Nang.

The tanks comprised the heavy section of 2nd Lt. Jim Ray’s 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Tank Battalion. Ray was in Hawaii for rest and recuperation, leaving three M48A3 Patton tanks under the command of acting section leader and tank C-25 commander Sgt. John Bartusevics, a 12-month veteran of in-country combat.

The heavy section escorted Marine infantrymen into the field, an area that was mostly tree lines, rice paddies and sand dunes. Normally, the tanks rotated back to the 3rd Battalion Command post every three to five days to undergo repairs, rearm and refuel before taking another group of grunts into the field. That work never took longer than an hour or two, but the tanks were late getting in with a group from Lima Company, so Bartusevics decided to remain overnight at the Charlie Company command post, attached to the battalion command post, and head out at dawn.

In the field “most of the guys slept in the tanks,” Bartusevics recalled. “It was very uncomfortable. You couldn’t stretch your legs out. You either slept sitting up or propped your legs up.” Cpl. Ed Boyette, the loader on tank C-23, commanded by Cpl. Gary Soncrant, remembered, “It was going to be our first evening off in quite a while in a hooch with a real bunk.”

sible for keeping an eye on enemy movements.

Two depleted platoons from Kilo and Mike companies of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, were manning the Desert Position.

The tankers assumed they would be immediately called to respond to the threat. As the minutes passed and no orders came, the men wondered why they were still parked there. A few minutes later, a junior officer ran in and said the tanks were needed.

“Everyone up!” Bartusevics shouted. “We’re going back out!”

The crews jumped up, grabbed their gear and ran to the tanks. It was 12:30 a.m.

The crewmen saw mortar flashes in the distance as they climbed aboard their tanks. They revved their engines and lined up, preparing to pull out. After 15 minutes, an officer emerged from the combat operations center. He told Bartusevics that a reserve force of grunts and amtracs (tracked amphibious landing vehicles) was being assembled to join them. The tankers were ordered to stand down and wait.

Twenty minutes went by, then 30. During this time the tankers listened intently to the radio, hearing men yelling orders and screams from the wounded mixed in with the sounds of gunfire and explosions. An additional 15 minutes passed. Flashes lighting up the sky all around the platoon patrol base could be seen from the battalion command post. Staying put, just sitting there was excruciating for the tankers.

Finally, a frustrated Bartusevics ran back to the combat operations center and declared he wasn’t waiting any longer, adding: “Just send the grunts and amtracs when they’re ready.” Walking out, Bartusevics asked for a crypto radio so he would have a secure line with the infantrymen in the platoon base and those back at the combat operations center. Lance Cpl. Greg Auclair, the driver of Soncrant’s C-23, recalled that a few minutes later an operator ran out with the radio, yelling: “You guys need to get down there. They’re getting overrun. They’re getting wiped out.”

“The hell with it!” Bartusevics barked to his crews. “We’re going. Put the grunt radioman up on the lead tank.” Not one of the tankers hesitated.

MAP: JON C.BOCK

PREVIOUS SPREAD: AP PHOTO/DANA STONE; THIS PAGE: VIA JOHN BARTUSEVICS

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TO DA NANG

MARBLE MOUNTAIN

VINH DIEN RIVER

Khai Tay

Ngan Cau

Combat at Khai Tay “Desert Position”

SOUTH C H I NA SEA

Main Supply Route CAN BIEN RIVER

Cau Ha Charlie Company Command Post/ 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, Command Post

Tanks on the Attack Jan. 15, 1967

SOUTH VIETNAM Da Nang

ENLARGED Crews of Charlie Company, AREA 1st Tank Battalion, in the 1st Saigon Marine Division, settled in for the night on Jan. 14, 1967, at the company command post near Cau Ha. Shortly after midnight they heard artillery fire in the direction of Khai Tay, a sand dune area known as the “desert position,” where the Marines had an infantry platoon patrol base. The tankers roared into action and added their firepower to the fight against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. By 4 a.m. on Jan. 15, the battle was over, and the leathernecks had prevailed.

nder normal circumstances, sending tanks on an operation without infantry support was too risky. But Bartusevics took the initiative and lurched forward. He turned to the radioman, positioned behind the turret next to him. “Tell COC to send the amtracs ASAP,” the sergeant ordered. “We’re leaving!” The tanks took off with Bartusevics and C-25 in the lead, followed by Soncrant’s C-23 and C-24, commanded by Cpl. John McNally.

Like the U.S. cavalry of the Old West, the Marines in their three Ace of Spades iron monsters rode to the rescue. The time was now 1:55 a.m. The distance between the battalion command post and the Desert Position was 4½ miles. Bartusevics had served in Vietnam long enough to know that the most likely route between the battalion post and the platoon patrol base was undoubtedly mined, and pockets of NVA troops would be positioned along the way, ready to ambush any reinforcements headed to the base.

Instead of making a beeline for the base, Bartusevics set off across the rice paddies and solid terrain, then jumped onto the main supply route running north and south. He crisscrossed back and forth on the supply route, then turned west near Ngan Cau, hoping to flank any enemy waiting to ambush

the tanks in the wide-open sand dunes.

“We went as fast as a 54-ton tank can go,” recalled Auclair of C-23. The tanks bounced along and at one point plunged down a 12-foot embankment. “That’s one time I found out you could actually go weightless in a tank,” Lewis said. “One second I’m sitting in the gunner’s seat and the next I’m floating up to the top of the tank.

It was quite an experience when we hit!”

Approaching the base from the southeast, the tankers could see green tracers from the attackers and red tracers from the Marines going in all different directions. Once the tankers got within sight of the base, Auclair remarked that the scene AU T U M N 2 0 2 2

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The morning after the attack, the Marines, their tanks and amtracs (amphibious vehicles) have sole possession of the platoon base, largely a mass of rubble.

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he tanks moved a little farther along the perimeter and attempted to enter through the gate, which was nothing more than a jumble of concertina wire strung across the entrance.

Pfc Jack Mitchell of Mike Company rushed forward to drag the gate open. Boyette jumped down to assist. Both immediately came under withering fire as they struggled to clear the entrance.

Frustrated that it was taking so long, Bartusevics yelled over the radio, “We’re going over the wire!” Generally, that’s a bad move for tankers.

The wire can easily catch in the tank’s sprockets and be pulled in, turning the tank into nothing

The battle site at Khai Tay was just a few miles southwest of Marble Mountain, about 11 miles from Da Nang. A Marine helicopter facility was at the foot of Marble Mountain, seen here on Jan. 15, 1967.

more than an immobilized sitting duck. However, Bartusevics knew his crews needed to get inside the base quickly if the defenders were to have any hope of surviving the night. He also knew that punching straight ahead lessened the chances of becoming mired in the wire.

The three behemoths entered in column with bullets bouncing off the sides and front as they plowed over the wire just left of the gate, running down Viet Cong in the process. All of the tanks were equipped with the new Xenon searchlight, much more powerful than the original barrel lights. Bartusevics recognized the advantage these lights presented and had the covers removed just before leaving the battalion command post.

He ordered his crews to switch on their lights.

“I thought the lights would lighten up the area and also blind the Viet Cong and NVA,” Bartusevics said. The tactic worked. Incoming shots be-

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COURTESY RICK LEWIS

The unit was formed on Nov. 27, 1913, as the 2nd Advance Base Regiment. It fought in Caribbean campaigns until 1925. It was redesignated 1st Regiment in 1916 and the 1st Marines on July 10, 1930.

Assigned to the new 1st Marine Division in early 1941, the regiment was in the World War II battles of Guadalcanal and Okinawa. In Korea it fought at Inchon and Chosin Reservoir.

The 1st Marines entered Vietnam in August 1965 and left in June 1971.

COURTESY IZZY ORTIZ

1st Marine Regiment

looked like Christmas with all the red and green tracer fire going everywhere.

The tankers realized that the situation inside the platoon base was becoming more dire by the second. They heard incessant firing, explosions, yelling and screaming over the radio. Boyette of C-23 recalled that someone came on the radio shouting, “They’re all over the place!” Every tanker knew he was about to take part in his toughest fight yet.

After pulling up at the concertina wire perimeter, the tankers came to a full stop. They were stunned by the intensity of the battle around them. “The scene was complete chaos,” Boyette remembered. Red and green tracers were crossing each other in all directions. There was handto-hand fighting everywhere. Almost immediately, rounds from North Vietnamese AK-47 assault rifles inside the perimeter began bouncing off the tanks. It was 2:05 a.m.

The crew of Tank C-23 was sent to retrieve wounded Marines stranded at a listening post in trees 50 yards outside the platoon base. Shown here, near Marble Mountain in late 1966, are tank commander Cpl. Gary Soncrant, driver Lance Cpl. Greg Auclair and loader Cpl. Ed Boyette, in a photo by gunner Lance Cpl. Rick Lewis.

gan missing, passing too high or too low. When the lights came on, the crew immediately saw bodies and body parts everywhere.

The Viet Cong quickly realized they were unprepared to deal with tanks entering the fray.

“Not too long after a couple of tanks arrived, the VC started making their way back to the trees as fast as they could,” said infantryman Pfc. Butch Kempka of Mike Company.

The NVA soldiers, however, were more seasoned and determined fighters. Bartusevics split his tank column, sending McNally and C-24 to the left while Soncrant and C-23 proceeded to the right. Bartusevics in C-25 moved straight forward. As the tanks were splitting off, he reminded the crews to be careful in their movements because the battlefield was strewn with dead and wounded Marines. Bartusevics also ordered the crews not to use their 90 mm main gun, as they were likely to take out as many Marines as North Vietnamese. Instead, the tankers went in with their .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns, as well as any side arms they were carrying.

COURTESY RICK LEWIS

COURTESY IZZY ORTIZ

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oon after the tanks entered the compound, Sgt. Roger Lipscomb, the platoon sergeant of Kilo Company, climbed aboard Bartusevics’ tank and pointed out where the attacks were coming from, the locations of heavy weapons and the command post. He also alerted Bartusevics to the presence of a four-man listening post that was outside the wire to the north. The men were surrounded and pinned down. Two were badly wounded. Bartusevics ordered Soncrant’s C-23 crew to assist them.

As the Viet Cong, NVA and Marine infantrymen M48A3 mixed together in brutal close-quarters combat Patton Tank throughout the platoon base, the tanks waded into the fight with their machine guns blazing. When the Crew: Four tanks split apart, each moved independently through (commander, gunner, loader, driver) the base, acting as mobile bunkers.

Taking the right flank, Soncrant fired the sky Engine: Continental AVD-1790 12-cylinder mount .30-caliber machine gun on the cupola, while diesel engine, 750 Lewis was in his seat firing the .50-caliber coaxial horsepower machine gun on the turret just below and to the left Weight: 54 tons of the 90 mm gun. Boyette was below, feeding ammu- Length: 30 ft., 6 in. nition belts as fast as he could. Driver Auclair was Width: 11 ft., 11 in. forced to stand in his hatch so he could see where he Height: 10 ft., 1 in. was going, making himself a perfect target for enemy Speed: 30 mph fire. He responded by taking out his .45-caliber pistol Range: 310 miles Fuel capacity: 375 and picking off NVA troops rushing toward him.

By this time, the North Vietnamese troops were gallons overrunning most of the base. Soncrant saw that his Armament: Cannon: crew was in imminent danger. “Traverse right!” he 90 mm M41; machine yelled to Lewis. The turret immediately swung sharply guns: .50-caliber and to the right. Lewis, peering at his whole world through .30 caliber the narrow view of his scope, was stunned to see a Marine and an NVA soldier locked in hand-to-hand fighting directly in front of him. In a split second, another NVA soldier ran up and shot the Marine in the back with his AK-47, killing him instantly. Lewis pulled on the trigger of the .50-caliber coax gun and gave the two NVA soldiers a burst that nearly cut them in half.

When Soncrant and his crew swung right, they unknowingly turned straight into the main thrust of the NVA attack. “I kept traversing right and picked up a wave of NVA rushing our right flank,” Lewis recalled. “They were so close you could see their eyeballs. I just laid on the gun switches and kept firing until I realized Soncrant was hollering at me to cease fire.”

Pfc. Don Reed of Mike Company remembered that “when the tanks came in there was a second wave of Viet Cong and NVA rushing us. Some guy on a .50 started up and dropped every one of them—saved our hides.”

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C-24. The corporal was taking his tank around the southern perimeter of the compound. Demark held out his hand to Rojas and pulled him aboard. Soon they were joined by four other grunts. “We had a turkey shoot then,” Rojas said.

“NVA soldiers kept trying to jump on the tanks, and we just kept kicking them off and shooting.”

“Now we started hunting,” Boyette said. “We ran over a number of Viet Cong as we moved about looking for pockets of NVA fighters.” The C-23 tank continued along the bunker-lined perimeter and fired at enemy targets. Soncrant, still on the sky mount .30-caliber gun, was joined by Boyette, who was out of his hatch firing an M14 rifle and his .45-caliber pistol. Auclair unloaded his pistol while maneuvering the 54-ton tank through an obstacle course of dead and wounded Marines, blown bunkers and debris.

Meanwhile, Bartusevics, in C-25, noticed that the heaviest firing was coming from the mess hall tent and directed at the command post bunker. The enemy in the “We had a mess hall became his immediate priority. As turkey shoot. the tank moved forward, it received heavy fire from three sides. Lance Cpl. John Koski, the NVA soldiers kept trying loader, came up through his hatch, firing in all directions with his M14, “picking off guys that to jump on were trying to get on the tanks,” remembered the tanks, Bartusevics. The sergeant and Koski observed and we just a group of NVA on top of the command post kept kicking and together quickly dispatched them. them off and Bartusevics saw the NVA occupants of the shooting.” mess hall setting up a machine gun to fire on the command post. Lewis recalled later that he heard Bartusevics yelling over the radio: “They’re in the mess hall tent!” Setting his sights on the target, Bartusevics yelled to his driver, “Reb,” real name Cpl. Joe Deluca: “Hunker down, but keep the hatch open.” As the tank moved forward, Bartusevics shouted again to Deluca: “Go straight! … Now, step on it! … Don’t stop till I tell you to!” The tank ran full speed ahead— right over the mess hall, crushing the structure, including the machine gun and all the NVA intruders.

Pfc. Mario Rojas of Kilo Company saw a tank coming and ran to it. He found Sgt. Robert Demark of Kilo already on top of the vehicle, McNally’s 28

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES

An H-34D Marine helicopter lands to evacuate casualties during an August 1965 offensive in northern South Vietnam. An M48 Patton provides security. At Khai Tay, Marine medevac choppers arrived about 4 a.m., and the tankers helped recover bodies.

UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/UIG/SHUTTERSTOCK

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eanwhile, Soncrant’s tank moved into an area with bunkers on its right and left. Suddenly the tank lurched forward to a complete stop. An infantry sergeant jumped on board and pointed to the location of the listening post outside the wire, 50 yards into the tree line to the north.

“There’s just Viet Cong in front of us,” Auclair declared. “I’m going forward!” The tank swerved right and moved forward to an opening blown in the wire by a bangalore torpedo, a long metal tube packed with explosives. Boyette climbed out of his hatch, moved across the tank, jumped off the front fender and ran through the opening in the wire, “hauling ass and firing his .45 as he ran to the tree line,” remembered Lewis.

Boyette found the listening post just inside the trees. Soon he was sprinting back to the tank carrying one of the wounded riflemen on his shoulders, shooting down the enemy as he came in.

Laying the man on the back of tank, he turned to Lewis and asked for another clip for his pistol.

Lewis obliged. Boyette replaced the empty clip, chambered the round and headed back out to the tree line to retrieve the second wounded Marine.

“I grabbed him, flung him over my shoulder and took off for the base,” Boyette recalled. With the two wounded Marines aboard, Auclair backed the tank up to the medevac area to unload their precious cargo before continuing forward along the perimeter once more.

Most of the NVA and Viet Cong were now outside the perimeter, and the tankers took the opportunity to set loose their 90 mm guns on the fleeing enemy. About this time, Bartusevics received word over his radio that the amtracs and infantry sent from the battalion command post were lost.

After ordering Soncrant and McNally to help mop up at the platoon base, Bartusevics set out alone in search of the amtracs. He radioed the amtrac crews and told them he would shine his searchlight straight up into the sky for a few seconds, turn it off, then on again. He did this periodically until the amtracs were able to get their bearings. Bartusevics then escorted the reinforcements to the base. By the time they got there the fighting was all but over.

Marines ride an M48A3 Patton tank to their next destination in 1966. After the Marine tankers of Charlie Company escorted the survivors of the Khai Tay battle to the battalion command post, they got a good night’s sleep and returned to their work.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/UIG/SHUTTERSTOCK

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t was about 4 a.m. when helicopters began arriving to medevac the wounded. After sweeping the area once more, the tankers assisted the infantrymen in recovering bodies. They also took stock of the base. One mortar was knocked out. The recoilless rifle and a machine gun bunker were destroyed. Several gun positions had been blown apart. After-action reports stated that 45 percent of the bunkers were destroyed by explosions from mortars, explosive-filled satchels and Chicom grenades, wooden-handled grenades made by Chinese communists.

The defenders of the Desert Position had fought off a battalion of about 360 men from the North Vietnamese V-75th Regiment, along with numerous local Viet Cong and at least two units of sappers, highly skilled commandos. Outnumbered more than 6-to-1, the defenders endured explosions, automatic weapons fire and hand-tohand fighting with bayonets until relief came in the form of three “chariots of angels,” as Rojas later described the Marine tanks.

The Marines lost 16 killed and 33 wounded of a 79- Combat at man force. All the casualties were among the infantryKhai Tay men. The tanks were credited with 20 confirmed eneJAN. 15, 1967 my killed and 10 probable. The total number of Viet U.S. MARINES Cong and NVA casualties was officially reported as 61, but every man involved in the fight agreed that those numbers were greatly undercounted.

TANKERS AND MARINE INFANTRY Auclair remembered the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 15, KILLED 1967, at the Desert Position as “the most terrifying night I ever spent in Vietnam!”

Late in the afternoon, the tanks escorted the amPLUS 33 WOUNDED tracs and infantrymen back to the battalion command post. That night the tankers got a well-deserved rest.

NVA AND VC FORCES The following morning, fully resupplied, 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Tank Battalion, went back out into the field.

Bartusevics was awarded the Silver Star for his acKILLED tions on Jan. 15. His driver, Deluca, and Boyette, the loader on Soncrant’s tank, received the Bronze Star.

Lewis later confided: “It was a good thing that Bartusevics received the Silver Star. He certainly deserved it. Otherwise he probably would have been court-martialed for disobeying orders.” That night, the tank crews were like all good Marines. They improvised, they adapted, and they overcame. V

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Samuel N. Thomas Jr. is a military historian, published author and museum director of the T.R.R. Cobb House in Athens, Georgia, where he lives.

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The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery is guarded with special reverence by soldiers of the U.S. Army. This hallowed ground became the center of controversy when U.S. government officials decided to add a crypt for an unknown serviceman killed during the Vietnam War and his remains were later identified.

THE UNKNOWN WHO WASN’T CONTROVERSY SURROUNDED MICHAEL J. BLASSIE’S BURIAL AT THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

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By James H. Willbanks

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ence Harding, lined up to pay their respects. On Nov. 11, exactly three years after the armistice ending the war was signed, Harding officiated at a burial ceremony attended by more than 5,000 people, including members of Congress, foreign dignitaries, generals, Medal of Honor recipients, other soldiers and veterans. After the national anthem, Harding addressed the crowd and then placed the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross on the casket. Foreign dignitaries added more medals.

The casket was moved to the crypt site east of the cemetery’s Memorial Amphitheater, dedicated in May 1920. As a cannon battery fired three volleys, it was lowered into the crypt under a simple white marble monument. Construction on the official Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that visitors see today began in December 1929 and was completed in April 1932.

In 1926, Congress directed that the memorial be protected by a military guard during daylight hours. In July 1937, the guard was extended to 24 hours. Sentinels from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regi-

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he Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, overlooking Washington from a hill at Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery, has come to symbolize the sacrifices of all U.S. service members who died in war, not just the unidentified ones buried there.

The tomb is hallowed ground with burials extending from World War I through the Vietnam War, but the Vietnam section, much like the war itself, has been marked by controversy and turmoil.

The memorial’s storied history began on March 4, 1921, when President Woodrow Wilson, on his last day in office, signed legislation directing the secretary of war to bring to the United States “the body of an unknown American” who served in Europe during World War I “for the burial of the remains with appropriate ceremonies” in Arlington National Cemetery.

In September that year, four identical caskets were exhumed from unmarked battlefield graves in France. On Oct. 24, they were transported to city hall in Chalons-sur-Marne. One would be selected for the Arlington tomb. Sgt. Edward Younger, a World War I veteran, was chosen to make the selection. He laid a spray of white roses on his choice. The selected casket was transported to Washington, aboard the armored cruiser USS Olympia. The other three caskets were reinterred in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery.

The selected casket arrived in Washington on Nov. 9, 1921, and lay in state on the Lincoln catafalque at the Capitol rotunda for two days. Some 100,000 visitors, including President Warren G. Harding and first lady Flor-

PREVIOUS SPREAD: JEFF HUTCHENS/GETTY IMAGES. THIS PAGE: HARRIS & EWING/PAUL THOMPSON/FPG/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

On Armistice Day, Nov. 11, in 1921, the coffin holding the unknown soldier of World War I is carried from the U.S. Capitol to a gun carriage that will bear the remains to Arlington National Cemetery.

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U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial

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ment, “The Old Guard,” assumed those duties in April 1946. They have maintained a constant vigil ever since, regardless of weather conditions.

After World War II and the Korean War had both concluded, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill in August 1956 to pay tribute to the unknowns of the two wars. The Army exhumed 18 bodies from cemeteries in North Africa, Europe, the Philippines and Hawaii.

One casket was chosen to represent soldiers who fought in Europe; another was selected to represent the Pacific theater. From those two, the casket destined for Arlington was selected. The other World War II unknown was buried at sea in a solemn ceremony. For the Korean War representative, Army officials chose one casket from four exhumed at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

On May 28, 1958, the casket bearing the unknown from World War II and the casket from Korea arrived in Washington. They lay in state at the Capitol rotunda until May 30, taking turns on the Lincoln catafalque. On May 30, Memorial Day, the caskets were borne by Army caissons to the Arlington cemetery. During a ceremony with full military honors, they were interred in crypts prepared for them alongside their World war I comrade. Eisenhower placed the Medal of Honor on each casket. A 21-gun salute was fired. The casket teams folded the flags and presented them to Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon, who stood in for the unknowns’ next of kin.

The Pentagon

Air Force Memorial

Arlington National Cemetery The history of the cemetery goes back to George Washington and Robert E. Lee. In 1778, John Parke Custis, the son of Martha Washington and her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, bought 1,100 acres in Northern Virginia. John’s son, George Washington Parke Custis, inherited the property in 1802. In 1808-18, his enslaved African Americans built a mansion called Arlington House. His daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, married the future Confederate general in 1831 and inherited the Arlington property after her father’s death in 1857. The Lees left in May 1861 after the start of the Civil War. U.S. troops immediately occupied the land and built forts there. As the Union death count surged, the Army started to use the property as a burial ground.

The first soldier buried at Arlington was Pvt. William Christman on May 13, 1864. On June 15, Arlington was officially designated a national military cemetery, and 200 acres were selected for the graves. Today the cemetery is 639 acres. Eligibility for burials is somewhat complex, but most veterans with at least one day of active service and an honorable discharge are eligible for aboveground inurnment (burial in an urn). More than 400,000 veterans and eligible dependents are buried at the cemetery.

IN THE EARLY 1960s, the United States found itself at war in Southeast Asia. After the commitment of U.S. ground troops in 1965, the war became increasingly unpopular at home and divided the nation. Nixon, elected president in 1968, announced in 1969 that he would begin withdrawing troops and seek a negotiated peace with the North Vietnamese. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on Jan. 27, 1973, and all U.S. troops were out of South Vietnam by the end of March. The South Vietnamese fought on alone until the spring of 1975, when the North Vietnamese ultimately triumphed.

National leaders agonized over a way to commemorate the conflict and honor Americans who had fought in Vietnam. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter dedicated a plaque at the Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington to commemorate those missing in action from the Vietnam War. Ronald Reagan, inaugurated president in January 1981, wanted to inter an unknown soldier from the Vietnam War at Arlington. However, there were few unknowns among the Vietnam War dead because of technological advances that aided in the identification of remains. But Reagan was adamant. He believed a Vietnam representative at the tomb would be a way to honor all of the war’s veterans.

There was opposition, however, from various quarters, including the Na-

tional League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, whose members believed that a memorial to an unknown Vietnam soldier might be a politically expedient way to close the book on the MIA issue.

Despite the opposition, Congress passed a law in 1983 authorizing the Defense Department to designate a Vietnam unknown to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Four sets of remains were candidates. Two were subsequently identified and sent home to their families. The third was disqualified because of some uncertainty about AU T U M N 2 0 2 2

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Smoke clouds and dust billow up after U.S. planes drop bombs in May 1972 near An Loc, the scene of heavy fighting between South Vietnamese troops and the North Vietnamese Army besieging the city as part of its Easter Offensive. Air Force 1st Lt .Michael Blassie, flying an attack aircraft, was shot down and killed by anti-aircraft fire on May 11, 1972.

THE X-26 REMAINS were recovered at the site of an Air Force plane shot down on May 11, 1972, in the area of An Loc, a town near the Cambodian border about 65 miles north of Saigon. The pilot was 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie.

Blassie, the oldest of five children, was born in St. Louis on April 4, 1948, to George and Jean Blassie. His father had served in Normandy during World War II. After graduating from St. Louis University High School, Blassie entered the U.S. Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Colorado. He studied psychology and was nominated for the All-Rocky Mountain League Soccer Team in 1968. Blassie graduated in 1970. After flight training at Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi, he received orders for the 8th Special Operations Squadron in Vietnam.

Blassie had already flown 132 combat missions when he took off from Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon in his Cessna A-37B Dragonfly light attack aircraft on May 11, 1972. He flew northwest toward An Loc, the site of heavy fighting since early April, when three North Vietnamese divisions besieged the city as part of Hanoi’s 1972 invasion launched over Easter weekend and known as the Easter Offensive.

South Vietnamese defenders in An Loc, led by the commander of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam’s 5th Division, had turned back repeated attacks with help from massive amounts of U.S. air power. On May 10-11, the North Vietnamese began what would be their strongest push to take the city. The defenders were vastly outnumbered. The enemy, attacking with nine regiments, forged two salients in the ARVN lines. With the South Vietnamese troops in a desperate situation, all available air support was rushed to the area.

Blassie and his flight commander, Maj. Jim Connolly, were both flying in aircraft armed with two 500-pound napalm bombs and assorted other munitions for a strike on enemy gun emplacements north of An Loc. Blassie rolled in against the enemy position. Before he could complete his low-level run, the Cessna was hit by a stream of tracer rounds from an enemy anti-aircraft battery.

In a letter to Blassie’s parents, Connolly described what happened: “Mike’s aircraft was hit and began streaming fuel. He must have been killed instantly, because he did not transmit a distress call of any kind. The aircraft flew a short distance on its own and then slowly rolled over, exploding on impact in enemy-held territory.”

Connolly requested Army Bell AH-1Cobra helicopters to search the crash site, but the choppers encountered heavy groundfire and had to abort the search.

Connolly believed there was no way Blassie could have survived, but the major continued circling the area “un-

TOP: WILLIAM GREENBLATT PHOTOGRAPHY, L.L.C./SYGMA VIA GETTY IMAGES. BOTTOM: AP PHOTO/NICK UT

Michael Blassie

the circumstances of his death. That left the remains that had been identified as X-26.

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til the last hope faded and all other aircraft departed,” he said later.

The day after the crash, an Air Force chaplain visited Blassie’s parents in St. Louis and told them their son had been killed in action and his body could not be recovered.

Fighting continued around An Loc for five more months, precluding any search of the crash site. On Oct. 11, after South Vietnamese troops turned back the North’s offensive and began to push their lines out from An Loc, an ARVN patrol found the crash site. They recovered six human bones and an assortment of other physical evidence, including a beacon radio, part of a pistol holster, a portion of a parachute and a flattened one-man life raft. The search also found fragments of a flight suit, a wallet containing Blassie’s ID card and a photograph of his family.

The South Vietnamese placed the remains and physical evidence in bags and gave them to Capt.

Bill Parnell, an adviser with the ARVN 18th Division, which had replaced the 5th Division as the controlling headquarters in An Loc. On Nov. 2, the remains were transported to a mortuary at Tan Son Nhut Air Base just outside Saigon. However, during the trip, Blassie’s wallet, including his ID card and a small amount of cash, disappeared.

ALTHOUGH THE EVIDENCE that still existed suggested the remains were those of Blassie, personnel at the Tan Son Nhut mortuary determined that it was not enough for a definitive forensic identification. Therefore, Blassie’s family was not informed that remains and artifacts had been recovered from the crash site. In 1973, the remains, associated evidence and related paperwork were transferred to a search and recovery center at Camp Samae San, Thailand.

In 1976, the remains were transferred to Hawaii for analysis at the Army’s new Central Identification Laboratory, responsible for identifying Vietnam war dead. Based on the evidence associated with the human remains, the recovered bone fragments were initially designated as “Believed To Be” Michael J. Blassie.

However, that designation was reversed after an examination of the human remains by Tadao Furue, the Hawaiian facility’s chief physical anthropologist, who had been identifying Korean War casualties since 1951. In cases where he had little information to work with, Furue attempted to calculate age, height and other characteristics by measuring bone fragments, a controversial technique called “morphological approximation,” which was later discredited.

In a memorandum dated Dec. 4, 1978, Furue

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wrote that after “processing” the remains from the Blassie crash, he esDOG TAG CHAIN timated the bones belonged to an FRAGMENT individual between 26 and 33 years old. Since Blassie was 24 years and 7 PARACHUTE SURVIVAL GUIDE months old at the time of his death, Furue determined that he was outside “the estimated age bracket.”

Additionally, he estimated height AMMUNITION at time of death as 65.2 to 71.5 MATCH POUCH HOLDER inches. Blassie was 72 inches. Furue tested a single hair found in a portion of the recovered flight suit and determined that the “blood type of the reteam in the DNA lab at the mains disagrees with the recorded blood Type ‘A’ A Armed Forces Institute of for Blassie.”

Pathology in Rockville, MaryDisregarding the documents that accompa- land (shown at top in May nied the remains, which indicated they might be 1998), conducted DNA tests on the Vietnam “unknown” those of Blassie, Furue was convinced that the after new examinations of remains were inconsistent with what was known personal objects recovered about Blassie. He recommended that the bones from the crash site (shown above) provided strong be reclassified as “designation unknown.” In evidence that the tomb 1980, the Armed Services Graves Registration Of- contained Blassie’s remains, fice accepted Furue’s recommendation, and the removed in a ceremony on May 14, 1998. “believed to be” status was rescinded. The remains were reclassified as “unidentified.” They were given the file number TSN 0673-72 X-26 (the “X” designation took the place of Blassie’s name) and stored at a lab in Hawaii.

There was pushback from some senior personnel at the lab. Maj. Johnnie Webb, the officer in charge of the Central Identification Lab, refused to sign documents that said the X-26 remains were unidentifiable. He believed the evidence sufficiently identified the remains as those of Blassie.

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TOP: President Ronald Reagan, at Arlington National Cemetery on May 28,1984, pays his respects during a ceremony for the Vietnam War’s serviceman deemed to be unknown. CENTER: Defense Secretary William Cohen participates in a ceremony on May 14, 1998, after the remains were exhumed for DNA testing. BOTTOM: A slab that once honored the Vietnam unknown was replaced with one that honors all of the war’s missing.

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or certify that they were unidentifiable. Unable to conclusively prove that the remains were those of Blassie, Webb reluctantly certified on March 21, 1984, that the remains could not “support a positive identification with any known casualty” in Vietnam.

The Pentagon ordered Webb to destroy any evidence linking Blassie to the X-26 remains. Instead, he hid the crash-site artifacts in the casket 36

TEN YEARS LATER, a former Green Beret, Ted Sampley, wrote an article about the Vietnam unknown for the U.S. Veteran Dispatch newsletter. After reading a book on investigating wartime plane crashes, Sampley had done his own research on the 1972 crash. Citing the bone fragments and pieces of a flight suit, Sampley wrote that he believed Blassie was buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He urged that the remains be exhumed and a positive identification be made through DNA testing.

Sampley talked to members of the Blassie family. They were stunned. The family had never been told about bone the fragments or other items recovered at the crash site. Initially, the family decided to remain silent.

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IN A CEREMONY AT PEARL HARBOR on May 17, 1984, Marine Sgt. Maj. Allan Jay Kellogg Jr., a Medal of Honor recipient from the Vietnam War, placed flowers on the casket containing the X-26 remains. The casket was transported to the frigate USS Brewton, which sailed into San Francisco Bay’s Alameda Naval Air Station on May 24. The casket was offloaded with full honors, including a 21-gun salute and a flyover by fighter jets. It was taken to nearby Travis Air Force Base and put aboard a cargo aircraft for transport to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.

The casket containing the X-26 remains lay in state in the Capitol rotunda for three days. The president and first lady Nancy Reagan paid their respects while it was there. On Memorial Day, May 28, 1984, the casket was borne by a horse-drawn caisson to Arlington National Cemetery. An estimated 250,000 people lined the procession route. Reagan presided over an interment service with some 3,000 guests, including more than a hundred veterans, some in wheelchairs and others on crutches. Also attending were families of service members still missing in action.

Reagan said: “The unknown soldier who has returned to us today…is symbolic of all our missing sons. Today we pause to embrace him and all who served us so well in a war whose end offered no parades, no flags and so little thanks.” The president promised that the United States government would never stop searching for those still missing, no matter how long it took.

Reagan then placed the Medal of Honor on the flag-draped casket and said, “Thank you, dear son, and may God cradle you in his loving arms.” The president accepted the American flag from the Honor Guard on behalf of the unknown’s loved ones. The casket was buried in a crypt alongside the unknowns from World War I, World War II and Korea. A marble slab was placed over the crypt, inscribed with “1958-1975.” The Blassie family in St. Louis had no idea that their loved one was buried in that crypt.

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with the human remains. Webb then penned a letter to the assistant secretary of the army discussing the controversy over the X-26 remains and described evidence that linked them to a particular pilot, although he did not specifically name Blassie. Later, Secretary of the Army John O. Marsh said he never saw Webb’s letter to the assistant secretary.

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The issue again arose when Vince Gonzales, a producer with CBS News, came across the Sampley article. Gonzales began to gather his own evidence and reached the same conclusion that Sampley did. He contacted the Blassie family. After much discussion, the family—at the urging of the airman’s mother, Jean—agreed that the remains should be brought home and granted Gonzales access to the family files. Blassie’s sister, Patricia, then a captain in the Air Force, agreed to speak on camera.

On Jan. 19, 1998, CBS Evening News aired the story. After laying out the evidence, correspondent Eric Engberg reported that the Vietnam “unknown” was Blassie. He said the military had used the secrecy of the selection process to hide that fact from the Blassie family and the public. The family petitioned President Bill Clinton’s defense secretary, William Cohen, to disinter the remains and conduct DNA testing.

A FIRESTORM OF CONTROVERSY ERUPTED. The Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion, among other groups initially against the designation of a Vietnam unknown, now asserted that any attempts to disinter the remains would desecrate the tomb. Nevertheless, Cohen directed Rudy de Leon, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, to conduct a study and determine how to proceed.

After a thorough examination of the facts, de Leon recommended that the remains be exhumed and DNA tested.

Cohen agreed. One week later, on the evening of May 13, workers cut into the Vietnam crypt with a diamond-edged saw. The remains were exhumed, draped with a flag and placed on a catafalque.

The following morning, Cohen presided over a ceremony at Jean Blassie reveals the headstone on the grave of son Michael Blassie the tomb attended by the Blassie family and families of eight at a national cemetery in St. Louis on July 11,1998—26 years after his other pilots killed in the same area where Blassie’s plane was death and 14 years after interment at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. shot down. Sampley was also present. Cohen said that he was reluctant to open the tomb, but added, “We yield to the promise of science, with one inscribed with “Honoring and Keeping with the hope that the heavy burden of doubt be lifted from a family’s heart.” faith with America’s Missing Servicemen, 1958The casket was placed in a hearse and transported to Walter Reed Medi- 1975.” The crypt is meant to represent all unidencal Center in Washington. Mitochondrial DNA testing revealed that the tified American dead during that period, not just X-26 remains were a perfect match with DNA samples provided by Michael those from Vietnam.

With the burial of Michael Blassie, the era of Blassie’s mother and oldest sister. On June 30, the Defense Department announced that the Vietnam unknown had been positively identified as U.S. honoring a new war’s “unknowns” has likely come to a close. Since the Vietnam War, the idenAir Force 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie.

At the family’s request, Blassie’s remains were flown by a C-130 transport tities of recovered remains have been confirmed plane to Scott Air Force Base, near St. Louis. On July 11, 1998, Blassie was through DNA testing. The Tomb of the Unknown buried with full military honors in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. Soldier, however, retains its prominence as halThe attendees included Connally, Blassie’s flight leader, and Parnell, the U.S. lowed ground and is still one of the most visited adviser at An Loc who had received the bag of remains and watched over sites in the nation’s capital. V them until they were delivered to the morgue in Saigon. Blassie’s casket was carried to the reburial gravesite by an Air Force honor guard. A flight of James H. Willbanks is a retired Army lieutenant four F-15 fighter jets flew over, with one soaring skyward in the “missing colonel, decorated Vietnam veteran and former man” salute. After 26 years in limbo, Blassie was finally home. His name is General of the Army George C. Marshall Chair of Military History at the Army’s Command and inscribed on Panel 1W, Line 23 of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The Medal of Honor awarded to the Vietnam unknown was rescinded General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, and put on display at Arlington cemetery’s museum. On Sept. 17, 1999, Kansas. He is the author or editor of 21 books on National POW/MIA Recognition Day, the empty crypt of the Vietnam War the Vietnam War and other aspects of military unknown was rededicated. The original slab over the crypt was replaced history. He lives in Georgetown, Texas.

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By Mark Carlson

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North Vietnamese SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, most often arranged in groups of six, sit on launchers near their radar guidance system housed in a van among a cluster of trucks and huts (upper right). This facility—discovered by an Air Force photo reconnaissance plane—was typical of the SAM sites that Operation Spring High was targeting on July 27, 1965, when disaster struck.

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An F-105D Thunderchief trails smoke on Feb. 14, 1968, after an encounter with an SA-2. The SAM did not hit the bomber, but exploded as it neared the aircraft.

Those explosions could be deadly as they scattered fragments over a wide area.

Pilot Robert Malcolm Elliot was killed.

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The Johnson administration was afraid that a more aggressive bombing campaign would increase civilian casualties and could escalate the war by provoking the Soviets and Chinese. For example, bombers were banned from the entire seaport of Haiphong Harbor because Soviet ships offloaded cargo there. Those constraints would soon manifest themselves in the debacle of Operation Spring High.

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he appearance of the SA-2—code-named “Guideline” by NATO and known to the Soviets as the S-75 “Dvina”—came as a rude shock to the West in the early 1960s. Although the U.S. was aware that the Soviets had developed an anti-aircraft missile, the SA-2 exploded onto the world stage when it shot down a Lockheed U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers of the CIA at an altitude of 70,000 feet.

The SA-2’s liquid-fueled second stage, 35 feet long and carrying a 440-pound warhead, was launched by a solid-fuel booster and streaked to its target at Mach 3.5, about 2,500 mph. The warhead’s lethal radius was more than 220 feet wide at low altitude but spread out to more than 800 feet above 60,000 feet.

Previously, fighter-bombers like the F-4 and F-105 had been able to avoid small-arms anti-aircraft artillery by flying at altitudes out of range

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n July 24, 1965, four McDonnell F-4C Phantom fighterbombers of Leopard Flight joined an airstrike against the Dien Bien Phu munitions storage depot and the Lang Chi munitions factory in the northwestern part of North Vietnam. The Phantoms bombed their assigned targets and withdrew to provide cover for the incoming Republic F-105D Thunderchief fighter-bombers of the 80th Tactical Fighter Squadron.

“As we started climbing out of the area after our single pass at the target,” recalls F-105 pilot Capt. Vic Vizcarra, “our mission commander informed the Phantoms that we were departing. We all remained on the same frequency as we climbed and headed south. I was left of Lead, which placed me on the Phuc Yen MiG base side of the flight. Suddenly we heard a call from the F-4s. ‘What the hell was that?’ one of them said.”

Leopard Lead called for others in his flight to check in. Leopards 3 and 4 responded, but 2 was never heard from—blotted out of the sky by a guided missile. The blast also damaged the other three Phantoms in the flight. They were the first victims of the soon-to-be-infamous SA-2 surface-to-air missile, or SAM. Four months earlier President Lyndon B. Johnson, intent on preventing North Vietnam from putting its full military weight into an invasion of South Vietnam, had authorized the Operation Rolling Thunder bombing campaign. The bombing began on March 2, 1965, and targeted North Vietnamese transport and communications lines. However, the White House prohibited U.S. air operations in a 10-mile radius around Hanoi. In addition, restrictions were put on target selection in a larger 30-mile radius, which was under the control of the White House. Only Johnson, with advice from administration officials such as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, had authority to order any air operations within that area.

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NORTH VIETNAM President Lyndon B. Johnson confers with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara on Dec. 1, 1964. They were reluctant to bomb SAM sites near Hanoi fearing it would be an escalation of the war that would draw in China or the Soviet Union.

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for the Soviet-made ZPU-23 and 37 mm guns, but the high-altitude SAMS, guided by SNR-75 azimuth and elevation radar (NATO code-named “Fan Song”), were an extreme hazard to every American plane.

A month after the start of Rolling Thunder, five SAM sites under construction were discovered inside the 10-mile area of prohibited bombing.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff were adamant that the sites be destroyed before they could be completed, but McNamara convinced Johnson to keep the SAM sites on the off-limits list. Between May and July1965 the Joint Chiefs asked the White House no fewer than three times to allow the Air Force and Navy to bomb the SAM sites. Each time they were turned down.

After the shootdown of the Phantom on July 24 by SAMs launched from two new batteries, site 6 and site 7, on the western edge of the 30-mile restricted zone, the Joint Chiefs again urged Johnson to authorize a strike on the SA-2 batteries. At last, the Pentagon prevailed. Johnson gave the order: “Take them out.”

The mission was assigned to four Thailand-based tactical fighter squadrons that flew the supersonic F-105D Thunderchief, known affectionately as the “Thud.” The F-105 was the world’s fastest fighter-bomber capable of nuclear weapon delivery. It could carry 8 tons of ordnance.

Even as planning for the mission, code-named Spring High, progressed, the Johnson administration was concerned that the U.S. operation could lead to increased Soviet or Chinese involvement. McNamara argued that only the SAM batteries that fired on the Phantoms, sites 6 and 7, should be eradicated because Russian advisers working with the North Vietnamese Army at other SAM sites might be killed, incurring the wrath of the Soviet government.

n the morning of July 27, 1965, the pilots of four tactical fighter squadrons woke to begin their mission. They would attack only sites 6 and 7. “So the prior night’s flight planning went up in smoke, and we were left scrambling at the last-minute requirements,” Vizcarra said. The mission start time was delayed into the afternoon.

The 12th and 357th Tactical Fighter squadrons, flying out of Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base, were to attack the North Vietnamese 63rd Missile Battalion at site 6. The 80th and 563rd Tactical Fighter squadrons from Takhli (pronounced “Tak-Lee”) Royal Thai Air Force Base would hit the 64th Missile Battalion at site 7.

Hanoi

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Takhli Korat Royal Thai Air Force Royal Thai Air Force Base Base

Haiphong GULF OF TONKIN

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Circling the Enemy President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration put constraints on bombing missions over North Vietnam because of fears that they might result in high civilian casualties and increased military involvement by China and the Soviet Union. The administration drew a circle 10 miles out from Hanoi and another at 30 miles. U.S. air attacks were prohibited inside the 10-mile radius. Attacks between the 10- and 30-mile radius were restricted to those approved by Johnson.

Each squadron was segmented into three fourplane flights. The Korat flights were named for trees: Pepper, Willow, Redwood, Cedar, Chestnut and Dogwood. The Takhli flights bore automobile names: Healy, Austin, Hudson, Valiant, Rambler and Corvette. A total of 48 F-105s participated in the strike.

Not all of the Thunderchiefs would attack the actual SAM batteries. Some would hit command radar vans, missiles and launchers, while others bombed support facilities and barracks. A portion were deployed to fight possible MiG attacks or held in reserve to cover aircraft that needed to abort their mission. Yet none of the Thuds were AU T U M N 2 0 2 2

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North Vietnamese troops ready an SA-2 surface-toair missile for a launch. The SAM’s ability to reach high speeds and a high altitude was an extreme threat to U.S. bombers flying over North Vietnam.

Capt. Vic Vizcarra

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than 3 miles away. The danger of midair collisions was very real.

Vizcarra was off Mearn’s right wing, while Rambler 3, Capt. Jim Hayes, and Rambler 4, Capt. Giles Gainer, were on the left. “Art told me that as soon as we released our bombs, he would call that I had the lead and make a hard right turn to avoid the Korat force coming north off site 6,” Vizcarra recalled.

The decision to attack in a fingertip formation was still a concern, so the flight leaders made their run at the targets in a loose, flexible fingertip formation, which spread the F-105s out to minimize the chance of a single hit damaging more than one plane and give them room to maneuver. Unknown to the Thud pilots, the North Vietnamese had ramped up the danger. The NVA moved all available anti-aircraft guns close to the SAM sites.

The Americans would be flying into one of the most heavily defended areas in North Vietnam.

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pring High began shortly after noon on July 27. Two aborts from the Korat squadrons brought in two reserve planes.

In one of those aircraft was Capt. Chuck Horner from the 357th Tactical Fighter Squadron at the Korat base. Like his squadron mates, he had endured a long and frustrating night of arming and rearming the Thuds. The first concern was that the napalm canisters had to be dropped at air speeds no greater than 375 knots (430 mph), dangerously slow for attacking a well-defended target a low altitude.

The 80th Tactical Fighter Squadron planners at Takhli sent word to the air staff in Saigon that the Thuds should use conventional iron bombs and fly at 480 to 500 knots (550-575 mph). The

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES (2)

assigned to attack the anti-aircraft guns protecting the SAM sites.

Moreover, higher headquarters had the F-105s Length: 35 ft. approaching their targets in a “finger four”—a fourDiameter: 2 ft., 4 in. plane flight with a two-plane lead element and a Weight: 5,000 lbs. two-plane second element in a formation that looks Speed: Mach 3.5 like four outstretched fingers of a hand. That formaRange: 28 miles tion was ill-suited for a low-level, high-speed attack Altitude: 82,000 ft. on a fixed site protected by anti-aircraft artillery, Warhead: 440 lbs.

Vizcarra explained. “What did they think this was— high-explosive an air show? One hit could wipe out the whole flight. fragmentation Four big F-105s flying close together on the deck, charge nothing like making oneself a bigger target.”

SAM sites 6 and 7 were nestled in the wedge of the delta between the Black and Red rivers about 450 miles from the Thailand bases. Both the Korat and Takhli forces would refuel from orbiting Boeing KC-135 tankers and head into North Vietnam via Laos. The Korat group would approach SAM site 6 from the south, while the Takhli aircraft would fly east and south down the Red River Valley to site 7.

In the Takhli force, a squadron’s first flight carried CBU-2 “cluster bomb units,” or bomblets. Each bomblet, with the explosive force of a large hand grenade, was filled with ball bearings that shot out of the bomblet at high speeds when it struck the ground or some object. When the bomblets were ejected, the 480-knot (550 mph) airstream sent them over a wide area, where they tore through swaths of enemy troops and vehicles. The second and third flights in a squadron were loaded with four BLU-27 napalm canisters.

Each four-plane flight was to stay about 150 seconds, or 20 miles, behind the preceding flight so the trailing planes would not be hit by exploding ordnance dropped from the planes in front. Creating an additional threat, the CBU-2 bomblets tended to collide with each other after ejecting and explode in the air. An aircraft’s thin-skinned and highly volatile fuel tanks could easily be ruptured by the bulletlike ball bearings.

That frightful possibility weighed on the pilots as they flew toward their targets. In Vizcarra’s flight with the Takhli group, Maj. Art Mearn was call sign Rambler Lead, and Vizcarra was Rambler 2. They were approaching from the northwest down the Red River to hit site 7, and the Korat group was approaching from the south for a simultaneous attack on site 6, less

LEFT: (© RIA NOVOSTI / ALAMY; RIGHT: COURTESY VIC VISCARRA

SA-2 Guideline

NATIONAL ARCHIVES (2)

LEFT: (© RIA NOVOSTI / ALAMY; RIGHT: COURTESY VIC VISCARRA

F-105D Thunderchief fighterbombers rest on the airfield at Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base in 1965. Two fighter squadrons took off from Takhli for the SAM site attacks on July 27, 1965.

Armorers attach an SUU-7/A dispenser of CBU-2 cluster bombs on the outer wing pylon of an F-105D in 1965. The dispensers dropped the bombs from tubes at the rear of the pods. Cluster bombs shoot out ball bearings at high speeds on impact.

request was approved, and ground crews changed the weapons. As dawn rose, a more senior Air Force general in Saigon said the original weapons load would stand. No reason was given.

Horner and Maj. Roger Myhrum took their places as three and four in the third Redwood Flight. Shortly after refueling but before leaving Laos, the leader aborted with mechanical trouble.

He pulled out, followed by the wingman. This left Horner and Myhrum as the sole planes in the lead flight. It was not a good start to an already problematic mission.

A Douglas RB-66 reconnaissance plane monitored the SAM radar emissions of sites 6 and 7, and whenever it found emissions, the code was: “Bluebells are singing.” That call was made during the refueling, but then came another: “Bluebells are silent.” Meanwhile, as the F-105s streaked ever deeper into enemy territory, NVA early-warning radars tracked them until they were lost in the ground clutter 14 miles out.

The Korat force entered North Vietnam at 17,000 feet and descended to its attack altitude of 500 feet. The Red and Black River valleys were alive with the sound of heavily laden Thunderchiefs roaring overhead at 375 knots.

The lead flights saw the flashes and tracers of heavy anti-aircraft fire crisscrossing ahead. They descended below 50 feet to avoid the deadly web.

Against orders, the pilots chose to ignore the 375knot restriction for napalm drops and advanced to 500 knots. Their F-105s churned up roostertails of mud and spray over the rice paddies.

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Crew: One Engine: One Pratt & Whitney J75-P-19W turbojet with 24,500 lbs. of thrust Wingspan: 34 ft., 11 in.

Length: 64 ft., 5 in.

Height: 19 ft., 8 in.

Max weight: 52,838 lbs.

Max speed: 1,390 mph Range: 2,206 miles Service ceiling: 51,000 ft.

Armament: One M61 Vulcan 20 mm cannon; more than 12,000 lbs. of ordnance (rockets, bombs, missiles)

As the fast-moving F-105s skimmed the ground, NVA gunners attempting to knock them down were hampered by the high berms around their emplacements. They could not lower their muzzles enough to hit the jets. The air over the Thuds was filled with a deadly curtain of hot steel. Several planes were hit from above, an unusual situation for aircraft. Some returned to base with branches and leaves caught in the underwing pylons.

Cedar Flight’s Capt. Robert Purcell took some damage, possibly from an object on the ground. He pulled up with the entire underside of the Thunderchief aflame, Horner observed. Purcell ejected as his plane turned into a ball of fire on impact. He was captured and sent to Hanoi.

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akhli force pilot Capt. Marty Case in Hudson 4 of the third flight assigned to site 7, took anti-aircraft artillery fire about 14 miles out. “We were so low that most of it went over us,” he said.

“As we got closer to the SAM site it was just flames and smoke and triple-A going across. It looked like the end of the world to me. I didn’t think any of us could make it through that alive.”

Capt. Kile Berg, Hudson 2, was hit on the approach, Case said. “The gunners were trying to hit the lead, but we were going so fast, they hit the No. 2. Kile made it to the target, but as we were on the escape route, I looked ahead and his entire airplane from the intakes back was a mass of flames. It looked like a meteor with a needle sticking out.” Berg ejected. He was captured and spent seven years as a prisoner of war.

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Capt. Jack Redmond in Takhli force’s Valiant 4 was watching to his right “when all of a sudden these other planes zipped past us at our altitude,” he remembered. “We were only about 50 feet up.

They were the Korat planes coming off site 6.”

While the Korat force hammered site 6, the Takhli force made its move on site 7. The first three flights dropped CBU-2 bomblets and napalm on the SAM launchers and radar van. After a lull of two minutes, the next flight of four Thuds came in to drop their napalm canisters.

Somehow the 80th Tactical Fighter Squadron’s Valiant leader, Maj. Phil Call, fourth in the attack stream behind the 563rd Tactical Fighter Squadron’s Hudson Flight, misjudged his approach and saw his flight aimed not at the enemy support base north of the missile battery, but at the SAM site itself.

The four Valiant pilots released their cluster munitions a few seconds before passing over site 7. But as Valiant Flight passed over the site, Redmond was stunned and angered to see that the SA-2 missiles they had come to destroy were dummies. “They knew we were coming and set up all those triple-A batteries at the site,” he said.

“It was a trap.”

The first to hit the support facilities half a mile north of the main site was Rambler Flight with Vizcarra on the left. When he looked ahead, he saw two columns of black smoke rising from numerous fires. “All across the valley were the tri-

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F-105D Thunderchief

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Three Air Force F-105Ds from the 334th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 4th Tactical Fighter Wing, en route from Thailand’s Takhli air base to bomb a military target in North Vietnam pull up to refuel from a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker in January 1966. Squadrons from the Takhli and Korat bases bound for SAM sites on July 27, 1965, had to refuel from a C-135 along the way.

ple-A gun positions,” Vizcarra recalled. “The 37 mm shells looked like orange golf balls when they came at me. They exploded into black puffs, and I saw the black shrapnel spreading out. Art said, ‘Rambler Lead, 3,2,1, Pickle!’ Then we all released.”

The Rambler and Corvette F-105s each carried four BLU-27 napalm canisters filled with jellied gasoline. When the canisters landed, huge fireballs erupted into the sky. Tons of burning napalm immolated men, vehicles and fuel. In seconds Rambler was clear of the anti-aircraft guns.

Meanwhile, in the Korat force, Horner and his leader in Redwood Flight saw the target and released their napalm canisters at 550 knots (630 mph). Horner later admitted he was not certain of a hit, but at least he could report that “100 percent of the ordnance fell in the target area.’”

The NVA gunners, with no F-105s assigned to strike them, were free to fire their 23 mm and 37 mm guns at close range. They shot down four Thuds in the target area. More than half of the F-105s suffered damage from groundfire.

Pepper 2, Capt. Bill Barthelmas, a friend Horner’s, was hit over site 6. Noticing that his plane was leaking hydraulic fluid, he called for Pepper Lead, Maj. Jack Farr, to come close and examine the damage. On an approach to an emergency field just beyond the Thai border, Barthelmas’ controls failed, and he collided with Farr. Both pilots were killed.

In the end, six aircraft were lost—four shot down and two in the collision. Three pilots were killed (Capt. Walter Kosko, Barthelmas, Farr) and two were captured (Purcell and Berg). One of the downed pilots, Capt. Frank Tullo, was found and rescued.

FROM TOP: COURTESY MARK CARLSON (2); JACQUES LANGEVIN/SYGMA VIA GETTY IMAGES

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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fter the returning F-105s landed and the pilots were debriefed, a hard and cruel truth emerged. Both SAM launch sites were devoid of missiles and equipment. The North Vietnamese had set up dummy SAMs made of white-painted bundles of bamboo ranged around a fake radar unit. More than 130 anti-aircraft guns were waiting for the Americans lured into the fake SAMs trap.

Vizcarra, in his memoir Thud Pilot wrote: “Spring High could have been a historic mission. It was the first time in history of an attack against a SAM site. If we had known the site was a trap, we would never have sent the force out. We attacked at low level, which was based on exaggerated assumptions of the SAM’s capabilities. I’m not sure we would have done much better even if we had been able to plan the mission without headquarters’ interference. We had a lot to learn, and you

sometimes have to do the wrong thing to know it was wrong.”

An air staff anti-SAM task force was established. Led by Brig. Gen. Kenneth “K.C.” Dempster, it involved the Air Force, Navy and defense contractors. Homing and warning receivers were installed in F-105s in December 1965, four months after Spring High.

They alerted the pilot to enemy radar emissions and their source. The Navy’s Shrike anti-radar missile, in early development when the mission took off, was given the highest priority. The Shrike homed in on radar emissions at the center of the SAM battery.

In all, 46 recommendations made by the task force were accepted by the Air Force, leading to the development of SAM-targeting “Wild Weasels,” the code name for aircraft designed to hunt down and destroy SAM batteries, which opened the way for airstrikes in enemy territory. The first Wild Weasels were modified North American F-100F Super Sabre fighter-bombers, which arrived in Thailand in November 1965 and destroyed a SAM site on Dec. 22.

More technology followed. QRC-160 jamming pods reached Southeast Asia in September 1966. For the first time, American fighters could self-jam SAM radars and render them ineffective.

By then the number of SAM sites had risen to 18, with another 18 sites suspected, but even with that increase the effectiveness of Wild Weasel SAM killers raised the life expectancy of U.S. airmen dramatically.

Sadly, it had taken a defeat to make that victory possible. Horner returned to Vietnam in 1967 to fly 70 Wild Weasel missions in addition to the 41 bombing sorties he had flown in 1965. He was greatly affected by the outcome of Spring High and remained highly critical of the White House’s decisions in target selection.

As Horner rose in rank, experience and responsibility, he did his best to see that the Air Force had the tools, training, support and, above all, morale to win future conflicts. As a lieutenant general he commanded the coalition air armada in the 1990-91 Gulf War. The decisive air war over Iraq proved that Horner had learned from Vietnam. V

FROM TOP: Capt. Marty Case of Hudson Flight from Takhli; Capt. Jack Redmond of Valiant Flight from Takhli; Capt. Chuck Horner of Redwood Flight from Korat, shown as a lieutenant general during the successful 1990-91 Gulf War, after the Air Force had applied the “lessons learned” from Vietnam.

Mark Carlson is a regular contributor to military history magazines and the author of The Marines’ Lost Squadron: The Odyssey of VMF-422 and Flying on Film: A Century of Aviation in the Movies, 1912-2012. He lives in San Diego.

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A HEALING FORCE NURSES PUT THEMSELVES IN DANGER TO KEEP THE WOUNDED ALIVE

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U.S. Army nurses at the 93rd Evacuation Hospital in Long Binh, near Saigon, in 1968, work to stabilize a patient. Nurses in Vietnam often faced not only intense demands for patient care but also the threat of attacks on close-by military facilities and even the hospitals themselves.

By Tom Edwards

n Pleiku, the sound was faint at first, then gradually grew louder; a medevac chopper somewhere in the night sky,” writes Diane Carlson Evans, a former Army Nurse Corps captain and the founder of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, in her book Healing Wounds. “For grunts, the sound was a benevolent god with rotor blades; for nurses, an adrenaline-pumping bird that brought us merciless, soul-harrowing work.”

For nurses in Vietnam that work occurred in Army field evacuation, surgical and MUST (Medical Unit, Self-contained Transportable) hospitals, on Navy hospital ships and aboard Air Force helicopters and planes. The average age of nurses was 23. About 65 percent had less than two years of experience, and 79 percent were women.

They served in both active duty and reserve units. There was a range of tour lengths for nurses, although Army nurses, like other soldiers, served one-year tours.

Medical facilities were frequently near supply depots and airfields—targets for enemy fire, which could come from any direction at any time. Some hospitals suffered significant damage from shelling.

Guards were on patrol 24/7, and barbed wire encircled the compounds. Nurses also had to deal with the loss of electricity, a lack of operating tables and shortages of supplies and equipment.

They responded with resourcefulness and creativity. Tables were constructed with discarded lumber and assorted scrap. Red Cross bags were filled with stones and used as traction weights. Combat nurses were scheduled for a 72-hour week—12 hours a day, six days a week—but after a major firefight with heavy casualties, a nurse’s shift might be 24 hours or longer. Despite all the difficulties, nurse veterans say a high level of camaraderie and the appreciation of their patients kept morale high.

Nurses in Vietnam often faced more intense demands for patient care than had been the case in previous wars. The widespread use of UH-1 Huey medevac helicopters enabled more of the severely wounded men to get to a hospital fast, sometimes within half an hour, substantially increasing the workload and pressure on nurses stationed there. Facilities for medical treatment admitted 133, 447 wounded personnel between January 1965 and December 1970, and 97,659 of them were hospitalized.

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urses were among the earliest U.S. service members in Vietnam. The first military women to arrive were Army Nurse Corps Majs. Jane Becker, Francis Smith and her sister, Helen Smith, who landed in Saigon on April 29, 1956, on a temporary duty assignment with U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group’s Medical Training Team. Their task was to train South Vietnamese nurses in medical procedures.

In the summer of that year, Navy mobile construction battalions, the Seabees, made their first appearance in Vietnam. Hospitals were put on the Seabees’ to-do list as the American military presence expanded in the early 1960s.

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Army nurses arrived in Vietnam at one of two sites: Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon and Bien Hoa Air Base, about 20 miles outside the city.

The Tan Son Nhut arrivals went to the 178th Replacement Company at Saigon’s Camp Alpha. The Bien Hoa arrivals reported to the 90th Replacement Battalion at nearby Long Binh. From those points, it was on to their duty assignments. A variety of buildings were converted into hospitals.

Some facilities had been turned over to the Army by the South Vietnamese.

Often the acquired spaces were reconfigured into an “X” shape with the nurses in the center, where they could better monitor all the patients.

Prior to 1967, tents were the primary living quarters for nurses. The tents were replaced with Seabee-constructed buildings such as simple living quarters called hooches and Quonset huts. Hooches, like those in the Central Highlands town of Pleiku, were typically made of wooden-framed buildings with window screens. Some Quonset hut residences, prefabricated structures of corrugated metal, had individual rooms. In others, the nurses shared an open bay. When hospitals moved closer to combat operations, the nurses ended up in tents again.

Navy nurses also came to Vietnam early in the war. They served on two hospital ships, USS Sanctuary and USS Repose, and at two land facilities: Station Hospital Saigon and Station Hospital Da Nang.

In 1963 the Navy assumed responsibility for civilian and military medical activities at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Two members of the Navy Nurse Corps reported in February of that year. They worked at Navy Station Hospital Saigon, a five-story inpatient facility with an operating and emergency

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The combination of fast transport and advances in medical care resulted in a survival rate of 98 percent for those reaching a hospital in an hour or less. On average, Vietnam War patients left the hospital sooner than those in World War II and Korea because of the improved medical care.

During the Vietnam War, the hospital mortality rate per thousand was 2.6 percent, compared with 4.5 percent during World War II.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: B.J. GREENWAY RASMUSSEN COLLECTION, MILITARY WOMEN’S MEMORIAL. THIS PAGE: WILLIAM HARRELL

A nurse helps prepare a patient for an operation at the 7th Surgical Hospital, a mobile army surgical hospital (MASH), at Blackhorse base camp near Saigon in 1968.

Nurses were among the earliest U.S. service members to arrive in Vietnam.

area. Four Navy nurses attached to the hospital received Purple Hearts after a Christmas Eve 1963 Viet Cong bombing of the bachelor officers’ quarters, where the nurses were staying. They were the first female members of the U.S. armed forces to earn Purple Hearts during the Vietnam War. The Sanctuary had 14 nurses onboard initially in January 1966, when it was stationed off the coast of the Hue/Phu Bai area in northern South Vietnam. From April 1967 until November 1972, the ship housed 29 nurses.

Their unofficial motto was, “You find ’em, we bind ’em.” The Repose arrived in January 1966 and by March had a 29-nurse contingent that served until May 1970.

In March 1966 the Navy’s Saigon hospital was transferred to the Army.

During its Navy days, more than 6,000 patients were hospitalized. Approximately 130,000 outpatients received treatments. The Navy nurses at the Da Nang hospital served from August 1967 to May 1970, when that hospital was also turned over to the Army. It became the largest casualty treatment center in the world, with 600 beds and 63,000 patient admissions.

In 1966 the Air Force shipped to Vietnam 400-square-foot containers modified for use as hospitals. Within the next two years, a hospital at Cam Rahn Bay, about 200 miles north of Saigon, was the second largest in the Air Force, with 475 beds and 100 more for a causality staging facility. Ultimately, Cam Rahn Bay evolved into the aeromedical evacuation site for the entire theater.

In 1968 the Air Force sent the first airplane specifically designed for medevac operations to Vietnam. The aircraft, a McDonnell-Douglas C-9A, was named “Nightingale” to honor Florence Nightingale, the English nurse noted for her work during the 1853-56 Crimean War. The Air Force assigned its first female nurses to Vietnam in 1966, the majority in Cam Rahn Bay. The following year, female flight nurses became part of the medevac crews.

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TOP LEFT: Hospital ship USS Repose, which operated mainly in northern South Vietnam, sailed to areas of heavy fighting so helicopters could transport casualties to the ship. TOP RIGHT: Medical assistants unload a wounded man from a rescue helicopter onto the Repose in 1966. CENTER: Lt. Cmdr.

Dorothy Ryan, a Navy nurse, checks on a Marine aboard the Repose in 1966. BOTTOM: Air Force 2nd. Lt. Kathleen Sullivan comforts a Vietnamese child as part of the military’s Medical Civic Action Program, MEDCAP, which assisted people in villages.

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s America’s combat forces increased, so did the nursing force. In 1965 the Army had 113 hospital beds and 15 nurses in Southeast Asia. By December 1968, there were 900 nurses in Vietnam working in 23 Army hospitals and one convalescent hospital, totaling 5,283 beds. That year there were 11 Reserve and National Guard medical units in Vietnam.

During an 11-year stretch from the opening of the 8th Field Hospital in the central coastlands town of Nha Trang in March 1962 until March 29, 1973, when the last Army nurses departed after the cease-fire that ended U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, approximately 11,000 women served there, and 90 percent of them were nurses.

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Guam, Japan, the Philippines and the United States. A shortfall of 2,000 nurses made recruitment the highest priority for Col. Mildred Clark, chief of the Army Nurse Corps from 1963 to 1967.

(Her successor, Col. Anna Mae Hays, who held the position from 1967 to 1971, was promoted to brigadier general on June 11, 1970, making her the first American woman to earn a general officer’s rank.)

Nurses volunteered for an array of reasons— including patriotism, a calling to help soldiers in need and a desire for adventure. Reflecting on a 30-year military career in a 2006 interview with American Nurse, Vietnam veteran Mary Jo Rice-Mahoney said: “It provided me the opportu-

nity to travel around the world, learn about different cultures, perform various nursing procedures, make lifelong friends, and live through a combat experience. It’s where my love of nursing began.”

Rice-Mahoney joined the Army Student Nurses Program at St. Joseph’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland, in 1968, during her third year in nursing school. She was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps six months before graduation and then reported to Fort Dix, New Jersey. She worked in an orthopedic ward and got what she described in the American Nurse interview as a crash course in “Combat Injuries 101.” In March 1969, Rice-Mahoney was ordered to report to the 67th Evacuation Hospital at Qui Nhon in the central coastal region of South Vietnam.

Nursing in Vietnam encompassed more than the treatment of combat wounds. As in previous wars, diseases were the most common threat to a service member’s health, accounting for nearly 70 percent of hospital admissions from 1965 to 1969. Diseases such as malaria and hepatitis were frequent. Among the worst injuries were burns. The required treatment was the application of Sulfamylon, a thick cream applied to the affected area. It was reapplied every four to six hours after the previous cream had been removed, a very painful process. A heavy dose of narcotics did not keep many from crying out in pain.

Military nurses also treated allied forces, American civilians and Vietnamese men, women and children. In their free time, many visited local villages and their hospitals to participate in U.S.-funded health programs through the Medical Civic Action Program, or MEDCAP. Time for relaxation was rare. The beaches at Cam Rahn Bay and China Beach in Da Nang were popular gathering spots. Nurses got together for music and dancing, broke the rules by riding in helicopters and airplanes to view the landscape and the South China Sea, attended USO performances featuring popular entertainers and had a one-week furlough for rest and recuperation out of the country. Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Thailand were locations available for R&R.

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The C-9 “Nightingale” was staffed with nurses and medical technicians who cared for patients transported from Vietnam to larger hospitals in the Philippines. INSET: An Air Force crewman seriously injured in the crash of a C-5A Galaxy transport plane on April 4, 1975, is treated at a Saigon hospital. The aircraft was carrying Vietnamese orphans to the U.S. as Saigon was about to fall to communist forces. Among the dead in the crash was Air Force nurse Capt. Mary Klinker.

Nurses on the Wall Eight women died in the combat zone.

All were nurses.

2nd Lt. Carol Ann Elizabeth Drazba, 22, Pennsylvania, Army, 3rd Field Hospital, Saigon. Killed Feb.18, 1966, in a helicopter crash.

2nd Lt. Elizabeth Ann Jones, 22, South Carolina, Army, 3rd Field Hospital, Saigon.

Killed Feb. 18, 1966, with Drazba in a helicopter crash.

Capt. Eleanor Grace Alexander, 27, New Jersey, Army, 85th Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon in the central coastal region. Killed Nov. 30, 1967, in a plane crash.

TOP LEFT: U.S. Army nurse Sharon Lane, being congratulated upon her promotion to first lieutenant in August 1968, was killed in June 1969 during a Viet Cong rocket attack on the hospital where she worked.

BOTTOM LEFT: Diane Carlson Evans, founder of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial and author of Healing Wounds, left, observes Glenna Goodacre’s work as the sculptor forms the clay version of what will be a bronze statue. RIGHT: Visitors lay flowers at the memorial, which depicts three women caring for a wounded soldier.

U.S. ARMY/VANDAMERE PRESS VIA AP, DIRCK HALSTEAD/GETTY IMAGES, LUKE FRAZZA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

U.S. AIR FORCE, AP PHOTO/NEAL ULEVICH

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he last Army nurses left Vietnam on March 29, 1973, two months after the cease-fire.

However, more service and sacrifice were still to come. On April 4, 1975, as Saigon was about to fall to communist forces, the Air Force conducted Operation Babylift to fly orphans from Vietnam to the Philippines, a stop on their way to the United States for adoption. Air Force Nurse Corps Capt. Mary Klinker and about 130 passengers died when a Babylift C-5 cargo plane experienced a malfunction shortly after taking off from Tan Son Nhut airport and crashed. Klinker was 27.

The names of eight women are engraved on the wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. All were nurses—four died in plane or helicopter crashes, one from illness, one from a stroke and one from enemy fire. On June 8, 1969, 25-year-old 1st Lt. Sharon Lane of Canton, Ohio, was killed in a Viet Cong rocket attack on the 312th Evacuation Hospital in Chu Lai in northern South Vietnam.

Evans, author of Healing Wounds, came up with the idea for the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in 1983 and founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project in 1984. Ten years later her dream was realized. A groundbreaking was held on July 29, 1993, and the memorial was dedicated on Nov. 11, 1993. The centerpiece of the memorial is

sculptor Glenna Goodacre’s bronze statue showing three military women with a wounded soldier.

The 6-foot, 8-inch sculpture honors not only nurses but all 265,000 women, military and civilian, who served throughout the world during the Vietnam era. It is positioned about 100 yards from the apex of the V-shaped wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Evans served as president and CEO of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation (her organization’s name since 2002) for more than 30 years.

Nurses who came home carried with them experiences and emotions that changed their lives.

“I learned so many lessons, but it took me years to put them into words or concrete thoughts,” Janis Nark, a Detroit native who served as an Army nurse in Vietnam 1970-71, said in a 2015 article, “Angels of War,” published on the website of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. “Vietnam hardened me,” she added, but also said, “It heightened my sense of humor. It made me realize what’s important in life, and what isn’t.” V Tom Edwards, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam 1968-69, is a freelance writer/photographer in Forest Lake, Minnesota. He thanks Diane Carlson Evans for her assistance with this article.

1st Lt. Hedwig Diane Orlowski, 23, Michigan, Army, 67th Field Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon. Killed Nov. 30, 1967, with Alexander in a plane crash.

2nd Lt. Pamela Dorothy Donovan, 26, Massachusetts, Army, 85th Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon. Died July 8, 1968, attributed to pneumonia.

Lt. Col. Annie Ruth Graham, 51, North Carolina, Army, 91st Evacuation Hospital in Tuy Hoa in the central coastlands. Died from a stroke on Aug. 14, 1968.

1st Lt. Sharon Ann Lane, 25, Ohio, Army, 312th Evacuation Hospital in Chu Lai on South Vietnam’s northern coast. Died June 8, 1969, when a rocket struck the hospital where she worked.

Capt. Mary Therese Klinker, 27, Indiana, Air Force, medical team onboard a C- 5 Operation Babylift plane transporting Saigon orphans destined for the U.S. Killed April 4, 1975, when the plane crashed after experiencing pressure problems after takeoff.

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ARMORED CAVALRY MAKING TRACKS TO THE BATTLEFIELD

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M113 armored cavalry assault vehicles, or ACAVs, and M551 Sheridan light tanks of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment plow through rough terrain about a mile and a half from the Cambodian border on March 18, 1970.

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try units, which also used M113s, were retrofitting their vehicles to make them similar to ACAVs, but their tactics still differed. Mechanized infantry fought both mounted and dismounted, while the armored cavalry primarily operated mounted and on the move. The Blackhorse Regiment, with three squadrons, was the only full armored cavalry regiment in Vietnam, but most infantry divisions had their own armored cavalry squadrons, adding five to the list: 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division; 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry, 4th Division; 3rd Squadron, 5th Cavalry, 9th Division; 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry, 23rd Division (Americal); and 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 25th Division.

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ne of the U.S. Army’s specialized units in Vietnam was the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, nicknamed the “Blackhorse Regiment.” When deployed in 1966, the regiment was equipped primarily with M113 armored personnel carriers modified with additional guns and shields to become “armored cavalry assault vehicles” for a more offensive role. The ACAV’s basic armament consisted of two 7.62 mm M60 machines guns mounted on either side of the cargo top hatch and a .50-caliber M2 machine gun upfront, protected by a rounded armored collar with armor plates fore and aft to afford more protection for the gunner. Backed by flamethrower-equipped M113s called M132 “Zippos,” M551 Sheridan light tanks and M109 self-propelled howitzers, Blackhorse ACAV crews fought with distinctive aggressiveness in numerous operations in the Saigon area between 1966 and 1972. By mid-1967 mechanized infan-

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A Sending a handwritten message to the enemy are troops from the 11th Armored Cavalry clearing the Bo Ho Woods area northwest of Saigon on May 27, 1971. B Soldiers in Troop E, 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, 23rd Infantry Division (Americal), halt for awhile. C The 11th Armored Cavalry “Blackhorse” Regiment traces its origins to the 11th Cavalry Regiment, formed in 1901. After a series of redesignatons, it became the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in 1948. The unit served in Vietnam 1966-72. D M113 crewmen of the 11th Armored Cav in Cambodia on the night of July 6, 1970, are silhouetted in the glare of tracer bullets during a “mad minute” exercise, in which they spray the area around them to detect enemy infiltration before moving on. E A member of Troop L, 3rd Squadron, 11th Armored Cav guides an ACAV across a river ford during Operation Junction City Phase II north of Saigon on April 7, 1967.

The most numerous tracked vehicle in Indochina was the versatile M113 armored personnel carrier.

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F An M132 “Zippo” armored flamethrower of 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, incinerates an enemy position in the Iron Triangle between Saigon and Cambodia during Operation Cedar Falls in January 1967. G An ACAV crewman from the 11th Armored Cavalry works outside the vehicle. H Soldiers of the 11th Armored Cavalry’s 2nd Squadron slog through monsoon mud near Fire Support Base Warrior 25 miles northwest of Saigon on Sept. 18, 1971. I M113 ACAVs and M551 Sheridan tanks of 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry, attached to the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal), prepare for an operation in August 1968. J ACAVs move in file across a clearing in War Zone C, along the Cambodian border, on Feb. 24, 1967. The tracks of other armored vehicles are already imprinted into ground.

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Gen. Vang Pao, who led CIAtrained Hmong guerrilla forces battling North Vietnamese encroachments into Laos, fires a 4.2-inch mortar in 1972.

The Erawan War, Volume 2: The CIA Paramilitary Campaign in Laos, 1969-1974

By Ken Conboy Helion & Company, 2022

58

In Ken Conboy’s masterful retelling of covert operations across the border from Vietnam, The Erawan War, Volume 2: The CIA Paramilitary Campaign in Laos, 1969-1974, picks up where the first volume, covering 1961-69, left off.

From 1969 onward, Conboy writes, CIA guerrilla regiments engaged the North Vietnamese Army in “increasingly conventional” operations.

He recounts those operations in chronological order and with fascinating details, providing a surprisingly clear look at warfare that MEDIA was supposed to be secret.

The book contains a thorough DIGEST history and analysis of covert operations code-named Erawan, after a mythic three-headed elephant that is a symbol of Laotian royalty. The covert forces in his narrative include the Commando Raiders, elite soldiers chosen to participate in “the most challenging of raids,

ambushes, prisoner snatches…and cross-border missions” into North Vietnam.

The book’s major strength is its focus on the activities of tribal minorities and locally recruited guerrilla troops who worked together with Americans in the fight against the NVA. Famed Hmong leader, Gen. Vang Pao, features prominently in the book, which examines his military decisions as well as the activities of the men serving under him.

Erawan War is notable not only for its detailed documentation of military operations, but also for its visual appeal. The book contains numerous rare photographs, in color as well as black and white. Some of the striking images are scenes of Commando Raiders with their advisers, as well as an impressive photo of Vang Pao firing a 4.2-inch mortar at enemy forces during Operation Phou Phiang II in late 1972. Also shown are colorful images of badges and insignia used by the troops,

COURTESY HUGH TOVAR

ERAWAN WAR IN LAOS PITTED CIA-BACKED FIGHTERS AGAINST NVA

VIETNAM

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Medals & Insignia of The Republic of Vietnam and Her Allies 1950-1975

By Col. Frank Foster MOA Press, 2020

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Otter and the Xieng Khouang Air Transport C-47.

Conboy’s book is a valuable resource for readers seeking to deepen their knowledge of military operations in Laos during the Vietnam War and those who wish to gain insights into special operations and clandestine warfare in general.

—Zita Ballinger Fletcher

SOUTH VIETNAMESE FORCES HONORED IN CATALOG OF MEDALS Medals & Insignia of The Republic of Vietnam and Her Allies 1950-1975, by retired Army Col. Frank Foster, gives readers a glimpse into a once prominent military organization that is fading fast from public consciousness.

The author, publisher of Medals of America Press, served in Vietnam in the 173rd Airborne Brigade and on the General Staff of U.S. Army Vietnam, a logistics and administrative support organization. He produced the book with assistance from John Sylvester Jr. and Ngan Dinh, formerly of the Airborne Division of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

Foster sees the book as more than a detail-rich catalog of medals and their history. He also hopes it helps perpetuate the legacy of those who served in South Vietnam’s armed forces.

It’s almost 50 years since the 1975 fall of Saigon, and Foster writes: “You can expect to find fewer original South Vietnamese made awards available. The knowledge and information on the Republic’s awards system is also disappearing.

We hope this book will preserve the memory of the Republic and of its awards to the men and women who fought so hard for its preservation.”

The book is an authoritative guide to all awards issued by the Republic of Vietnam, as well as those of its allies during the war, including the United States, the Commonwealth, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines. Medals from colonial occupier France’s war in Vietnam are also displayed. One example is the Dragon of Annam (the ancient Chinese name for a French-ruled region in what is now Vietnam).

Crisp images of medals, ribbons and insignia

are accompanied by short histories and explanations of their symbolism. Foster explains how the medals were intended to be worn. He also provides information about the manufacturers and variations of awards. Ratings reflecting the rarity of particular medals on the militaria market will be helpful for collectors. Additionally, the book has pages on police medals and awards issued to youths and civilians.

This reviewer was particularly interested in the Kim Khanh decoration, awarded to Vietnamese citizens and foreigners who “distinguished themselves by exceptional achievement which helped develop human relations and understanding between peoples and between nations.” The Kim Khanh, an award with traditional roots revived by President Ngo Dinh Diem’s government in the mid-1950s to early ’60s, was intended for civilians but could be bestowed on senior military officials.

Unlike other awards, which evolved conceptually from French and American designs, the Kim Khanh was of unique Vietnamese origin.

Fashioned in the shape of a traditional Vietnamese gong, it featured five stalks of bamboo, an open scholar’s scroll with a writing brush and two dragons. Adorned with colorful tassels and beads, it was worn around the neck. The Kim Khanh was reserved for men. A version for women was called the Boi, with one of its later designs incorporating phoenixes.

The book also includes illustrations of South Vietnamese uniforms, badges and insignia, with a particularly fine-looking spread depicting imagery of shoulder sleeve insignia from the 1970s.

“Orders, decorations and medals are symbols of courage and merit, as well as human vanity,” Foster writes. “They are, also perhaps, enduring fragments and mementos of history.”

Providing a clear window into the past, Foster’s book highlights South Vietnam’s military culture as well as the rich symbolism and history of awards from various nations united in a common purpose during the Vietnam War. It will be greatly appreciated by collectors and readers seeking to enhance their knowledge of military awards and insignia.

—Zita Ballinger Fletcher

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PHOTO CREDIT

including the Commando Raiders, with translations of their mottoes.

Aviation enthusiasts will likely appreciate the illustrations of planes used in secret operations, including the Continental Air Services DHC-6 Twin Otter, the CIA’s Air America DHC-6 Twin

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War’s Boston Buddies

The Gunner and the Grunt: Two Boston Boys in Vietnam with the First Cavalry Division Airmobile

By Michael L. Kelley and Peter Burbank King Printing Co., 2020

For all the unfond memories it may leave in the different recruits who undergo it, basic training is designed to be a universal experience, primarily meant to reorient the individual toward the team. Then, as soldiers earn a military occupational specialty their experiences are individualized again, but within the context of their assigned unit.

A guerrilla war that escalated into a sprawling, complex conflict fought on land, sea and air, the American war in Vietnam produced as many narratives as participants, each one different, yet with elements of common experiences, adding a facet to the overall history of the war like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle.

The Gunner and the Grunt adds its own special twist by creatively combining into one book the individual experiences of two members of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in 1965-66— one a specialist in helicopters, the other an airborne infantrymen transported into and out of battle by choppers.

Although both came from Boston, Michael L. Kelley and Peter Burbank had not met before they went to Vietnam. By the time their tours of

duty were up, they had forged a fraternal bond, the kind applicable only to troops who had served in the same unit, in their case the 9th Cavalry Regiment (Reconnaissance).

The Gunner and the Grunt interweaves the individual experiences of Kelley and Burbank, from the uncertainties of enlistment to the struggles of post-traumatic stress disorder, including all the wartime ordeals in between.

Even while displaying their two “little pictures,” however, they pause on occasion to place themselves within the “big picture” of their units, as the Bostonians write about the officers and men who served alongside them and the major operations in which the 9th Cavalry distinguished itself.

Although it is a self-published book, The Gunner and the Grunt is a comprehensively researched historic document on one year’s activities for the 9th Cav and the 1st Cavalry Division, worthy of gracing their unit libraries.

That the book simultaneously succeeds on the individual soldier level makes it a standout for any reader with an interest in the airmobile aspect of the Vietnam War. —Jon Guttman

Beefing Up the Huey

UH-1 Huey Gunship vs NVA/VC Forces 1962-1975

By Peter E. Davies Osprey Publishing, Bloomsbury USA 2021

62

As early as 1962, American helicopter crews providing fast troop transport for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam discovered that the communist Viet Cong were not too intimidated.

They engaged the mobile but vulnerable rotary engine craft with whatever firearms they had on hand, from rifles to cannons. In that same year, newer, more powerful and capacious models of Bell UH-1 “Huey” copters became available for troop transport.

The U.S. Army began fitting the older, smaller UH-1As, Bs and Cs with extra armament—machine guns, Gatling guns or rockets in a variety of experimental arrangements. The Army pressed them into service as escorts for the troop-laden “slicks” (no guns, resulting in a smooth surface) to counter the enemy’s groundfire.

With both sides relying on a good offense as the best defense, numerous encounters involving American or ARVN air assaults pitted deadly cocktails of weaponry packed aboard the U.S. gunships against Viet Cong and North Viet-

namese arms, most notably the DShKM 1938/46 “Dushka” 12.7 mm machine gun (known and dreaded among American chopper crews as “.51-calibers” and “helicopter eaters”).

In UH-1 Huey Gunship vs NVA/VC Forces, Peter E. Davies compares the weapons and the tactical doctrines for their use that evolved in the crucible of combat.

Aside from the classic battles between Hueys and “.51s,” he covers the gamut of other weapons employed on both sides and describes the gunships’ use not only by the U.S. Army but also the Navy, Marines and Air Force, as well as the Royal Australian Air Force and Republic of Vietnam Air Force.

With accompanying photographs and color illustrations by Jim Laurier and Garth Hector, Davies’ book, No.112 in Osprey’s “Duel” series, serves up a short but comprehensive overview of the development under fire of a revolutionary form of airborne warfare that is still in use today.

—Jon Guttman

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AIR FORCE CROSS, FOUR SILVER STARS

By Jon Guttman

Fifty years ago in August 1972, fighter pilot Capt. R. Steve Ritchie achieved his fifth aerial victory and ace status. Given the limitations of a 21st century dominated by guerrilla warfare and remote-controlled electronic surveillance aircraft, he may well be the last.

Richard Steven Ritchie, born in Reidsville, North Carolina, on June 25, 1942, graduated from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on June 3, 1964, and got his wings at Laredo Air Force HALL OF Base, Texas. In his first Vietnam combat tour in 1968, Ritchie flew 95 forward air controller missions directing VALOR artillery or airstrikes from an F-4 Phantom II out of Da Nang Air Base with the 480th and 489th Tactical Fighter squadrons of the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing. In 1969 he returned stateside to attend the Air Force Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

Back in Vietnam in January 1972, Ritchie was assigned to the 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, at Udorn Royal Thai Air Base. North Vietnam invaded the South on March 30 and as one response President Richard Nixon launched Operation Linebacker, an all-out air offensive against the North on May 10. That day was marked by several ferocious engagements for the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy air wings and their opponents, the North Vietnamese air force.

Ritchie flew an F-4D the morning of May 10 as deputy leader of Oyster Flight (call sign Oyster Three) with Capt. Charles Barbin DeBellevue in the back seat as his weapons systems operator, or WSO. Maj. Robert A. Lodge and WSO Capt. Roger C. Locher led the flight.

64

Jon Guttman is Vietnam’s research director.

U.S. AIR FORCE

R. STEVE RITCHIE

At 9:42 a.m. the flight ambushed four MiG21MFs of North Vietnam’s 921st Fighter Regiment north of Hanoi. Lodge used AIM-7E-2 Sparrow radar-guided air-to-air missiles to destroy one MiG, his third victory of the war. Then 1st Lt. John D. Markle and Capt. Steve D. Eaves claimed another. Either MiG might have been piloted by Nguyen Cong Huy, who returned to Noi Bai air base with his plane badly damaged.

When Ritchie fired his first AIM-7 it did not explode, but his second missile did. DeBellevue, seeing a yellow parachute, shouted, “Oyster three’s a splash!” The struck pilot was probably Cao Son Khao, who ejected but died from injuries later.

Lodge, aiming for his fourth kill, was closing on the remaining MiG-21 when his F-4 was attacked by a Shenyang J-6, a Chinese-built MiG-19, of the 925th Fighter Regiment. Lodge was killed, but Locher was able to eject. The enemy victor, Nguyen Manh Tung, overshot the runway at Yen Bai. His J-6 exploded, killing him. Locher evaded capture for 23 days, a record for a pilot during the war, and was finally rescued by helicopter on June 2.

On May 31, Ritchie and 1st Lt. Lawrence H. Pettit, flying an F-4D, destroyed a MiG-21MF about 30 miles south of the Chinese border, killing Senior Lt. Nguyen Van Lung of the 921st Regiment and giving Ritchie his second shootdown.

On July 8 Ritchie teamed up with DeBellevue in a cannon-armed F-4E to attack MiG-21PFMs threatening an EC-121K radar-equipped airborne early warning aircraft. Getting behind the enemy, Ritchie loosed two AIM-7s that destroyed the No. 2 MiG. He launched a third missile to blow apart the leader. Senior Lt. Nguyen Ngoc Hung and Lt. Vu Van Hop of the 927th Fighter Regiment were killed. Ritchie was one MiG away from ace status.

On Aug. 28 the captain was back in his earlier F-4D with DeBellevue when they found MiG21s approaching head-on. Maneuvering behind them in a steep, climbing turn, Ritchie launched two AIM-7s at extreme range, then his remaining two. Number three was also a miss, but the last one struck home. Ritchie had become the Air Force’s only ace pilot of the Vietnam War. In April 1974 Ritchie resigned his regular Air Force commission but remained with the Reserves. On April 8, 1994, he was promoted to brigadier general. In the course of his career Ritchie received an Air Force Cross, four Silver Stars, 10 Distinguished Flying Crosses and 25 Air Medals. Phantom F-4D 66-7463, in which Ritchie scored both his first and fifth victories, is on outdoor display at the Air Force Academy. V

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