battle of khe sanh casualties

Ten more Marines and 89 NVA died during this period. [28], In early December 1967, the PAVN appointed Major General Tran Quy Hai as the local commander for the actions around Khe Sanh, with Le Quang Do as his political commissar. On January 14, Marines from Company B, 3rd Recon Battalion, were moving up the north slope of Hill 881 North, a few miles northwest of Khe Sanh Combat Base. [54] In attempting to determine PAVN intentions Marine intelligence confirmed that, within a period of just over a week, the 325th Division had moved into the vicinity of the base and two more divisions were within supporting distance. [59], During the rainy night of 2 January 1968, six men dressed in black uniforms were seen outside the defensive wire of the main base by members of a listening post. Declassified documents show that in response, Westmoreland considered using nuclear weapons. Early in the war US forces had established a garrison at Khe Sanh in Quang Tri province, in the . The deaths of U.S. Air Force personnel, estimated between five and 20, are also omitted. On January 21 at Khe Sanh, 30,000 North Vietnamese troops attacked an air base held by just 6,000 United States Marines. After failing to respond to a challenge, they were fired upon and five were killed outright while the sixth, although wounded, escaped. [105], Lownds estimated that the logistical requirements of KSCB were 60 tons per day in mid-January and rose to 185 tons per day when all five battalions were in place. [158] The question, known among American historians as the "riddle of Khe Sanh," has been summed up by John Prados and Ray Stubbe: "Either the Tet Offensive was a diversion intended to facilitate PAVN/VC preparations for a war-winning battle at Khe Sanh, or Khe Sanh was a diversion to mesmerize Westmoreland in the days before Tet. [125] On the night of 28 February, the combat base unleashed artillery and airstrikes on possible PAVN staging areas and routes of advance. [45] In December and early January, numerous sightings of PAVN troops and activities were made in the Khe Sanh area, but the sector remained relatively quiet.[46]. But Pisor also pointed out that 205 is a completely false number. One had to meet certain criteria before being officially considered KIA at Khe Sanh. The Pegasus force consisted of the Army 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) plus the 1st Marine Regiment. The Marines suffered 155 killed in action and 425 wounded. In March 1968, an overland relief expedition (Operation Pegasus) was launched by a combined MarineArmy/ARVN task force that eventually broke through to the Marines at Khe Sanh. The Marines knew that their withdrawal from Khe Sanh would present a propaganda victory for Hanoi. One headquarters would allocate and coordinate all air assets, distributing them wherever they were considered most necessary, and then transferring them as the situation required. [34] The heaviest action took place near Dak To, in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum. The plane, piloted by Lt. Col. Frederick J. Hampton, crashed in a huge fireball a few miles east of Khe Sanh, killing all aboard. A limited attack was made by a PAVN company on 1 July, falling on a company from the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, who were holding a position 3km to the southeast of the base. The Operation Scotland tactical area of responsibility (TAOR) was limited to the area around Khe Sanh along Route 9 in western Quang Tri province. [78], Thus began what was described by John Morocco as "the most concentrated application of aerial firepower in the history of warfare". He made his final appearance in the story of Khe Sanh on 23 May, when his regimental sergeant major and he stood before President Johnson and were presented with a Presidential Unit Citation on behalf of the 26th Marines. Beginning in October 1967, the Communists greatly increased their forces in the Khe Sanh area to total two infantry divisions, two artillery regiments and an armored regiment. 26th Marine Regiment (United States) - Wikipedia Enemy artillery rounds slammed into the runway. This is also the position taken in the official PAVN history but offers no further explanation of the strategy. During the course of the siege, the U.S. Air Force dropped five tons of bombs for each of the estimated 20,000 attacking NVA troops. The September bombardments ranged from 100 to 150 rounds per day, with a maximum on 25 September of 1,190 rounds. [137] Opposition from the North Vietnamese was light and the primary problem that hampered the advance was continual heavy morning cloud cover that slowed the pace of helicopter operations. The Battle of Khe Sanh took place between January 21 and July 9, 1968; however, most of the official statistics provided pertain only to Operation Scotland, which ended on March 31, or to the 77-day period beginning what is classified as the Siege of Khe Sanh, where the 26th Marines were pinned down until Operations Niagara, and Pegasus freed At 1530 hours the first C-123, with 44 passengers and a crew of five, began to land. [173][174], After the ARVN defeat in Laos, the newly-reopened KSCB came under attack by PAVN sappers and artillery and the base was abandoned once again on 6 April 1971.[175][176]. Only nine US battalions were available from Hue/Phu Bai northward. A platoon from Company D, 1/26 Marines was sent from the base but was withdrawn in the face of the superior PAVN forces. American logistical, aerial, and artillery support was provided to the operation. However, North Vietnamese sources claim that the Americans did not win a victory at Khe Sanh but were forced to retreat to avoid destruction. [96], The Marines at Khe Sanh had a plan in place for providing a ground relief force in just such a contingency, but Lownds, fearing a PAVN ambush, refused to implement it. I suspect he is also trying to draw everyone's attention away from the greatest area of threat, the northern part of I Corps. This marked the first time that all three battalions of the 26th Marine Regiment had operated together in combat since the Battle of Iwo Jima during the Second World War. [166] This view was supported by a captured North Vietnamese study of the battle in 1974 that stated that the PAVN would have taken Khe Sanh if it could have done so, but there was a limit to the price that it would pay. This time period does not particularly coincide with the fighting; rather, it dates from before the siege began and terminates before the siege (and the fighting) ended. [66] Hours after the bombardment ceased, the base was still in danger. [69] Due to the arrival of the 304th Division, KSCB was further reinforced by the 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment on 22 January. The official assessment of the North Vietnamese Army dead is just over 1,600 killed, with two . [164] He cited the fact that it would have taken longer to dislodge the North Vietnamese at Hue if the PAVN had committed the three divisions at Khe Sanh to the battle there instead of dividing its forces. by John Prados. On January 31, while approximately 50,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops were occupied in defending or supporting Khe Sanh and other DMZ bases, the communists launched an offensive throughout South Vietnam. It was a two-part battle which took place from November 14 to 18, 1965 at the la Drang Valley, South Vietnam. The opportunity to engage and destroy a formerly elusive enemy that was moving toward a fixed position promised a victory of unprecedented proportions. Battle of Khe Sanh - Wikipedia Of the 7877 officer casualties, 7595 or 96.4% were white, 147 or 1.8% were black; 24 or . [108] The most dramatic supply delivery system used at Khe Sanh was the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System, in which palletized supplies were pulled out of the cargo bay of a low-flying transport aircraft by means of an attached parachute. [120], On 23 February, KSCB received its worst bombardment of the entire battle. The battalion was assaulted on the night of 23 January by three PAVN battalions supported by seven tanks. MACV therefore initiated an operation to open Route 9 to vehicle traffic. They too were left out of the official Khe Sanh casualty count. [40] The 2nd and 3rd battalions of the 3rd Marine Regiment, under the command of Colonel John P. Lanigan, reinforced KSCB and were given the task of pushing the PAVN off of Hills 861, 881 North, and 881 South. After a ten-day battle, the attackers were pushed back into Cambodia. Taking a larger but more realistic view, the Khe Sanh campaign resulted in a death toll of American military personnel that approached 1,000. On 18 January, Westmoreland passed his request for Air Force control up the chain of command to CINCPAC in Honolulu. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. This article was written by Peter Brush and originally published in the June 2007 issue of Vietnam Magazine. The attacks hindered the advancement of the McNamara Line, and as the fighting around Khe Sanh intensified, vital equipment including sensors and other hardware had to be diverted from elsewhere to meet the needs of the US garrison at Khe Sanh. [146] Useful equipment was withdrawn or destroyed, and personnel were evacuated. [21], PAVN artillery fell on the main base for the first time on 21 January. [59], Making matters worse for the defenders, any aircraft that braved the weather and attempted to land was subject to PAVN antiaircraft fire on its way in for a landing. Battle of Khe Sanh: American Casualties : Showing All Results. Listen Now. The official figure of 205 KIA only represents Marine deaths in the Operation Scotland TAORthat is, Marines killed in proximity to the Khe Sanh Combat Base during the period from November 1, 1967, to March 31, 1968. "[103] The Bru were excluded from evacuation from the highlands by an order from the ARVN I Corps commander, who ruled that no Bru be allowed to move into the lowlands. [74], During January, the recently installed electronic sensors of Operation Muscle Shoals (later renamed "Igloo White"), which were undergoing test and evaluation in southeastern Laos, were alerted by a flurry of PAVN activity along the Ho Chi Minh Trail opposite the northwestern corner of South Vietnam. [99] The relief effort was not launched until 15:00, and it was successful. Two days later, the PAVN 273rd Regiment attacked a Special Forces camp near the border town of Loc Ninh, in Bnh Long Province. U.S. battles of the war in Vietnam had young GIs or Marines humping into the boonies in search of the enemy. [161], Whether the PAVN actually planned to capture Khe Sanh or the battle was an attempt to replicate the Vit Minh triumph against the French at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu has long been a point of contention. Khe Sanh had long been responsible for the defense of Lang Vei. 20,000-30,000 men Battle of Khe Sanh Overview A smaller slice of the action saw Americans on the receiving end, defending some firebase or outpost. Its mission was to destroy the Special Forces and their Vietnamese allies and to ambush any reinforcements coming from Khe Sanh. [77] When weather conditions precluded FAC-directed strikes, the bombers were directed to their targets by either a Marine AN/TPQ-10 radar installation at KSCB or by Air Force Combat Skyspot MSQ-77 stations. Marines stayed in the area, conducting operations to recover the bodies of Marines killed previously. [81] The sensors were implanted by a special naval squadron, Observation Squadron Sixty-Seven (VO-67). Ten American soldiers were killed; the rest managed to escape down Route 9 to Khe Sanh. [69] The Marine Direct Air Support Center (DASC), located at KSCB, was responsible for the coordination of air strikes with artillery fire. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. In the course of the fighting, Allied forces fired 151,000 artillery rounds, flew 2,096 tactical air sorties, and conducted 257 B-52 Stratofortress strikes. [33] The PAVN fought for several days, took casualties, and fell back. [34] US intelligence estimated between 1,200 and 1,600 PAVN troops were killed, and 362 members of the US 4th Infantry Division, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and ARVN Airborne elements were killed in action, but three of the four battalions of the 4th Infantry and the entire 173rd were rendered combat-ineffective during the battle. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. The Battle of Khe Sanh began on January 21, 1968, when forces from the People's Army of North Vietnam (PAVN) carried out a massive artillery bombardment on the U.S. Marine garrison at Khe Sanh, located in South Vietnam near the border with Laos. The NVA continued shelling the base, and on July 1 launched a company-sized infantry attack against its perimeter. At least 852 PAVN soldiers were killed during the action, as opposed to 50 American and South Vietnamese. [1] He goes on to state that a further 72 were killed as part Operation Scotland II throughout the remainder of the year, but that these deaths are not included in the official US casualty lists for the Battle of Khe Sanh. But only by checking my service record while writing this article did it become evident that I had participated in all three operations. On April 15, Operation Pegasus ended and Operation Scotland II began. "[105] There had been a history of distrust between the Special Forces personnel and the Marines, and General Rathvon M. Tompkins, commander of the 3rd Marine Division, described the Special Forces soldiers as "hopped up wretches [who] were a law unto themselves. The NVA 304th Divisions history notes that on 9 July 1968, the liberation flag was waving from the flag pole at Ta Con [Khe Sanh] airfield. On July 13, 1968, Ho Chi Minh sent a message to the soldiers of the Route 9Khe Sanh Front affirming our victory at Khe Sanh.. 528 of them include images. Where were the major battles of the Vietnam War? Tolson was not happy with the assignment, since he believed that the best course of action, after Tet, was to use his division in an attack into the A Shau Valley. Battlefield:Vietnam | Timeline - PBS The Marine defense of Khe Sanh, Operation Scotland, officially ended on March 31. The Khe Sanh battlefield was considerably more extensive from the North Vietnamese perspective than from that of the U.S. Marine Corps, both geographically and chronologically. Setting out from Ca Lu, 10 miles east of Khe Sanh, Pegasus opened the highway, linked up with the Marines at Khe Sanh, and engaged NVA in the surrounding area. By early January, the defenders could count on fire support from 46 artillery pieces of various calibers, five tanks armed with 90-mm guns, and 92 single or Ontos-mounted 106-mm recoilless rifles. [150] On 31 December 1968, the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion was landed west of Khe Sanh to commence Operation Dawson River West, on 2 January 1969 the 9th Marines and 2nd ARVN Regiment were also deployed on the plateau supported by the newly established Fire Support Bases Geiger and Smith; the 3-week operation found no significant PAVN forces or supplies in the Khe Sanh area. Marine Corps aviators had flown 7,098 missions and released 17,015tons. Lownds also rejected a proposal to launch a helicopter extraction of the survivors. Among the dead Marines was 18-year-old Pfc Curtis Bugger. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, then began planning for incursion into Laos, and in October, the construction of an airfield at Khe Sanh was completed. The enemy by my count suffered at least 15,000 dead in the area.. [12], General Creighton Abrams also suggested that the North Vietnamese may have been planning to emulate Dien Bien Phu. The strike wounded two more Strike Force soldiers and damaged two bunkers. [94] Although the PAVN was known to possess two armored regiments, it had not yet fielded an armored unit in South Vietnam, and besides, the Americans considered it impossible for them to get one down to Khe Sanh without it being spotted by aerial reconnaissance. The latest microwave/tropospheric scatter technology enabled them to maintain communications at all times. The tower at Khe Sanh instructed the pilot to take evasive action and go around for another approach. These were pitted against two to three divisional-size elements of the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN). The main US forces defending Khe Sanh Combat Base (KSCB) were two regiments of the United States Marine Corps supported by elements from the United States Army and the United States Air Force (USAF), as well as a small number of Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops. The Battle of Khe Sanh (21 January 9 July 1968) was conducted in the Khe Sanh area of northwestern Qung Tr Province, Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), during the Vietnam War. That was superseded by the smaller contingency plans. The Hill Fights (also known as the First Battle of Khe Sanh) was a battle during the Vietnam War between the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) 325C Division and United States Marines on several hill masses north of the Khe Sanh Combat Base in northwest Qung Tr Province . Following a rolling barrage fired by nine artillery batteries, the Marine attack advanced through two PAVN trenchlines, but the Marines failed to locate the remains of the men of the ambushed patrol. [1] According to Brush, it was "the only occasion in which Americans abandoned a major combat base due to enemy pressure" and in the aftermath, the North Vietnamese began a strong propaganda campaign, seeking to exploit the US withdrawal and to promote the message that the withdrawal had not been by choice. McNamara wrote: "because of terrain and other conditions peculiar to our operations in South Vietnam, it is inconceivable that the use of nuclear weapons would be recommended there against either Viet Cong or North Vietnamese forces". After its adoption, Marine helicopters flew in 465 tons of supplies during February. "[24] In November 1964, the Special Forces moved their camp to the Xom Cham Plateau, the future site of Khe Sanh Combat Base. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. The PAVN forces were in the process of gaining elevated terrain before it launched the main attack. [90], The Tet Offensive was launched prematurely in some areas on 30 January. The Marines and their allies at Khe Sanh engaged tens of thousands, and killed thousands, of NVA over a period of many weeks. In the aftermath, the North Vietnamese proclaimed a victory at Khe Sanh, while US forces claimed that they had withdrawn, as the base was no longer required. Additionally, the logistical effort required to support the base once it was isolated demanded the implementation of other tactical innovations to keep the Marines supplied. [48][Note 4], Not all leading Marine officers, however, had the same opinion. For most of the battle, low-lying clouds and fog enclosed the area from early morning until around noon, and poor visibility severely hampered aerial resupply.

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