The acting commander of the 199th LIB, Col. Frederic E. Davison, ordered three of his infantry companies operating north of Long Binh to attack the rocket launch site, while LG Weyand ordered the 9th Infantry Division to send the 1st Brigade from Bearcat Base. CRITICALPAST.COM:
The 2-47s enemy body count came in at over 200, while the battalion suffered only four KIA. Get under! Sugar Bear Dames, as he was called by his many friends, walked down a side alley toward the highway. Zabecki remembers taking his place on the wall with his M-79 grenade launcher. The village of Ho Nai, now a ghost town, was still smoldering. These photos were taken from December 9, 1967 to February 1968. . Just then a three-man VC RPG team calmly walked across the street right in front of the damaged APC. Realizing we were driving past our objective, I halted the company and called for the 2nd Platoon to find a place to turn around. bore in my M14 barrel had begun to flake off and the wooden stock was
I dismounted the platoons and placed them on line on each side of the road: the second on the left, or north, and the first on the right, or south. Helicopter gunships took off from Bien Hoa AB to investigate, but were unable to locate the force in the darkness. maxhightForP2 = 13904;
Chu Lai and LZ Baldy Photos. Long Binh ammo dump was one of the
I told him that I wanted to command a company. checkered) water tower by the main gate. Unconfirmed reports reports said the blasts were . When the G3 adviser told me to lend the rangers a track, I told the sergeant that the M-113 was not a tank and to be careful with it. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. At least 3,000 tons of ammu nition were reportedly de stroyed in the blasts, which be gan before dawn and continued until midmorning. No infantry school tactic fit the situation; improvisation became the order of the day. Its predominantly Catholic population was made up of many Vietnamese who fled North Vietnam in 1954 after the Viet Minh victory. Terms & Conditions |
[3]:2015, At 04:00 a 60-man VC sapper team penetrated the northeastern perimeter of the base killing three MPs and entered the massive ammunition dump (105646N 1065436E / 10.946N 106.91E / 10.946; 106.91) where they planted eighteen Satchel charges before being forced to withdraw by the 720th Military Police Battalion. 0.22 [2]:349, The perimeter was strengthened by an ad hoc force of support personnel from the 145th Aviation Battalion and just before midday the ARVN 57th Regional Force Battalion moved through the base and counterattacked the VC forcing them to withdraw east into the rubber plantation leaving behind over 100 dead. After the cemetery had been cleared Company B, 2/3rd Infantry joined Company C, 4/12th Infantry and they made a night defensive perimeter north of Ho Nai, while the 2/47th Infantry was withdrawn to Bin Ha. The colonel explained that since we were infantry soldiers and did not know the proper method of searching a house, he and his crew had come to teach us. We left the clearing of Bien Hoa City in the capable hands of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry. 10. Since I was in an airborne unit, it seemed certain that I would go to the 173rd Airborne Brigade or the 101st Airborne Division. An MP full colonel, along with a deputy sheriff from Los Angeles (dressed in his deputy uniform) and two jeeploads of Vietnamese National Police, drove up to my track. His two daughters, Ly's mother and her sister, are disabled. Benny Toney, the 2nd Platoon sergeant, hooked a tow cable to Stormy. Forget that, he said. Some were complete projectiles weighing
During TET 1969 in front of Bunker Hill 17, VC sappers tried to penetrate our fence line. He wanted to borrow one of our tracks. I operated a heavy five
He assigned one to the airborne battalion and the other to Charlie Company. 4. Elements of B Company, 2/47th Infantry (Mechanized) and C Company, 4/39th Infantry, clearing North Vietnamese Army regulars from "Widows' Village" (a hamlet of housing provided by the government of the Republic of Vietnam for widows and children of fallen ARVN soldiers). Soldiers of the U.S. 2nd Battalion 47th Infantry (Mechanized) and 4th Battalion 39th Infantry clearing a hamlet during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Alpha Company was ordered to the 199th LIB compound, which was under attack. main target because they were outnumbered 5 to 1. Soon we could hear leaders moving up and down the bunker line yelling for the guards to stop firing. The 2nd Platoon pulled the damaged track out of the side street and towed it back to the III Corps compound. Listening to the scouts desperate fight on the radio, Charlie Company attacked with renewed vigor as we tried to get to Barnes and his men. "I was the 1SGT of the
The colonel explained that since we were infantry soldiers and did not know the proper method of searching a house, he and his crew had come to teach us. Aerial view of (USARV) United States Army Republic of Vietnam Headquarters Complex at Long Binh, Vietnam.
I almost did
Fighting our way to the scout platoon, we were stopped when we came upon two large churches, straddling Highway 1, each occupied by VC. Now commanded by a brand-new second lieutenant, the men of Alpha Company balked when they were told to move. Ly's father is a bricklayer. We all knew these moves were more than precautionary. We had run through the rear of the 274th VC Regiment, which was attacking the airfield. [2]:347[3]:236 The rocket/mortar attack was the signal to start the ground assaults on Bien Hoa AB and Long Binh.
That was 90th Replacement Battalion, situated on the road to Saigon between the village of Bien Hoa and the huge base at Long Binh. THE EXPLOSIONS RATTLED WINDOWS IN SAIGON, ABOUT 13 MILES (20 KILOMETERS) AWAY. border. He waved me off. -- color photo Near Moc Hoa. They bowed and looked confused. We were in a cloud of disarray
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Ammo Dump Explosion 18 Feb 1968 where 8 pads detonated with a total ammo value of $2,774,348: f. On 18 February 1968 at approximately 0300 an attempted penetration of the depot was. The North Vietnamese Army had circled
After I got the coordinates of our objective, I yelled, Crank em up! into the radio handset. As we made the turn eastward on Highway 1, the lead platoon was ambushed. In January 1968, our battalion relocated to the area between Xuan Loc and Bien Hoa, where intelligence had located a VC battalion. Battalion policy was that we had to fill in all holes and empty our sandbags each time we left a position. Craven and another photographer, were both wounded in the engagement.) A VC guerrilla hiding behind a parked ARVN jeep had fired the rocket. Of course you never
At the end of the previous day, Charlie Company had reported 38 VC killed, at the cost of only 11 U.S. wounded and three APCs damaged by RPGs. At 0700, as daylight was breaking, my track rolled past the ARVN III Corps compound gate. I was well seasoned having been through all the scenarios that presented
him in. In addition we detained more than 20 probable VC fighters dressed in civilian clothes. Policy was to fill in all holes and empty our sandbags when we left a position, to leave nothing the VC might use against us. Copyright Screenocean 2022 | Powered byImagen. As 1st Lt. Brice Barnes led his scout platoon into the edge of Ho Nai, he ran full speed into a hornets nest. Here was another sign that the situation was serious: The battalion commander personally gave out map coordinates of company objectives in the clear.Alpha Company was ordered to the 199th LIB compound, which was under attack. As darkness settled in, Charlie Company was ordered to move back the way it had come, to the junction of Highways 1 and 316, where we would form a screen in front of the 199th LIB base camp. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. We threw grenades over the wall behind them, but hit nothing.. Tet Offensive I had returned to Long Binh Post. View of surrounding areas. 0.17 They had been told that the population would rise up against the Americans and that there would be plenty of captured U.S. weapons to fight with. 1.04 find all the dead so the countryside smelled like a scene from The
The Vietnamese brigadier general, who was the ranking man at III Corps, drew circles around two equal-sized areas of downtown Bien Hoa. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. The ARVN general and III Corps G3 adviser, however, were not happy when we pulled out. Charlie Company had reported 38 VC killed, at the cost of only 11 U.S. wounded and three APCs damaged by RPGs. Less has been written about the danger, turmoil, chaos, confusion, contradictions and outright lunacy that confronted individual units as they responded to VC attacks on the morning of January 31. The helmet had stopped
The remains of a stack of over 15,000 high explosive 155mm artillery projectiles after the VC attack on February 4. (Vietnam War period). There we would be assigned a unit we would serve with in Vietnam. During this fighting, the two platoon leaders were wounded, Lieutenant Casper in the leg and Lieutenant Jones in the foot. Specialist 4 Bill Rambo, assistant driver and .50-gunner on my command track, remembers my response to the firing as being absolutely irate. As the scouts escaped, the volume of enemy fire began to slacken, then died altogether. THE EXPLOSIONS RATTLED WINDOWS IN SAIGON, ABOUT 13 MILES (20 KILOMETERS) AWAY. I said again, "Who is there"? We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I was called to a meeting in the headquarters. mortar rounds and 90 122-mm. [2]:347 Weyand also requested the 1st Australian Task Force (1 ATF) to defend the eastern approaches to Long Binh/Bien Hoa and 1 ATF had commenced Operation Coburg on 24 January. As the C-23 track Stormy, which was in the lead, turned into a side street, an RPG slammed into its front, smashing the radiator and wounding several soldiers. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. He manned the .50 and, with a Charlie Company driver, headed down Highway 1. According to the official history of the VC 5th Division, the 3rd Battalion, 5th VC Regiment, supported by the Bien Hoa Sapper Company, had the mission of overrunning the compound, which was defended by about 15 ARVN soldiers and a smattering of MACV advisers. The offensive continued until the end of the month in the North part of
We could shoot about 21 miles into Cambodia. There was an ammo dump explosion in 1968 also and both 1967 and 1968 are correct and were of course separate incidents. (Long Binh) ammunition dump. About 30 minutes later, the track was back with only the driver, who reported the ranger sergeant had been killed and that it had been impossible to get the wounded. In addition, we were tremendously flexible. Widows Village made a perfect attack position for the VC, since it lay directly across Highway 316 from II Field Force headquarters in the Long Binh complex. We all knew that these moves were more than just precautionary. while we were gone. Bravo Company was sent to protect the Long Binh ammunition dump, and Charlie Company was ordered into downtown Bien Hoa, where the ARVN III Corps headquarters was in danger of being overrun. Bucks County Pennsylvania United States USA, Del Rio Texas Laughlin Air Force Base USA, Roxborough Pennsylvania United States USA, U-Tapao Royal Thai Air Force Base Thailand. At the headquarters of the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry (2-47), nicknamed the Panthers, the commander, Lt. Col. Arthur Moreland, asked me what job I wanted. An eyewitness account of the battle for control of Bien Hoa and Long Binh on the first day of the 1968 Tet Offensive. The attacks on Bin Ha, Bien Hoa Air Base and Long Binh Post, occurred during the early hours of 31 January 1968 and continued until 2 February 1968. When it
. Officer and soldiers examine barbed wire torn apart by Vietcong who infiltrated Long Binh ammunition dump. 0.04 As we turned right onto Highway 15, an unbelievable spectacle stretched before us. Burned out 105mm howitzer shells at ammunition dump in Bien Hoa Air Force Base, Bien Hoa in Vietnam. Alpha Company, still licking its wounds from the January 23 fight, was left intact. We had run through the rear of the 274th VC Regiment, which was attacking the airfield. The 2nd Platoon led the way under Lieutenant Fred Casper, followed by my track, then Lieutenant Howard Jones 1st Platoon and, finally, the weapons platoon under Lieutenant Don Muir. The 2-47 was one of several units he pulled in from the jungles to guard the Long Binh headquarters and logistical complex 15 miles northeast of Saigon. The 2-47 was one of several units General Weyand pulled in from the jungles to guard the Long Binh headquarters and logistical complex 15 miles northeast of Saigon. A spokesman for the South Vietnamese command said that, according to unconfirmed re ports, satchel charges, of the type used by Vietcong sabotage squads were found near the dump. We suffered more wounded during the trip back to III Corps, where I was called to a meeting in the headquarters. I yelled at Lieutenant Casper, and everybody looked around as the VC tore out running the last few yards to safety. The 2-47s scout platoon had just finished a brutal fight in Widows Village, and at 1600 hours, it was ordered to move to the junction of Highways 1 and 316, and to attack westward through the village of Ho Nai toward Charlie Company, in the hope of pinning the VC between us. was his helmet and flack jacket! After the roadblock was cleared and communications restored, Charlie Company continued toward its objective. A soldier, who has been hit, lying prone between two other soldiers, tries to get up. Not only would I not finish my command tour, I was being assigned to a leg division. I walked back to my track, thinking this was going to be a nightmare. It then dawned on us that the VC were throwing down their weapons, changing clothes and slipping away. Although initially surprised, U.S. forces had reacted quickly and, despite what was reported in the press, American and ARVN forces handed the VC a devastating defeat during Tet. I had inherited the job
The battle was significant, since Alphas leadership was seriously depleted during the days immediately prior to Tet. As you know there were no officers
During this fighting, both platoon leaders were wounded, Lieutenant Casper in the leg and Lieutenant Jones in the foot. The Long Binh ammunition dump had exploded. F-100 Super Sabre and F-4 Phantom II drop Mark 82 bombs in Vietnam during U.S. air strikes. Over the two month recovery and clearing operation, tens of thousands of these hazardous munitions were recoverd by hand, one at a time. Normally, operations orders issued over the radio were encoded and sent by the S3s radio operator. Somehow the foam trucks from
We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. In April 1967 I was a first lieutenant commanding a rifle company in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. The G3 adviser told me that they had received intelligence that Vo Nguyen Giap, the North Vietnamese commanding general, had his command post in a Catholic church about 1 kilometer east of III Corps. was out of the bldgs. Hide. 4 Joseph Dames was tasked to return to the tracks for more grenades. Barbed wire torn apart by Vietcong who infiltrated through Longbinh ammunition camp. As dawn broke, everything was deathly quiet. 14. During the last week of January, the battalion patrolled the jungles east of Highway 15, near the Binh Son rubber plantation. The two of them refused evacuation and neither reported his wound. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. In October, the 2-47 was given the mission of securing engineers as they cleared Highway 1 from Xuan Loc to the II Corps boundary near Phan Thiet. Updated 7/26/2015. I was told to forget about them, which reinforced our feeling that this situation was different and that combat was certainly imminent. Now someone pointed out that there were a lot of young men, all dressed in black pants and white shirts, walking among the refugees. 6 External links modified. Waking Dead. As the sun sank over the Long Binh base, they tossed a football and ate cold C rations. My Account |
As we turned right onto Highway 15, an unbelievable spectacle stretched before us. The attacks by Vietcong (VC) and People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) forces were one of several major attacks around Saigon in the first days of the Tet offensive. After much frequency changing, I finally got the commander of the bunker guards on the radio. to contact the Commanding Officer(MAJ Guidroz). Long Binh Vietnam 1969 stock footage and images - Showing 1 to 6 of 5540 results Sort by: All Decade 1890 - 1899 Location (1) Norfolk Virginia USA (2) Normandy France (12) Norman Oklahoma USA (1) (1) (1) North Carolina United States USA (2) North Chicago Illinois USA (1) North Dakota United States USA (1) North Haven Maine USA (1) North Korea (1) Unconfirmed reports reports said the blasts were the work of Vietcong sabotage teams. At the meeting I was joined by the S3 of a battalion from the 101st Airborne Division. Dames killed them with a burst from his M-16 probably saving the lives of everyone on my track. LV EXPLOSIONS In a few moments, the huge dump became a fireball, the shock of the explosion echoing over an area of 50 miles. All of these placements were made with the wrongful assumption that the VC would attack from the jungles outside the base. U.S. military officials vVould not give the exact number of casualties for security reasons. Tower sent Major Jones to take command, and once Alpha got moving, it did a magnificent job. from the petroleum dump immediately next to our position. a noise! [3]:2305 By dawn the VC/PAVN were retreating northwards pursued by helicopter gunships and at 06:15 Company C, 4/12th Infantry began moving north in pursuit, intending to pin the VC/PAVN against a force from Company B, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment which was moving south. To get to the church, we had to run a gantlet of fire, through the VC 238th Regiment and into the flank of the 275th, which was fighting the 2-47s scout platoon in Widows Village. Besides the fireworks, ARVN soldiers had linked tracer bullets together and were stitching the darkness with weaving streams of machine gun fire. The ammunition dump contained high explosives like: C-4, artillery rounds, mortar rounds, aerial flares, 50 caliber rounds, M-60 machine gun rounds, and aerial rockets for the Huey Cobra and gunships. 26 VC/PAVN were killed in the attack and several captured. Under fire, Staff Sgt. because Mankato (Minnesota)Vocational school had taught me to weld as
First was sand then bigger stuff. Suddenly he came upon a VC RPG team drawing a bead on my command track, which was a prime target given the number of radio antennas jutting from it. [2]:347 Within Bien Hoa AB, the USAF 3rd Security Police Squadron was responsible for security manning bunkers and operating mobile patrols within the base perimeter. Simultaneously, platoon leaders reported finding discarded AK-47s. The 2-47s scout platoon had just finished a brutal fight in Widows Village, and at 4 p.m., it was ordered to move to the junction of Highways 1 and 316, and to attack westward through the village of Ho Nai toward Charlie Company, in the hope of pinning the VC between us. The three companies formed a line almost three kilometers long, facing to the east, with their backs to the Long Binh wire. Through sporadic fire, we continued northwest on Highway 15 to where it intersected Highway 1 on the western edge of Bien Hoa. Refine Your Search Long Binh Vietnam 1968 stock footage and images - Showing 1 to 6 of 5537 results Sort by: All All Search Results Decade 1890 - 1899 (3) 1900 - 1909 (18) 1910 - 1919 (136) 1920 - 1929 (83) more Location Aalen Germany (1) Aberdeen Proving Ground Maryland USA (1) Afghanistan (2) Africa (3) more Akron Ohio USA (3) Charlie Company would get the mission. 1. 0.48 A slightly wounded soldier, lying on the ground, smiles as he points to his leg as another soldier helps him. Then a report came in that a body had been found wearing a white shirt under a black pajama tunic. Meanwhile, Hueys reported VC running from the village. For more great articles, subscribe to Vietnam magazine today! As the sun sank low, we closed within a few hundred meters of the scout platoon and watched as helicopter gunships destroyed a large yellow house from which the VC were pinning down Barnes troops. known as Widows Village. That night, no one slept, but instead scanned the jungles with Starlight scopes, seeing nothing. Despite the confusion and wounds, our troops returned fire. One reference claims that 4 February 1967 was the date, and another claims that 28 March was the date. Company B, 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, which was placed under the operational control of the 2-47, made a combat air assault under fire into the middle of the Widows Village battle and fought bravely beside the Panthers all day long. When we arrived, we found the churchyard packed with thousands of civilians. The chrome
I realize now that the track was high enough that the rounds would have passed over the troops in front of the vehicle, Love recalls. ", "I then went to the CP and tried
General Patton's son, then Lt. Col. George Patton III, commander of the U.S. Army's 11th Armored Cavalry (Black Horse), positioned his tanks in between our big bunker hills . In another sign that the situation was serious, the battalion commander himself gave map coordinates of company objectives in the clear. [2]:3512 US losses in the fighting in the Widow's Village were three dead. The idea was to leave nothing the VC might use against us. For additional reading, see: The Battle for Saigon, Tet 1968, by Keith Nolan; and History of the 5th Division, by Ho Son Dai and Nguyen Van Hung. We charged southeast down Highway 316 to the Highway 15 intersection, situated on a small hill overlooking the 90th Replacement Company. As we cleared the ambush, the column suddenly came to a halt because of some kind of block in the road; simultaneously, someone keyed the company net. We carried concertina wire, sand bags and hundreds of Claymore mines and trip flares to make our defensive positions practically impenetrable. I was never so happy in my life. After telling them to stop shooting
But no one would be leaving the country that day. Around midnight on October 29th, 1966, the Viet Cong mortared or rocketed the Long Binh Ammo Dump. more that happened that night. In a fight, the company had 22 .50-caliber machine guns, a 106mm and several 90mm recoilless rifles, and more radios and M-60 machine guns than a walking company could ever carry. [American sources in Vien tiane said, as quoted by The Associated Press, that the captured American was prob ably the pilot of a Continent al Air Service plane that was forced to land behind Pathet Lao lines after running out of fuel.
Long Binh ammo dump was one of the biggest ordnance storage areas in the country. At the beginning of the Tet Offensive, one rifle company was ordered to to clear the village of Ho Nai, a Bien Hoa suburb. He said his battalion was in heavy contact, and he had several wounded rangers he needed to evacuate. One of the children in the Hope System of Care is Nguyen Thi Ly, born in 2001 with a deformed face, head and chest. Our area from the
Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. Script is copyright Reuters Limited. to check-in and see what was going on, and found myself the only
To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Dismounted troops of the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, stay close to their M-113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) as they clear Widows Village, near Long Binh Army Post, of Viet Cong who had overrun it during the Communist 1968 Tet Offensive (National Archives). The churches were cleared in short order. As I walked around the front of a track, the .50-caliber gunner accidentally hit the trigger and pumped five rounds into the ground about three feet in front of me. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Having been struck by mortars or rockets, the fuel tanks at the air base, as well as several buildings throughout Bien Hoa, were burning brightly. The gun-jeeps were progressively replaced by M113s and XM-706 Commando armored cars. We began detaining the well-dressed young men among the refugees. and still no answer. Despite the confusion and wounds, our troops returned fire. opened his mouth but, SGT Cuffee, the supply SGT. With a push-to-talk button stuck in the transmit position, no one could use the radio. After the roadblock was cleared and communications restored, Charlie Company continued toward its objective. As our medics treated the wounded, I reported to the American lieutenant colonel who was the III Corps G3 adviser. Flames illuminated the clouds, forming an eerie glow; flares hung in the sky and helicopter gunships crossed back and forth firing red streams of tracers into the city. remember being giddy and my brain was asking What is wrong with me?. We were ordered to go to that church and detain every male between the ages of 16 and 80. As a result long-range reconnaissance patrols (LRRPs) from Company F, 51st Infantry Regiment were positioned north of Long Binh to detect PAVN/VC approaching the base.