Unfortunately for the VC, they had no weapons other than the RPG launcher. Which date was it? When I arrived at 9th Division in June, I was further shocked to learn that I was going to a mechanized battalion, rather than be assigned to one of the battalions in the Delta where I could use my light infantry and Ranger school experience. and the perimeter was still intact.
At 7 a.m., as daylight was breaking, my track rolled past the ARVN III Corps compound gate. The 2nd Platoon took on the one on the north side of the road, and the 1st Platoon attacked the other. I told him we couldnt take the tracks off Highway 1 into town because the streets were too narrow. This fire was observed by the helicopter gunships that had been circling the area north of Long Binh and they quickly moved to attack the launch sites and were soon joined by an AC-47 Spooky gunship and their combined fire soon stopped the rocket/mortar fire.
90th Replacement Battalion | My Vietnam Experience Script is copyright Reuters Limited. As dawn broke, everything was deathly quiet. The platoons attacked by successive bounds through the village as the tracks, forming the base of the T, gave fire support from the .50s and resupplied the troops with ammo. At 0300 hours I received a call from Major Bill Jones, who had recently taken Ionoffs place as S3, stating that Bien Hoa airbase, the Long Binh facility, the II Field Force headquarters and the 199th Light Infantry Brigade (LIB) base camp were under heavy mortar and rocket attack. I had no way of knowing who it was with no light in the
PAVN/VC losses were 137 killed and 25 captured. Binh was a logistical mistake because the perimeter was so heavily armed
[3]:2204, On 1 February Company B, 2/3rd Infantry, Company C, 4/12th Infantry and elements of 2/47th Infantry swept Ho Nai finding only dead VC/PAVN and civilians who had been murdered by the VC or killed in the fighting in the town. [2]:350, With the base returned to full operation, that afternoon C130s landed the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment to help ARVN forces fighting the VC in Bin Ha city. This is the airstrike on snipers at the 195th AHC perimeter and the Long Binh ammo dump explosion set off by sappers the morning of the 1968 Tet offensive with sound effects added. I sat behind the .50-caliber, munching and giving thanks for the fact that, incredibly, nobody in Charlie Company had been killed. went off my first thought was that it was a nuclear explosion because of
The combat around III Corps headquarters was intense. The offensive continued until the end of the month in the North part of
As my airborne mentality faded, I learned to love the M-113or track. We could haul more personal gear, live more comfortably and walk less than straight-leg troops.
The NAM - Dong Ha vietnam 1968 | Dong Ha ammo dump | Facebook A soldier, who has been hit, lying prone between two other soldiers, tries to get up. Jan. 31. When Lieutenant Casper jumped up, our legs became entangled and I tripped him, Ax remembers. Views of a number of huts, in the hamlet, that have not been destroyed. When I arrived at the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, nicknamed the Panthers, Lt. Col. Arthur Moreland, the commander, asked me what job I wanted. Our arrival had canceled fears that III Corps headquarters might be overrun. Then things started falling out of the sky.
Powerful Explosion In Ammunition Dump Rocks S. Viet Nam Madera As my airborne mentality faded, I learned to love the M-113or track, as we called it. We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. 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. I called III Corps to report that we had detained all of these people, and was told to wait for the Vietnamese National Police to take charge. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Alpha Company was ordered to the 199th LIB compound, which was under attack. As time passed, I became a mechanized soldier. Flames consuming huts. I yelled at Lieutenant Casper, and everybody looked around as the VC tore out running the last few yards to safety. I told the platoon leaders to prepare to dismount and to take all the ammunition and grenades they could carry. I had been in Vietnam about nine months. As our medics treated the wounded, I reported to the American lieutenant colonel who was the III Corps G3 adviser. to check-in and see what was going on, and found myself the only
All I could think of to say was, Please clear that weapon!During the meeting, a master sergeant adviser to a Vietnamese ranger battalion ran into the compound. Dames killed them with a burst from his M-16 probably saving the lives of everyone on my track. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. There was an ammo dump explosion in 1968 also and both 1967 and 1968 are correct and were of course separate incidents. and still no answer. Wrecked ambulance with flat tires. 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. After the fight for the churches, there occurred one of the most bizarre and inexplicable incidents of the day. Some VC crossed Route 316 and took up firing positions in bush at the southern perimeter of the Plantation.
Maps of Heavily Sprayed Areas and Dioxin Hot Spots 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. I remember one
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. 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. The explosion echoed over an area of 50 miles. Dames walked down a side alley toward the highway. Updated 7/26/2015. The battle was significant, since Alphas leadership was seriously depleted during the days immediately prior to Tet. Four men were killed and more than 20 wounded, including most of the officers. [3]:218, The town of Ho Nai (105812N 1065335E / 10.970N 106.893E / 10.970; 106.893) was located on Highway 1 north of the Widow's Village and Long Binh Post. 14. 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. We began to pop hand-held flares so they could see we were there, but the shooting persisted, one round actually hitting my track. Then, for the last week in January, the 2-47 was sent south of the 9th Divisions base camp to patrol the jungles east of Highway 15, near the Binh Son rubber plantation. We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Toward dark, airstrikes had to be called in to blast the VC from the hill. . 13. rockets at Bien Hoa AB and Long Binh Post. ], The Laotian representative said six members of the Meo special forces were also cap tured with the American on May 7 in Xieng Khouang Province near the North Vietnamese bor der. Even though it was about 6-8 miles away to the NE of Bien Hoa, it was plainly visible . Fires were burning late into the afternoon. The bombs descend and explode on structures in grove of trees near rice paddies 23 miles east of Binh Thuy on 19th August. 1 comment. It had been over two days and many of us had no sleep. He waved me off. 11K views 9 years ago This is a brief clip of the ammo dump explosion at Long Binh, Vietnam, taken the morning of the Tet offensive, 1968. I was to be a platoon leader again, in Charlie Company, commanded by Captain John Ionoff. After we finished clearing the area around the compound and as our wounded were being dusted off, I received an absolutely incredible order from III Corps. SP4 Lawrence Korteum
The action occurs January 31st, 1968 (on "Tet", the Vietnamese Lunar New Year holiday). By 1968 the Bien Hoa-Long Binh complex was the largest US/South Vietnamese military base in South Vietnam. We were ordered to go to that church and detain every male between the ages of 16 and 80. Unconfirmed reports reports said the blasts were the work of Vietcong sabotage teams. I walked back to my track, thinking this was going to be a real nightmare. After much frequency changing, I finally got the commander of the bunker guards on the radio. Zabecki remembers taking his place on the wall with his M-79 grenade launcher. ", "We mustered everyone we could
M-113 Armored Personnel Carrier on guard. An accurate body count could never be compiled since so many VC bodies were dragged away or were burned in the many fires that ravaged the towns and villages. 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. Initials PW/VS/JH/BB/ES PW/VS/JH/ES [7], The Tet offensive attacks and previous losses due to mortar and rocket attacks on air bases across South Vietnam led the Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze on 6 March 1968 to approve the construction of 165 "Wonderarch" roofed aircraft shelters at the major air bases. 4 and future U.S. senator from Nebraska Chuck Hagel) had defended the Long Binh ammo dump and had helped in the Widows Village fight. As best I could, I explained that they were to take charge and that General Giap might be among the civilians. Aerial view of Long Binh Post in Vietnam. ", "Then we were all in the bunker
The 2nd Platoon pulled the damaged track out of the side street and towed it back to the III Corps compound. They all blew up! I sounded off, "who is there"? That night, frightened bunker guards in the 199th compound shot into the darkness to their front. It knocked a dimple in the side of the track as I fired up the gunner., Later in the fighting, Casper and several 2nd Platoon troops were pinned down next to a building. opened his mouth but, SGT Cuffee, the supply SGT. Just then a three-man VC RPG team calmly walked across the street right in front of the damaged APC. 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 idea was to leave nothing the VC might use against us. [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. 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) 939939. 7.
Talk:Long Bnh, Bin Ha - Wikipedia 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). He assigned one to the airborne battalion and the other to Charlie Company. the airbase made it too us in the daylight and foamed the ditch for
Dressed as travelers returning to ancestral homes for the Tet holiday, the guerrillas had quietly drifted into their urban assembly areas and put together their weapons. A burst of VC machine gun fire erupted nearby, causing the colonel, the deputy and their Vietnamese escorts to pile into their vehicles and roar off in the direction from whence they had come. 1. Then a report came in that a body had been found wearing a white shirt under a black pajama tunic. GV DUMP border. ", "I then went to the CP and tried
sixteen guns stationed next to the western border of Vietnam. According to Jones, that assault went so perfectly that it could have served as a demonstration at the infantry school. At that moment, a burst of VC machine gun fire erupted, causing the colonel, the deputy and their Vietnamese escorts to pile into their vehicles and roar off in the direction from whence they had come. hightForP2 = 330
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. around Bien Hoa Airbase and headed toward our post of Long Binh, then
All day civilians had been darting from their homes and running from the fighting. Ripped apart barbed wire. Company B, 2nd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment had arrived by helicopter from Bearcat and joined up with 2/47th Infantry to sweep the Widows Village. Now someone pointed out that there were a lot of young men, all dressed in black pants and white shirts, walking among the refugees. Tower had called and told me Charlie Company was under the operational control of III Corps and I was to take my orders from them. SV AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND EXPLOSION LV DITTO While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. Ammo Dump Exlosion Sapper Attack! After all had left for the
[3]:210 Instead at approximately 03:30 the VC began firing across the road at the Plantation Compound being met by return fire from the perimeter bunkers. The scout platoon had fought . We began to pop hand-held flares so they could see we were there, but the shooting persisted, one round hitting my track. Charlie Company soldiers, used to months of patrolling and fighting in the jungles, suddenly found themselves fighting house to house as their fathers had done in World War II. We found out later from captured VC that many guerrillas had been given only two magazines for their weapons. ordnance pad in the huge ammo dump. Attacking Long
The bombs descend and explode near structures in grove of tress in agricultural area 30 miles southwest of Saigon on 19 August, 1968. I walked back to my track, thinking this was going to be a nightmare. After commanding 180 paratroopers, taking on four APCs and 40 troops seemed like a dreamexcept that now I was responsible for troops in combat, not training. 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. During this time, the battalion made only sporadic contact and suffered few casualties. -
The progress was slow and ammunition was becoming a scarce, particularly grenades, which city fighting consumes at an enormous rate. out of the sky. According to the VC 5th Division official history, the 3rd Battalion, 5th VC Regiment was supported by the Bien Hoa Sapper Company; its mission was to overrun the compound, which was defended by about 15 ARVN soldiers and a smattering of MACV advisers. We could use our tracks as a base of fire or in a blocking position as the company maneuvered on foot. [2]:348, As the rockets hit Bien Hoa AB, 2 battalions of the VC 274th Regiment emerged from a rubber plantation 500m east of the eastern perimeter of Bien Hoa AB. All night they scanned the jungles with Starlight scopes, seeing nothing. What we came up with was a T formation. THE EXPLOSIONS RATTLED WINDOWS IN SAIGON, ABOUT 13 MILES (20 KILOMETERS) AWAY. Aerial view of Long Binh Post in Vietnam. John Gross received the Silver Star for his actions in command of Charlie Company on the first day of the Tet Offensive. October continued with construction efforts. Sappers had placed satchel charges on pallets of artillery ammunition, and the resulting mushroom cloud caused all its witnesses to think the VC had employed a tactical nuclear weapon. Alpha Company, still licking its wounds from the January 23 fight, was left intact. I was told to forget about them, which reinforced our feeling that this situation was different and that combat was certainly imminent. The explosions at Long Binh, 15 miles northeast of Sia gon rattled windows and shook doors here in the capital. Helicopter gunships took off from Bien Hoa AB to investigate, but were unable to locate the force in the darkness. Since I was in an airborne unit, it seemed certain that I would go to the 173rd Airborne Brigade or the 101st Airborne Division. The first explosion was 2,400,000 pounds of 8 inch high explosive artillery projectiles. Ly's father is a bricklayer. 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. 102 comments 105 shares. biggest ordnance storage areas in the country.
This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp. Sugar Bear Dames, as he was called by his many friends, walked down a side alley toward the highway. Seems like the fighting went on
This site requires JavaScript. Long Binh ammo dump was one of the biggest ordnance storage areas in the country.
In fact, the Communists had already infiltrated the city of Bien Hoa, suburban Ho Nai village and Widows Village, where pensioned families of deceased ARVN soldiers lived. 1.04 Hoa. while we were gone. This is the story of one rifle company, and what it faced on that decisive day. Tower sent the battalion S3, Major Jones, to take command, and once Alpha got moving, it did a magnificent job. Several M 113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) are seen accompanying the troops. carried on into that night with tracers flying everywhere. As we made the turn eastward on Highway 1, the lead platoon was ambushed. My Account |
Long Bnh Post and the Vietnam War | Worlds Revealed We could use our tracks as a base of fire or in a blocking position as the company maneuvered dismounted. Tower ordered Charlie Company to attack eastward to clear the village of Ho Nai, a Bien Hoa suburb. In addition to the US bases, the city of Bin Ha was the headquarters of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) III Corps and home to a large prisoner of war camp. Meanwhile, Charlie Company was ordered back to III Corps. the barracks hall just as he stepped out of his room going to
I was well seasoned having been through all the scenarios that presented
At that time, I received a call on my company frequency from the battalion commander, Colonel Tower, asking how things were going. 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. 2023 CriticalPast LLC. I
His battalion was in heavy contact and he had several wounded rangers he needed to evacuate. Later, as the sun sank over the Long Binh base, they tossed a football and ate cold C rations. The 2nd Platoon, under Lieutenant Fred Casper, led the way, followed by my track, then Lieutenant Howard Jones 1st Platoon and, finally, the weapons platoon under Lieutenant Don Muir. At 07:30 the VC/PAVN force stopped and made a stand in a cemetery where they continued to be hit by the gunships and the ACAVs of Company C. At 08:00 Company C was joined by a force from 2/47th Infantry and they proceeded to methodically kill all the VC/PAVN in the cemetery. Over the two month recovery and clearing operation, tens of thousands of these hazardous munitions were recoverd by hand, one at a time. I asked one of the men
Tet of 1968 - 118th AHC A VC commander captured later in the battle revealed that his orders were only to start the attack after several hundred rockets had hit the Plantation, but as the rocket sites had been neutralized before the rocket threshold was reached, the ground assault on the Plantation never began. At least 3,000 tons of ammu nition were reportedly de stroyed in the blasts, which be gan before dawn and continued until midmorning. Simultaneously, platoon leaders reported finding discarded AK-47s. I had learned no tactic at infantry school that fit the situation we were faced with, so we improvised. [3]:242, The VC/PAVN attacks were a failure. . They tried to make us keep our heads down so we couldn't get them with our counter-mortar fire . Its predominantly Catholic population was made up of many Vietnamese who fled North Vietnam in 1954 after the Viet Minh victory. The VC attacks on Bien Hoa and the Long Binh complex were abject failures, due in part to the fact that on January 31, 1968, they had run into the Panthers of the 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry. After a eventful
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Charlie Company slammed into the VC before they could get their attack organized. Some were complete projectiles weighing
officer around. Riflemen staying close behind. [2]:3523, General Weyand later noted that in their attacks on the Saigon area "Despite the large number of Communist troops committed, insufficient force was applied in any one area to take and hold the objectiveThe assault had been launched piecemeal and it was repulsed piecemeal in a series of relatively small battles. This article incorporates public domain material from the .mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit;word-wrap:break-word}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:"\"""\"""'""'"}.mw-parser-output .citation:target{background-color:rgba(0,127,255,0.133)}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-free a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lock-green.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg")right 0.1em center/12px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:none;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#3a3;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right{padding-right:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .citation .mw-selflink{font-weight:inherit}Air Force Historical Research Agency.
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