Operation lam son 719
Rain-forest bunker complexes served the NVA for both offensive and defensive purposes. During the early stages of a battle, as in the fighting for Hill 875, The NVA could sortie out and employ their flanking and envelopment tactics to advantage. They knew the terrain intimately, because they had been living in this area secretly for quite a very long years, where starting to build The Harriman Super-Highway since Neutral Laos Agreement 1962, plus POL pipe-lines parallel along it, while during the last phase of bunker construction. Later, when the battle was approaching a high-point, as in the assault on Hill-888 South, The NVA could wait out the bombardment in the shelter of the bunkers.
In the end, bombs and shells would exact their toll. Those NVA regiments who were ordered to hold their position or to expose themselves in counterattacks would die, as they were to die by the thousands during couple days of the “Hill-Fight”. Their crucial purpose were paralyzed the 105s of Airborne and 155s of B/44 Artillery Battalion at Hill-31 and used maximum indirect fire power for destroying helicopters when they attempted to land. By planning carefully, by fortifying in advance, and by designing a battlefield that enticed the Airborne into becoming victims of General’ Giap stylized methods of fighting at Dien Bien Phu battle in 1954; the separated NVA regiments could accomplish what was most important to them: they could prolong the combat and make any Airborne battalions sent against them suffer grievously. Merely to strip away the top layer of canopy trees, the second layer of pole trees, and finally the underbrush so that on could see the bunkers to attack them with precision consumed days of this standard bombardment with artillery from Khe Sanh 175s, 155s, and 8-inch-guns and 250- and 500-pound bombs. Despite all of the preparatory bombing and shelling of Hill 888 South, the Airborne could not see the bunkers until they were almost on top of them, and there were the bunkers until they were almost on top of them, and there were plenty of trees left standing to give the snipers leafy perches. So why as the guns lead, I recommended Lt Col Airborne X.O’ 3rd Brigade let the forward squads must wore the orange-panel for references I had sight accuracy for protected them in advance 60 to 100 meters ahead strafing and rocket runs, now I had ready 38 rockets in both side my bird.
Lt Col X.O Brigade care about the lives of his forces; He engaged to forward head-front of platoon right in the moment he received a report of the bloodletting on the hill, took a squad of riflemen, and crawled forward to find out for himself what was happening. He therefore understood the limits of conventional bombardment against bunkers like the ones he now saw on Hill 888 South and the rashness of sending his troop to seize them. He ordered all of two airborne joint battalions withdraw from the hills and recommended in suggestion the Air-Wing from Thailand and 7th Fleet to switch to 750-, 1,000-, and 2,000 pound bombs with delay fuses. The delay fusing meant that the bomb penetrated the earth before exploding. A miss was still effective, because the subterranean shock waves tended to collapse the bunkers from beneath.
The concussion from the big bombs was disabling in itself (lethal when the hit was close enough), and the delay also gave the pilots time to fly clear.
Lt Col X.O intervened too late. The death toll entirely of Lam Son after two weeks was thousands in these typical “Hill-Fights” of 875 and 888 were already hundred-eighty. Close to half of the men had just been killed in this impetuous attack on Hill-888 South, and this time the Airborne were forced to abandon their dead in order to extricate the living. When Airborne returned after fierce bombardments during 24 hours later to recover the bodies of their comrades and occupy the wasteland of cratered ridges littered with splintered trees, forty-five of bunkers were still intact and the NVA regiment-men were gone again. The survivors of the 320 NVA Regiment and 29th Regiment that had borne the battle until this point had retreated to Hill-888 North, where, unbeknownst to the 3rd Brigade commander, Colonel Tho, they had been relieved by fresh troops of the 29th Regiment, which the NVA division commander had been holding in reserve.
Subsequently, Airborne’ recommendation had also put in U.S Navy and Air-force squadrons to work on Hill 888 North with heavy bombs, but 2,000-pounders could not blow away the perverse weather of this mountainous area. As the lead 8th-Airborne Battalion neared the top of that hill late on the same afternoon that 888 South was occupied, the men encountered brisk sniper fire, meanwhile we had been covered strafing fire-support for 2nd battalion been leaving Hill-30. The Airborne thought they could handle the snipers. They could not handle the tropical storm that enveloped them with forty-five-mile-per-hour winds and blinding rain. The battalion commander had to order a retreat. It was too dangerous to allow his Airborne-men to plunge ahead into who knew what.
Now, five separated NVA regiments from 320 Division, 324B Division took advantage of the hiatus to launch a counterattack that night by two reinforced main forces. The NVA regiments troops broke through the perimeter of 3th Airborne-Battalion and seized some previously unoccupied bunkers in the tree lines. There, with automatic weapons and grenades, they traded their lives through most of the next day in a fight to the death bunker by bunker. More dying followed on subsequent hours. By the time the 52 hours of fighting for the Hill-875, 888 had end, the bodies of 80 airborne-men had been carried to the spot near a stony-creek for evacuated and 148 had been wounded but that never happened. The worst Airborne’ losses for any single battle of the start Lam Son 719 of the war thus far.
Actually, General Giap’ tactical strategy determined by every Fire Support Bases of ARVN must be paralyzed in isolation by the eight regiments of NVA artillery, and six AAAs anti-aircraft regiments. Specially 152s guns: the duds from these penetrated four feet into the earth, and 120mm mortars that burst in an extremely large fragmentation pattern. Thereby every base our helicopter was crashed and grounded on those FSB. In this time so far: at Hill-31, two H34s crashed inside the FSB; at Hill-30, two UH1-H; at Hotel two UH1-Hs, and A-Loui, three UH1-H that I didn’t count so various kinds of choppers that U.S Aviation left there. General Giap’ tactical indicated instead broke every chop-stick one by one than couldn’t break a full chop-stick-bundle. He manipulated used main strong infantry forces with tanks attack from East at Dong Da of Rangers LZ North of 39th , LZ South 21st battalion, and West at Hill-31 Airborne than joint combined forces moved to attack South right after on Fire Support Hill-30 was seized; then Base A-Loui and Hotel [Hong Ha-2] later on. Certainly, 100 percent ended the Victory-War with perfect preparedness thank to CIA counterespionage help Giap with full detail information (Giap was engaged in OSS in 1943, now it seemed to me, General Giap at sit right on Pentagon side by side with General Haig)
As quickly as they let it ebb in the west, these three NVA regiments/70B, shifted the fighting to the eastern side of the Hill 31, striking the farther west Airborne Fire Support Base in three fronts, from west, north, and south. Brigade commander Colonel Tho ordered the joint forces come back from south-east to rescue 3rd Airborne Battalion and command post but fail because NVA 27th regiment was in the stronger-holding point on high relief. “The enemy is all over that goddamn area and seems to be getting stronger, if anything. And so there’s a real fight going up there. Particularly that indirect fire thing is worrying.” Just how worrying was demonstrated at Hill-31, where more than thousand and thousand incoming rounds every hour and more than from such indirect fire weapons as mortars 120mm and 122mm rockets and artillery – reportedly including 152mm howitzers – knocked out all the Fire Support Bases destroyed 105s and 155s friendly artillery and forced ARVN forces to withdraw for survive. Meanwhile the NVA 24B, and 66 regiments were paying a heavy price. The full 3rd Battalions, 300 soldiers were ordered died on the spot Hill-31 even though by raining 23, 14,5mm and grounding by PT-76 chains.
Now for counter-weight in the ROE’ compensation, the Strategic Air Command estimated that Arc Light B-52s alone were inflicting losses that were the equivalent of about one combat effective NVA regiment per week.” The Hill-31 area now, every direction shelling became the worst curse of this bloody fierce war, worse than the NVA regiments infantry assaults, worse than the ambushes of the supply convoys, worse than the raids by the sappers (a term American applied to NVA and Viet Cong commando-type troops) who stripped to their under-shorts and crawled through the barbed wire to toss satchel charges into bunkers and artillery revetments. The shelling was worse because it was equally lethal but harder on the nerves.
The worst on 25 February at 10:a.m it was still in heavy ‘pea-soup-fog’, the weather was marginal with clouds below the mountaintops and increasing ground fog. Still I thought low-flying helicopters, under clouded ceiling, could weave around the worst of it. Meanwhile five NVA’ regiments, setting from different direction, in column set out hurrying to march convergence to Hill-31 through the darkness fog that thickened with the lowering humid temperatures after long night. Suddenly, it too began to get serious when nearly just a short moment 5,000 rounds fell on the Fire Support Base Hill-31. The NVA regiments brought to bear all manner of artillery in the Soviet-designed arsenal by U.S dollars (financial-supported by creditor Skull and Bones, this remind you in the past history: in 1917 on his advise, [the founder Skull and Bone] the United States gave the Russian revolutionary government under Aleksandr Kerensky a $325 million credit to be spent on war but “materiel from the United States”) – 85mm, 100mm, 122mm, and 130mm guns; 120mm mortars that burst in an extremely large fragmentation pattern; and 122mm Katyusha rockets nine feet long, and particularly 152mm guns, the duds from these penetrated four feet into the earth. From now they don’t hide the real guns and mortars and rockets launchers in deep pits and in tunnels, no more in camouflage they boldly keep firing not like in the early days built “phony gun” positions for the interpreters of the Bronco OV-10 observer to find as simulate muzzle flashes. I can cast my eyes on the NVA battery that was obliterated and several meters of brown-dirt blown off the tops of the ridges, exposing what had been underground warehouses.
From several miles of south-east of Hill-31, I led two gun-ships for closed air-support 8th Airborne Battalion to joint communicated with the remnant element from another 6th Battalion at north west. Something was strange NVA troops climbed on board PT-76 and shortly they hurried converging on Hill-31 in retreated from their high crests south Hill-31. Meanwhile two H-34 from Queen-Be Squadron were got hit by indirect artillery grounded on the spot Hill-31 after dropped supplies, the panic and the sick-sight of troop deserters mobbing helicopters and hanging from ski and now all over inside the helicopter cabin inflicting the crashes of two H-34. I meditate in thought, had bogged down and become a blood debacle, with our troops Laotian hill-top strongholds cut-off and annihilated piece-meal by the result of the ten NVA regiments rushing from five Divisions plus two separated regiment plus tank T-54, T-34 and armored truck PT-76 and artilleries regiments.
In the anticipated stratagem of Permanent Government about the outcome of this operation was “the biggest-fiasco that I saw in my whole time been here because it broke the back of the South Vietnamese finest army particularly irreplaceable were the dead elite-officers, I must said: since “that” the future leaders, they were all dead for turning in South Vietnam to Hanoi without bloodshed but blood-leaked or Saigon was not be a “pebble” Capital.
Now a deep gloomed over the hill scenery in front of mine, after numerous ferocious cruelty shelling pounded on Hill-31, “that by afternoon the setting sun would be shining through so much smoke and dust that you couldn’t see it.” First I could see the Hill-31 among the vertical smoked column but eventually it disappeared out of my sight by hours blurred in the haze of smoke and flashed. I couldn’t understand the plight of my H-34 crewmen there died or wounded. More friendly bombardment more enemy attacked approach-trajectory closer, the fighter-bombers couldn’t distinguish the friend troops will withdraw or dead on spot, which direction friend troops will forced retreat. The Air Force and Navy tried all manner of counter-battery measures to rescue or paralyze their opponents. The batteries from Khe Sanh’ Long Toms, and guns Eight-inch, 155mm Howitzer fired hundreds or thousands of shells around the Hill-31. The F.4 Phantom, F-105 from Thailand; the Seventh Fleet A-4 Sky-hawks, F.8 Crusaders precision dive-bombed, and A-6 Intruder bombers, which lofted a respectable seven tons each, laid carpets in the tens of thousands of tons. But nothing gave more than a respite from these Dien Bien Phu’ artillerymen who counted in their intellectual heritage the seventeenth-century French genius of artillery and siege-craft Sebastien de Vauban, and who had had so much practice at digging and disguising against his direct military heirs who had forgotten his teachings.
(Continued)
Rain-forest bunker complexes served the NVA for both offensive and defensive purposes. During the early stages of a battle, as in the fighting for Hill 875, The NVA could sortie out and employ their flanking and envelopment tactics to advantage. They knew the terrain intimately, because they had been living in this area secretly for quite a very long years, where starting to build The Harriman Super-Highway since Neutral Laos Agreement 1962, plus POL pipe-lines parallel along it, while during the last phase of bunker construction. Later, when the battle was approaching a high-point, as in the assault on Hill-888 South, The NVA could wait out the bombardment in the shelter of the bunkers.
In the end, bombs and shells would exact their toll. Those NVA regiments who were ordered to hold their position or to expose themselves in counterattacks would die, as they were to die by the thousands during couple days of the “Hill-Fight”. Their crucial purpose were paralyzed the 105s of Airborne and 155s of B/44 Artillery Battalion at Hill-31 and used maximum indirect fire power for destroying helicopters when they attempted to land. By planning carefully, by fortifying in advance, and by designing a battlefield that enticed the Airborne into becoming victims of General’ Giap stylized methods of fighting at Dien Bien Phu battle in 1954; the separated NVA regiments could accomplish what was most important to them: they could prolong the combat and make any Airborne battalions sent against them suffer grievously. Merely to strip away the top layer of canopy trees, the second layer of pole trees, and finally the underbrush so that on could see the bunkers to attack them with precision consumed days of this standard bombardment with artillery from Khe Sanh 175s, 155s, and 8-inch-guns and 250- and 500-pound bombs. Despite all of the preparatory bombing and shelling of Hill 888 South, the Airborne could not see the bunkers until they were almost on top of them, and there were the bunkers until they were almost on top of them, and there were plenty of trees left standing to give the snipers leafy perches. So why as the guns lead, I recommended Lt Col Airborne X.O’ 3rd Brigade let the forward squads must wore the orange-panel for references I had sight accuracy for protected them in advance 60 to 100 meters ahead strafing and rocket runs, now I had ready 38 rockets in both side my bird.
Lt Col X.O Brigade care about the lives of his forces; He engaged to forward head-front of platoon right in the moment he received a report of the bloodletting on the hill, took a squad of riflemen, and crawled forward to find out for himself what was happening. He therefore understood the limits of conventional bombardment against bunkers like the ones he now saw on Hill 888 South and the rashness of sending his troop to seize them. He ordered all of two airborne joint battalions withdraw from the hills and recommended in suggestion the Air-Wing from Thailand and 7th Fleet to switch to 750-, 1,000-, and 2,000 pound bombs with delay fuses. The delay fusing meant that the bomb penetrated the earth before exploding. A miss was still effective, because the subterranean shock waves tended to collapse the bunkers from beneath.
The concussion from the big bombs was disabling in itself (lethal when the hit was close enough), and the delay also gave the pilots time to fly clear.
Lt Col X.O intervened too late. The death toll entirely of Lam Son after two weeks was thousands in these typical “Hill-Fights” of 875 and 888 were already hundred-eighty. Close to half of the men had just been killed in this impetuous attack on Hill-888 South, and this time the Airborne were forced to abandon their dead in order to extricate the living. When Airborne returned after fierce bombardments during 24 hours later to recover the bodies of their comrades and occupy the wasteland of cratered ridges littered with splintered trees, forty-five of bunkers were still intact and the NVA regiment-men were gone again. The survivors of the 320 NVA Regiment and 29th Regiment that had borne the battle until this point had retreated to Hill-888 North, where, unbeknownst to the 3rd Brigade commander, Colonel Tho, they had been relieved by fresh troops of the 29th Regiment, which the NVA division commander had been holding in reserve.
Subsequently, Airborne’ recommendation had also put in U.S Navy and Air-force squadrons to work on Hill 888 North with heavy bombs, but 2,000-pounders could not blow away the perverse weather of this mountainous area. As the lead 8th-Airborne Battalion neared the top of that hill late on the same afternoon that 888 South was occupied, the men encountered brisk sniper fire, meanwhile we had been covered strafing fire-support for 2nd battalion been leaving Hill-30. The Airborne thought they could handle the snipers. They could not handle the tropical storm that enveloped them with forty-five-mile-per-hour winds and blinding rain. The battalion commander had to order a retreat. It was too dangerous to allow his Airborne-men to plunge ahead into who knew what.
Now, five separated NVA regiments from 320 Division, 324B Division took advantage of the hiatus to launch a counterattack that night by two reinforced main forces. The NVA regiments troops broke through the perimeter of 3th Airborne-Battalion and seized some previously unoccupied bunkers in the tree lines. There, with automatic weapons and grenades, they traded their lives through most of the next day in a fight to the death bunker by bunker. More dying followed on subsequent hours. By the time the 52 hours of fighting for the Hill-875, 888 had end, the bodies of 80 airborne-men had been carried to the spot near a stony-creek for evacuated and 148 had been wounded but that never happened. The worst Airborne’ losses for any single battle of the start Lam Son 719 of the war thus far.
Actually, General Giap’ tactical strategy determined by every Fire Support Bases of ARVN must be paralyzed in isolation by the eight regiments of NVA artillery, and six AAAs anti-aircraft regiments. Specially 152s guns: the duds from these penetrated four feet into the earth, and 120mm mortars that burst in an extremely large fragmentation pattern. Thereby every base our helicopter was crashed and grounded on those FSB. In this time so far: at Hill-31, two H34s crashed inside the FSB; at Hill-30, two UH1-H; at Hotel two UH1-Hs, and A-Loui, three UH1-H that I didn’t count so various kinds of choppers that U.S Aviation left there. General Giap’ tactical indicated instead broke every chop-stick one by one than couldn’t break a full chop-stick-bundle. He manipulated used main strong infantry forces with tanks attack from East at Dong Da of Rangers LZ North of 39th , LZ South 21st battalion, and West at Hill-31 Airborne than joint combined forces moved to attack South right after on Fire Support Hill-30 was seized; then Base A-Loui and Hotel [Hong Ha-2] later on. Certainly, 100 percent ended the Victory-War with perfect preparedness thank to CIA counterespionage help Giap with full detail information (Giap was engaged in OSS in 1943, now it seemed to me, General Giap at sit right on Pentagon side by side with General Haig)
As quickly as they let it ebb in the west, these three NVA regiments/70B, shifted the fighting to the eastern side of the Hill 31, striking the farther west Airborne Fire Support Base in three fronts, from west, north, and south. Brigade commander Colonel Tho ordered the joint forces come back from south-east to rescue 3rd Airborne Battalion and command post but fail because NVA 27th regiment was in the stronger-holding point on high relief. “The enemy is all over that goddamn area and seems to be getting stronger, if anything. And so there’s a real fight going up there. Particularly that indirect fire thing is worrying.” Just how worrying was demonstrated at Hill-31, where more than thousand and thousand incoming rounds every hour and more than from such indirect fire weapons as mortars 120mm and 122mm rockets and artillery – reportedly including 152mm howitzers – knocked out all the Fire Support Bases destroyed 105s and 155s friendly artillery and forced ARVN forces to withdraw for survive. Meanwhile the NVA 24B, and 66 regiments were paying a heavy price. The full 3rd Battalions, 300 soldiers were ordered died on the spot Hill-31 even though by raining 23, 14,5mm and grounding by PT-76 chains.
Now for counter-weight in the ROE’ compensation, the Strategic Air Command estimated that Arc Light B-52s alone were inflicting losses that were the equivalent of about one combat effective NVA regiment per week.” The Hill-31 area now, every direction shelling became the worst curse of this bloody fierce war, worse than the NVA regiments infantry assaults, worse than the ambushes of the supply convoys, worse than the raids by the sappers (a term American applied to NVA and Viet Cong commando-type troops) who stripped to their under-shorts and crawled through the barbed wire to toss satchel charges into bunkers and artillery revetments. The shelling was worse because it was equally lethal but harder on the nerves.
The worst on 25 February at 10:a.m it was still in heavy ‘pea-soup-fog’, the weather was marginal with clouds below the mountaintops and increasing ground fog. Still I thought low-flying helicopters, under clouded ceiling, could weave around the worst of it. Meanwhile five NVA’ regiments, setting from different direction, in column set out hurrying to march convergence to Hill-31 through the darkness fog that thickened with the lowering humid temperatures after long night. Suddenly, it too began to get serious when nearly just a short moment 5,000 rounds fell on the Fire Support Base Hill-31. The NVA regiments brought to bear all manner of artillery in the Soviet-designed arsenal by U.S dollars (financial-supported by creditor Skull and Bones, this remind you in the past history: in 1917 on his advise, [the founder Skull and Bone] the United States gave the Russian revolutionary government under Aleksandr Kerensky a $325 million credit to be spent on war but “materiel from the United States”) – 85mm, 100mm, 122mm, and 130mm guns; 120mm mortars that burst in an extremely large fragmentation pattern; and 122mm Katyusha rockets nine feet long, and particularly 152mm guns, the duds from these penetrated four feet into the earth. From now they don’t hide the real guns and mortars and rockets launchers in deep pits and in tunnels, no more in camouflage they boldly keep firing not like in the early days built “phony gun” positions for the interpreters of the Bronco OV-10 observer to find as simulate muzzle flashes. I can cast my eyes on the NVA battery that was obliterated and several meters of brown-dirt blown off the tops of the ridges, exposing what had been underground warehouses.
From several miles of south-east of Hill-31, I led two gun-ships for closed air-support 8th Airborne Battalion to joint communicated with the remnant element from another 6th Battalion at north west. Something was strange NVA troops climbed on board PT-76 and shortly they hurried converging on Hill-31 in retreated from their high crests south Hill-31. Meanwhile two H-34 from Queen-Be Squadron were got hit by indirect artillery grounded on the spot Hill-31 after dropped supplies, the panic and the sick-sight of troop deserters mobbing helicopters and hanging from ski and now all over inside the helicopter cabin inflicting the crashes of two H-34. I meditate in thought, had bogged down and become a blood debacle, with our troops Laotian hill-top strongholds cut-off and annihilated piece-meal by the result of the ten NVA regiments rushing from five Divisions plus two separated regiment plus tank T-54, T-34 and armored truck PT-76 and artilleries regiments.
In the anticipated stratagem of Permanent Government about the outcome of this operation was “the biggest-fiasco that I saw in my whole time been here because it broke the back of the South Vietnamese finest army particularly irreplaceable were the dead elite-officers, I must said: since “that” the future leaders, they were all dead for turning in South Vietnam to Hanoi without bloodshed but blood-leaked or Saigon was not be a “pebble” Capital.
Now a deep gloomed over the hill scenery in front of mine, after numerous ferocious cruelty shelling pounded on Hill-31, “that by afternoon the setting sun would be shining through so much smoke and dust that you couldn’t see it.” First I could see the Hill-31 among the vertical smoked column but eventually it disappeared out of my sight by hours blurred in the haze of smoke and flashed. I couldn’t understand the plight of my H-34 crewmen there died or wounded. More friendly bombardment more enemy attacked approach-trajectory closer, the fighter-bombers couldn’t distinguish the friend troops will withdraw or dead on spot, which direction friend troops will forced retreat. The Air Force and Navy tried all manner of counter-battery measures to rescue or paralyze their opponents. The batteries from Khe Sanh’ Long Toms, and guns Eight-inch, 155mm Howitzer fired hundreds or thousands of shells around the Hill-31. The F.4 Phantom, F-105 from Thailand; the Seventh Fleet A-4 Sky-hawks, F.8 Crusaders precision dive-bombed, and A-6 Intruder bombers, which lofted a respectable seven tons each, laid carpets in the tens of thousands of tons. But nothing gave more than a respite from these Dien Bien Phu’ artillerymen who counted in their intellectual heritage the seventeenth-century French genius of artillery and siege-craft Sebastien de Vauban, and who had had so much practice at digging and disguising against his direct military heirs who had forgotten his teachings.
(Continued)
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