This site was called Hill 63 because there was a hill nearby that had an elevation of 63 meters on the map. hightForP2 = 330
maxhightForP2 = 13904;
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. OK. He stated 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. We all knew these moves were more than precautionary. At 03:45 the unit engaged the VC/PAVN with 2 ACAVs being quickly knocked out by RPG fire. I operated a heavy five
By continuing to use this site without changing your cookie settings, you agree that you are happy to accept our privacy policyand cookie policyand for us to access our cookies on your device. [3]:220, When the Company F, 51st Infantry LRRP team reported VC/PAVN moving past their position a reaction force from Company C, 4/12th Infantry mounted on ACAVs was sent to investigate. As our medics treated the wounded, I reported to the American lieutenant colonel who was the III Corps G3 adviser. He said I would have to wait. The Commo track, C-007, nicknamed Abdula and the Rug Merchants, with then- Pfc (and current Vietnam editor) David Zabecki behind the .50-caliber, brought up the rear. I was not sure what to do about the bunkers we had dug. night on alert at the Birdcage, I was awakened (trying to sleep
We came up with a T formation. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. 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. As the C-23 track in the lead, Stormy, turned into a side street, a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) slammed into its front, smashing the radiator and wounding several soldiers. convoy about two days before and were repairing anything that had failed
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. Long Binh ammo dump was one of the biggest ordnance storage areas in the country. 12. ", "We mustered everyone we could
The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. 8. He wanted to borrow one of our tracks. About 30 minutes later, the track came back with only the driver, who reported the ranger sergeant had been killed and that it had been impossible to evacuate the wounded. It involved transfer of powder projectiles and fuses enough to keep
By Vietnam terms
Then things started falling
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. ", "Then we were all in the bunker
EXPLOSIONS IN DISTANCE His action probably saved the lives of everyone on my track. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. [2]:349, At dawn several AH1 Cobra gunships from the 334th Assault Helicopter Company joined the defense spraying the VC with rockets and machine gun fire which started fires causing the VC assault to lose its impetus. 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. At 4 a.m., Jones ordered us to pull in our ambushes and be prepared to move, and told Charlie Companys noncombatants to report to battalion headquarters. I explained to the colonel that this was not a police action, and that we werent searching houses, we were in combat. Riflemen moving cautiously. January 12, 1972. by: Arnold John Houchin Bin Ha, USAF 3rd Security Police Squadron 1970-1972 Phu Cat, 37th SPS; Thu Hoa, 31st SPS; . He waved me off. Through sporadic fire, we continued northwest on Highway 15 to where it intersected Highway 1 on the western edge of Bien Hoa. Sugar Bear Dames, as he was called by his many friends, walked down a side alley toward the highway. Then things started falling out of the sky. 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. I was disappointed when I received orders to join the 9th Infantry Division. Big Boom! agreement was that the stockade prisoners would pitch our sandbags, help
[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. When offered the chance to go to II Field Force to help establish a new long-range reconnaissance patrol outfit, I turned it down to stay with the company. Artillery
After the fight for the churches, there occurred one of the most bizarre and inexplicable incidents of the day. AMMUNITION DUMP. August 1966 November 1966 December 1966. 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. The view is from the compound of the 20th. Even though it was about 6-8 miles away to the NE of Bien Hoa, it was plainly visible . Get under! Tom Allaback. Love was so startled, he didnt fire. At the beginning of the Tet Offensive, one rifle company was ordered to to clear the village of Ho Nai, a Bien Hoa suburb. 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. Fred Casper, one of the bravest of the brave, was killed during the May offensive at the Y Bridge in Saigon, leading from the front as was his custom. Chu Lai and LZ Baldy Photos. He was alive but he suffered a busted ear drum and singed hair, eye brows and arms. We threw grenades over the wall behind them, but hit nothing.. a noise! Initials PW/VS/JH/BB/ES PW/VS/JH/ES Just then a three-man VC RPG team calmly walked across the street right in front of the damaged APC. SAIGON, South Vietnam, June 1 (Reuters)Explosions ripped through a huge ammu nition dump near here today, killing one soldier and wound ing 13. 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. Toward dusk on January 30, Charlie Company soldiers stripped to the waist to dig bunkers next to their APCs. 118th during the Tet of 1968, also called the Defense of Bien
In mid-September, when Ionoff moved to battalion to become the operations officer (S3), I assumed command of Charlie Company. I had learned no tactic at infantry school that fit the situation we were faced with, so we improvised. 13. He said his battalion was in heavy contact, and he had several wounded rangers he needed to evacuate. 5. [3]:242, The VC/PAVN attacks were a failure. from the petroleum dump immediately next to our position. My only previous contact with M-113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) was during a training exercise at the officers basic course. 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. Then a report came in that a body had been found wearing a white shirt under a black pajama tunic. When the Tet cease-fire period began on January 28, the battalion was called back to the vicinity of Bear Cat, and Charlie Company was ordered to a large open field across Highway 15 from the Long Tan airfield. 1. Now the fight was on. I told him that I wanted to command a company. Simultaneously, platoon leaders reported finding discarded AK-47s. As the ammo dump burst into flames, secondary explosions erupted in other storage areas, and . He wanted to borrow one of our tracks. I was never so happy in my life. I told him that I wanted to command a company. It dawned on us that the VC were throwing down their weapons, changing clothes and slipping away. One reference claims that 4 February 1967 was the date, and another claims that 28 March was the date. He read a memorandum charging that 100 days after the signing of the Vientiane ceasefire accords, the seven men had been planning to take command of groups of saboteurs recently infiltrated into the area., See the article in its original context from. remember that my right shoulder and chest were black and blue from the
He ignored me and went to a nearby house where he and the deputy sheriff kicked in the front door. Besides the fireworks, ARVN soldiers had linked tracer bullets together and were stitching the darkness with weaving streams of machine gun fire. The Vietnamese general and the III Corps G3 adviser, however, were not very happy when we pulled out. That night, no one slept, but instead scanned the jungles with Starlight scopes, seeing nothing. II Field Force commander LG Frederick C. Weyand had also ordered the 9th Infantry Division to be prepared to send its 1st Brigade from Bearcat Base 16km south of Long Binh to Bien Hoa-Long Binh in the event of an attack. 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 extremely careful with it. At 08:00 the VC south of the Plantation withdrew into the Widows Village. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp. At that time, I received a call on my company frequency from the battalion commander, Colonel Tower, asking how things were going. Charlie Company was ordered to a large open field across Highway 15 from the Long Thanh airfield. However, Charlie Company slammed into the VC before they could organize their attack. 2. We were ordered to go there and detain every male between the ages of 16 and 80. (Vietnam War period). 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 unit left their position at Firebase Concord north of Bin Ha and moved east proceeding along trails north of Ho Nai towards the LRRP position. -- color photo Near Moc Hoa. Anyone can read what you share. 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. 1.04 While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. There we would be assigned a unit we would serve with in Vietnam. Normally, operations orders issued over the radio were encoded and sent by the operations officers radio operator. As we turned to head back, a tremendous blast shook the whole city of Bien Hoa. 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. 0.17 Some were complete projectiles weighing
[5], USAF losses were 4 killed in action with another dying of a heart attack, while 26 were wounded. The first explosion was 2,400,000 pounds of 8 inch high explosive artillery projectiles. As was our normal practice, each company had sent two ambush patrols into the jungle to our front. Waking Dead. I said again, "Who is there"? The Long Binh ammo dump had exploded. Company E engaged the PAVN/VC supported by artillery fire killing 47 PAVN/VC. carried on into that night with tracers flying everywhere. He assigned one to the airborne battalion and the other to Charlie Company. We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. No answer. Men at Long Binh ammunition dump. As we rolled by, we looked down into the compound and saw soldiers in khakis, boarding passes in hand, milling about. As I remember this night, around 12 or 12:30 a.m. the sirens
It also contained tons of captured NVA ammo and guns from the A Shau Valley. He replied that I would have to wait. the barracks hall just as he stepped out of his room going to
the light dome that rose from the explosion. In a few moments, the huge dump became a fireball, the shock of the explosion echoing over an area of 50 miles. who was tossed into a sewage ditch by the explosion, remembers 'killing the jeep' with his M-16. Come back up on the battalion freq. I had never been so happy in my life. out of the sky. There, Charlie Company soldiers joined ARVN and U.S. MACV soldiers manning the walls. As enemy resistance stiffened, we realized we had bottled at least a company of the VC 275th Regiment in the village. Then and
For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Vietnam Magazine today! 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. Summary - October 1966. As enemy resistance stiffened, we realized we had bottled at least a company of the VC 275th Regiment in the village. We never saw them again. Despite the confusion and wounds, our troops returned fire. 11. Which date was it? GV EXPLOSIONS AND FIRES The VC/PAVN attacked the position that night in a 6 hour long assault which was met initially by US mortar and artillery fire, then helicopter gunships and then napalm strikes. We charged southeast down Highway 316 to the Highway 15 intersection, situated on a small hill overlooking the 90th Replacement Company. Later, captured VC said many guerrillas only had two magazines for their weapons in expectation that the population would rise up against the Americans and have plenty of captured weapons to fight with. The action occurs January 31st, 1968 (on "Tet", the Vietnamese Lunar New Year holiday). Suddenly he came upon a VC RPG team drawing a bead on my command track, which was marked as a prime target by the number of radio antennas jutting from it. [2]:347, The VC 275th Regiment had taken up positions in a residential area known at the Widows' Village (105731N 1065237E / 10.9587N 106.877E / 10.9587; 106.877), which housed the wives and families of dead ARVN soldiers and was located across Route 316 from the Plantation Compound. At 3 a.m. on January 31, I received a call from Major Bill Jones, who had recently taken Ionoffs place as operations officer. I jumped down and ran from track to track, pounding on the sides and yelling, Check your handsets! As I ran back through the weapons platoon in the pre-dawn gloom, with small-arms fire cracking overhead, I was amazed to see young girls carrying bottles of Coca-Cola, trying to sell them to the troops. ". (Note: According to Colonel Sonny Craven, then leader of a combat photo team on the scene, these combat sequences was filmed by soldiers of the 221st Signal Company [Pictorial]). But their 81mm mortars were useless, since we were told we could not put any indirect fire into the town. Those orders were for us to clear the VC from the houses surrounding the corps headquarters. 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). 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. The Communists were starting to carry out a plan that they had studied for a considerable period. He ignored me and proceeded to a nearby house where he and the deputy sheriff kicked in the front door. STOCKPILES OF BOMBS AND ARTILLERY SHELLS AT THE U.S. ARMY AMMUNITION DUMP AT LONG BINH, IN SOUTH VIETNAM, ERUPTED YESTERDAY (SATURDAY) WHEN TIME CHARGES, PLACED BY VIET CONG RAIDERS, DETONATED AMID TONS OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES. SV AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND EXPLOSION Gradually, I became a mechanized soldier. [2]:350, At approximately 16:45 F-100 Super Sabres of the 531st Tactical Fighter Squadron conducted a Napalm strike against a PAVN/VC company at the east end of the base runway. APCs advance, firing 50 caliber machine guns. For more great articles, subscribe to Vietnam magazine today! [3]:23950, In the late afternoon of 31 January after clearing the Widow's Village 2/47th Infantry advanced into Ho Nai from the south, the town appeared deserted. Realizing we were driving past our objective, I halted the company and called for the 2nd Platoon to find a place to turn around. About two days later one the huge fuel bags next
Privacy Policy2023 CriticalPast LLC. We could ride, walk or be airlifted to war, travel great distances in a short amount of time, and arrive with many times the ammunition and equipment that could be lifted in by helicopter. "I was the 1SGT of the
Long Binh Ammo Dump October 29, 1966 . Tower ordered Charlie Company to attack eastward to clear the village of Ho Nai, a suburb of Bien Hoa. During Tet 1968, the 856th Radio . while we were gone. 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. Our outfit was a
officer around. 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. I was told to forget about them, which reinforced our feeling that this situation was different and that combat was certainly imminent. 939939. This was no surprise to us, since we could hear the enemy rounds slamming into Long Binh. Bringing that volatile convoy through the city, which had not been totally cleared and was still burning in many places, was a tremendously heroic act. My plan was to make captain and go to Vietnam as an experienced company commander. In January 1968, our battalion relocated to the area between Xuan Loc and Bien Hoa, where intelligence had located a VC battalion. 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. The Long Binh ammo dump had exploded. Now commanded by a brand-new second lieutenant, the men of Alpha Company balked when they were told to move. Charlie Company reacted quickly to reinforce Alpha, and a daylong fight ensued. unless they could see someone, I went to our Operations shack
to contact the Commanding Officer(MAJ Guidroz). Four men were killed and more than 20 wounded, including most of the officers. All day civilians had been darting from their homes and running from the fighting.