Good evening and welcome back to the channel. This is our eighth episode, part eight, Shoefly Under Fire and A Nation in Crisis. What you’re about to hear is drawn directly from the official history of the United States Marine Corps in Vietnam. A nine volume series researched and written by the Marine Corps History and Museums Division and published by the US government.

 These aren’t dramatizations or secondhand accounts. This is the core’s own record of what happened compiled from command diaries, afteraction reports, oral histories, and the accounts of the men who were there. We’ll be focusing on the years when marine involvement was most intense. the advisory era of the early 1960s, the landing at Daang in 1965, the brutal fighting of 1966 and 1967, and the defining crucible of 1968.

We’ll follow Marines from the rice patties of the Meong Delta to the hills above Kesan. Where possible, we will go into detail on specific actions and include additional references for you to dive deeper into this history. As always, if this content is to your liking, please ensure that you like and subscribe.

The language is formal, the record is honest, and the story is remarkable. Let’s begin. Marine KC130 Hercules shuttled between Okinawa and Daang for several days during the second week of January, bringing the officers and men of HMM 162 to Vietnam and returning with members of HMM 163. The changeover of units was completed on January 11th when Lieutenant Colonel Wthben officially transferred his squadron’s aircraft and maintenance equipment to the newly arrived unit.

 In the five months and 10 days since they initiated operations at Sock Trang, Wthben’s Ridgerunners had amassed an enviable combat record. The squadron’s crews had flown a total of 10,869 hours, 15,200 sortizes, and had lifted over 25,216 combat assault troops and 59,024 other passengers. In one month alone, August, they had established a Marine Corps record for medium helicopter squadrons by flying 25,543 helicopter hours.

 These records had not been set without risks, however. During the course of their operations in the Meong Delta and in IICOR, helicopters operated by HMM 163’s crews had been hit on 32 occasions by communist smallarms fire. Moreover, the squadron had become the first Marine unit to suffer combat casualties in the Vietnam conflict.

HMM 162 led by Lieutenant Colonel Reinhardt Louu, the veteran Marine aviator who had commanded the squadron during the recent deployment to Thailand as part of the third MW began full-fledged combat support operations the same day that the last of Wrathman squadron departed Daang. HMM 162’s crews, many of whom had participated in similar operations around Udor the previous summer, limited their early flights to routine resupply missions and a few medical evacuations.

Such missions enabled the squadron’s personnel to become better acquainted with the terrain over which they would operate during the next six months. The new squadron participated in its first major combat troop lift on January 19th when a break in the monsoon allowed the second Arvin division to execute a hellaorn operation into the mountains about 15 mi west of Daang.

18 Marine UH34 Delta Seahorses lifted 300 Arvin troops into three separate landing zones near a suspected communist base area. The squadron’s pilots and crews encountered their first Vietkong opposition during this troop lift. Upright bamboo stakes obstructed one of the landing zones, while at another, the enemy fired at the Marine aircraft with small arms.

 Although two seahorses were hit, none were shot down and the mission was completed successfully. A month later, on February 18th, the Marine pilots experienced another of the hazards associated with flight operations in Vietnam. While attempting to land troops from the first Arvin Division in a clearing about 18 miles southwest of Hi, five helicopters sustained punctures in the bottoms of their fuselages when they accidentally landed on tree stumps concealed by high grass in the landing zone.

 One stump caused extensive damage to an aircraft when it ripped into its forward fuel cell. The crew was forced to leave the seahorse in the field under Arvin protection overnight. The next morning, marine mechanics were flown in from Daang to repair the helicopter. Despite several troop lifts involving a dozen or more aircraft, Hleborn assault missions did not dominate HMM 162’s operations during the unit’s first three months in South Vietnam.

 Poor weather conditions over the northern provinces continued to restrict flight operations generally to resupply and medical evacuation missions. Statistics for the first quarter of 1963, for example, indicated that Marine helicopters conducted 6,537 logistic sortizes as opposed to 1,181 tactical support sortizes. The single most significant incident during HMM 162’s initial three months in Vietnam took place in the second week of March when the squadron suffered its first aircraft losses and casualties.

These were incurred during a salvage rescue attempt in the mountains of northern Toucor. The incident began on March 10th as two Marine seahorses attempted to insert a four-man American Vietnamese ground rescue team into the jungle about 30 mi southwest of Kuang Nai. The team’s assignment was to locate a US Army OV1 Mohawk, a twin engine turborop electronic reconnaissance aircraft manufactured by Grumman, which had crashed, and its pilot, who had parachuted into the jungle.

 The exact site of the accident had not been located, but the general area was known to be a steep jungle-covered mountain, the elevation of which approached 5,000 ft. While attempting to lower search personnel into the jungle by means of a hoist, one of the helicopters lost power and crashed. The Arvin Ranger, who was on the hoist when the accident occurred, was killed, but the helicopter’s crew managed to climb from the wreckage shortly before it erupted in flames.

 The co-pilot, Captain David N. Webster, was severely burned in the explosion. Other marine seahorses from Daang joined in the rescue operation, refueling from the Tafts at Kuang Nai for the flight into the mountains. The situation was complicated further when a second Marine helicopter experienced a power loss and crashed near the burned out Seahorse Hulk while attempting to land a rescue team composed of MABs 16 Marines.

Fortunately, the aircraft did not burn and the only injury incurred in the crash was a sprained ankle. But the extremely steep and densely jungled terrain kept the Marines from reaching the sight of the other downed helicopter. Bad weather and darkness prevented further efforts to extricate the various American and South Vietnamese personnel from the jungle that day.

 During the night, Captain Webster died of injuries. The next day, the Marines stripped a seahorse of some 700 pounds of equipment so as to enable it to operate more efficiently at the extreme elevations in the vicinity of the crash sites. After carefully maneuvering the helicopter into a hovering position, the pilot was able to extract the survivors and the dead co-pilot from the site where the first seahorse had crashed and burned.

The survivors were flown to Kuang Nai. There the wounded were treated and later evacuated by US Air Force transport to an American hospital at Na Trang. While these events were taking place, the Marines from the second downed helicopter guided by search aircraft operating over the area located and recovered the injured Army Mohawk pilot.

This accomplished, the Marines hacked out a small clearing from which they were evacuated by another Marine helicopter. The episode was not yet over, however, as the crashed Mohawk and its payload of advanced electronics equipment still had not been secured. Finally, an Arvin Ranger Company which had joined the search reached the remnants of the Mohawk and established security around the site while US Army technicians were hella lifted in to examine the debris.

The marine seahorse, which had crashed nearby without burning and was damaged beyond repair, was cannibalized for usable parts and then destroyed. On March 13th, with the search and rescue tasks completed, Marine helicopters began shuttling South Vietnamese Rangers to Mong Book, a nearby government outpost. During this phase of the mission, the helicopters received fire from Vietkong, who had moved into positions near the Rangers perimeter.

Three seahorses delivered suppressive fire on the enemy with their door-mounted M60 machine guns while the remaining helicopters picked up the troops in the landing zone. This was the first recorded instance of a Marine helicopter providing closeair support in actual combat. Other developments occurred in the early months of 1963 which either directly or indirectly affected the conduct of marine helicopter operations.

One was the improved coordination of intelligence gathering and usage among all South Vietnamese and American agencies within ICOR. This effort, which was essentially a concerted drive to streamline the collection and flow of intelligence information, was stimulated by a series of corewide intelligence seminars, the first of which was held in early February.

Of special interest to the Marine aviators was the establishment of closer liaison between the Marine task element, US Army special forces and South Vietnamese units in the Northern Core tactical zone. Closely related to the improvement of the overall intelligence situation was the acquisition of some new equipment by the Shoefly Marines.

In March, the task element received two new model handheld aerial cameras for use by the crews of the 01 Bravo bird dog observation aircraft. Later in the month, a photo lab was completed to facilitate the rapid processing of the photographs. By the end of the month, the Marines were also being provided with high alitude photographic coverage of some objective areas taken by US Air Force reconnaissance jets.

 The tempo of marine helicopter operations began to quicken in early April with the advent of sustained periods of clear weather. On April 13th, HMM 162 participated in a major Hellaorn assault in which 435 Second Arban Division troops were lifted into a suspected communist stronghold in the mountains along the Song Thu Bon about 30 mi south of Daang.

As in most troop lift missions, the Marine Bird Dogs provided reconnaissance and radio relay support. For the first time in the war, Marine transport helicopters were escorted by helicopter gunships. The UH1 Bravo Irakcoy, a single engine turbine-powered utility helicopter built by the Bell Helicopter Company.

Five Hueies from a detachment of the Army’s Daang based 68th Aviation Company armed with M60 machine gun clusters and 2.75 in rockets joined the VNAF fighter bombers to conduct preparatory air strikes on the landing zones. The initial landing met enemy resistance, but later in the day, action in the operational area intensified.

A Marine seahorse was hit by eight rounds of enemy small arms fire while attempting to evacuate wounded South Vietnamese soldiers and US Army advisers from a landing zone near the point where the urban forces had been landed that morning. With the co-pilot, First Lieutenant John D. Olman wounded, the badly damaged aircraft force landed in the Vietnamese position.

Two other Marine helicopters were dispatched to the scene to pick up the Marine crew and complete the evacuation. They managed to evacuate Lieutenant Olman, a wounded American adviser, and one dead and four wounded Arvin soldiers without incident. On a return trip to pick up more wounded, however, one of the two seahorses suffered heavy damage from Vietkong fire.

In this incident, the crew chief, Corporal Charlie M. Campbell, was wounded in the thigh, chest, and back by small arms fire, and the aircraft was forced to land near the first downed helicopter. The accompanying seahorse landed, picked up Campbell, and returned him to Daang for emergency treatment. Repair teams were heavy lifted to the position on the afternoon of the 13th and began repairing both helicopters.

One was able to return to Daang later that day, but the other required extensive repairs and could not be flown to safety until the 15th. While HMM1 162 repair crews were working feverishly to extricate their aircraft from the predicament along the banks of the Song Thuub, another of their helicopters was shot down nearby while supporting the same operation.

This aircraft was hit four times while approaching an Arvin landing zone located in the small valley about 3 mi south of the action in which the two helicopters had been lost earlier. After temporary repairs were made, its crew flew the damaged UH34D to Daang, where more detailed repair work was accomplished.

The number of combat support sorties flown into the mountains by HMM 162’s crews rose steadily as the weather improved. Near the end of April, the Marines helifted three battalions of the first Arvin division into the mountains of Kuang Tree and Tu Tien provinces near the Le Oceanian border. These units were to participate in an extended multi-regiment drive against suspected communist infiltration routes there.

This operation for which Lieutenant Colonel Lou’s squadron provided daily support after the initial landing taxed the durability of both the Marine crews and their aircraft. For 90 days, task element helicopters flew into and out of hazardous landing zones located at elevations as high as 4,500 ft. The majority of these sorties were resupply and medical evacuation missions with the occasional exception being the hellborn displacement of infantry and artillery units when distance or terrain prohibited overland movement.

Despite the dangers inherent in helicopter operations conducted over mountainous terrain, the squadron incurred no aircraft or personnel losses while supporting the offensive in western Kangtree and Tu Tien provinces. While his squadron support of the first arvin division’s ongoing drive near the le oceanian border continued, Lieutenant Colonel Louu committed 21 seahorses to support the offensive against the Doja base area along the southern edge of one core.

 On April 27th, Marine crews helifted over 567 troops of the second Arban Division into the mountainous area roughly 22 mi southwest of Tam Ki to begin operation Bach Fuang 11. The squadron was less fortunate during this operation than it was during the lengthy Kuang 10 effort. One helicopter was shot down by Vietkong fire which wounded the pilot Captain Virgil R. Hughes in the leg.

 The crew and the embarked Arvin soldiers escaped further injury when the aircraft made a crash landing in which it suffered extensive damage. After the crew was rescued, a salvage team from Daang stripped the helicopter of all usable parts and burned the Hulk so the Vietkong could not make use of it. This was the first Marine helicopter loss definitely attributed to direct enemy action.

Following the initial hellborn assaults into the Doja area, two seahorses were rotated to traumi from Daang on a daily basis. refueling from the TAFF’s bladder. These standby aircraft were used primarily to perform medical evacuation missions for VNMC and Arvin units involved in operation Bach Fuang 11.

 Before the operation ended in miday, HMM 162’s crews had evacuated nearly 100 marine and urban casualties from hazardous landing zones scattered along the border of First and Second Corps. The task elements bird dogs also provided aerial reconnaissance support for all phases of the operation. On May 19th, the day before Bach Fuang 11 terminated, 12 Marine seahorses lifted the two Vietnamese Marine battalions to the provisional brigade command post at Trai.

This particular phase of the operation evoked favorable comment from an anonymous US Marine pilot who noted on an unsigned debriefing form that the Hleborn withdrawal had gone smoothly and that the Vietnamese Marines appeared well organized in the landing zones and at Trai. Bakfang 11 ended unceremoniously the following day when HMM 162 he helifted the Arvin battalions from the Doja base area.

One trend which became increasingly apparent as the spring of 1963 unfolded was the growing utilization of the Army Huey helicopter gunships as escorts to and from landing zones. The gunships accompanied all marine assault, hely lifts and medical evacuations and when available also escorted resupply flights in order to provide suppressive fire around government positions while landings were in progress.

Although well suited for the escort missions, the lightly armed Hueies did not replace the Vietnamese Air Force attack aircraft as the principal source of preparatory air strikes around landing zones being used for assault helifts. The Marines continued to rely on the more heavily armed VNAF T28 Trojans and A1H Skyraaiders to conduct the so-called prep strikes.

As a result of the joint helicopter operations in ICO, a vigorous debate developed within the Marine Corps concerning the value of armed helicopters. This debate and the subsequent development, procurement, and operations of marine helicopter gunships will be covered in a separate historical monograph being prepared by the history and museums division headquarters US Marine Corps.

May was the last full month of combat support operations for Lieutenant Colonel Lu’s squadron. In the first week of June, transports from VMGR 152 began landing at Daang with the Marines of a new Seahorse Squadron. Since assuming responsibility for helicopter support in Icore in mid January, HMM 162 had compiled a solid combat record.

While under the squadron’s operations, the Seahorse helicopters had flown 17,670 sorties for a total of 8,579 flight hours. The bird dogs added approximately 400 sorties and another 1,000 hours to these figures. In the month of May alone, HMM 162’s helicopters flew over 2,000 flight hours, a number which approached the record set by HMM 163 during the previous summer in the Meong Delta.

Other statistics reflected the growing intensity of the Vietnam War. Since its deployment to Daang, the tenant colonel Lou’s unit had lost three helicopters. Two as a result of operations at extreme elevations and one to enemy fire. One member of the unit had been killed and three others wounded since the squadron entered the combat zone.

After a brief changeover period, the outgoing squadron commander officially turned over his unit’s aircraft and maintenance equipment on June 8th to Lieutenant Colonel Frank A. Shook, the commanding officer of HMM261. Shook, who had flown Marine helicopters in combat during the Korean War, committed his crews to their first actual combat missions that same day.

A significant change took place in the coordinating arrangements that governed US helicopter units supporting IICOR at approximately the same time that HMM261 initiated combat support operations. Since its relocation at Daang, the Marine Task Element along with all other aviation units in ICTZ had received its missions from the air support operations center located within the core headquarters.

As the number of US and VNAF aviation organizations assigned to IICOR grew and the total number of missions multiplied, it became necessary to modify the system of coordination and control. In accordance with the comm directive, IOR headquarters created an aviation headquarters operations center, AHOK, to oversee the employment of Marine and Army aircraft in the CTZ.

The AHOK, which was composed of a senior army representative, a senior marine representative, and an operations section, was to be directed by the commander. Task element 79336 formally stated its primary mission was to plan, direct and control the employment of all Army and Marine Corps aviation units and aircraft operations in direct support of IICOR.

The newly organized AHOK was also ordered to participate in and provide assistance to operational planning in the coordination of employment of USA/USMC Aviation with VNAF/USAF Tactical Air. The AHOK therefore was formed to supplement rather than replace the older air support operations center which continued to direct and control all US Air Force and VNAF operations over the northern provinces.

It was under this arrangement that US Marine and Army aviation units operated. After mid 1963, HMM261’s Marines began encountering systematic Vietkong resistance to their operations shortly after their first combat missions in early June. A 21 aircraft assault mission into the mountains west of Daang was aborted on July 6th when the Marine pilots discovered that the Vietkong had obstructed the two available landing zones with upright stakes.

While inspecting one of the landing zones on a low pass, a helicopter was hit in the forward fuel cell by communist small arms fire. The damage to the aircraft was not serious enough to force a landing, but the pilot of an escorting US Army Huey was mortally wounded while attempting to suppress the ground fire.

10 days after the enemy forced the cancellation of the assault mission west of Daang, HMM261 suffered its first aircraft loss in Vietnam. The crash, which was later attributed to mechanical failure, occurred about 37 miles southwest of Daang while one of the squadron’s helicopters was on a routine logistics mission.

Six passengers, two American advisers, and four Arvin soldiers were injured in the accident. The squadron commander dispatched two other seahorses to the scene of the crash to evacuate the wounded and insert a salvage team. The badly damaged aircraft was assessed as beyond repair and was destroyed. In the second week of August, officers from HMM261 and the task elements staff under the command of Colonel Gomez met with American and Vietnamese officers at IICOR headquarters to plan a largecale Hellaorn retrograde movement.

The planned heel lift was to mark the culmination of operation Lamsan 12, a 3-w weekl long offensive by several battalions of the second arban division against communist infiltration routes in Quang Nam province along the Le Oceanian border. Although not encircled, the Arvin battalions had encountered increasing Vietkong pressure since early August.

ICOR authorities feared that unless their units were withdrawn promptly, they might be cut off from the few landing zones that existed in the rugged operations area. As planned, the retrograde operation involved healing some 1,300 troops with their artillery and equipment to Tuang Duck, a government-held town situated 30 mi southwest of Daang along the Son Vu Gia.

The operation plan called for the commitment of 20 Marine helicopters, 18 of which would participate in the actual troop lifts. The two extra seahorses would be used in the event it became necessary either to replace helicopters assigned to the troop lift or to conduct search and rescue operations for downed aircraft.

Three VNAFC horses and two US Army unarmed Hueies were designated by the IOR headquarters to assist HMM261 with the helyl lift. The Daang Air Support Operations Center assigned a variety of other aircraft to support the operation. These included two VNAF Trojans, one Farmgate B26 Invader, and two US Army Huey gunships.

These aircraft would share the task of providing closeair support for the troop lift. A marine bird dog was scheduled to perform weather reconnaissance missions. The entire air operation was to be coordinated from two aircraft. An American forward air controller in a VNAF observation plane was to direct all air strikes.

 While overall control for the multi-service bilingual effort was to come from a US Air Force U10 Super Courier. This six-man single engine aircraft which possessed an 8-hour fuel capacity and carried three radios would serve as an airborne air support operations center airborne ASOC. It would be flown by an air force pilot and would carry a marine officer from the task element along with US and Vietnamese representatives from the Daang ASOC.

These officers would be in continuous radio contact with all aircraft in the operations area and also with the US Air Force liaison officer to ICORE who would be positioned with the ground troops. The concept of the operation called for the Arvin units to be lifted from two hazardous landing zones over a 3-day period.

 According to the plan, 500 Arban soldiers were to be removed from Landing Zone Hotel on Thursday, August 15th. Landing Zone Hotel, a small clearing which could accommodate only three seahorses, was situated along a river and was crowded between two 1,000 ft high ridge lines only 5 miles from the Le Oceanian border. The steep jungle covered ridges generally paralleled each other less than 400 meters apart on either side of the landing zone.

Slightly west of the small clearing, the ridges joined to form a box canyon. The physical structure of the location dictated that the transport helicopters used the same approach and retirement routes. Due largely to the proximity of the high terrain which surrounded landing zone hotel, the Arvin adopted a marine proposal to leave a 125man security force on the two ridges.

This force would provide cover for the helicopters conducting the final troop lift during this first phase of the retrograde movement. The 125 South Vietnamese soldiers would move cross country to another landing zone to be picked up by helicopters following the completion of the hely lift from landing zone hotel.

The second landing zone, cenamed Zulu, was nearly as treacherous as the first. Zulu was completely encircled by a rim of hills some 500 ft higher than the floor of the landing site. In addition to the 125man security force from hotel, the Marine, Army, and VNAF helicopters were scheduled to lift 200 Arvin troops and two 105 mm howitzers from this landing zone on the 16th and 17th of August, the second and third days of the operation.

An unexpected complication developed the morning the operation began when the Air Force grounded its invaders after one of the attack bombers crashed elsewhere in the northern portion of Vietnam as a result of undetermined causes. Shortly after this crash, HMM261 was called upon to divert a flight of helicopters to assist in search and rescue operations for the downed invader, thus reducing even further the assets available to support the Helyborn retrograde.

Despite the loss of some of the air power assigned to the operation, IICOR authorities elected to proceed with the heli lift from landing zone hotel as planned. After the crew of a marine bird dog confirmed that good weather prevailed over the operations area, the first helicopters departed Daang on schedule.

Less than half an hour after takeoff, the Marine and Vietnamese pilots began maneuvering their aircraft between the two ridges which dominated landing zone hotel. Twice during the pickup, the armed Huey escorts drew fire from the thick jungle on one side of the approach lanes being used by the transports. Both times they returned fire in the direction of the unseen enemy and forced him to silence his weapons.

The first phase of the operation was completed without serious incident 4 hours after it had begun. The second phase of the helift began the next morning with the two unarmed US Army Hueies making several trips to landing zone Zulu to lift out the disassembled Arvin 105 mm howitzers. The Marine and VNAF transport helicopters followed and continued to shuttle troops out of the landing zone for three hours without encountering enemy opposition.

Then a departing flight of seahorses drew fire from a nearby ridge line. One of the escorting Hueies immediately marked the suspected target for the VNAF Trojans and the attack aircraft bombed and strafed the position. The communist activity ceased after an overnight march. The covering force from landing zone hotel arrived at landing zone Zulu.

 Although they were not scheduled to be removed from the field until the next day, the schedule was adjusted and the 125 weary Arvin soldiers were flown to the secure assembly area on the afternoon of their arrival. This modification reduced the amount of work which would be required of the helicopters on the final day of the operation.

The next phase of the helella lift from Zulu on the 17th of August was characterized by increasing concern for security around the landing site. The general scheme for protecting the helicopters during this critical stage of the exercise was to establish two perimeters. one around the rim of high ground which surrounded the zone and another around the immediate landing site.

 The outer perimeter would be withdrawn first, leaving the inside ring of troops to deny the enemy direct access to the landing zone while the force from the outer perimeter boarded the helicopters. Once the Vietnamese soldiers were withdrawn from the rim of hills, the area within 300 meters of the close-end defenses would be automatically cleared for air strikes.

Even with these precautions, the helicopters would be extremely vulnerable to any enemy force that might rapidly occupy the high ground above landing zone Zulu following the withdrawal of the outer perimeter. Accordingly, once the troops from the outer defenses were staged for the helift, the transport helicopters would be directed by the airborne ASOC to tighten the landing interval between aircraft from the usual 5 minutes to as short a time span as possible.

By landing in such rapid succession, the dangerous final stage of the operation could be accomplished more quickly. Two hours after the heal lift began on Saturday morning, the air liaison officer at Zulu reported that the outer perimeter had been withdrawn and that all remaining Vietnamese troops were in positions around the landing zone.

 At this point, the operation, now in its most critical phase, began to experience agonizing delays. First, a loaded helicopter arrived at the assembly area with a rough running engine. Fearing that the fuel in the TAFS had somehow become contaminated, Lieutenant Colonel Shook instructed all HMM261 pilots to check their aircraft’s fuel strainers while their passengers disembarked at the assembly point.

 No evidence was found to indicate that the fuel contained contaminants, but the operation was slowed at the exact point where the intensified heal was to have begun. Another minor delay occurred after a helicopter flying near the landing zone reported having drawn enemy ground fire. The approach and departure routes were adjusted slightly so that the transport helicopters would not fly over the area and VNAF Trojans were directed to attack the suspected enemy position.

Shortly after the air strike ended, the air liaison officer at the landing zone reported more enemy activity. only 500 m from his position. This momentary crisis was resolved when the American air liaison officer personally directed armed Hueies to neutralize the target area. Finally, the airborne ASOC passed instructions to proceed with the operation whereupon HMM261 and VNAF helicopters began spiraling down into the landing zone.

 The escorting Huey gunships provided continuous protection for the transport helicopters by flying concentric but opposite patterns around them. One after another, the transports landed, took on troops, climbed out of the landing zone, and turned toward Tuang Duck. Less than 5 minutes after the stepped up heal began, the last troops were airborne.

The crew chief of the helicopter which embarked the final Arvin Hela team then dropped a purple smoke grenade into the empty landing zone to signal all other aircraft that the lift was complete. The 3-day Hellaorn retrograde from the La Ocean border proved to be one of the most efficient helicopter operations conducted by the Marines in the Republic of Vietnam during the early 1960s.

Its success was due largely to detailed planning, particularly the South Vietnamese plans for the ground defense of both landing zones. These plans and their subsequent execution led a grateful Colonel Gomez, the task element commander, to declare, “This was the first time in our experience that a helicopter born withdrawal had been treated as a retrograde operation rather than an administrative lift.

Without a sound retrograde plan, the operation might well have failed. Although this observation was correct, it should be added that the close coordination between the airborne ASOC, the operational aircraft, and the air liaison officer on the ground had contributed to the successful execution of the plans.

These agencies were instrumental in coordinating the bilingual multi-service effort, particularly when it was beset with difficulties in its critical final stage. HMM261’s combat support missions continued at a normal rate following the completion of the mid August retrograde healft. A month later, on September 16th, Lieutenant Colonel Shook’s squadron lost its second seahorse in a crash 25 miles west southwest of Wei.

 The helicopter, which had developed mechanical problems while carrying troops of a South Vietnamese assault force, was damaged beyond repair. Its crew members and passengers fortunately escaped injury. The aircraft was stripped of usable parts by a salvage team from Daang and burned. Shortly after this incident, the first elements of a new squadron began arriving at Daang and HMM261 turned to preparations for its departure.

Since early June, when it had become the fourth Marine helicopter squadron assigned to Shoefly, Lieutenant Colonel Shooks unit had accumulated 5,288 combat flying hours and 11,46 sorties in the seahorses alone. The squadron’s crews had heavy lifted over 6,000 troops, nearly 1,900,000 lb of cargo, and had accomplished over 600 medical evacuation missions.

 The new squadron, HMM 361, assumed responsibility for helicopter support in Icore on October 2nd after a short period of orientation flying with the crews of the departing unit. HMM 361’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. Ross, was wellqualified to direct a tactical aviation unit in a combat situation.

Decorated with five distinguished flying crosses during World War II and Korea, he was a recent graduate of the Air Force Command and Staff College. Barely a week after Ross’ squadron initiated combat support operations at Daang, it suffered its first aircraft and personnel losses. The incident occurred on October 8th when two seahorses crashed almost simultaneously while on a search and rescue mission 38 mi southwest of Daang.

Both helicopters burned, killing 10 men, the pilots, co-pilots, the squadron’s flight surgeon, and five crewmen. A search of the area was initiated immediately for the downed aircraft, but darkness prevented their discovery until the next morning. By then, the Vietkong had surrounded both crash sites and were waiting to ambush the search and rescue helicopters, which they knew would arrive.

When the rescue aircraft attempted to land, they met determined enemy opposition. Colonel Gomez requested Arvin assistance and 254 South Vietnamese troops were lifted into nearby clearings with instructions to dislodge the enemy force from the area around the downed aircraft. While executing the landing, HMM 361 helicopters were hit nine times by small arms fire, but suffered only superficial damage.

One Arvin soldier was killed. The following day, as the South Vietnamese forces moved toward the down seahorses, three Marine helicopters escorted by three armed Hueies and two VNAF Trojans lifted an inspection team into the crash site to recover the bodies and investigate the wreckage. Enemy automatic weapons fire broke out while the seahorses waited in the landing zone and forced the pilots to take off while the inspection team found cover on the ground.

 After the communist fire had been suppressed, the helicopters returned for the stranded Marines. Their investigation of the aircraft hulks had been fruitful. The evidence of enemy small arms fire in the wreckage and the relative positions of the two helicopters led Lieutenant Colonel Ross to conclude that the aircraft had been shot down by the Vietkong.

But this was not a conclusive finding. There was room for speculation that the two helicopters had actually collided in midair while attempting to evade ground fire. Ground action in the hills around the crash sites continued. On October 11th, another Marine helicopter was hit by Vietkong fire while resupplying Arvin units in the area.

 In this incident, the UH34D was struck twice in the engine and once in the wheel strut while in a landing zone about 2 mi from the point where the crashes had occurred. After assessing the damage, a maintenance team from Daang determined that the helicopter would require a new engine. Marines from the security platoon were utilized to provide security until October 13th when an additional 120 Arvin troops were helifted into the area and established a perimeter around the aircraft.

Other helicopters then delivered the new engine and a maintenance crew to the landing zone. After the engines were exchanged, a crew returned the Seahorse to Daang. By the time HMM 361 had removed the last Arvin troops from the hills around the scene of the tragic accidents, monsoon weather had begun to restrict flight operations.

The remaining two weeks of October were characterized by a reduced number of missions, most of which were either resupply or medical evacuations. By the end of October, despite numerous flight cancellations, Lieutenant Colonel Ross’ crews had gained the unenviable distinction of having attracted more enemy fire during a one-month period than any previous squadron to serve with Shoufly.

Their helicopters had been shot at on 46 different occasions and had been hit 18 times. Shoeflyy’s combat support operations came to a halt in the first days of November as the reverberations from DM’s overthrow spread to South Vietnam’s northern provinces. American officials in Washington and Saigon, aware of the pitfalls that might accompany open support of either side in the power struggle, ordered all US military forces to cease advisory and combat support activities.

As a result of the sensitive political situation, no US aircraft left the ground on November 2nd. Two days after the new regime seized power in Saigon, the US Marine helicopters were permitted to perform emergency medical evacuation and emergency resupply missions. Even these flights were to be approved beforehand by Arvin military officers in Saigon.

Four days after DM’s overthrow, the new leaders in Saigon eased the political restrictions and Shoeflyy’s operations returned to near normal. One remaining limitation stipulated that US helicopters could not transport Arvin units into population centers even though troops could be helifted from the cities into rural areas due to torrential monsoon rains which began striking the Daang area in mid November.

HMM 361’s combat support operations continued at a relatively low level throughout the remainder of the year. This trend was confirmed by the flight totals compiled for the final two months of 1963. In November, the squadron’s UH34Ds flew only 145 sorties for 233 flight hours. December statistics 230 helicopter sorties for 338 flight hours indicated a slight upswing but fell far short of the monthly figures achieved earlier in the year with rain and fog frequently rendering the mountains inaccessible by air. The prepundonderance of the

squadron’s missions were conducted along the coastal plains. As 1963 ended, Shoeflyy’s combat support operations were continuing at a greatly reduced rate. The situation in Vietnam, although not yet desperate, the overall situation in South Vietnam at the end of 1963 was far from favorable. Mismanaged and poorly coordinated from the outset, the strategic Hamlet program had failed to fulfill even the most moderate of American and South Vietnamese expectations.

Little discernable headway had been made toward restoring any large segment of the populated rural areas to government control. Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese had disregarded the Geneva Agreement of 1962 and had continued to infiltrate troops and material down the Le Oceanian corridor into the South.

 Although the 1963 figure of 4,200 confirmed infiltrators was roughly 1,000 men lower than the figure for the previous year, it was substantial enough to force the government to deviate more and more from its avowed strategy of clearing Vietkong formations from the vital populated areas. To help meet this continuing influx of communist regulars, the government had committed its ground force to operations against base areas located in the remote hinterlands with increasing frequency.

More often than not, these multi-battalion offensives, such as the VNMC Arban Drive into the Doza base area in May, proved feudal, usually resulting in scattered and inconsequential clashes with small groups of Vietkong. The continuation of such actions of course worked to the advantage of the communists as the government forces expended time, energy and lives without exacting a commensurate price from the enemy.

 Other disturbing trends had emerged on the south battlefields during the course of the year. Following an action fought in the Meong Delta during early January in which the Vietkong soundly defeated a multi-battalion Arvin Hleborn force, enemy main force units continued to maintain their integrity and fought back when confronted with helicopter assaults.

 This trend was evident even in the northern provinces where each successive assault by marine helicopters appeared to meet more determined resistance. Aside from the Vietkong’s newfound confidence in countering Hleborn offensives, another source of concern to US and Vietnamese officials was the appearance in the south of several Vietkong regimental headquarters during the year.

 The activation of these headquarters, which assumed control of already operational main force battalions, seemed to precage another phase of communist military escalation. The situation throughout South Vietnam worsened in the aftermath of the DM coup. Subsequent to the widespread command changes ordered by the new government, the morale and in turn the effectiveness of the Vietnamese armed forces declined sharply.

The Vietkong moved quickly to exploit the prevailing state of confusion by staging a rash of attacks in the weeks after DM’s overthrow. Attacks which worked a profound influence on the already faltering strategic Hamlet program. The fall of the NGO regime, wrote one American scholar, was accompanied by the complete collapse of the pacification efforts in many areas, and vast regions that had been under government control quickly came under the influence of the Vietkong.

The nation’s new leaders therefore formally terminated the badly damaged Strategic Hamlet Program. Although it was soon to be replaced with similar pacification campaigns, most Vietnamese and American officials conceded that much time and energy would be required to restore momentum to the government’s efforts at securing the allegiance of the rural population.

So by the end of 1963, both the tempo and effectiveness of South Vietnam’s overall war effort was at its lowest eb since the intensification of the US military assistance program in early 1962. This threatening situation was hardly consistent with American military plans which were being implemented at year’s end.

 drawn up at Secretary of Defense McNamera’s direction and approved by him in the late summer of 1963. These plans called for a phased withdrawal of 1,000 US servicemen from Vietnam by January 1964. The phased withdrawal plan, whose ultimate objective was to end direct American participation in the war, envisioned a gradual scaling down of US involvement while simultaneously turning over more military responsibility to the South Vietnamese.

Included in the initial 1,000man reduction was the 47man security platoon which had guarded the US Marine task elements compound at Daang since April. For the Marines serving with the task element, 1963 thus ended on an inongruous note. While the Vietkong threat appeared on the rise, their own defenses were being reduced.

Clearly, events in Vietnam had overtaken long range plans already in motion. Marines meet the challenge. New American decisions, a restructured military assistance command, changes in Marine Leadership, redesation and reorganization, the Vietnamese Marine Brigade, additional Marine activities, new American decisions.

Less than three weeks after the overthrow of Ngo Denzm, the US presidency changed hands. On November 22nd, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson took the reigns of the American government. By late November, when the new president assumed office, the process of political and military disintegration, which had begun in South Vietnam following the ZM coup, was already well underway.

This process continued into the early weeks of 1964 when in late January, General Wyn Khan, the newly appointed commander of first corps, seized power in a bloodless coup. This second turnover in the government of South Vietnam in less than 3 months had its most serious impact on the nation’s armed forces. A new series of command changes ensued and again the government’s operations against the communists suffered.

As had been the case in the closing months of 1963, the Vietkong continued to capitalize on the government’s disarray by expanding its control into previously secure areas. By March, the rapidly declining effectiveness of the South Vietnamese military forces led the Johnson administration to review the earlier decisions to withdraw American servicemen and to cut back the military assistance program.

In a March 16th memorandum to President Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamera warned that the military situation had unquestionably been growing worse in South Vietnam. One, to counteract this threatening trend, McNamera offered a broad set of recommendations which included a proposal to support a 50,000man increase in the size of the Vietnamese military and paramilitary forces.

 The memorandum did not address the question of additional American advisers who might be needed to supervise the proposed expansion. In any case, President Johnson approved McNamera’s plan the following day. thus setting the stage for increases in US military assistance to South Vietnam. Shortly after his most recent decision on Vietnam, President Johnson ordered changes in his top civilian and military representatives in Saigon.

On June 22nd, General William C. West Morland US Army who had been serving since January as deputy commander US MV succeeded General Harkkins as commander US MCV. One day later on the 23rd, President Johnson announced that General Maxwell D. Taylor would replace Henry Kat Lodge as US ambassador to the Republic of Vietnam.

Taylor, who had been serving since 1962 as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been closely associated with the Vietnam problem since his 1961 factf finding mission. Both he and West Morland were thoroughly familiar with US programs and objectives in Vietnam. Soon after assuming his new responsibilities, General West Morland requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff augment his command with 5,100 additional military personnel.

In his opinion, these men were needed to support and supervise the expansion of the Vietnamese military and paramilitary forces. Secretary McNamera met with the Joint Chiefs on July 20th to discuss this request for 900 more adviserss and 4,200 additional support personnel. All agreed that the deteriorating situation in Vietnam demanded the measure and recommended its approval.

The proposal was forwarded to President Johnson who approved it in early August. Emphasizing the urgency of the military situation, McNamera then ordered the Joint Chiefs to complete the entire buildup before September 30th. At this juncture, however, General West Morland pointed out that such a rapid influx of personnel would overload existing facilities in South Vietnam and stated his desire to see the buildup accomplished in a more orderly progression over a period of several months. After considering the general’s

latest request, the Secretary of Defense withdrew his earlier demand for an accelerated deployment.