What happens when a group of men are LED loose in the wilderness with no oversight and a simple instruction kill anything that moves Tiger Force is the answer an elite Recon group of the Vietnam War whose war crimes were covered up by the US government for decades in this video we look at the atrocities committed by the men of Tiger Force as they descended into barbarity in the jungle of Vietnam and how the US Government tried to hide it from the world Tiger Force was a longrange reconnaissance Patrol unit of the first
Battalion 327th infantry 101st airborn division it was formed in November 1965 by Major David hackworth to quote out gorilla the gorillas it usually numbered about 45 men at any one time but people would rate out every few months for example 120 men served in the Tiger Force between July and December 1967 usually Tiger Force would be dropped into an operational area and given effectively free reign to achieve their goal military command maintained minimal oversight of their activities so long as they racked up a body count the
brass were happy many soldiers embraced the freedom and lack of bureaucracy that Tiger Force provided but the absence of account ability or oversight would lead the man of Tiger Force down a dark path the events that would enshrine them in the history books began to unfold in summer 1967 when the Tiger Force was sent into the sve valley the sve valley was an agricultural hotspot that was allegedly a hiding place for the Viet Kong VC and North Vietnamese Army NVA tiger force was instructed to clear out remaining residents of the valley to a
nearby refugee camp and then sweep the area for VC soldiers and food CES the valley was declared a free fire area shoot first ask questions later civilian casualties were still unacceptable in theory but enforcing that condition was a whole other matter the commanding officer for the sve deployment was Lieutenant James Hawkins Hawkins was a bombastic and egotistical man whose responsibility would become an ongoing issue it would be impractical to go over every member of the Tiger Force here we will name a few as we go but two to keep
in mind are specialist Ken green and private Sam Ibara green and Ibara were childhood friends who enlisted together and volunteered for Tiger Force side by side these were ordinary men from ordinary backgrounds but their time in Tiger Force would irrevocably change them soon after arriving in sve Tiger Force Force encountered a lone Hut a man emerged and fired on the soldiers Tiger Force returned fire and shredded both the man and his hood it was only afterwards that soldiers inspected the hood and found the man’s wife and baby
inside both had been killed in the crossfire it was a classic case of collateral damage the sort of thing that American units in Vietnam had come to accept as inevitable it was a dire foreshadowing of things to come Tiger Force endured ambushes trip wires bamboo traps leeches venomous snakes malnutrition and lack of sleep as they slog through the valley this left them irritable and frustrated the paranoia of knowing that an enemy could lurk in every tree or every Hood primed them to shoot at everything that moved Tiger
Force became especially angry with the Villagers who refused to leave their homes or who quietly snuck back once the Americans had left it didn’t take long for the abuse to start soldiers started to assault villagers who wouldn’t move or robbing the ones who did they eventually took to burning the Huts to ensure that no one could return private Ibara enjoyed the burnings Ibara and Green’s contempt reached boiling point during one Village clearance where they found an unarmed man hiding under a table Ibara and green dragged him
outside and beat him bloody they said his scarf marked him him out as an NVA soldier that was enough for Ibara who took out his knife and slid the man’s throat green and the other soldiers were taken back at first but no one complained and no one reported it it was perhaps Zara’s first murder but not the last alcohol only made things worse several weeks after entering the valley some of the Tigers including Lieutenant Hawkins got drunk and went on patrol where they found an elderly Vietnamese man walking along the road the soldiers
beat the man with the buts of their rifles but this caused an argument among the soldiers about mistreatment of civilians Hawkins settled it quickly when he pulled out his rifle and unloaded into the defenseless old man the soldiers might have put it down to drunkenness except Hawkins did almost the same thing the next day two elderly women approached the soldiers but Hawkins shot them before they reached him Lieutenant Donald Wood put his foot down he was Furious and demanded that Hawkins explain himself but Hawkins was
Unapologetic the free fire zone had been declared after all anything in this Valley is ours Hawkins told him there are no friendlies do you hear me no one is supposed to live here the pretenses for murder only became thinner one of the team’s Medics Barry Bowman recalled being ordered by his Sergeant to execute a prisoner come on pop your cherry the sergeant had told him to be in the Tigers and not have shot an unarmed person was starting to become an oddity Bowman refused so the sergeant took his pistol and shot the
man himself another incident that stuck with many of the soldiers was the execution of two elderly blind men the Tigers claimed that the men were VC Trail Watchers although how they’d do that without eyesight is a mystery the two men were being led by a 12-year-old boy and one soldier said they’d have shot him too if a helicopter hadn’t been nearby to catch them on that same day another Tiger Force team was clearing a village when an old Buddhist monk approached them and scolded them for how they beat the villagers and burned their
Huts the Tigers didn’t have a translator and stopped the man’s condemnation with a bullet they planted a Grenade on him and called him in as a VC kill before long the tiger started to brag they trade stories over the campfire of the way they’d killed the target rarely pretending that who they killed was actually an enemy for example Sergeant Robin vany earned the nickname one punch for a bet he made that he could take down a captured civilian with one punch he failed but vany tried again only this time he ordered a soldier to stand
behind the man with a Bayonet to his neck not everyone gave in to this inhuman cruelty one such man was Sergeant Manuel Sanchez Sanchez captured two young VC prisoners but he knew it wasn’t right to execute them Sanchez stood watch over the prisoners all night fearing what his comrades might do to them eventually Lieutenant Hawkins sent two soldiers over to Sanchez the next morning to tell him to relocate the prisoners down the nearby Hill Sanchez obeyed thinking they were going to be extracted but instead the soldiers shot
the prisoners as soon as they cleared the camp Sanchez was stunned one of them Shrugged and told him I was just following orders Sanchez might have kept standing for decency but that evening Sanchez was badly injured and another tiger killed in an ambush the voices of reasons were Vanishing fast and every dead tiger was another source of anger and resentment for the ones who remained the next day the Tigers approached a village farmers were out working in the rice patties and never saw the soldiers coming they were just working in the
field one tiger recounted we all knew that Hawkins ordered his men to take position and fire few of them escaped the song V operation ended in August 1967 Upon returning to base Lieutenant wood reported the crimes to the military authorities but they refused to do anything Tiger Force was quickly reassigned to their next objective Quang tin Province NVA forces were flooding into Quang tin and the Tigers were needed to sweep the jungles and take them out the NVA were already entrenched in Quang tin the Tigers lost a member to an ambush on
the first day and continued to lose a steady stream of members throughout the month’s long campaign although fresh recruits had been rotated in the depravity and callousness that the older Tigers learned in sve was as strong as ever during a sweep of one Village the Tigers saw women and children running into underground tunnels the Tigers dropped grenades in behind them they camped near the village that night and one Sergeant remembered hearing the cries of the women and children below fading gradually throughout the night
the next morning the Tigers began pulling out bodies but no one counted how many not a single weapon was found an old woman came to the Village to burn incense for the dead but the Americans shot him too medic Barry Bowman remembered the incident he approached the wounded old man but didn’t help him one month earlier Bowman had defied his Sergeant’s orders to execute a prisoner now Bowman shot the injured Man without remorse he reflected that it wasn’t about right or wrong in his mind or even about winning the war he just wanted to
survive if that meant killing anyone who might be a threat so be it many of the Tigers especially private Ibara began taking trophies necklaces of human ears were a particular favorite Ibara even carried around a bag of vinegar to preserve the ears so he could replace the rotting ones on his necklace glimpses of Sanity inside the Tigers were fading fast but they weren’t quite extinguished Sergeant Bruner had only been transferred into the Tigers a week earlier when he was sent to lead a team to investigate a village Sergeant
William Doyle took a second team to the same place while both teams were inspecting the village Doyle found a family an older man his wife his brother and two children through the Tiger’s interpreter the man claimed he’d been abused by the VC and wanted to offer information in exchange for the safety of his family do was impatient he wanted the information immediately he started to beat the man and eventually shot him Bruno was horrified Doyle ordered his men to execute the Man’s brother too but Bruno raised his rifle at the soldiers
and promised to shoot them first the Tigers had argued before but they’d never raised their guns at each other Bruner and Doyle stared each other down but eventually Doyle gave in Bruner stood Watch Over The Grieving family all night until a helicopter came to collect them Bruno was a newcomer but he could see what the Tigers had become men like iara and Doyle were sadistic monsters Who Loved cruelty others like Bowman seemed to be shutting down working on Instinct it’s like their dad he recalled in early September the efforts
of Quang tin were reorganized into operation wheeler wheeler was essentially a scorched Earth directive to clear the province of NVA for the Tigers it was business as usual except the command wanted to keep a closer eye on their results you’re from the 327th Infantry so I want 327 kills was the order from the brass the Tigers would be eager overachievers a string of bad events pushed the Tigers even further on September 20th Hawkins foolishly ordered four men to ascend a hill he knew was mined three men were injured one was
killed one tiger had to be physically restrained from killing Hawkins Hawkins didn’t seem to care Bruno remembered finding Hawkins the next morning completely unbothered by the deaths and taking pot shots at the Villager in a nearby Field more Tigers died in the following days on September 29th a particularly bad Ambush killed several men including specialist green the already Savage Ibara channeled his grief for his friend into atrocities when the next mission came to clear a village Ibara took the lead no one said a word
when Ibara immediately opened fire most of them joined in and only stopped when they ran out of ammunition there wasn’t a single weapon found in the village but the tigers called in multiple VC kills anyway Hawkins was finally transferred out in late October and replaced with the captain Harold Maha Maha found a cruel pack of men wearing necklaces of human ears and who ate as rarely as as they slept on maha’s first mission he ordered a ceasefire when he spotted civilians in the Target Village the Tigers simply ignored him at least 16
people were killed including babies and nor a single weapon was found officially the Tigers hit 327 confirmed kills on November 19th unofficially everyone knew they’d hit it weeks ago the tiger simply didn’t report most of their kills because they knew that so many kills with so few weapons recovered with ra suspicions one tiger claimed that he’d personally killed 120 people all of them unarmed but had only reported a fraction of them sometime in late November the Tigers were called to assist another unit that was pinned by enemy fire from
a village the Tigers proceeded to do what they did best rampaging through the village and eliminating anything moving inside private iara heard a baby crying from a Hut and went inside soon after the crying stopped Witnesses said that Ibara had added another trophy to his collection the attack on the village where Ibara committed yet another abominable crime would prove to be a pivotal moment after this point details on what Tiger Force did become scant and the unit was later redeployed to other areas however one of the soldiers in the
unit the tiger saved in that Village was horrified at what he saw that soldier named John Ahern was killed a few months later but not before he told his friend and fellow Soldier Gary Koy about the incident it took until 1971 for Koy to speak to military authorities about what he’d heard he had no idea who had gone into that hood and kill that baby but he knew it was someone in the Tiger Force the koi allegation kickstarted a yearl long investigation into what Tiger Force had done in Vietnam after the Scandal of
my lie the Pentagon had set up a criminal investigations Department to investigate accusations of war crimes agent Gustav aspe led the way by this point most of tiger Force’s members had left the military and investigators struggled to locate them or to make them talk slowly though over several years aspe uncovered a monstrous list of war crimes torture murder of civilians mutilation of the Dead the execution of prisoners and more one former tiger admitted that the Tigers killed a lot of people while I was with them and I may
have shot one or two myself that would not be considered Justified aspe tracked down almost every surviving tiger and built a startling picture of Cruelty backed up by the admissions of the very men who’ committed the crimes some were genuinely remorseful but few feared any repercussions they were right aspe submitted his detailed report in 1975 authorities reviewed the evidence and acknowledged that at least 18 people including Ibara and Hawkins could justifiably be tried for war crimes however they decided that quote nothing
beneficial or constructive could result in prosecution at this time no hearings were held no charges were pressed and no knowledge of the tiger Force’s crimes was made public that changed in 2002 ists Michael Salah and Mitch Weiss discovered the Tiger Force files they were shocked that one of the largest war crimes investigations in US history had been completely covered up Salah and Weiss spent months putting the pieces together they tracked down surviving Tigers pulled over radio logs from the war and even visited sve and quing Tin
to speak with the survivors of the tiger forces atrocities in October 2003 they published a bombshell series on the Tiger Force laying be their crimes for the world to see and earning them the pullet of prize for investigative journalism the truth had come to light but Justice did not follow many of the Tigers who’d stood up for what was right had already died wood who’d first complained to his superiors about the war crimes Sanchez who tried and failed to protect his prisoners from his own teammates and Sergeant Bruner who’
raised his rifle at a fellow tiger to save a family from execution were all dead meanwhile iara had died in 1982 but Hawkins and Doyle were still alive although publicly shamed Doyle made no apologies he freely spoke to Salah and Weiss during their investigation the way to live is to kill because you don’t have to worry about anybody who is dead Doyle told the reporters he claimed his only regret was that he didn’t kill more of them like my lie before it Tiger Force betrayed a culture of casual violence that pervaded
the Vietnam War the military was obsessed with body counts and cared much less about where those bodies came from Tiger Force’s unique level of autonomy and lack of accountability encouraged its members to sink into greater depths of depravity and inflict immeasurable suffering on the people of rural Vietnam we cannot know how many people were killed or mistreated by the Tiger Force it was certainly in the hundreds if not the thousands it might be too late for justice but it’s never too late to learn a lesson
from Tiger Force do you think the US government has learned its lesson about covering up atrocities let us know in the comments and don’t forget to like And subscribe for more videos like this one
