battle of khe sanh casualties

While suffering less significant casualties (around 10,000 dead), ARVN units had only turned back the attacking PAVN forces with massive American air support. Two Marines died. Senior Marine Corps General Victor Krulak agreed, noting on May 13 that the Marines had defeated the North Vietnamese and won the battle of Khe Sanh. Over time, these KIA figures have been accepted by historians. [116] Marine analysis of PAVN artillery fire estimated that the PAVN gunners had fired 10,908 artillery and mortar rounds and rockets into Marine positions during the battle. As the relief force made progress, the Marines at Khe Sanh moved out from their positions and began patrolling at greater distances from the base. Amid heavy shelling, the Marines attempted to salvage what they could before destroying what remained as they were evacuated. [39], On 24 April 1967, a patrol from Bravo Company became engaged with a PAVN force of an unknown size north of Hill 861. 129131. The attacks hindered the advancement of the McNamara Line, and as the fighting around Khe Sanh intensified, vital equipment including sensors and other hardware had to be diverted from elsewhere to meet the needs of the US garrison at Khe Sanh. Its mission was to destroy the Special Forces and their Vietnamese allies and to ambush any reinforcements coming from Khe Sanh. Westmoreland echoed this judgment in his memoirs, and, using exactly the same figures, concluded that the North Vietnamese had suffered a most damaging and one-sided defeat. On July 10, Pfc Robert Hernandez of Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, was manning an M-60 machine gun position when it took a direct hit from NVA mortars. The NVA 304th Divisions history notes that on 9 July 1968, the liberation flag was waving from the flag pole at Ta Con [Khe Sanh] airfield. On July 13, 1968, Ho Chi Minh sent a message to the soldiers of the Route 9Khe Sanh Front affirming our victory at Khe Sanh.. The Marine defense of Khe Sanh, Operation Scotland, officially ended on March 31. [131], Planning for the overland relief of Khe Sanh had begun as early as 25 January 1968, when Westmoreland ordered General John J. Tolson, commander, First Cavalry Division, to prepare a contingency plan. [79] On an average day, 350 tactical fighter-bombers, 60 B-52s, and 30 light observation or reconnaissance aircraft operated in the skies near the base. Scotland was a 26th Marine Regiment operation, so only the deaths of Marines assigned to the regiment, and attached supporting units, were counted. These forces, including support troops, totaled 20,000 to 30,000. Key Battles | Vietnam War - Pritzker Military Museum & Library [21][68], To eliminate any threat to their flank, the PAVN attacked Laotian Battalion BV-33, located at Ban Houei Sane, on Route 9 in Laos. [37] He was vociferously opposed by General Lewis W. Walt, the Marine commander of I Corps, who argued heatedly that the real target of the American effort should be the pacification and protection of the population, not chasing the PAVN/VC in the hinterlands. Sporadic actions were taken in the vicinity during the late summer and early fall, the most serious of which was the ambush of a supply convoy on Route 9. The 26th Marine Regiment (26th Marines) is an inactivated infantry regiment of the United States Marine Corps. The Marines claimed 115 PAVN killed, while their own casualties amounted to 10 dead, 100 wounded, and two missing. On April 20, Operation Prairie IV began, with heavy fighting between the Marines and NVA forces. Historians have observed that the Battle of Khe Sanh may have distracted American and South Vietnamese attention from the buildup of Viet Cong (VC) forces in the south before the early 1968 Tet Offensive. [87], Heated debate arose among Westmoreland, Commandant of the Marine Corps Leonard F. Chapman Jr., and Army Chief of Staff Harold K. Johnson. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Early in the war US forces had established a garrison at Khe Sanh in Quang Tri province, in the . [10] Once the news of the closure of KSCB was announced, the American media immediately raised questions about the reasoning behind its abandonment. [128] They also reported 1,436 wounded before mid-March, of which 484 men returned to their units, while 396 were sent up the Ho Chi Minh Trail to hospitals in the north. 6,000 men North Vietnamese Vo Nguyen Giap Tran Quy Hai Approx. The official assessment of the North Vietnamese Army dead is just over 1,600 killed, with two . In 1966, the regular Special Forces troops had moved off the plateau and built a smaller camp down Route 9 at Lang Vei, about half the distance to the Laotian border. [152] The Marines occupied Hill 950 overlooking the Khe Sanh plateau from 1966 until September 1969 when control was handed to the Army who used the position as a SOG operations and support base until it was overrun by the PAVN in June 1971. Aug 23, 2013. Site will be misbehaving during our migration to new (better!) They fixed the attention of the American command on the border regions, and they drew American and ARVN forces away from the coastal lowlands and cities in preparation for the Tet Offensive. On June 19, 1968, another operation began at Khe Sanh, Operation Charlie, the final evacuation and destruction of the Khe Sanh Combat Base. [43] Lieutenant General Robert E. Cushman Jr. relieved Walt as commander of III MAF in June. Throughout the campaign, US forces used the latest technology to locate PAVN forces for targeting. The monumental Battle of Khe Sanh had begun, but the January 21 starting date is essentially arbitrary in terms of casualty reporting. The main US forces defending Khe Sanh Combat Base (KSCB) were two regiments of the United States Marine Corps supported by elements from the United States Army and the United States Air Force (USAF), as well as a small number of Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops. The enemy by my count suffered at least 15,000 dead in the area.. A secret memorandum reported by US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, sent to US President Lyndon B. Johnson on 19 February 1968, was declassified in 2005. First had been Operation Full Cry, the original three-division invasion plan. Its main objectives were to inflict casualties on US troops and to isolate them in the remote border regions. The NVA used Hill 881 North to launch 122mm rockets at the Marines during the siege. NVA casualties were more than 200. [166] This view was supported by a captured North Vietnamese study of the battle in 1974 that stated that the PAVN would have taken Khe Sanh if it could have done so, but there was a limit to the price that it would pay. Twenty-five USAF personnel who were killed are also not included. Two days later, US troops detected PAVN trenches running due north to within 25 m of the base perimeter. [121] Casualties from the bombardment were 10 killed and 51 wounded. McNamara's thinking may have also been affected by his aide David Morrisroe, whose brother Michael Morrisroe was serving at the base. Five more attacks against their sector were launched during March. [143][144], On 15 April, the 3rd Marine Division resumed responsibility for KSCB, Operation Pegasus ended, and Operation Scotland II began with the Marines seeking out the PAVN in the surrounding area. The Armys 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), with more than 400 helicopters under its control, conducted airmobile operations deeper into enemy-controlled areas. A victory for the Americans and South Vietnamese, the Battle of Dak To cost 376 US killed, 1,441 US wounded, and 79 ARVN killed. However, even if Westmoreland believed his statement, his argument never moved on to the next logical level. Seven miles west of Khe Sanh on Route 9, and about halfway to the Laotian border, sat the U.S. Army Special Forces camp at Lang Vei. Strategically, however, the withdrawal meant little. wikipedia.en/Rathvon_M._Tompkins.md at main chinapedia/wikipedia.en Cushman, the new III MAF commander, supported Westmoreland perhaps because he wanted to mend Army/Marine relations after the departure of Walt. [27][28] The Marines' defensive system stretched below the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) from the coast, along Route 9, to Khe Sanh. According to Ray Stubbe, a U.S. Navy chaplain during the siege and since then the most significant Khe Sanh historian, the 205 figure is taken only from the records of the 26th Marine Regiment. The distinctions between Operations Scotland, Pegasus and Scotland II, while important from the command perspective, were not necessarily apparent to individual Marines. If that failed, and it did, they hoped to attack American reinforcements along Route 9 between Khe Sanh and Laos. The 324th Division was located in the DMZ area 1015 miles (1624km) north of Khe Sanh while the 320th Division was within easy reinforcing distance to the northeast. Westmoreland was replaced two months after the end of the battle, and his successor explained the retreat in different ways. However, the PAVN committed three regiments to the fighting from the Khe Sanh sector. 528 of them include images. No logic was apparent to them behind the sustained PAVN/VC offensives other than to inflict casualties on the allied forces. "[91][92], Not much activity (with the exception of patrolling) had occurred thus far during the battle for the Special Forces Detachment A-101 and their four companies of Bru CIDGs stationed at Lang Vei. [45] In December and early January, numerous sightings of PAVN troops and activities were made in the Khe Sanh area, but the sector remained relatively quiet.[46]. Thirty-three ARVN troops were also killed and 187 were wounded. The Marines found a solution to the problem in the "Super Gaggle" concept. Army deaths at FOB-3, however, were not included in the official statistics either. During the 1968 Tet Offensive, as many as 30,000 Communist Vietnamese forces surrounded roughly 6,000 U.S. marines defending a combat base on .. Week of February 21 On March 6, two U.S. Air Force C-123 cargo airplanes departed Da Nang Air Base en route to Khe Sanh. [100][Note 6], Lownds infuriated the Special Forces personnel even further when the indigenous survivors of Lang Vei, their families, civilian refugees from the area, and Laotian survivors from the camp at Ban Houei Sane arrived at the gate of KSCB. Hundreds of mortar rounds and 122-mm rockets slammed into the base, levelling most of the above-ground structures. The advance would be supported by 102 pieces of artillery. Due to the nature of these activities, and the threat that they posed to KSCB, Westmoreland ordered Operation Niagara I, an intense intelligence collection effort on PAVN activities in the vicinity of the Khe Sanh Valley. The Khe Sanh battlefield was considerably more extensive from the North Vietnamese perspective than from that of the U.S. Marine Corps, both geographically and chronologically. They asked what had changed in six months so that American commanders were willing to abandon Khe Sanh in July. Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. Air Power in the Siege of Khe Sanh - HistoryNet [28], In early December 1967, the PAVN appointed Major General Tran Quy Hai as the local commander for the actions around Khe Sanh, with Le Quang Do as his political commissar. [138] At 08:00 on 15 April, Operation Pegasus was officially terminated. Battle of Khe Sanh : American Casualties We have 535 casualty profiles listed in our archive. The official North Vietnamese history claimed that 400 South Vietnamese troops had been killed and 253 captured. The NVA continued shelling the base, and on July 1 launched a company-sized infantry attack against its perimeter. [75], Niagara I was completed during the third week of January, and the next phase, Niagara II, was launched on the 21st,[76] the day of the first PAVN artillery barrage. This, however, did not prevent the Marine tanks within the perimeter from training their guns on the SOG camp. Even so, Westmoreland insisted for it not only to be occupied by the Marines but also for it to be reinforced. The PAVN claimed that Khe Sanh was "a stinging defeat from both the military and political points of view." This is the battles end date from the North Vietnamese perspective. Operation Scotland II continued until the end of the year, resulting in the deaths of 72 more Marines. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. [40] The 2nd and 3rd battalions of the 3rd Marine Regiment, under the command of Colonel John P. Lanigan, reinforced KSCB and were given the task of pushing the PAVN off of Hills 861, 881 North, and 881 South. MN: 05-12-1968: Vietnam: Army: 2: Several rounds also landed on Hill 881. [23][Note 2], James Marino wrote that in 1964, General William Westmoreland, the US commander in Vietnam, had determined, "Khe Sanh could serve as a patrol base blocking enemy infiltration from Laos; a base for operations to harass the enemy in Laos; an airstrip for reconnaissance to survey the Ho Chi Minh Trail; a western anchor for the defenses south of the DMZ; and an eventual jumping-off point for ground operations to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. At 1530 hours the first C-123, with 44 passengers and a crew of five, began to land. Battle of Khe Sanh: Greatest U.S. Victory in Vietnam - HistoryNet [34] US intelligence estimated between 1,200 and 1,600 PAVN troops were killed, and 362 members of the US 4th Infantry Division, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and ARVN Airborne elements were killed in action, but three of the four battalions of the 4th Infantry and the entire 173rd were rendered combat-ineffective during the battle. The next operations were named Crockett and Ardmore. Unlike the official figures, Stubbes database of Khe Sanh casualties includes verifiable names and dates of death. [110], As more infantry units had been assigned to defend KSCB, artillery reinforcement kept pace. Indeed, had enemy forces not been at Khe Sanh, they could have joined the NVA and VC who occupied Hue, a much more important strategic target. [140] Operation Scotland II would continue until 28 February 1969 resulting in 435 Marines and 3304 PAVN killed.