One of the more striking aspects of the war in Southeast Asia was the adaptation of existing weapons in the American arsenal to the peculiar needs of an unconventional war. This volume traces the history from initial conception of the fixed-wing gunship in the early 1960's through deployment and operations to the end of American combat involvement in early 1973.

This is the second of a series of functional volumes on the Marine Corps' participation in the Vietnam War, which will complement the nine-volume operational and chronological series also underway. This particular history examines the Marine Corps lawyer's role in Vietnam and how that role evolved. Also considered is the effectiveness of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in a combat environment. Military law functioned in Vietnam. but was it acceptably efficient and effective? There were several thousand courts-martial tried by the 400 Marine Corps lawyers who served in Vietnam. Those trials stand as testament to the Marines, officer and enlisted, who made the justice system yield results through their work, dedication, and refusal to allow the circumstances of Vietnam to deter them. Did the military justice system really work? The reader can be the judge, for both successes and failures are depicted here. This book presents a straightforward and unflinching examination of painful subjects. Marine lawyers in Vietnam came to legal grips with drug use, racism, fragging, and the murder of noncombatants, along with the variety of offenses more usually encountered. The Marine Corps can take pride in the commanders and the judge advocates who ensured that whenever those crimes were discovered they were exposed and vigorously prosecuted. There were no cover-ups; no impediments to the judge advocates who conscientiously represented the accused or the United States.

A book about the elite Army Ranger of the Republic of Vietnam

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was the first new agency established by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara after he assumed office in 1961. The ambitious McNamara intended to reformulate U.S. strategic nuclear policy and reduce inefficiencies that had developed in the Department of Defense (DoD) in the 1950s. DIA was the lynchpin to both efforts. In the early and middle 1960s, McNamara and his subordinates, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric and new DIA Director Lieutenant General Joseph Carroll (USAF), worked hard to establish the Agency, but their efforts were delayed or stymied by intransigent and parochial military leadership who objected to the creation of DIA because they feared a loss of both battlefield effectiveness and political influence in Washington, D.C.1 The work of building the DIA was made all the more urgent by the deteriorating situation in Southeast Asia. By the early 1960s, millions of dollars and hundreds of advisory personnel sent by the U.S. were having a negligible impact on the anti-communist campaign there. As the U.S. continued to commit more resources to the ill-fated government in Saigon, the country found itself drawn deeper and deeper into the maelstrom. For DIA, the looming war in Southeast Asia would expose major problems in its organization and performance. Especially in the period from 1961 to 1969, DIA, either because of structural weaknesses or leadership failures, often failed to energetically seize opportunities to assert itself in the major intelligence questions involving the conflict there. This tendency was exacerbated by national military leadership's predilection for ignoring or undercutting the Agency's authority. In turn, this opened up DIA to severe criticism by Congress and other national policymakers, some of whom even considered abolishing the Agency. During the war, McNamara's great hope for reforming military intelligence would be swept up in quarrels between powerful domestic adversaries, and DIA's performance left the Secretary of Defense deeply embittered toward his creation. It was only at the end of the war that DIA assumed a more influential role in Southeast Asia. Until then, however, the Agency was consigned to the wilderness when it came to questions about the Vietnam conflict.

The primary question this thesis aims to answer is--did the Studies and Observation Group (SOG) covert and clandestine operations contribute significantly to the Vietnam War effort? The scope of research is an examination of SOG operations throughout the war. To determine SOG's contributions, research will answer the following secondary and tertiary questions: (1) What were the US strategic, operational, and tactical goals for Vietnam and how did they develop? (2) Did SOG contribute to the accomplishment of strategic, operational, and tactical goals in the Vietnam War? and (3) How did SOG missions affect enemy forces and their operations? By answering the primary, secondary, and tertiary questions, a conclusion may be drawn concerning the contributions of SOG in Vietnam as the primary headquarters for carrying out the unconventional war effort against the North Vietnamese. Lessons learned may apply to the use of similar unconventional warfare assets in the Global War on Terrorism.

More than three decades after the final withdrawal of American troops from Southeast Asia, the legacy of the Vietnam War continues to influence political, military, and cultural discourse. Journalists, politicians, scholars, pundits, and others have used the conflict to analyze each of America's subsequent military engagements. Many Americans have observed that Vietnam-era terms such as "cut and run," "quagmire," and "hearts and minds" are ubiquitous once again as comparisons between U.S. involvement in Iraq and in Vietnam seem increasingly appropriate. Because of its persistent significance, the Vietnam War era continues to inspire vibrant historical inquiry.

The eminent scholars featured in The War That Never Ends offer fresh and insightful perspectives on the continuing relevance of the Vietnam War, from the homefront to "humping in the boonies," and from the great halls of political authority to the gritty hotbeds of oppositional activism. The contributors assert that the Vietnam War is central to understanding the politics of the Cold War, the social movements of the late twentieth century, the lasting effects of colonialism, the current direction of American foreign policy, and the ongoing economic development in Southeast Asia.

The seventeen essays break new ground on questions relating to gender, religion, ideology, strategy, and public opinion, and the book gives equal emphasis to Vietnamese and American perspectives on the grueling conflict. The contributors examine such phenomena as the role of women in revolutionary organizations, the peace movements inspired by Buddhism, and Ho Chi Minh's successful adaptation of Marxism to local cultures. The War That Never Ends explores both the antiwar movement and the experiences of infantrymen on the front lines of battle, as well as the media's controversial coverage of America's involvement in the war. The War That Never Ends sheds new light on the evolving historical meanings of the Vietnam War, its enduring influence, and its potential to influence future political and military decision-making, in times of peace as well as war.

'My Vietnam' is Dave Morgan's story. A typical 20 year old, he was forced into extraordinary circumstances in Vietnam. The Vietnam War would expose Dave to an omnipresent danger and sheer terror that would impact him forever. Dave's story focuses on his time as a soldier and his return psychologically exhausted to a divided nation.

A Compelling Read or the Perfect Gift... What it's like to fly combat jets down between the trees. Whether you have ever flown a jet, or just wished to do so, and whether you served in Vietnam or just read about it, you will be riveted by this fast-paced and vivid account in prose and poetry that tells the story of a special breed of men. These were the hand-picked few who led death-defying lives as F-100 Super Sabre pilots. "Songs" tells the story of the "Hun Drivers" in war and peace, who flew low and fast between the trees with troops under fire day or night, or spent weeks away from home and family on nuclear alert, hoping that the red phone that signaled WW III would never ring. Their plane was called "The Widow Maker" for good reason, as you soon learn. Songs From A Distant Cockpit puts you in the cockpit and in among these single-seat, single-engine fighter pilots as they trained in the "most dangerous plane ever built." It brings you along as they learned how to fly it, and how to survive in it, and the sudden risks and terrors that they faced often as they flew it. If you've ever wondered "What it's like to fly a close-air-support fighter bombers" in combat in Vietnam, or on other missions that pushed the ragged edges of the flight envelope, with Death an all-too-frequent wingman, then you'll have a vivid understanding when you read "Songs." This highly acclaimed book uses on-the-scene, at-the-time prose and poetry in a blend said by historians to be unique in books about combat in its ability to capture the feelings and experiences shared by those who took pride in their ability to fly "the Hun." These men were few in number, because, with rare exception, only top pilots could become F-100 Super Sabre pilots. Many were the sights they saw, the things they felt, and the terrors that visited so suddenly, when Death came calling but left again as suddenly, without a "customer." What they, and the author, have most in common to this day is that they all enjoyed their "Songs" in distant cockpits, high above, or down so low, so fast, so far away, that only God could find them. Men and women from all walks of life are saying, "I couldn't put it down," and some add that parts of it "brought them to tears." So, satisfy your yearnings to fly because now it's time for YOU to get in that fighter cockpit and go flying through the bullets and down between the trees "

Hal's Navy is an insightful personal memoir that brings home not only many technical aspects of naval service, but also the joys, sorrows, separations and heady feelings of a job well done. Hal Sacks tells his terrific and entertaining story beginning with Officer Candidate School and Korea in 1953, going on to Vietnam in 1968, and beyond. Lovers of great storytelling will relish this book, right alongside history buffs and military aficionados.

Between 1966 and 1976, American artist Nancy Spero completed some of her most aggressively political work. Made at a time when Spero was a key member of the anti-war and feminist arts-activism that burgeoned in the New York art world during the period, her works demonstrate a violent and bodily rejection of injustice. Considering the ways in which anti-war and feminist art used emotion as a means to persuade and protest, Pain and Politics in Postwar Feminist Art examines the history of this crucial decade in American art politics through close attention to Spero's practice. Situating her work amongst the activism that defined the era, this book examines the ways in which sensation and emotion became political weapons for a generation of artists seeking to oppose patriarchy and war. Exemplary of the way in which artists were using metaphors of sensation and emotion in their work as part of the anti-Vietnam war and feminist art movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Spero's practice acts as a model for representing how politics feels. By exploring Spero's political engagement anew, this book offer a profound recontextualization of the important contribution that Spero made to Feminist thought, politics and art in the US.

The civil rights and anti--Vietnam War movements were the two greatest protests of twentieth-century America. The dramatic escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam in 1965 took precedence over civil rights legislation, which had dominated White House and congressional attention during the first half of the decade. The two issues became intertwined on January 6, 1966, when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) became the first civil rights organization to formally oppose the war, protesting the injustice of drafting African Americans to fight for the freedom of the South Vietnamese people when they were still denied basic freedoms at home.

Selma to Saigon explores the impact of the Vietnam War on the national civil rights movement. Before the war gained widespread attention, the New Left, the SNCC, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) worked together to create a biracial alliance with the potential to make significant political and social gains in Washington. Contention over the war, however, exacerbated preexisting generational and ideological tensions that undermined the coalition, and Lucks analyzes the causes and consequences of this disintegration.

This powerful narrative illuminates the effects of the Vietnam War on the lives of leaders such as Whitney Young Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Roy Wilkins, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as other activists who faced the threat of the military draft along with race-related discrimination and violence. Providing new insights into the evolution of the civil rights movement, this book fills a significant gap in the literature about one of the most tumultuous periods in American history.

After relatively successful military interventions in Iraq in 1992 and Yugoslavia in 1998, many American strategists believed that airpower and remote technology were the future of U.S. military action. But America's most recent wars in the Middle East have reinforced the importance of counterinsurgency, with its imperative to "win hearts and minds" on the ground in foreign lands. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has studied and experimented with the combined action platoon (CAP) concept used from 1965 to 1971 by the Marine Corps in Vietnam.

Consisting of twelve Marines, a medic, and dozens of inexperienced local militiamen, the American contingent of CAPs lived in South Vietnamese villages where they provided twenty-four-hour security and daily medical support for civilians, and fostered social interaction through civic action projects, such as building schools, offices, and wells. Defend and Befriend is the first comprehensive study of the evolution of these platoons, emphasizing how and why the U.S. Marine Corps attempted to overcome the inherent military, social, and cultural obstacles on the ground in Vietnam. Basing his analysis on Marine records and numerous interviews with CAP veterans, author John Southard illustrates how thousands of soldiers tasked with counterinsurgency duties came to perceive the Vietnamese people and their mission.

This unique study counters prevailing stereotypes and provides a new perspective on the American infantryman in the Vietnam War. Illuminating the fear felt by many Americans as they served among groups of understandably suspicious civilians, Defend and Befriend offers important insights into the future development of counterinsurgency doctrine.

Narrated through the colorful photographs of Washington, DC-based photographer Robert Dodge, this publication explores Vietnam four decades after the end of the war. Dodge's images from throughout Vietnam reveal a country at a crossroads with serious economic and political challenges.

The title of this book reflects that it is a book about being locked up with God. This happened to me during the Vietnam War. I was an American prisoner of war - P.O.W. I spent over five years in a prison, and there I was with God and only God besides a few cellmates. This is mainly a book of the speeches I have given over the last decade or so that reflect my experience as a war prisoner. I have integrated the stories and experience of this period of my life with the faith and experiences of my life since. The talks have been transcribed and placed together here. I have refined and polished them. Some are shorter than others because of the various time constraints. I have selected what I felt were my best. They have been sorted by category as the table of contents reflects. However, I placed the first in its own category and titled it My General Talk. This is the one I most commonly give. It gives a good general overview of my experiences in the Vietnam War and my total dependence on and trust in the Maker. The second category titled Faith all relate to deep spiritual truths that I have grown to love and respect because of my initial experiences as a POW. To get through five years in a prison camp under horrible conditions was a real journey of faith. I returned to this country an entirely different man. I had grown in my faith. I had learned how to trust God, to love Him and to forgive others. These talks reflect what being locked up with God for five years did to me. The third category titled Family and Manhood reflect what has occurred to me and what I hold out as ideal in regard to being a man and a father and husband of a family. I have been through much in my lifetime. I have had and raised a large family. I am now old and have had time to reflect what is important and what means the most. I have also made many mistakes in my life and only by the grace of God have made it to this point and still have a family. This category is given to help young men get off to a good start. The best way to learn is by experience. That is, the experience of others who have been through it and made all the mistakes one can possibly make. This is the case with me. I am offering these three speeches to all young men so that they can profit by my life of having to learn the hard way. If young men can read these, they won't have to fall and struggle as I have had to do. They can fly high and have a very productive life being a man and, if called, also a father and husband of a family. The final category of talks titled War and Patriotism include those that give more detailed stories of my combat and POW experiences in South and North Vietnam. This war is history and most don't even remember it, but reflecting on a war and hearing what a person has experienced who lived through one can help anyone to grow in love of country. The reader can also learn much in case they are ever called to be in a war. Being in the military is a vocation all by itself. It is a vocation of love because a soldier is ready to lay down his or her life for another wherever they are called to serve their country. A soldier must be ready to not only die for others but also suffer as I did and many others did in an enemy prisoner of war compound. This category also includes a talk about leadership. This will help any young man or woman know what it takes to be a great leader. There is also a speech about Lance Sijan and one that was given at an Air Force Base to honor two other Medal of Honor winners, Bud Day and Leo Thorsness. Reflecting about the life of real heroes always does a soldier good, for all soldiers are called to be heroes in their vocation of love. I hope and pray that this book helps our country be great and remain great for ages to come. I will soon die as all do, but words never die. My hope is that these words will go on helping my American brothers and sisters keep America great. May God bless you and our country forever. Amen.

This book examines Operation SEALORDS, the capstone campaign conducted by the Brown-Water Navy in Vietnam. Specifically, this paper addresses the primary question: Was the SEALORDS campaign successful, and if so, what lessons, can be learned from SEALORDS and how might we employ brown-water forces in the future? This book breaks down the SEALORDS campaign into three areas of study. First, the study examines the barrier interdiction portion of the campaign designed to stem the flow of enemy infiltration of men and material from Cambodia into the Mekong Delta. Second, this study analyzes the Denial of Sanctuary Operations and Pacification portion of the SEALORDS operations. Lastly, the Accelerated Turnover to the Vietnamese Program known as "ACTOV" is examined to determine its effectiveness. The Findings of this book suggest that by concentrating naval forces athwart the major infiltration routes along the Cambodian border, SEALORDS effectively cut enemy lines of communication into South Vietnam and severly restricted enemy attempts at infiltration. Additionally, the findings suggest that SEALORDS contributed significantly to pacification efforts in the southern part of III Corps and all of the TV Corps Tactical Zone. Finally, the ACTOV Program is evaluated as successful and put the navy out ahead of the other services with respect to Vietnamization of the war effort.

The mission:
Become the most skilled, highly-trained, and deadliest
fighter pilots in the world.
The place: TOP GUN
In the darkest days of the Vietnam War, the U.S. Navy's kill ratio had fallen to 2:1 -- a deadly decline in pilot combat effectiveness. To improve the odds, a corps of hardened fighter pilots founded the Fighter Weapons School, a.k.a. TOP GUN. Utilizing actual enemy fighter planes in brutally realistic dogfights, the Top Gun instructors dueled their students and each other to achieve a lethal new level of fighting expertise. The training paid off. Combining the latest weaponry and technology, mental endurance, and razor-sharp instincts, the Top Gunners drove the Navy's kill ratio up to an astounding 12:1, dominating the skies over Vietnam.
This gripping account takes you inside the cockpit for an adventure more explosive than any fiction -- in a dramatic true story of the legendary military school that has created the most dangerous fighter pilots the world has ever seen.

The author first served with Vietnamese Marines in 1972 when they came on board the U.S. Navy ships that Battalion Landing Team 1/9 was embarked on. They were preparing for an amphibious landing to counter the North Vietnamese Army's Spring Offensive in Military Region 1 (I Corps) in South Vietnam. They brought with them their U.S. Marine advisors who were known by the senior members of the battalion. They had already witnessed or heard of the exploits of then-Captain John Ripley and Lieutenant Colonel Gerry Turley in blunting the initial attacks of the Easter Offensive. As the Vietnamese were formed into helicopter or boat teams and fed a meal before going ashore, they bantered with the American Marines and Sailors, telling them to come along to "kill communists." After a turbulent start to the offensive, the Vietnamese Marines exhibited the fighting spirit that elite units create for themselves. This was reflected in the various names of their battalions that were the focus of their unit identification. The infantry battalions had a series of nicknames and slogans that were reflected on their unit insignia: 1st Battalion's "Wild Bird," 2d Battalion's "Crazy Buffalo," 3d Battalion's "SeaWolf," 4th Battalion's "Killer Shark," 5th Battalion's "Black Dragon," 6th Battalion's "Sacred Bird," 7th Battalion's "Black Tiger," 8th Battalion's "Sea Eagle," and 9th Battalion's "Mighty Tiger." For the artillery units, this was the 1st Battalion's "Lightning Fire," 2d Battalion's "Sacred Arrow," and 3d Battalion's "Sacred Bow." Support and service battalions followed this example as well. The 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade and its embarked troops provided helicopters, amphibious tractors, and landing craft support for a series of attacks leading to the recapture of Quang Tri City through the fall of 1972. In addition, command and control facilities and liaison were provided to the Republic of Vietnam's I Corps and Military Advisory Command Vietnam's 1st Regional Advisory Command in the sustained counteroffensive. This reinforced the impression made by the Vietnamese Marines themselves. This began the interest in the story that follows. The period after World War II saw a number of associated Marine Corps formed in the republics of China, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. They had been founded, with the help of foreign military aid, to fight the various conflicts to contain communist expansion in the region. Also present at various times were other Marines from the Netherlands, France, and Great Britain. The beginnings of the Cold War witnessed this proliferation of amphibious forces in Asia, in part because of the reputation the U.S. Marines had earned in the cross Pacific drive against Japan and in other postwar confrontations. This is about one of them, the Vietnamese Marine Corps or Thuy Quan Luc Chien (TQLC). This occasional paper provides documents on the topics of the Vietnamese Marines and the U.S. Marine Advisory Unit from this period.

19: I never had a birthday in Vietnam was written to show how the guys out in the field lived from day to day and not knowing if it was going to be their last day. There's some laughter, sorrow, feeling so down that taking a bullet to end it didn't seem so bad. Guys are guys and the nineteen to twenty four year olds that were in Vietnam were a little more intense than most. Living with death day to day is something only another combat soldier would understand. This was written to get the reader to understand that.

This is the third volume in a planned 10-volume operational and chronological series covering the Marine Corps' participation in the Vietnam War. A separate topical series will complement the operational histories. This particular volume details the continue d buildup in 1966 of the III Marine Amphibious Force in South Vietnam's northernmost corps area, I Corps, and the accelerated tempo of fighting during the year . The result was an "expanding war." The III Marine Amphibious Force had established three enclaves in I Corps during 1965. Employing what they believed was a balanced strategy-base defense, offensive operations, and pacification-the Marines planned to consolidate their base areas in 1966. At the beginning of 1966, the 1st Marine Division reinforced the 3d Marine Division and 1st Marine Aircraft Wing in Vietnam. By the end of the year, the III Marine Amphibious Force had nearly doubled in size. Two separate events, however, were to dash the high hopes held by the Marines in 1966. An internal political crisis in the spring halted the Marine pacification campaign south of the large Da Nang Airbase. In July, the North Vietnamese Army launched an incursion through the Demilitarized Zone and Marines went north to counter the enemy thrust. By December 1966, Marine units were stretched thin along the 265-mile length of I Corps. As one Marine commander observed, "too much real estate-do not have enough men." Although written from the perspective of III MAF and the ground war in I Corps, the volume treats the activities of Marine advisors to the South Vietnamese Armed Forces, the Seventh Fleet Special Landing Force, and Marines on the staff of the U .S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, in Saigon.

During the second half of the twentieth century, the American military chaplaincy underwent a profound transformation. Broad-based and ecumenical in the World War II era, the chaplaincy emerged from the Vietnam War as generally conservative and evangelical. Before and after the Vietnam War, the chaplaincy tended to mirror broader social, political, military, and religious trends. During the Vietnam War, however, chaplains' experiences and interpretations of war placed them on the margins of both military and religious cultures. Because chaplains lived and worked amid many communities--religious and secular, military and civilian, denominational and ecumenical--they often found themselves mediating heated struggles over the conflict, on the home front as well as on the front lines. In this benchmark study, Jacqueline Whitt foregrounds the voices of chaplains themselves to explore how those serving in Vietnam acted as vital links between diverse communities, working personally and publicly to reconcile apparent tensions between their various constituencies. Whitt also offers a unique perspective on the realities of religious practice in the war's foxholes and firebases, as chaplains ministered with a focus on soldiers' shared experiences rather than traditional theologies.

THE SHOCKING TRUTH REVEALED A blistering, firsthand account of an American Soldier who joined forces with the Montagnards WHILE LOSING THE WAR AGAINST NORTH VIETNAM, ARVN TROOPS CONDUCTED A SECRET PROGRAM OF GENOCIDE AGAINST THE MONTAGNARD HILL PEOPLE. THE U.S. ARMY DIDN'T INTERVENE. THE GLOBAL MEDIA DIDN'T NOTICE. BUT THE 'YARDS WEREN'T ALONE. A HANDFUL OF GREEN BERETS FOUGHT AT THEIR SIDE...

Merriam Press Military Monograph 138. First Edition (June 2012). Donald McClure Fenwick enlisted in the United States Marine Corps at the young age of 18. His destiny was to serve his country as a Marine and to make the Marine Corps a career. He reported to Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California in January 1957 for recruit training and retired in October 1990. For 33 years he served our nation and retired as a Master Gunnery Sergeant. His illustrious military career embodies both the old breed and the new breed of the Marine Corps. Donald would serve in distant lands such as Vietnam and Okinawa with several cruises aboard ship in the Caribbean Sea and Mediterranean Sea. His 33 years of honest and faithful service to the United States of America and to the Marine Corps is a legacy and a story that needs to be told. His story will capture your attention and give you an insight into the reality of what being a United States Marine is all about. His personal experiences while growing up on the farm in rural Kentucky and while progressing through the enlisted ranks, reveal the espirit de corps, camaraderie and the struggles he had to endure. He is a national asset as are many of the unsung heroes of our time. May we never forget their personal sacrifices and love of country and Corps. Contents: Life on the Farm; A Destiny to Serve; Vietnam-The Early Years; Vietnam-The Second Tour; Okinawa-Back to The Rock; The Love of his Life; Retirement-Life after the Corps. 71 photos (mostly of Vietnam, all unpublished).