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Books > History > American history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 > Vietnam War
Throughout the Vietnam War, one focal point persisted where the
Viet Cong guerrillas and ARVN were not a major factor, but where
the trained professionals of the North Vietnamese and United States
armies repeatedly fought head-to-head. A Shau Valor is a thoroughly
documented study of nine years of American combat operations
encompassing the crucial frontier valley and a 15-mile radius
around it-the most deadly killing ground of the entire Vietnam War.
Beginning in 1963 Special Forces A-teams established camps along
the valley floor, followed by a number of top-secret Project Delta
reconnaissance missions through 1967. Then, U.S. Army and Marine
Corps maneuver battalions engaged in a series of sometimes
controversial thrusts into the A Shau designed to disrupt NVA
infiltrations and to kill enemy soldiers, part of what came to be
known as Westmoreland's "war of attrition." The various campaigns
included Operation Pirous in 1967, 1968's Operations Delaware and
Somerset Plain, 1969's Operations Dewey Canyon, Massachusetts
Striker, and Apache Snow-which included the infamous battle for
Hamburger Hill-culminating with Operation Texas Star and the
vicious fight for and humiliating evacuation of Fire Support Base
Ripcord in the summer of 1970, the last major U.S. battle of the
war. By 1971 the fighting had once again shifted to the realm of
small Special Forces reconnaissance teams assigned to the
ultra-secret Studies and Observations Group-SOG. Other works have
focused on individual battles or units, but A Shau Valor is the
first to study the nine-year campaign-for all its courage,
sacrifice and valor-chronologically and within the context of other
historical, political, and cultural events. In addition to covering
the strictly military aspects of the various campaigns in the A
Shau, Tom Yarborough, author of the renowned Da Nang Diary, shows
how events in both Vietnam and the United States became inexorably
linked, as domestic dissent and a lack of realistic military
strategy ultimately led to America's first lost war.
During the Vietnam War, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam
Studies and Observations Group (MACVSOG) was a highly-classified,
U.S. joint-service organization that consisted of personnel from
Army Special Forces, the Air Force, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps Force
Reconnaissance units, and the CIA. This secret organization was
committed to action in Southeast Asia even before the major
build-up of U.S. forces in 1965 and also fielded a division-sized
element of South Vietnamese military personnel, indigenous
Montagnards, ethnic Chinese Nungs, and Taiwanese pilots in its
varied reconnaissance, naval, air, and agent operations. MACVSOG
was without doubt the most unique U.S. unit to participate in the
Vietnam War, since its operational mandate authorized its missions
to take place "over the fence" in North Vietnam, Laos, and
Cambodia, where most other American units were forbidden to go.
During its nine-year existence it managed to participate in most of
the significant operations and incidents of the conflict. MACVSOG
was there during the Gulf of Tonkin incidents, during air
operations over North Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, the secret
bombing of and ground incursion into Cambodia, Operation Lam Son
719, the Green Beret murder case, the Easter Invasion, the Phoenix
Program, and the Son Tay POW Raid. The story of this extraordinary
unit has never before been told in full and comes as a timely
blueprint for combined-arms, multi-national unconventional warfare
in the post-9/11 age. Unlike previous works on the subject, Black
Ops, Vietnam is a complete chronological history of the unit drawn
from declassified documents, memoirs, and previous works on the
subject, which tended to focus only on particular aspects of the
unit's operations.
This is an account of the battle of Kham Duc, one of the least
known and most misunderstood battles in the American Phase of the
Second Indochina War (1959 to 1975). At the time it was painted as
a major American defeat, but this new history tells the full story.
The authors have a unique ability to reassess this battle - one was
present at the battle, the other was briefed on it prior to
re-taking the site two years later. The book is based on exhaustive
research, revisiting Kham Duc, interviewing battle veterans, and
reading interview transcripts and statements of other battle
participants, including former North Vietnamese Army (NVA)
officers. Based on their research, the authors contend that Kham
Duc did not 'fall' and was not 'overrun'. In fact, it was a
successful effort to inflict mass attrition on a major NVA force
with minimum American losses by voluntarily abandoning an
anachronistic little trip-wire border camp serving as passive bait
for General Westmoreland's 'lure and destroy' defensive tactics, as
at Khe Sanh.
As a linguist with the U.S. Navy Fleet Support Detachment in Da
Nang, Herb Shippey was assigned to air reconnaissance during the
Vietnam War. Flying with fellow "spooks" over the Gulf of Tonkin
and Laos, his duty was to protect American aircraft and ships
threatened by MiG 21 fighter jet activity. Shippey's introspective
memoir recounts dangerous missions aboard non-combat aircraft
(EC-121 Warning Star, P-3 Orion, A-3 Sky Warrior), rocket attacks
and typhoons, and the details of his service, some of them
classified for forty years.
The 'missile with a man in it' was known for its blistering speed
and deadliness in air combat. The F-104C flew more than 14,000
combat hours in Vietnam as a bomber escort, a Wild Weasel escort
and a close air support aircraft. Though many were sceptical of its
ability to carry weapons, the Starfighter gave a fine account of
itself in the close air support role. It was also well known that
the enemy were especially reluctant to risk their valuable and
scarce MiGs when the F-104 was escorting bombers over North Vietnam
or flying combat air patrols nearby. The missions were not without
risk, and 14 Starfighters were lost during the war over a two-year
period. This was not insignificant considering that the USAF only
had one wing of these valuable aircraft at the time, and wartime
attrition and training accidents also took quite a bite from the
inventory.
While the F-105 Thunderchief and F-4 Phantom got most of the glory
and publicity during the war in Vietnam, the Lockheed F-104
Starfighter was not given much chance of surviving in a 'shooting
war'. In the event, it did that and much more. Although built in
small numbers for the USAF, the F-104C fought and survived for
almost three years in Vietnam. Like its predecessor the F-100, the
Starfighter was a mainstay of Tactical Air Command and Air Defence
Command, with whom it served with distinction as an air superiority
fighter and point defence interceptor. This small, tough and very
fast fighter, dubbed 'The Missile with a Man in It', was called
upon to do things it was not specifically designed for, and did
them admirably. Among these were close air support and armed
reconnaissance using bombs, rockets and other armaments hung from
its tiny wings, as well as its 20 mm Vulcan cannon, firing 6000
rounds per minute. The jet participated in some of the most famous
battles of the war, including the legendary Operation "Bolo," in
which seven North Vietnamese MiGs went down in flames with no US
losses. Even as it was fighting in Vietnam, the Starfighter was
being adopted by no fewer than six NATO air forces as well as Japan
and Nationalist China. It was later procured by Jordan, Turkey and
Pakistan. The latter nation took the Starfighter to war with India
twice in the 1960s, and it also saw combat with Taiwan.
The story of the Starfighter in Vietnam is one of tragedy and of
ultimate vindication. For decades the F-104's contribution to the
air war in Vietnam was downplayed and its role as a ground attack
machine minimised. Only in recent years has that assessment been
re-evaluated, and the facts prove the Starfighter to have been able
to do its job as well or better than some of the other tactical
aircraft sent to the theatre for just that purpose.
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