Beginning as a young boy, Jules takes you through the unique process of becoming a Naval Aviator, engages you into his experiences as a brand new pilot in a combat squadron and, finally becoming a flying warrior. Having survived two combat cruises aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk from 1966-1968, compiling 332 career carrier take offs and landings, being shot at daily by enemy fire while completing 200 combat missions over Vietnam, he clearly shares the views of the aviators who flew along with him on these missions while fighting this unpopular war. Jules was awarded the Nation's Distinguished Flying Cross, 21 Air Medals, and many other accolades. After reading this book the reader will have a new understanding and appreciation about the Warriors who protect not only their comrades in arms, but the defense of the nation as well.

When the U.S. Army went to war in South Vietnam in 1965, the general consensus was that counterinsurgency was an infantryman's war; if there was any role at all for armored forces, it would be strictly to support the infantry. However, from the time the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment arrived in country in September 1966, troopers of the Blackhorse Regiment demonstrated the fallacy of this assumption. By the time of Tet '68, the Army's leadership began to understand that the Regiment's mobility, firepower, flexibility, and leadership made a difference on the battlefield well beyond its numbers. Over the course of the 11th Cavalry's five-and-a-half years in combat in South Vietnam and Cambodia, over 25,000 young men served in the Regiment. Their stories - and those of their families - represent the Vietnam generation in graphic, sometimes humorous, often heart-wrenching detail. Collected by the author through hundreds of in-person, telephone, and electronic interviews over a period of 25-plus years, these "war stories" provide context for the companion volume, The Blackhorse in Vietnam. Amongst the stories of the Blackhorse troopers and their families are the tales of the wide variety of animals they encountered during their time in combat, as well as the variable landscape, from jungle to rice paddies, and weather. Blackhorse Tales concludes with a look at how the troopers have dealt with their combat experiences since returning from Vietnam. Between the chapters are combat narratives, one from each year of the Regiment's five-and-a-half years in Southeast Asia. These combat vignettes begin on 2 December 1966, when a small column of 1st Squadron vehicles and troopers were ambushed on Highway 1 and emerged victorious despite being outnumbered. They go on to describe the one-of-a-kind crossing of the Dong Nai River on 25 April 1968, as the Blackhorse Regiment rode to the rescue during Mini-Tet 1968, and the 2nd Squadron's fight to clear the Boi Loi Woods in late April 1971.

This book recounts the experiences of a young US Marine officer during the Vietnam War as he fights that war over a nineteen month period in three different geographical areas of South Vietnam. He graphically explains to the reader what it was like to perform three distinct combat missions: long-range ground reconnaissance in the Annamite Mountains of I Corps, infantry operations in the rice paddies and mountains of Quang Nam Province, and special police operations for the CIA in Tay Ninh Province. The author describes in rich detail each of these distinct military activities and provides powerful and explicit examples of each. Using primary sources, such has US Marine Corps official unit histories, CIA documents, and his weekly letters home to his parents, the author relies almost exclusively on primary sources to convey to the reader a story that is devoid of hyperbole and focused on providing an accurate and honest account of combat at the small unit level. Of particular interest to students of the war is his description of his assignment to the CIA as a Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) advisor in Tay Ninh Province, where he participated in several secret missions as part of the controversial Phoenix Program. He also reveals the name and contribution of the CIA's most valuable spy during the war, the famous "Tay Ninh Source".

Although US involvement in the Vietnam conflict began long before 1965, Lyndon Johnson's substantial large commitment of combat troops that year marked the official beginning of America's longest twentieth-century war. By 1969, after years of intense fighting and thousands of casualties, an increasing number of Americans wanted the United States out of Vietnam. Richard Nixon looked for a way to pull out while preserving the dignity of the United States at home and abroad, and at the same time, to support the anticommunist Republic of Vietnam. Ultimately, he settled on the strategy of Vietnamization—the gradual replacement of US soldiers with South Vietnamese forces. Drawing on newly declassified documents and international archives, Unwilling to Quit dissects the domestic and foreign contexts of America's withdrawal from the Vietnam War. David L. Prentice demonstrates how congressional and presidential politics were a critical factor in Nixon's decision to abandon his hawkish sensibilities in favor of de-escalation. Prentice reframes Nixon's choices, emphasizes Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird's outsized yet subtle role in the decision-making process, and considers how South Vietnam's Nguyen Van Thieu and North Vietnam's Le Duan decisively shaped the American exit. Prentice brings Vietnamese voices into the discussion and underscores the unprecedented influence of American civilians on US foreign policy during the Vietnamization era.

This study explains how the armies of North and South Vietnam, newly equipped with the most modern Soviet and US tanks and weaponry, fought the decisive armored battles of the Easter Offensive. Wearied by years of fighting against Viet Cong guerillas and North Vietnamese regulars, the United States had almost completely withdrawn its forces from Vietnam by early 1972. Determined to halt the expansion and improvement of South Vietnamese forces under the U.S. "Vietnamization" program, North Vietnam launched a major fourteen-division attack in March 1972 against the South that became known as the "Easter Offensive." Hanoi's assault was spearheaded by 1,200 tanks and was counteracted on the opposite side by Saigon's newly equipped armored force using U.S. medium tanks. The result was ferocious fighting between major Cold War-era U.S. and Soviet tanks and mechanized equipment, pitting M-48 medium and M-41 light tanks against their T- 54 and PT-76 rivals in a variety of combat environments ranging from dense jungle to urban terrain. Both sides employed cutting-edge weaponry for the first time, including the U.S. TOW and Soviet 9M14 Malyutk wire-guided anti-tank missiles. This volume examines the tanks, armored forces and weapons that clashed in this little-known campaign in detail, using after-action reports from the battlefield and other primary sources to analyze the technical and organizational factors that shaped the outcome. Despite the ARVN's defensive success in October 1972, North Vietnam massively expanded its armor forces over the next two years while U.S. support waned. This imbalance with key strategic misjudgments by the South Vietnamese President led to the stunning defeat of the South in 1975 when T54 tanks crashed through the fence surrounding the Presidential palace and took Saigon on 30 April 1975.

In this fully illustrated introduction, leading Vietnam War historian Dr Andrew Wiest provides a concise overview of America's most divisive war. America entered the Vietnam War certain of its Cold War doctrines and convinced of its moral mission to save the world from the advance of communism. However, the war was not at all what the United States expected. Dr Andrew Wiest examines how, outnumbered and outgunned, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces resorted to a guerrilla war based on the theories of Mao Zedong of China, while the US responded with firepower and overwhelming force. Drawing on the latest research for this new edition, Wiest examines the brutal and prolonged resultant conflict, and how its consequences would change America forever, leaving the country battered and unsure as it sought to face the challenges of the final acts of the Cold War. As for Vietnam, the conflict would continue long after the US had exited its military adventure in Southeast Asia. Updated and revised, with full-colour maps and new images throughout, this is an accessible introduction to the most important event of the "American Century."

The true story of the fierce band of women who battled Washington - and Hanoi - to bring their husbands home from the jungles of Vietnam. On 12 February, 1973, one hundred and sixteen men who, just six years earlier, had been high flying Navy and Air Force pilots, shuffled, limped, or were carried off a huge military transport plane at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. These American servicemen had endured years of brutal torture, kept shackled and starving in solitary confinement, in rat-infested, mosquito-laden prisons, the worst of which was The Hanoi Hilton. Months later, the first Vietnam POWs to return home would learn that their rescuers were their wives, a group of women that included Jane Denton, Sybil Stockdale, Louise Mulligan, Andrea Rander, Phyllis Galanti, and Helene Knapp. These women, who formed The National League of Families, would never have called themselves 'feminists', but they had become the POW and MIAs most fervent advocates, going to extraordinary lengths to facilitate their husbands' freedom - and to account for missing military men - by relentlessly lobbying government leaders, conducting a savvy media campaign, conducting covert meetings with antiwar activists, and most astonishingly, helping to code secret letters to their imprisoned husbands. In a page-turning work of narrative non-fiction, Heath Hardage Lee tells the story of these remarkable women for the first time. The League of Wives is certain to be on everyone's must-read list.

This book tells the full story of the US Naval air campaign during the Vietnam War between 1965 to 1975, where the US Seventh Fleet, stationed off the Vietnamese coast, was given the tongue-in-cheek nickname 'The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club'. On August 2, 1964, USS Maddox became embroiled in the infamous 'Gulf of Tonkin incident' that lead directly to America's increased involvement in the Vietnam War. Supporting the Maddox that day were four F-8E Crusaders from the USS Ticonderoga, signalling the start of the US Navy's commitment to the air war over Vietnam. The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club was the nickname for the US Navy's Seventh Fleet, Task Force 77, stationed off the coast of Vietnam which, at various points throughout the war, comprised as many as six carriers with 70-100 aircraft on board. The Seventh Fleet played an essential role in supporting operations over Vietnam, providing vital air support to combat troops on the ground and taking part in major operations such as Rolling Thunder and Linebacker I and II. Serving with the US Seventh Fleet during this period and involved in the dramatic history of The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club was author Tom Cleaver, who was a 20-year-old member of Commander Patrol Forces Seventh Fleet which had operational control over Maddox and Turner Joy. His use of dramatic first-hand experiences from interviews with both American and Vietnamese pilots plus official Vietnamese accounts of the war provides a balanced and personal picture of the conflict from both sides. Detailing the very earliest incident in the Gulf of Tonkin through to the final evacuation of US nationals in 1975, he brings the story of US air intervention into Vietnam vividly to life.

Through its remarkable service during the war in Southeast Asia, the Skyraider became legendary. It served with distinction in the hands of U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and South Vietnamese Air Force pilots, who took the war to the enemy, often at low altitude and in the face of devastating antiaircraft fire. And it suffered heavy losses. The Skyraiders versatility and the mettle of its pilots were unmatched. This book takes not only a look at an old airplane, but at the warriors who flew and maintained the machine they called the Spad. This volume captures the essence of combat in the Spad, and explains the broad range of Spad operations. The text, which is rich with the narratives of Spad pilots and ground crew, is complemented by over 300 original photographs, seventy emblems, and detailed listings of every Skyraider that flew in the war, and the colorful units to which they were assigned. This fascinating volume is a must for aviation enthusiasts, history buffs, and modelers alike.

This is the first history of the legendary US Army's HAWK missile system, the world's first mobile air-defense missile system, which saw service and combat around the world. Designed to counteract the threat posed by advanced 1950s Soviet-built aircraft, the first HAWK unit became operational in 1959. At its peak, it saw frontline service in the Far East, Panama, Europe, and in the Middle East. Units were also used during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War. In the hands of other nations, HAWK proved its efficacy in combat during the Arab-Israeli Wars, Iran-Iraq War, Chadian-Libyan War, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Credited with shooting down more than 100 aircraft during its combat career, the HAWK system was respected for its lethality. Such was Soviet concern, that the USSR developed electronic jammers, anti-radiation missiles, and other countermeasures specifically to degrade its effectiveness. The US retired its HAWK systems soon after the Cold War ended in 1991 when air defense priorities shifted from aircraft to ballistic missile defense, yet a modernized version of the system remains in service to this day in many nations. Packed with archive photos and original artwork, this is the first book about the HAWK system. Featuring research from HAWK technical and field manuals, interviews with HAWK veterans, and detailing the authors' personal experiences with HAWK missile units, it provides a comprehensive study of one of the most lethal and effective air missile systems of all time.

December 1967: Richard Burns had just arrived in Vietnam as part of the fourteen-man 101st Pathfinder Detachment. Within just one month, during a holiday called Tet, the Communists would launch the largest single attack of the war--and he would be right in the thick of it. . . .

In Vietnam, Richard Burns operated in live-or-die situations, risking his life so that other men could keep theirs. As a Pathfinder--all too often alone in the middle of a hot LZ--he guided in helicopters disembarking troops, directed medevacs to retrieve the wounded, and organized extractions. As well as parachuting into areas and supervising the clearing of landing zones, Pathfinders acted as air-traffic controllers, keeping call signs, frequencies, and aircraft locations in their heads as they orchestrated takeoffs and landings, often under heavy enemy fire.

From Bien Hoa to Song Be to the deadly A Shau Valley, Burns recounts the battles that won him the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and numerous other decorations. This is the first and only book by a Pathfinder in Vietnam . . . or anywhere else.

A gripping true account of leadership in combat, focusing on Capt. George Paccerelli as he molded the men of the Army's Air Cavalry LRRP company into a successful reconnaissance unit
-- Hot combat
-- Jorgenson is one of Ballantine's most prolific and successful military authors, and books on Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols are among the most popular Vietnam titles.
-- The author served in Vietnam both as a soldier and as a journalist and spent over seven years in the military.

The main premise "The Vietnam Wars" is that Vietnam experienced not one but several over-lapping and often inter-dependent wars. This lively new source book chronicles the history of one of the bloodiest and most controversial conflicts of the twentieth century, beginning with the birth of the Vietnamese communist party in 1930 and ending with the triumph of the Vietnamese revolution in 1975. Through a series of short essays, but most especially through the documents themselves, the book illustrates and illuminates both the conflict and the main historical debates about its origins, course and consequences.

For 50 years, civilians have avoided hearing about the controversial experiences of Vietnam veterans, many of whom suffer through post-traumatic stress alone. Through interviews conducted with 17 soldiers, this book shares the stories of those who have been silenced. These men and women tell us about life before and after the war. They candidly share stories of 40 plus years lived on the "edge of the knife" and many wonder what their lives would be like if they had come home to praise and parades. They offer their tragedies and successes to newer veterans as choices to be made or rejected.

As a first lieutenant in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, U.S. Army pilot David Porter was section leader in an Aerial Scout platoon in Vietnam. Their mission was to conduct reconnaissance in OH-6 aircraft (a.k.a. Light Observation Helicopter or "Loach") near the Cambodian border. Finding and engaging the enemy at low altitude in coordination with an AH-1 Cobra gunship circling above, these units developed a remarkable method of fighting the Viet Cong: Hunter-Killer Operations. The tactic had great local success but died with the war. Few today are aware of the hazards these pilots faced during times of intense combat. Porter's vivid memoir recounts the internal workings of a legendary air cavalry troop, in-the-cockpit combat actions, and the men who were key players on this perilous battleground.

Fifty-five years in the writing, these collected poems trace the development of a committed poet from an early age. Many deal with the author's encounter with the Vietnam War and its endless consequences. Others range from family and friends to nature and the environment to the blessings and absurdities of the human condition. Ehrhart's poems are contemplative yet accessible, with no special gears required.

1968 was a year filled with calamitous events that mired down the Lyndon Johnson presidency, not the least of which was the unheeded warnings leading up to the hijacking of the USS Pueblo, a lightly-armed spy ship cruising in international waters off North Korea. After a fierce, one-sided attack by the North Korean military, the U.S. Navy ship and its crew of eighty-three men were taken hostage, with the crew being imprisoned and tortured daily for nearly a year before being released. How, and why did the Navy, the National Security Agency, and the Johnson administration place the Pueblo into such an untenable situation in the first place? And secondly, what could possibly have driven Kim Il-sung, the autocratic dictator of North Korea to take the gamble of hijacking a Navy ship belonging to the world's most powerful nation? With extensive research, including summaries of White House meetings and conversations that followed the capture, The Capture of the USS Pueblo answers these questions and reviews the flawed leadership decisions and national events that led to the capture of the spy ship. The capture of the USS Pueblo contains painfully-learned historical lessons, lessons that should be reviewed and heeded, especially as they relate to international events unfolding today.

From 1945 to 1973, 115,427 US military men were advisors in Vietnam. Of these, 66,399 were combat advisors. Eleven were awarded the Medal of Honor, 378 were killed and 1393 were wounded. Combat advisors, officers and NCOs, lived and fought with Vietnamese combat units, advising on tactics, weapons, and liaising with local US military support. This is the story of my first tour as a combat advisor 1966-1967. My training began at the Army Special Warfare School in unconventional warfare, Vietnamese culture and customs, advisor responsibilities, then Vietnamese language school. To get to Vietnam, I had to hitchhike across the Pacific, a colorful story. In-country I was senior advisor to a city infantry defense force and then an infantry mobile rapid reaction force. The author's respect for his Vietnamese comrades grew as combat operations against Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army units and conducting operations with US Marines were part of what we did. A major battle is described where the 320-man Vietnamese battalion makes a night helicopter assault on a 1200-man NVA regiment. And, on a different night, the Viet Cong stopped the war for the author to obtain a US Marine helicopter to med-evac a wounded baby.

In November 1969, what Time Magazine called the "largest battle of the year" took place less than two miles from the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone. Three companies of Task Force 1-61 met 2,000-3,000 North Vietnamese. American forces fought for two days, inflicting heavy casualties and suffering nine killed. Late on November 12, it became evident that the American position could be overrun. Alpha Company was airlifted in darkness to reinforce a small hill in the jungle. Three hours later, well past midnight, the Americans were attacked by 1,500 NVA. There was a twist: A secret Vietcong document captured near Saigon urged intense action before November 14 in anticipation of the Vietnam War Moratorium Demonstrations set for November 15 in many cities in America. The Vietcong planned to inflict a stunning defeat in "an effort to get the fighting in step with the peace marchers." The author, a member of Alpha Company who rode in on the last helicopter, offers unique insights into the story of the men who fought those three days in 1969.

Hundreds of Americans from the town of Stamford, Connecticut, fought in the Vietnam War. Of those, 29 did not return. These men and women came from all corners of the town. They were white and black, poor and wealthy. Some had not finished high school; others had graduate degrees. They served as grunts and helicopter pilots, battlefield surgeons and nurses, combat engineers and mine sweepers. Greeted with indifference and sometimes hostility upon their return home, they learned to suppress their memories in a nation fraught with political, economic and racial tensions. Now in their late 60s and 70s, these veterans have begun to tell their stories, which have been collected and recorded in this book.

When Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces on April 30, 1975, the communist victory sent shockwaves around the world. Using ingenious strategy and tactics, Ho Chi Minh had shown it was possible for a tiny nation to defeat a mighty Western power. The same tactics have been studied and replicated by revolutionary forces and terrorist organizations across the globe. Drawing on recently declassified documents and rare interviews with Ho Chi Minh's strategists and couriers, this book offers fresh perspective on his military blueprint and the reasons behind the American failure in Vietnam.

What was it like to live through the only war America lost in the twentieth century? Firebase Tan Tru answers that question by describing one man's adventures fighting in Vietnam's Mekong Delta during the peak of the war in 1969. A unique feature of this story is that it focuses upon that rare enlisted man who was already a college graduate, struggling to cope not only with the authoritarian rigidity of America's Army but also the horror and madness of the war itself. It describes both harrowing nearly fatal clashes in combat and the numerous surreal experiences encountered in that foreign land. If you are curious about how a bizarre war like Vietnam changes a thoughtful young man into cynicism and skepticism, then Firebase Tan Tru is a book you need to read. It provides insights into the personal psychology of both America's Vietnam era officers and the enlisted men they lead as well as our Vietnamese allies and our Vietnamese enemies.

In the spring of 1954, after eight years of bitter fighting, the war in Vietnam between the French and the communist-led Vietminh came to a head. With French forces reeling, the United States planned to intervene militarily to shore-up the anti-communist position. Turning to its allies for support, first and foremost Great Britain, the US administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower sought to create what Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called a "united action" coalition. In the event, Winston Churchill's Conservative government refused to back the plan. Fearing that US-led intervention could trigger a wider war in which the United Kingdom would be the first target for Soviet nuclear attack, the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, was determined to act as Indochina peacemaker - even at the cost of damage to the Anglo-American "special relationship". In this important study, Kevin Ruane and Matthew Jones revisit a Cold War episode in which British diplomacy played a vital role in settling a crucial question of international war and peace. Eden's diplomatic triumph at the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina is often overshadowed by the 1956 Suez Crisis which led to his political downfall. This book, however, recalls an earlier Eden: a skilled and experienced international diplomatist at the height of his powers who may well have prevented a localised Cold War crisis escalating into a general Third World War.

Among the many horrors of the Vietnam War, some of the most brutal and, until now, least documented were the experiences of the American prisoners of war, many of whom endured the longest wartime captivity, of any POWs in U.S. history. With this book, two of the most respected scholars in the field offer a comprehensive, balanced, and authoritative account of what happened to the nearly eight hundred Americans captured in Southeast Asia. The authors were granted unprecedented access to previously unreleased materials and interviewed over a hundred former POWs, enabling them to meticulously reconstruct the captivity record as well as produce an evocative narrative of a once sketchy and misunderstood, yet key chapter of the war. Powerful and moving in its portrayal of how men sought to cope with physical and psychological ordeals under the most adverse conditions, this landmark study separates fact from fiction. Its analysis of the shifting tactics and temperaments of captive and captor as the war evolved skillfully weaves domestic political developments and battlefield action with prison scenes that alternate between Hanoi's concrete cells, South Vietnam's jungle stockades, and mountain camps in Laos. Giving due praise but never shirking from criticism, the authors describe in gripping detail dozens of cases of individual courage and resistance from celebrated heroes like Jim Stockdale, Robinson Risner, Jeremiah Denton, Bud Day, and Nick Rowe to lesser known legends like Major Ray Schrump and Medal of Honor winner Donald Cook. Along with epic accounts of endurance under torture, breathtaking escape attempts, and remarkable prisoner communication efforts, they also reveal Code of Conduct lapses and instances of outright collaboration with the enemy. Published twenty-five years after Operation Homecoming, which brought home 591 POWs from Vietnam, this tour-de-force history is a compelling and important work that serves as a testament to tile courage, faith, and will of Americans in captivity, as well as a reminder of the sometimes impossible demands made on U.S. servicemen under the Code of Conduct in prisoner of war situations. It is vividly illustrated with maps, prisoners' renderings of camps and torture techniques, and dozens of photographs, many never before published. d and shameful conditions. It includes insightful analyses of the circumstances and conditions of captivity and its varying effects on the prisoners, the strategies and tactics of captors and captives, the differences between captivity in North and South Vietnam and between Laos and Vietnam, and analysis of the quality of the source materials for this and other works on the subject.