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    Thiet Gap! The Battle Of An Loc, April 1972. [Illustrated Edition]
    Thiet Gap! The Battle Of An Loc, April 1972. [Illustrated Edition]
    Thiet Gap! The Battle Of An Loc, April 1972. [Illustrated Edition]
    Ebook158 pages1 hour

    Thiet Gap! The Battle Of An Loc, April 1972. [Illustrated Edition]

    By Lt-Colonel James H. Willbanks

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    About this ebook

    [Illustrated with 1 table, 7 maps, 1 figure and 13 Illustrations]
    The Battle of An Loc was one of the most important battles of the Vietnam War. It took place during the 1972 North Vietnamese Spring Offensive, after most U.S. combat troops had departed South Vietnam. The battle, which lasted over two months, resulted in the virtual destruction of three North Vietnamese divisions and blocked a Communist attack on Saigon. The sustained intensity of combat during this battle had not been previously seen in the Vietnam War. Although this battle occurred after the high point of American involvement in Vietnam, when U.S. forces were in the process of withdrawing from that country, Americans played a key role in the action. South Vietnamese ground forces and their U.S. Army advisers, working in close cooperation with U.S. Army and Air Force air support, proved a combination capable of resisting defeat and seizing victory. Because the Battle of An Loc did not involve large numbers of American troops, little has been written about the battle or American participation in it. Jim Willbanks’ study focuses on the conduct of the battle and the role American combat advisers and U.S. air power played in defeating the North Vietnamese forces during the spring of 1972.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNormanby Press
    Release dateAug 15, 2014
    ISBN9781782893844
    Thiet Gap! The Battle Of An Loc, April 1972. [Illustrated Edition]

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      Book preview

      Thiet Gap! The Battle Of An Loc, April 1972. [Illustrated Edition] - Lt-Colonel James H. Willbanks

      Thiet Giap!

      The Battle of An Loc,

      April 1972

      by

      Lieutenant Colonel James H. Willbanks, U.S. Army, Retired

       This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.picklepartnerspublishing.com

      To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books –

      Or on Facebook

      Text originally published in 1993 under the same title.

      © Pickle Partners Publishing 2013, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

      Publisher’s Note

      Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

      We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Contents

      TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

      FOREWORD 4

      DEDICATION 4

      ILLUSTRATIONS 5

      Figures 5

      Maps 5

      TABLES 5

      PREFACE 6

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 7

      I. INTRODUCTION 8

      II. THE NORTH VIETNAMESE SPRING OFFENSIVE 10

      The North Vietnamese Strategy 10

      Military Region III 11

      The Vietnamization Program 14

      III. THE BATTLE OF AN LOC, PHASE I 18

      The NVA Plan in MR III 18

      The Assault on Loc Ninh 19

      The North Vietnamese Turn on An Loc 27

      The Battle for An Loc 31

      The NVA Change Their Plan 41

      The Second Attack 42

      Conditions in the City 43

      IV. THE BATTLE OF AN LOC, PHASE II 47

      The Third Attack 47

      The Battle on QL-13 51

      The Siege Is Broken 53

      The ARVN Are Victorious 54

      V. THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS 56

      American Air Power 56

      American Advisers 59

      VI. THE NORTH VIETNAMESE VICTORY IN 1975 62

      1973-1974 62

      The Initial Attack on Phuoc Long 62

      The General Offensive 63

      VII. CONCLUSIONS 66

      APPENDIX 68

      Order of Battle 68

      Battle of Loc Ninh, 4-8 April 1972 68

      Battle of Loc Ninh, 9-15 April 1972 68

      Battle of Loc Ninh, 19-22 April 1972 69

      Battle of Loc Ninh, 9 May-June 1972 69

      Battle Along QL-13, 5 April-June 1972 70

      REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 71

      BIBLIOGRAPHY 72

      Unpublished Primary Source Material 72

      Published Primary Sources 73

      Secondary Sources 73

      Periodicals 75

      THE AUTHOR 77

      FOREWORD

      The Battle of An Loc was one of the most important battles of the Vietnam War. It took place during the 1972 North Vietnamese Spring Offensive, after most U.S. combat troops had departed South Vietnam. The battle, which lasted over two months, resulted in the virtual destruction of three North Vietnamese divisions and blocked a Communist attack on Saigon. The sustained intensity of combat during this battle had not been previously seen in the Vietnam War.

      Although this battle occurred after the high point of American involvement in Vietnam, when U.S. forces were in the process of withdrawing from that country, Americans played a key role in the action. South Vietnamese ground forces and their U.S. Army advisers, working in close cooperation with U.S. Army and Air Force air support, proved a combination capable of resisting defeat and seizing victory.

      Because the Battle of An Loc did not involve large numbers of American troops, little has been written about the battle or American participation in it. Jim Willbanks’ study focuses on the conduct of the battle and the role American combat advisers and U.S. air power played in defeating the North Vietnamese forces during the spring of 1972.

      September 1993

      RICHARD M. SWAIN

      Colonel, Field Artillery

      Director, Combat Studies Institute

      DEDICATION

      To all the American men and women who answered their nation’s call and served in the Republic of Vietnam, but especially to those who made the supreme sacrifice with their lives, to include Brigadier General Richard Tallman, Lieutenant Stanley Kuick, Major Richard Benson, First Lieutenant Richard Todd (killed by incoming artillery in An Loc on 9 July 1972), and Lieutenant Colonel William B. Nolde, the last American who died in Vietnam before the negotiated cease-fire went into effect. (Nolde was killed in An Loc on 27 January 1973, just eleven hours before the guns stopped firing.)

      ILLUSTRATIONS

      Figures

      1. Organization, U.S. Army advisory structure, 1972

      Maps

      1. The NVA Easter Offensive, 1972

      2. Key locations, Binh Long Province, MR III

      3. Binh Long Province, 5 April 1972

      4. The Loc Ninh-An Loc vicinity

      5. The defense of An Loc, 12 April 1972

      6. The NVA high-water mark in An Loc, 11 May 1972

      7. The NVA final offensive, March-May 1975

      TABLES

      1. Estimated NVA troop strength

      PREFACE

      The genesis of this paper goes back to 1972 in a hospital ward in the 3d Field Hospital in Saigon, Republic of Vietnam. Having just been evacuated from the besieged city of An Loc, I thought that someday I would attempt to write of the desperate battle that was fought there during the massive North Vietnamese Easter Offensive.

      Twenty years after the fact, as part of a master’s degree program at the University of Kansas, I began drawing together the many aspects of this key battle that blocked the North Vietnamese attack on Saigon. The result is the following study.

      Aside from the obvious personal interest that this battle held for me, I also wanted to address the critical contribution of U.S. advisers and American close air support to the eventual South Vietnamese victory in defeating the 1972 North Vietnamese offensive in Military Region III. The body of literature on the war in Vietnam grows daily, but the emphasis of most of these works falls within two categories: historical overviews and first person accounts. These books usually focus on the height of American involvement, when large numbers of U.S. troops and units were actively conducting combat operations. Very little has been written about the American commitment in the latter part of the war when U.S. participation was embodied in a handful of advisers who remained with the Vietnamese units in the field and the few air elements left in country.

      This paper focuses on the role of U.S. advisers and American tactical air power in the latter part of the war, specifically the 1972 Easter Offensive. While I was a participant in this battle, this study is by no means a memoir or a personal account. The purpose of this paper is to examine the battle of An Loc to determine the contribution made by the American advisers and flyers.

      I have relied on my own personal experience for context but have attempted to document the story of the battle from multiple sources. My research drew heavily on primary sources, such as unit histories, official communiqués, operational summaries, intelligence reports, after-action reports, and a limited number of first person accounts. The research also considered the South Vietnamese point of view by examining the U.S. Army Center of Military History Indochina Monograph Series, in which former senior South Vietnamese military leaders discuss a variety of issues germane to the Vietnam War, including the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) performance during the 1972 North Vietnamese invasion.

      A limited number of North Vietnamese sources are also considered. While these works are very political in nature, they provide a glimpse of the Communist perspective and the strategy that led to the North Vietnamese decision to launch a large-scale offensive in 1972.

      Most primary sources for this study are available in the Combined Arms Research Library, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

      I am indebted to Lieutenant Colonel Robert D. Ramsey III and Colonel Richard M. Swain of the Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, for giving me the opportunity to publish this study.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      There are a number of groups and persons that I would like to thank for their contribution to this effort.

      First, I wish to

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