Hell in An Loc Read online

  During the battle of An Loc, General Hollingsworth frequently flew over the besieged city to boost the morale of the defenders by talking to the American advisors and also to senior ARVN commanders and assuring them of the full support of U.S. airpower. On one of these occasions, General Hollingsworth, using his code name “Danger 79,” called Colonel Nhut to inquire about the situation in his sector. Nhut—code name “M-72” (the LAW antitank rocket launcher was obviously a popular weapon in An Loc)—invited General Hollingsworth to drop by for a drink and to see for himself what was going on on the ground. General Hollingsworth politely declined; he told Nhut he would do that at another time.5

  As it was apparent that the NVA were preparing for another push to take the city, General Hollingsworth had reason to be concerned because the American advisors had reported that the morale of the defenders had rapidly deteriorated, that symptoms of battle fatigue were evident everywhere, and that the troops, understandably, were physically and mentally exhausted. They had beaten back two major assaults, tenaciously held to this small piece of property since early April despite constant artillery bombardments and probing attacks; their wounded had not been evacuated and their effectives had critically dwindled.

  On the national front, May 10 was a somber day for the country. In MRI, NVA forces, after their victory at Quang Tri on May 1, were preparing to attack the friendly positions on My Chanh River, the last defense line before the Imperial City. In MRII, ARVN’s 23rd Division in Kontum was under imminent renewed attacks from two NVA divisions, which were regrouping after their failed offensive on April 15. In An Loc, the enemy was determined to take the city before May 19 to celebrate Ho Chi Minh’s birthday. So on May 10, President Thieu declared the nation in danger and imposed a night curfew on all South Vietnamese cities effective the following day.6

  The shortage of troops was also a major concern for General Minh. In fact, only about 4,000 ARVN soldiers, including regulars as well as territorial forces, were about to face two NVA divisions supported by tanks and artillery. An attempt was made to bring reinforcement to the garrison by air, but by that time, the NVA had moved their anti-aircraft batteries closer to the city. On May 9, a VNAF Chinook helicopter transporting fresh troops into An Loc was hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire. Maj. Nguyen Tan Trong, chief pilot, tried to land in an area just south of An Loc, but the helicopter burst into flames, killing three crewmen. Maj. Nguyen Tan Trong and Lt. Nguyen Van Thanh, co-pilot, were captured by the enemy; they were released in 1973 after the Paris Peace Agreement.7 The destruction of Major Trong’s helicopter over An Loc put an end to any effort to reinforce the garrison.

  This, however, didn’t stop Col. Walter Ulmer from flying in to relieve Colonel Miller, who was near exhaustion after over one month of uninterrupted fighting. General Hollingsworth believed it was time to replace him and to inject new blood in the division advisory team before the upcoming attack. On May 10, a Huey helicopter flown by the commander of the 12th U.S. Aviation Group, escorted by Cobra gunships, touched down briefly on the helipad at the southern area of the city; as Colonel Ulmer leaped out, Colonel Miller jumped in and the helicopter lifted up in a hurry before the inevitable arrival of the enemy artillery. Colonel Miller was slated to command a brigade of the 101st Airborne Division in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.8 Colonel Ulmer, a West Point graduate, had previously served as an advisor to the 40th Regiment of the ARVN 22nd Division in the Central Highlands.9

  Hell broke out half an hour past midnight on May 11. “North Vietnamese artillery rained down with such intensity that the sound of exploding rounds melted together in a single rolling roar,” wrote Dale Andradé.10 An estimated 8,300 rounds of artillery and mortars of all calibers hit the city without interruption. As the area held by ARVN troops was reduced to about one square kilometer after the first two attacks, this means that, in the average, every 120 square meters (or a square of 11 meters each side) of South Vietnamese positions received one round of enemy artillery. This was by far the biggest offensive launched on the city of An Loc. The NVA this time decided to launch a four-pronged assault aimed at cutting An Loc into four different zones and to destroy these one by one. The NVA 5th Division conducted the main attack directed to the north and northeast, while the 9th Division’s secondary attack was aimed at the western and southern sections of the city.

  The four attacking columns approached from four different directions, as follows:

  - 174th Regiment/5th Division in the north.

  - Regiment E6/5th Division in the northeast.

  - 271st Regiment /9th Division in the south (through the Xa Cam Gate).

  - 272nd Regiment/9thDivision in the west (through the Phu Lo Gate).

  The 275th Regiment of the 5th Division was held in reserve. Each attacking column was supported by six to eight tanks.

  Around 4:30 A.M., the enemy lifted their artillery fire and their infantry and tanks started the assault. However, when they approached the ARVN defense line, their tanks bypassed their infantry, because they were afraid to be sitting ducks and be hit by M-72 LAWs if they progressed at infantry pace. As a consequence, a number of these tanks were destroyed as soon as they penetrated the perimeter of defense.

  In the north, the 174th Regiment/5th NVA Division launched repeated assaults on the positions of the 8th Regiment and the 3rd and 4th Companies of the 81st Airborne Commando Group. The 8th Regiment withdrew under pressure toward the city but some units were able to cling to the high-rise buildings and stop the attacking forces along Nguyen Trung Truc Street. A few tanks that penetrated deep into the defenses of the commandos to the east were destroyed by soldiers of the 8th Regiment. Also under heavy enemy pressure, the 81st Commandos had to give up some of the terrain regained three weeks earlier. At one point, the commandos were on the verge of being overrun by ferocious enemy assaults. The 5th Division command post, in close coordination with the U.S. advisors, again, had to divert one preplanned B-52 strike to drop its payload on top of the attackers, just a mere 600 yards from the commandos. This last-minute change saved the 81st Commando from possible annihilation while inflicting heavy casualties on the attackers. (It was estimated that 90% of all Arc Light strikes in support of An Loc were diverted from their original targets to drop on more urgent ones.)11

  “The close explosions shook the houses,” as a commando later described the effects of the B-52 air strikes. “The earth vibrated violently, the compressed air caused me to have difficulty breathing, I didn’t know if the two sorties were finished because I had not recovered my consciousness. The city darkened as the cloud of dust had risen and covered the sun light. The civilians in my sector had been given instructions regarding personal safety in case of close B-52 strikes but many children still had bleeding in their ears and nose.”12

  The well-placed Arc Light strike allowed the commandos to reorganize and during the day, they succeeded in recapturing some of their positions after launching violent counter-attacks, sometimes leading to hand-to-hand combat.

  In the northeast, the E6 Regiment of the NVA’s 5th Division launched a two-pronged assault on the 3rd Ranger Group positions. One PT-76 tank was destroyed, but the 36th and 31st Battalions in the north and eastern sector were under heavy attack. Supported by effective air strikes and protected by heavily fortified positions inside public buildings, the 36th Battalion beat back wave after wave of enemy assaults in the vicinity of the Chinese School; however the battalion lost contact with some of the outposts south of the airport, which were driven back or overrun by superior enemy forces.

  In the 31st Battalion’s sector, the situation was more critical. Around 2:00 A.M., the enemy launched human wave assaults against the battalion positions in the eastern side of the city, driving back the forward outposts in the western edge of Quan Loi plantation and threatening to overrun the battalion units in the vicinity of the White Bridge. Colonel Biet requested an urgent B-52 strike one kilometer from the defense perimeter to stop the enemy from breaking through the line of the 31st Ba
ttalion. The request was approved and the American advisor told the air support officer in the S-3 section that when the FAC arrived over the target area and called the group call-sign on the radio, all he had to do was to squeeze the speaker button on the radio handset twice to confirm that he knew the B-52s were about to bomb the requested target. A few minutes later, the air support officer heard the FAC calling on the air support frequency. He squeezed the speaker button twice and five minutes later, a string of tremendous explosions shook the entire northeastern sector. Major Khanh, the 31st Battalion commander, immediately yelled and cursed on the radio; he protested the fact that the Ranger Group did not alert him ahead of time so his men could take cover. His men were shaken in their bunkers, but fortunately nobody was hurt.

  Khanh later called back to report that the enemy must have been all destroyed because everything was quiet after the B-52 strike. Early the next morning, Khanh sent patrols out in the direction of Quan Loi plantation. They found a large number of dead, charred enemy corpses with all sorts of light and heavy weapons in the southwestern edge of Quan Loi.13

  Corp. Nguyen Van Xuan from the 3rd Ranger Group recalled that in the morning of May 11, a seventy-year-old man named Ong Sau (or Mr. Sau), noticed a T-54 tank was stuck in a drainage ditch under the balcony of his two-story house, while the tankers were busy trying to get the tank out of the ditch. Mr. Sau went inside and asked the rangers—who were taking up position in his house—to give him a hand grenade and teach him how to use it. The rangers wanted to go out to take a look, but Mr. Sau told them to stay put; he went back to the balcony, removed the safety pin of the grenade and dropped it into the open hatchet of the T-54. Mr. Sau rushed inside the house and escaped by the rear door. There was a big explosion followed by several smaller explosions, then a column of black smoke rose up in front of the house. When the firing died down outside, Mr. Sau furtively came back; he saw a few charred bodies inside the blackened carcass of the tank while the façade of his house was partially burned and covered with black smoke.14 Obviously, this was not the type of welcome the North Vietnamese tankers were told they would receive in An Loc.

  While the situation on the northeast and east of the city was temporarily stabilized, elements of the NVA E6 Regiment supported by tanks, launched a furious assault on the weakly defended area in the northern sector between the 81st Commando Group and the 3rd Ranger Group. The attacking force succeeded in driving a wedge between the above two units; it broke through the 52nd Ranger Battalion—which fell back in disorder—and advanced toward the center of the city. Lt. Col. Richard J. McManus, the senior advisor to the 3rd Ranger Group, later blamed Major Dau, the 52nd Ranger Battalion commander, for failure of leadership in combat.15 However, during the siege of An Loc, the 52nd Ranger Battalion lost about half of its effective force while the remaining fighting men were wounded at least once.16 A battalion that did not fight would not have incurred such exorbitant losses.

  In the western sector, the 272nd Regiment of the 9th NVA Division attacked through the Phu Lo Gate. Two leading PT-76 tanks were knocked out by the 7th Regiment, but the enemy succeeded in capturing the city’s prison and the Public Works Department building at 9:15 A.M., despite a furious resistance from South Vietnamese defenders. In particular, the American advisors had nothing but praise for Lt. Col. Ly Duc Quan, the 7th Regiment commander: three times wounded in the battle of An Loc, Quan kept commanding his troops while being propped up in his cot.17 Colonel Quan was a Nung officer. As we have seen earlier, the ARVN’s 5th Division was the offspring of the 3rd Field Division, which consisted of former Nung battalions; the above battalions—which fought the Indochina War in North Viet Nam under the French—resettled in the South and were integrated into the National Army after the partition of Viet Nam under the 1954 Geneva Accords. Like the North American Indians, the Nung—an ethnic minority living near the Chinese border—were exceptionally brave warriors and Colonel Quan had upheld that tradition in the Battle of An Loc.

  An enemy post-action report indicated that the attacking force in 7th Regiment sector made a major tactical mistake by not pressing southeastward to capture the command post of the 5th Division, the nerve center of the defense of An Loc, instead of capturing the Public Works campus, “an objective of no tactical value.”18 At 9:30, the 3rd Battalion of the 7th Regiment, under relentless enemy attacks, withdrew toward the center of the city, in close proximity to the 5th Division command post. The enemy started to consolidate their positions in the newly gained salient on the western sector.

  In the south and southeastern sector, the enemy committed the 275th Regiment of the 5th NVA Division—which was held in reserve—to launch a two-pronged attack. The first thrust was aimed at the Sector Psychological Warfare Company headquarters. As one PT-76 tank emerged in front of the perimeter of defense, Sgt. La Trong Thang destroyed it with an M-72 rocket,19 but the enemy was able to establish a foothold in Binh Long Sector area. The second thrust was aimed at the Xa Cam Gate, which was defended by the 1st Battalion of the 48th Regiment. (The 1st Battalion was part of TF-52 from ARVN 18th Division. After its withdrawal from Hung Tam Base on April 7, TF-52 was assigned a central area between the 3rd Ranger Group and the 8th Regiment. After the second attack, the 1st Battalion of the 48th Regiment was attached to the 1st Airborne Brigade.) The NVA pushed back the 1/48 Battalion and captured the area around Xa Cam Gate.20

  Because the USAF had been alerted about the impending attack, it was ready to provide uninterrupted air support starting at 4:00 A.M. Jet fighters, Cobra gunships, and B-52s strafed enemy formations around the perimeter of defense and sometimes within the city itself. During the day, 350 tactical air sorties and 26 B-52 missions had been accomplished in support of the garrison.21 The American pilots reported that many enemy assaults were completely neutralized by CBU bombs which proved very deadly on exposed targets. However, stopping the enemy offense with massive air support was not without its price: One U.S. A-37, two Cobra gunships, two FAC O-2 aircraft, and one VNAF A-1 were shot down during the course of the day’s action.22These heavy losses were due in part to the introduction to the battle of An Loc of the SA-7 Strela, a new surface-to-air missile that had been used by the enemy earlier in MRI. A Soviet-made shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile, the Strela was very effective against low-flying Cobra gunships. The introduction of this new weapon reflected the NVA’s attempt to neutralize, or at least to minimize, the air support in An Loc in an all-out effort to take the city.

  Despite heavy air support, the situation became critical by 10:00 A.M. In the north, the enemy broke though the friendly line in certain areas and seized the Field Police headquarters and the New Market. In the northeast, the office of the “Open Arms” program fell and the enemy reached a point only 500 meters from the 5th Division headquarters. In the west, elements of the NVA 9th Division occupied the Public Works building and were stopped a mere 300 meters from the 5th Division command post. The Binh Long sector in the south was broken through. In the southeastern sector—except for the area in the vicinity of Xa Cam Gate which was occupied by the enemy—the paratroopers held their line and inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers. It was clear that the enemy’s plan was to cut An Loc in half with a pincer movement of two main attacks in the northeastern and western sectors. Linking up these two penetrations would indeed separate the defenders into enclaves that could be defeated in detail.

  Around 10:00 A.M., Colonel Luong, 1st Airborne Brigade commander, ordered the 8th Airborne Battalion to counter-attack to recapture the Xa Cam Gate area. U.S. warplanes supporting the paratroopers’ counter-attack destroyed six enemy tanks, including a BTR-50 amphibious armored vehicle.23 After the Xa Cam Gate had been recaptured, Colonel Luong replaced the 8th Battalion with the 63rd Company of the 6th Airborne Battalion, which had earlier withdrawn from Doi Gio Hill with heavy losses. The 8th Battalion, in coordination with Binh Long provincial forces, again launched a new counter-attack to recapture the portion of the south and southwestern sectors th
at had been broken through by elements of the NVA 275th Regiment. After the defensive line of Binh Long Sector had been restored, Lieutenant Colonel Ninh, 8th Battalion commander, reinforced the defense of the southern sector with the 82nd Airborne Company.

  Map 11: Third Attack on An Loc

  While the situation in the southern sector had been temporarily stabilized, the enemy tried to widen their northeastern and western penetrations. At around 10:30 A.M., General Hung ordered the 1st Airborne Brigade to counter-attack to destroy the enemy’s two prongs, which threatened to seize his command post.

  Around 11:00 A.M., General Hung called Colonel Truong, the 8th Regiment commander, to inquire about the situation in the latter’s sector. Truong assured his division commander that his men had been able to regroup and stop the enemy roughly along the Nguyen Trung Truc line. Hung then informed Colonel Truong that the 7th Regiment had been overrun despite round-the-clock support from the 155mm guns at Tong Le Chan outpost. Hung also said that elements of the 7th were now taking positions near his command post, that the enemy was firing B-40s at his bunker, and that he had ordered Colonel Luong to send one airborne battalion to his rescue. “If the paratroopers arrive after the enemy overrun the 5th Division headquarters, I would commit suicide instead of being taken prisoner,” said Hung. “After I die, take your regiment and try to move to Chon Thanh with the 81st Airborne Commando.” Truong told General Hung not to give up and let him know he would immediately dispatch the 8th Reconnaissance Company to reinforce the protection of the 5th Division headquarters pending the arrival of the paratroopers.24

  In the meantime, Colonel Luong ordered the 5th Battalion—which had been screening the terrain to the south of the city—to enter An Loc and to attack in two divergent directions to stop and destroy the enemy’s two converging columns that were dangerously closing in on General Hung’s command post. The left column of the 5th Battalion stopped the enemy in the vicinity of the Public Works building; the column to the right battled the enemy around the Montagnard elementary school. In the afternoon, Colonel Luong dispatched the 3rd Airborne Reconnaissance Company to protect the 5th Division headquarters. To provide close fire support to the 5th Battalion’s counter-attack, Colonel Luong used the four organic 81mm mortars serviced by the artillerymen from the battery that was overrun earlier at Doi Gio. The street combat raged all day long and by nightfall the outcome of this seesaw battle remained uncertain.