Hell in An Loc Read online

  Noteworthy is the fact that the only information about the uneasy relationship between General Hung and Colonel Miller and about Hung’s depicted “inability to handle the stress of high-intensity combat” came from only one source: Colonel Miller himself. Willbanks readily admitted that “the discussion of the relationship between Hung and Miller was based on interviews and communication with Colonel Miller. It was impossible to get General Hung’s side of things because he committed suicide shortly after the fall of Saigon in 1975.”3

  Colonel Ulmer, who replaced Colonel Miller as 5th Division senior advisor on May 10, had probably a fresher and more objective view of General Hung’s conduct. Ulmer later recounted that Hung seemed weary and cautious, but he was clearly in command. Ulmer also recalled that “Hung never buckled, though he was clearly very concerned.”4

  A senior officer who had witnessed General Hung’s conduct during the siege of An Loc is Col. Bui Duc Diem, a veteran of the Indochina War who had fought in a paratroop battalion in North Viet Nam. Three times wounded at An Loc, Colonel Diem was awarded two U.S. Silver Stars for heroism during the siege. As Assistant for Operations to General Hung, he was the number three man in the command structure of the 5th Division and the only high-ranking officer who survived the siege of An Loc and the fall of the South—the number two man, Col. Le Nguyen Vy, deputy division commander, also committed suicide in 1975. Colonel Diem told this author that General Hung was always calm under pressure. Diem also reported that when NVA tanks were closing in on the 5th Division command post, General Hung sent a number of his staff officers to man the defensive positions around the underground bunker; two young staff officers were killed by cannon shells from a T-54 tank before the tank was destroyed by other defenders. General Hung, wearing a flak jacket, a steel helmet and carrying a M-16 rifle, often visited the frontline talking to the troops and making sure they knew how to use their M-72 antitank weapons.

  Brig. Gen. Mach Van Truong, who, as a colonel, commanded the 8th Regiment, Col. Nguyen Cong Vinh, former 9th Regiment commander, and Col. Pham Van Huan, former commander of the 81st Airborne Commando Group, told me that Hung never panicked and was in full control of the situation.

  Finally, the third cause of the success of the defense of An Loc, in my opinion, was the errors committed by the NVA in the planning and execution of their 1972 Easter invasion. “There were mistakes on both sides, plenty of them,” recalled Colonel Miller about the NVA’s first attack on An Loc, “but we must have made fewer because we were still there when it quieted down, and that meant we were there from then on in my opinion.”5 The NVA, indeed, had made quite a few mistakes during their 1972 invasion. The failure of their Nguyen Hue campaign and, in particular, its bitter defeat in the battle of An Loc, were, in fact, the results of flawed intelligence, strategic errors, and tactical shortcomings.

  Sun Tzu, the famous Chinese strategist, wrote: “Know your enemy, know yourself: one hundred battles engaged, one hundred battles won.” Obviously, the Communists didn’t know their enemy well when they decided to launch their Easter Offensive; they had, indeed, misjudged the resilience of the South Vietnamese army and the American commitment to support its ally, even at a time when U.S troops were disengaging from the country.

  In the view of some military analysts, General Giap’s biggest mistake in launching the 1972 Eastern invasion was to trust the antiwar activists and communist sympathizers in Saigon, who assured him that the South Vietnamese people were ready to overthrow the Saigon government and would acclaim the North Vietnamese troops as liberators.

  It has also been suggested that the North Vietnamese underestimated the staying power of the South Vietnamese forces because they concluded from the lessons of Operation LAM SON 719 that ARVN units would break and run under pressure. If this was true, then the Communists had indeed grossly misjudged ARVN’S performance. In that fateful Laotian campaign, in fact, the South Vietnamese troops’ movements, logistical preparations, and most of all, the speculations of the American press, had alerted the enemy to the incoming attack. (The attack didn’t start until February 7, 1971, but by February 1, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, and the New York Times reported the possibility that a strike into Low Laos was imminent.)6 As a result, the NVA had concentrated a powerful anti-aircraft defense system in the area. Over one hundred U.S. helicopters were shot down during the first week and consequently, the Americans substantially cut down on the number of helicopters available for troop transport, resupply, and medical evacuation. Although on March 6, the ARVN launched a successful air assault on Tchepone and discovered a large number of enemy bodies, the attacking forces also suffered heavy casualties. Ambushed and overwhelmed by far superior enemy forces while lacking adequate air support, logistical supply, and medical evacuation, ARVN units had to retreat without accomplishing their mission of searching for and destroying enemy logistical installations around this important staging area on the Ho Chi Minh trail. The pictures in the U.S. media depicting isolated cases of panicking soldiers clinging to the skids of helicopters gave to the enemy—and also to the world—the wrong impression that ARVN units would fold under pressure.

  The enemy, on the other hand, appeared not to have learned one of the lessons of the 1968 Tet Offensive, and that is, ARVN would stand and fight when defending South Vietnamese towns and cities—even when taken by surprise. No cities fell, no ARVN units defected or fled during the above offensive. The VC did occupy a large area of the city of Hue, but they were ultimately driven out after tough house-to-house fighting. The Communists also seemed to overlook the fact that almost half of the war-making potential of the VC was destroyed in this failed offensive and that the NVA had to send North Vietnamese troops to replenish the VC units or, in some instances, to replace them entirely.

  Moreover, Hanoi had misjudged President Nixon’s resolve to support South Viet Nam in the middle of this crucial Vietnamization period and to bring the formidable U.S. airpower in-country and in the theater to bear upon the North Vietnamese aggressors. While Cobra gunships were very effective against enemy infantry and tanks in the open, the AC-119 Stingers, AC-130 Spectres, A-37s, and F-4s provided accurate close air support and had on many occasions broken enemy assaults. The most important tool in the U.S. arsenal, no doubt, were the B-52s, which, day after day, went after enemy logistical installations, assembly areas and even enemy attacking formations less than one kilometer from ARVN positions. In many instances, the B-52s’ timely and accurate strikes had saved some ARVN units from possible annihilation. As reported in an earlier chapter, a preplanned B-52 strike scored a direct hit on an NVA regiment headquarters and one battalion—which began to deploy in formations for the final assault during the second attack on An Loc—forcing the enemy to cancel the attack on the western wing entirely.

  With regard to strategy used by the NVA during their Easter Offensive, as mentioned earlier, Hanoi hoped that by launching a simultaneous three-pronged attack on Quang Tri, Kontum, and Binh Long, it would sow confusion within ARVN/JGS as to the main thrust and would force the latter to commit the general reserves prematurely. This multi-pronged offensive would also allow for strategic flexibility, as a successful attack on Quang Tri would open the door to the Imperial City of Hue, while a successful attack on Kontum would cut South Viet Nam in half. A successful thrust on Binh Long, in the other hand, would allow for the installation of the Provisional Revolutionary Government (P RG) in An Loc and would pose a threat to the capital city of Saigon itself.

  A three-pronged attack, however, has its drawbacks because the NVA had to disperse all their forces to three distant fronts, and thus were unable to reinforce—and resupply in a timely manner—any of them when the need arose. In MRI and MRII respectively, with additional troops and logistical supplies, the NVA could have exploited their initial successes at Quang Tri and Tan Canh by attacking Hue and Kontum, which were lightly defended at that time. By the time the attacking forces regrouped and were ready to resume the attack, ARVN had
already brought in reinforcements to mount a counter-attack to retake Quang Tri and to beat back the NVA’s attack on Kontum.

  Likewise, had the NVA received fresh troops with adequate supplies, they could have taken An Loc right after the fall of Loc Ninh on April 7, because at that time An Loc was defended only by Binh Long territorial forces, a ranger battalion, and the depleted 7th Regiment of the 5th Division. By the time the NVA 5th Division, the main attacking force—in conjunction with the 9th Division, which was already in place—was ready to resume the attack after its victory at Loc Ninh, ARVN III Corps had been able to reinforce An Loc successively with the two remaining ranger battalions from the 3rd Ranger Group, the 8th Regiment of the 5th Division, the 1st Airborne Brigade, and the 81st Airborne Commando Group.

  Further, because of the lack of reinforcements, the enemy had to stop after each attack to regroup, be resupplied, and be replenished before resuming the attack. Consequently, the NVA not only had lost the momentum for failing to exploit and reinforce the initial successes, but also had allowed the defenders to reorganize and III Corps to bring in reinforcements. Worse, during the lulls between two attacks, VNAF and USAF conducted round-the-clock air strikes on enemy regiments and armored units assembled around An Loc with disastrous consequences for the morale of the troops and the combat worthiness of the attacking forces.

  By contrast, the South Vietnamese had a far superior strategic mobility, thanks to VNAF and USAF’s airlift capacity, that had allowed ARVN/JGS to quickly bring in reinforcements in accordance with the development of the situation on the three fronts. When the decision was made to reinforce An Loc at the war council in Saigon on April 7, for example, it took ARVN only four days to move the entire 21st Division by air from the Mekong Delta to Bien Hoa airbase and from there by trucks to Chon Thanh, south of An Loc. When it was decided to reinforce the counter-offensive of I Corps to recapture Quang Tri after the siege of An Loc had been lifted in July, it took less than a week to complete the airlift of the 1st Airborne Brigade and the 81st Airborne Commando Group to Phu Bai airport, south of Hue.

  With regard to the battle of An Loc, Tran Van Nhut was convinced that the NVA’s failure to launch a surprise initial attack on the capital city of Binh Long at the beginning of the offensive constituted a strategic blunder. In Unfinished War, General Nhut, indeed, believed that had NVA used their 9th Division to launch a surprise attack on An Loc during the first days of the offensive, then encircled Loc Ninh with the 5th Division, while at the same time interdicting Route 13 with the 7th Division, they could have easily captured An Loc because the city was very lightly defended at that time.7 From a strategic standpoint, he might be right. However, from the logistical point of view, this could hardly be done because the enemy had to build up its supply bases before launching a large-scale offensive on three different fronts. And this was not an easy task given the fact that their supply lines had been interdicted and their logistical installations damaged or destroyed without interruption by USAF and VNAF warplanes. For this reason, first, they had to take Loc Ninh—which stood on their lifeline—so that they could bring in their supplies in food and ammunition before the 9th Division was finally able to launch their first attack on An Loc, six days after the fall of Loc Ninh. It took the 5th Division an additional twenty-eight days to participate with the 9th Division in the third attack on An Loc.

  In his memoir, Brig. Gen. Mach Van Truong, former 8th Regiment commander, reported that during the first NVA attack on An Loc on April 13, 1972, his regiment captured the executive officer of a tank company. The NVA officer disclosed that his unit moved to the South immediately after it was activated in Hanoi and the officers were required to go through a political indoctrination session in which they committed themselves to implement the following three-phase campaign: a) Take Loc Ninh, capture materials and equipment from ARVN 9th Regiment and the district of Loc Ninh, resupply in fuel and food, then attack An Loc; b) Take An Loc, resupply in fuel and food from ARVN 5th Division and Binh Long Sector then attack Binh Duong; c) Occupy Binh Duong, resupply as above then launch a coordinated attack on Saigon.8

  According to General Truong, the prisoner’s revelation explained why dried rice and rations issued by ARVN quartermasters were found on the bodies of dead NVA soldiers. The fact that Communist troops bought or confiscated canned and dry foods at the local markets around An Loc in early April showed that, even with the supplies captured at Loc Ninh, the NVA’s logistical lines were not keeping pace with their front units.

  A similar situation developed in MRI and also in MRII. In MRI, the days following the collapse of the city of Quang Tri on May 1, as the remnants of ARVN’s 3rd Division and attached units were fighting their way back toward the lightly defended My Chanh line amid thousands of refugees fleeing south, NVA’s three attacking divisions could have launched a pursuit operation to capture the Imperial City of Hue. Instead, they had to stop to consolidate their new positions and to await resupply in order to build up their logistics before continuing the offensive. This gave ARVN time to regroup, refurbish, and bring in reinforcements in order to launch the successful counter-offensive to recapture the city of Quang Tri in September.

  In his memoir 25 Nam Khoi Lua (25 Years of War ),9 Brig. Gen. Ly Tong Ba, former 23rd Division commander in MRII, reported that, after the capture of the town of Dac To about twenty miles north of Kontum, the two attacking NVA divisions stopped to celebrate their victory. Had they continued their offensive, reasoned Ba, they would have been able to capture the city of Kontum, because his division, located at Ban Me Thuot south of Pleiku, wouldn’t have had enough time to replace the 22nd Division, which had been defeated earlier in Dac To.

  Both the enemy offensives in MRI and in MRII seemed to indicate that the North Vietnamese were often too cautious and too slow in exploiting their early tactical successes, but the reality was that the constant pounding of their supply lines by B-52 strikes prevented the timely build-up of their logistical bases necessary for any successful pursuit operation. In MRII, by the time the commander of the NVA’s B3 Front resumed the offensive fifteen days after the fall of Dac To , General Ba had been able to bring his entire division to Kontum and to conduct a well prepared and well executed defense plan, which thwarted the enemy’s ambition to control the Central Highlands and to cut South Viet Nam in half.

  According to ARVN field commanders in An Loc, the major tactical mistake of the NVA was the lack of coordination between the attacking forces. Due to constant tactical and strategic air interdiction or due to the inability of Communist military leaders to direct a multi-divisional offensive, the different wings launched their assaults at different times; this allowed the defending units to support each other and the 5th Division to focus air support to the units being attacked.

  On the other hand, the enemy’s failure to sustain the momentum of attack in An Loc was due not only to the NVA’s failure to reinforce the attacking forces to exploit their initial successes, but also to the absence of clear objectives for the tankers and the lack of coordination between armor and infantry units. During the first attack on An Loc, enemy tanks casually rolled down the main thoroughfares of the city without infantry protection, because the tankers were told that the defenders would flee in panic and the population would greet them as liberators. Some defenders did panic—ARVN soldiers had never faced enemy tanks in battle before—but they did not flee, and the civilian population fled instead of welcoming the northern “liberators.” After the defenders had recovered from their initial shock and discovered the effectiveness of the M-72 antitank weapon, they started to hunt down the enemy tanks all over the city.

  During the succeeding waves of attack, the North Vietnamese tankers were more cautious, but their unit commanders—who lacked experience in combined arms tactics—ordered their units to be split in small elements to support various attacking columns. This “piecemeal” tactic violated the principles of mass and maneuver inherent in the use of armor in battle. Instead of st
riking en masse deep on weak points in the ARVN’s defense to produce shock and surprise, the use of a few tanks on each wing to support the infantry was a recipe for disaster: to avoid being destroyed as sitting ducks alongside the slow-advancing infantry, the tanks continued to progress deep into ARVN positions without infantry protection, and thus were easy prey for the defenders and U.S. Cobra gunships.

  The enemy’s ineffective employment of armor resulted in great part from the fact that the control of the armor branch was centralized at COSVN and, consequently, tank and infantry units in An Loc were operating under two different chains of command with little or no combined arms coordination.

  On the other hand, the enemy’s inflexible tactic of launching frontal human-wave assaults on ARVN positions following the lifting of artillery barrages, proved damaging to their infantry. ARVN defenders, in fact, were instructed by their unit commanders to rest, even relax, in their foxholes or bunkers during the artillery barrage and to stand up and shoot at enemy human waves at close range, when the North Vietnamese stopped or shifted their artillery. Many enemy units were decimated by this costly—and recurring—tactic.