Operation Kingpin

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Son Tay prison camp

Operation Kingpin was a military command company of the US Army in 1970 during the Vietnam War for the liberation of American soldiers from a North Vietnamese POW camp near Sơn Tây .

planning

Model of the prison camp

In early 1970, a reconnaissance drone (UAV) discovered a new prisoner-of-war camp west of Hanoi . It was the Sơn Tây camp , which served as the reception center for the notorious Hỏa Lò prison or Hanoi Hilton (nickname of the US military ). The evaluation of the reconnaissance photos showed that around 50 American soldiers were detained at this location. Then was Green Berets - officer Col. Arthur D. Simons commissioned with the planning and execution of a relief operation. The team consisted of 100 hand-picked Army Special Forces veterans, all with years of experience in Southeast Asia , who were selected from over 500 volunteers. At Eglin Air Force Base ( Florida ), a dismountable one-to-one model was built that had to be dismantled at certain times and hidden in a hangar during the overflight phases of Soviet spy satellites . For several months all aspects of such an operation were trained there. Captain Richard J. Meadows developed a surprise tactic especially for this mission, which was supposed to simulate a helicopter crash right into the center of the camp complex. At the same time, the attack was to be flanked with diversionary air strikes on Hanoi.

execution

Green berets on board one of the helicopters

Eventually the deployment was personally approved by President Richard Nixon and carried out on November 21, 1970. At first the attack went according to plan, the surprise landing succeeded, all guards could be neutralized without losing their own and the camp was secured. But then the unit had to find out that all prisoners had been relocated (weeks beforehand due to the risk of flooding). And although only one F 105G Wild Weasel aircraft was shot down and the entire team returned, the operation was considered a failure by the American public.

consequences

In fact, despite the failure, the mission was still successful in another way. The North Vietnamese leadership found that their prison camps were now constantly endangered by similar commando operations. She then endeavored to concentrate all American prisoners of war in the Hỏa Lò prison in Hanoi. Although this led to an immense overcrowding of the cells, on the other hand the prisoners had the psychological advantage of being no longer held in solitary confinement . Another immediate success of the operation was a North Vietnamese re-evaluation of the prisoner situation . The regime could no longer afford to abuse the prisoners of war too much because it had to reckon with possible successful liberation operations and emaciated and injured former prisoners of war could have been instrumentalized for propaganda by the USA in front of the cameras. Increasingly, however, the North Vietnamese government also saw the prisoners of war as useful bargaining chips for peace talks.

literature

Web links

Commons : Operation Ivory Coast  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 21 ° 8 ′ 40.6 ″  N , 105 ° 29 ′ 44.9 ″  E