Battle of Hamburger Hill

date	May 10. bis 20th May 1969
place	16.253055555556 107.17472222222Coordinates: 16 ° 15 ′ N , 107 ° 10 ′ E Dong Ap Bia Thua Thien, Vietnam
output	US Army victory

Parties to the conflict
United States United States South Vietnam Vietnam Sud	Vietnam North 1955 North Vietnam
Commander
Melvin Zais	Ma Vĩnh Lan
Troop strength
around 1800	around 1500
losses
70 killed, 372 wounded	over 630 killed

Photo from Hamburger Hill from 2011

US flag hoisted on Hill 937

Fire base over the A-Su valley

Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division

The Battle of Hamburger Hill was the last major US ground offensive in the Vietnam War . It took place on May 10-20, 1969, near the Lao border on Dong Ap Bia hill, which was listed as hill 937 on US military maps. Although the hill was of little strategic value, US commanders ordered a large-scale ground offensive in the Ap Bia area as part of Operation Apache Snow to "purge" it of forces from the Vietnamese People's Army.

Hill 937 later became known vulgarly among the infantrymen as Hamburger Hill, as the mortar fire of the North Vietnamese People's Army literally turned many Americans into " hamburger - minced meat ".

overview

The offensive escalated in the loss- protecting grave fighting the heavily fortified hill 937. The fact that the fighting mainly by infantry with small-caliber automatic weapons was passed, they got quickly the character of the infantry fighting in the First World War .

The US paratroopers were expected by the well-armed and excellently trained soldiers of the Vietnamese People's Army in extended combat positions. The attacks often had to be stopped because of tropical downpours, self- fire by the air force and artillery , accidents and the effective defense of the elite regiment of the Vietnamese People's Army.

After ten days, the 101st Airborne Division managed to take and hold the hill after suffering heavy losses.

The gain in terrain was marginal and the hill was abandoned after a few days. The high losses among US soldiers during the struggle for a strategically insignificant hill led to a rethinking of US military strategy and the "Vietnamization" of the war. The criticism in the media due to the open war reporting and the war fatigue in the US public led the US commanders-in-chief in Vietnam to keep their own forces more and more out of loss-making skirmishes.

terrain

The battle took place on the Dong Ap Bia massif, in the rugged, rainforest-covered mountain slopes along the border with Laos in southern Vietnam . The mountain Ap Bia rises from the A-Shau valley as a single mountain massif, which is not connected to the hills of the Annamitschen mountains . The part called Hill 937 by the Americans dominates the A-Shau Valley and forms a series of ridges and foothills, 900 to 940 meters above sea level. The entire rugged and rugged mountain is covered with two- to three-story mountain rainforest and a thicket of bamboo and elephant grass on the steep ridges. The Dong Ap Bia is known by the local Montagnard tribes as the "hill of the creeping beast" because of its wild nature.

Deployment to Operation Apache Snow

The Battle of Hamburger Hill took place in May 1969 as part of Operation Apache Snow , the second part of a three-phase military campaign against the Vietnamese People's Army, which had established itself in the remote A-Sầu Valley .

The A-Shau Valley was already a deployment area of the Vietnamese People's Army and the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive . The aim of the campaign was to use a series of operations to neutralize the enemy masses in the A-Shau Valley and to cut off the infiltration routes of the Vietnamese People's Army into South Vietnam.

As early as 1966, fighting developed in this region over the camp of the Special Forces in the A-Shau valley and then required a permanent presence of US troops. American efforts to clear the valley of North Vietnamese units were unsuccessful for a long time. General Richard G. Stilwell , commander of XXIV Corps, massed the equivalent of two infantry divisions, artillery and air support to bring the A-Shau Valley under US control for good. The North Vietnamese marched the 6th, 9th and 29th Regiments of the Vietnamese People's Army into the A-Shau Valley to make up for the losses they suffered during Operation Dewey Canyon in February 1969.

The following units were entrusted with Operation Apache Snow:

three airmobile infantry battalions of the 3rd Brigade (Colonel Joseph Conmy ) of the 101st Airborne Division "Screaming Eagles" (Major General Melvin Zais ): 3rd Battalion / 187. 1st Infantry Regiment (Lieutenant Colonel Weldon Honeycutt ), 2nd Battalion / 501st. Infantry Regiment (Lieutenant Colonel Robert German) and the 1st Battalion / 506. Infantry Regiment (Lieutenant Colonel John Bowers).
two ARVN battalions (2nd / 1 and 4th / 1) of the 1st ARVN infantry division,

The 9th Marine Regiment , the 3rd Battalion of the 5th Cavalry Regiment and the 3rd ARVN Regiment were also temporarily involved in the fighting to support the 101st Airborne Division in the heavy fighting.

planning

Colonel Conmy described Operation Apache Snow as armed reconnaissance. His plan stipulated that all five infantry battalions would be deployed by helicopters in the A-Shau Valley on May 10, 1969, and track down the Vietnamese People's Army and their positions in their assigned sectors.

The further attack planning provided that the US Marines and the 3rd Battalion / 5th Battalion. US cavalry should send scouting troops in the direction of the Laotian border , while the ARVN units would block the runway at the bottom of the valley. The 501st and 506th Infantry Regiments were supposed to destroy the enemy in their respective operational areas and seal off the escape routes to Laos . In the event of enemy contact with the North Vietnamese, Conmy would relieve the attacked unit with other troops by helicopter. In theory, the US 101st Airborne Division would regroup its forces quickly enough to prevent the Vietnamese People's Army from taking massive action against an isolated unit. As soon as a US unit would get in contact with the Vietnamese People's Army, the order was to hold out in the current position and wait for a reinforcement battalion to be relieved by helicopter, which should then take up combat immediately.

The US and ARVN units that participated in Operation Apache Snow had, by previous operations in the A Shau Valley and reports from scouts learn that would probably be likely to be heavy enemy resistance. However, scouts could not make any statements about the strength and position of the enemy. The positions of the North Vietnamese were completely hidden from aerial reconnaissance by means of clever camouflage; the troops of the Vietnamese People's Army only moved at night on paths that could not be monitored from above due to the dense forest of leaves in the treetops. Orders were passed through detectors or simple wire connections so that they would not leave any tell-tale radio signals for enemy intelligence. The planning on the US side was largely based on guesswork. The commanders of the US infantry units had to rely on their own scouting teams to track down the enemy. Looted equipment, documents and the occasional prisoner of war could only provide sparse raw data on the defense systems of the Vietnamese People's Army. The first four days spent the 3rd / 187th. Infantry regiment under Colonel Honeycutt accordingly with the arduous scouting of the opposing positions.

Initially, the operation for the 101st Airborne Division was routine and uneventful. The 3rd / 187th The battalion came across documents stating that the 29th North Vietnamese Infantry Regiment "Pride of Ho Chi Minh" had to be in unseen positions somewhere in the A-Shau Valley. This regiment was a battle-tested elite unit that took part in the 1968 offensive on Huế and was involved in heavy house-to-house fighting . Experience from the encounters with the Vietnamese People's Army suggested that this time again there would be a brief bitter firefight and - before the Americans could use their superior firepower with artillery and air force - a tactical retreat across the Laotian border at lightning speed . Longer skirmishes and battles like Dak To and Ia Drang were relatively rare in the Vietnam War and therefore not to be expected.

Honeycutt was a protégé of General William C. Westmoreland and was given command of the 3rd Battalion of the 187th Infantry Regiment in January 1969. He was feared among his officers because of his uncontrolled aggressiveness. It was his declared aim to put the Vietnamese People's Army into battle at all costs before it could withdraw to Laos unnoticed . He assumed that his battalion would be able to carry out the armed reconnaissance operation on 937 Hill without reinforcements. Only the B Company, previously a brigade reserve, was made available again in addition to its operational one .

Introductory phase of the battle

On May 11, 1969, Honeycutt ordered A and D companies to begin reconnaissance on the northern and northwestern ridges of Hill 937, while B and C companies were to march straight to the summit via various routes. When the B Company was dropped by helicopters in the landing zone (LZ), it came under fire from North Vietnamese units from well-developed positions one kilometer below the summit. Honeycutt Cobra quickly dispatched attack helicopters (also known as ARA aerial artillery) to intervene in the battle.

In the dense jungle, the combat helicopters mistook the area at hand of the 187th Infantry Regiment for the positions of the Vietnamese People's Army. Two soldiers were killed and 35 wounded, including Honeycutt, as a result of friendly fire shelling . This incident temporarily interrupted the chain of command of the 187th Infantry Regiment and forced the 3./187 to change their nightly defensive positions. The contact with the enemy, however, confirmed that there was indeed a North Vietnamese unit in the operations room, which Honeycutt erroneously estimated as the strength of an increased infantry platoon or company.

For the next two days, Honeycutt tried to prepare his units for a coordinated battalion attack, which was thwarted by the difficult topography of the battlefield and the fierce resistance of the North Vietnamese. The D company launched a flank attack, which was repulsed with great losses. The company withdrew and was initially no longer involved in the battle. The images evaluated by the aerial reconnaissance provided indications that the enemy unit must have been much stronger than previously assumed.

The Vietnamese People's Army had meanwhile received further reinforcement via the Ho Chi Minh Trail and operated from well camouflaged trenches and bunkers. Their troops showed determination to face the battle on Hill 937 despite the expected high losses. On both sides the certainty grew that the initial skirmish would develop into a tough and fierce battle.

U.S. attack reinforcements on Hill 937 offensive

The 1./506 had no significant enemy contact in their area of operation and around noon on May 13, 1969, Colonel Conmy changed his order to monitor the infiltration routes from Laos and supported Honeycutt's attack from the south.

B Company was set down by helicopter over Hill 916 while the rest of the battalion moved on on foot. The remaining units were four kilometers from Hill 937 and both Honeycutt and Conmy did not expect an effective relief attack until May 15, 1969. Although B Company was already on Hill 916 on May 15, 1969, it was not until on May 19, 1969, until the entire company arrived in the planned attack position, the march through the impassable mountain forest was so difficult .

The 3./187 began on May 14 and 15, 1969 with an attack, with which they suffered heavy losses, while the 1./506 began on May 15 and 16, 1969 attack attempts on the southern foothills of the hill. The extremely difficult terrain and the well-organized North Vietnamese continuously delayed the progress of US tactical operations on hills 916, 900 and 937.

Steep mountain slopes and impenetrably dense vegetation offered almost no opportunities for helicopter landing zones and made air landings impracticable. The terrain camouflaged the North Vietnamese 29th Infantry Regiment and initially made US air strikes ineffective, in return, troop movements of the Vietnamese People's Army could go unnoticed, so that a fragmented battlefield resulted.

North Vietnamese soldiers were able to fire unhindered at incoming helicopters and disembarking US infantrymen, and numerous helicopters were shot down or badly damaged with guided missiles, grenades or other large-caliber armor-piercing weapons. The Vietnamese People's Army stepped up its attacks on US command posts and through sustained fire raids tied up troops that could not be used for the assault on the hill.

Attacked US combat units were isolated from the troops and had to enclose themselves in an all-round security, as they were attacked from all sides from the forest. Suddenly appearing North Vietnamese units in platoon or company strength attacked constantly from the flanks or from ambush and ensured that the US paratroopers were largely incapacitated.

American tactical difficulties

The effectiveness of the US forces was limited because of narrow paths which funneled the attacking companies and platoons into a well-prepared field of fire of the North Vietnamese troops. Support from artillery fire was often too risky because of the proximity to the opposing combat units . Attacked US units tried to withdraw as quickly as possible and then requested artillery support and attack helicopters, which, however, hardly damaged the well-camouflaged North Vietnamese bunker positions.

During the battle, however, the forest was almost completely defoliated by the bombardment in many places and the bunkers came to light. Because of their large number and their cleverly angled construction with trenches and covered trenches, they could hardly be eliminated by direct fire. Only napalm and fire from recoilless large-caliber weapons ( bazookas ) could destroy some bunkers.

The US combat command of the small combat units suffered from decentralization . Honeycutt ordered his company commanders to advance continuously, but the central coordination was missing. When the hill was stormed in 937, the chain of command was almost completely lost and various units fought uncoordinated next to each other. Fire support by the artillery was also uncoordinated, artillery observers were often deployed down to the platoon level.

The battalion command post was constantly overwhelmed by various contradicting reports and it was often not possible to get an exact picture of the current battle situation. Misunderstandings in the transfer of orders to artillery and attack helicopters led to numerous cases of "friendly fire". Against the 3./187 alone five attacks from Cobra attack helicopters were carried out by mistake, which led to seven dead and 53 wounded. Four of these incidents occurred more than a kilometer from the actual target area.

Hamburger Hill

On 16 May 1969, visited war correspondent Jay Sharbutt of Associated Press combat units on the hill 937 and interviewed division commander Melvin Zais and asked him why mainly infantry instead of firepower from artillery and air force in the initial phase used came. More reporters followed and the name "Hamburger Hill" became common. On May 18, 1969, the brigade commander ordered an assault on Hill 937 to be carried out by two battalions, with the 1./506 attacking from the south and the 3./187 from the north. The 29th Infantry Regiment of North Vietnam was to be finally destroyed in a concentrated operation.

The D-Company of 3./187 managed to work its way up to 75 meters to the summit, until it was forced to retreat again due to heavy losses, including all of its officers. It developed a fierce melee , the partially from a distance of 20 meters to the enemy bunker positions with automatic weapons and hand grenades were held.

Honeycutt was supposed to coordinate the final battle from a light observer helicopter and direct the movements of the individual companies, but this project soon had to be canceled due to an unusually strong tropical rain storm and poor visibility. It was impossible to move forward and so the 3./187 had to retreat downhill again and give up the ground again. Three companies moved independently of one another towards Hill 900 and were finally able to take the southern ridge of the hill after bitter hand-to-hand fighting.

Due to the unexpectedly high losses and criticism from the press, Zais seriously considered canceling the operation completely, but then decided to restart the fighting. The US Corps Commander and MACV Commander General Creighton W. Abrams publicly supported this decision.

Zais decided to deploy three fresh battalions and so relieve the 3./187. The losses of 3./187 were particularly heavy, they amounted to 320 fallen and seriously wounded, i.e. more than 60 percent of the experienced paratroopers who had initiated the attack in the A-Shau valley. Two of the four company commanders and eight of the eleven platoon leaders died in the battle of Hamburger Hill.

On May 18, 1969, the battalion commander of 2nd / 506th Lieutenant Colonel Gene Sherron arrived at the command post at Honeycutt to direct the final phase of the fighting. While the last dead of 3./187 were flown out, the officers of the battalion were not yet informed about the new command. Honeycutt complained to Zais, reiterating that his battalion was still operational and that he would continue the fighting. After a sharp argument, Zais finally deposited the ambitious honeycutt in one of Sherron's companies as a reserve.

Final attack and conquest of the hill

Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division on the hill in late May 1969

On May 19, 1969, two fresh battalions, the 2nd / 501th and 2nd / 3rd ARVN infantry, were deployed by helicopters to the north and south-east of the hill. Both battalions immediately moved to the mountainside and took positions from where they attacked the last bunker positions of the 29th North Vietnamese Regiment in the early hours of the morning. At the same time, the 1./506 managed to take the hill 900 after three days of uninterrupted hand-to-hand combat.

The 3rd Brigade began the offensive on May 20, 1969 at 10:00 a.m. and was reinforced by 3rd/187 and A Company of 2nd/506. The last offensive was initiated by a two hour intensive air strike and ninety minutes of concentrated artillery fire.

The battalions began at the same time as the final phase of the offensive and around 12:00 p.m. parts of the 3./187 reached the top of the hill and fought bunker positions, which lasted until the late afternoon hours. Nevertheless, some smaller units of the Vietnamese People's Army managed to break away to Laos via the Ho Chi Minh Trail . At 5:00 p.m. Hill 937 was declared free of the enemy.

Unconfirmed reports

According to recent military history research - especially after concessions from General Creighton W. Abrams in the "Abrams Tapes" - it was the 2nd / 3rd ARVN, which took part in the final assault on the hill 937 and in a front section very close to the enemy lines was in position. This unit sent out a combat reconnaissance patrol to determine the minimum enemy strength. The commanding ARVN officer decided to take advantage of the current situation and proceed before the attack by the Allied units.

The 2./3 ARVN reached the summit of Hamburger Hill at 10:00 a.m., before the 3./187, but was ordered back on the pretext that another artillery attack was to take place on the mountain peak. The opportunity to take the last defensive positions was not used. Shortly thereafter, the 3./187 was able to take the mountain. This was apparently done for propaganda purposes, to create the image that the Americans had conquered Hamburger Hill alone and not the South Vietnamese allies.

aftermath

The US losses in the ten-day battle amounted to 70 dead and 372 seriously wounded. To take the position, the 101st Airborne Division had to deploy five infantry battalions, a total of 1,800 men and ten batteries of field artillery . In addition, the US Air Force flew a total of 272 combat missions and dropped 450 tons of bombs (explosive fire and fragments) and 69 tons of napalm over Hamburger Hill. The 7th and 8th Battalions of the 29th Regiment of the Vietnamese People's Army Pride of Ho Chi Minh lost 630 soldiers who were later found scattered on the battlefield and recovered.

Corpses were found in the bunker positions, underground tunnel systems and makeshift graves. The exact number of North Vietnamese soldiers who fell could not be given, as it was the Vietnamese custom to take the dead with them. Only those who could no longer be taken along during the quick escape were found; so the number of victims could be much higher.

The effects of the Battle of Hill 937 were more political than military. The media opened the public discussion as to whether the battle and the heavy US losses were really necessary.

The newly appointed commander of the 101st Airborne Division evacuated Hamburger Hill unnoticed on June 5, 1969 and the paratroopers withdrew from the A-Shau valley. The debate about the events on Hamburger Hill reached as far as the US Congress , in which the military policy in Vietnam was controversial. Senators Edward Kennedy , George McGovern and Stephen M. Young in particular sharply criticized the military leadership.

In its June 27, 1969 issue, Life magazine published pictures of 241 fallen US soldiers who were killed in one week in Vietnam. This ushered in a turning point in the Vietnam War. Although only five dead in the pictures came from Hamburger Hill, the American public got the impression that all of the dead came from Hill 937. The criticism of the Vietnam War and the associated protest movement by opponents of the war grew even stronger, so that the war could hardly be justified by the politicians.

The controversy over how the Battle of Hamburger Hill was fought ushered in a fundamental reassessment of US military policy. As a direct result of the high casualties, General Abrams changed his strategy of increasing the maximum pressure on North Vietnamese units and initiated a defensive reaction. President Richard Nixon has already called for the first troop withdrawal from Vietnam. Although the battle was not among the worst in the Vietnam War, it nonetheless became a turning point.

In 1987 the film Hamburger Hill with Don Cheadle , Steven Weber and Dylan McDermott was made , which processed the experiences at Hill 937.

swell

Wiest, Andrew: Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN. NYU Press 2007. ISBN 978-0-8147-9410-4 . P. 168.
Zaffiri, Samuel: Hamburger Hill, May 10 – May 20, 1969 (1988), ISBN 0-89141-706-0 .
Linderer, Gary A .: Eyes Behind The Lines: L Company Rangers in Vietnam , 1969 (1991), ISBN 0-8041-0819-6 .
Hamburger Hill - The Real Story , Historyinfilm.com
Battle for Hamburger Hill During the Vietnam War. Article by Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr., US Army (ret.)
The Battle for Hamburger Hill , Time, May 30, 1969 issue. Retrieved April 4, 2007.