Battle for Ap Bac

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Battle for Ap Bac
Part of: Vietnam War
Shot down American helicopter
Shot down American helicopter
date 2nd January 1963
place Republic of Vietnam
output Victory of the People's Liberation Army
Parties to the conflict

FNL Flag.svg National People's Liberation Front

Vietnam SudSouth Vietnam South Vietnam United States
United StatesUnited States 

Commander

Duyen

Bui Dinh Dam
Huyn Van Cao
John Paul Vann

Troop strength
FNL Flag.svg 300 soldiers Vietnam SudSouth Vietnam3,500 soldiers, unknown, several military advisers
United StatesUnited States
losses

FNL Flag.svg21 killed
17 wounded

Vietnam SudSouth Vietnam66 killed
137 wounded
5 helicopters
4 troop transports 3 killed 8 wounded
United StatesUnited States

The Battle of Ap Bac (vietnam. Ấp Bắc ) was a brief but militarily significant event during the first years of the Vietnam War . During the battle, a battalion of the National People's Liberation Front (Viet Cong) fought in South Vietnam against numerically superior troops of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Despite the use of fighter bombers, artillery, helicopters and armored personnel carriers, the government forces failed to defeat the guerrilla forces. In vain, American advisors ordered the Vietnamese officers to take offensive action. Some units and commanders refused to obey and instead requested air support. On the same day the partisans finally managed to escape under cover of darkness.

background

Vietnam 1960/1962

Indochina in the early 1960s

In the early 1960s, South Vietnam was a country in turmoil, and Ngo Dinh Diem was still the official president of the republic. However, due to numerous repressive measures, such as the persecution of those who think differently, forced relocations and high rent taxes, the discontent among the South Vietnamese population increased. At the beginning of 1959 the first armed clashes between insurgents and government troops finally broke out. It all started with the Kor indigenous people, one of the numerous hill tribes in the Vietnamese highlands. They raided the village of Teo Reo, which was an ARVN garrison. Sixty men of the crew were killed, and a little later some other tribes rose up.

The resistance against the regime was organized elsewhere as well. Former Viet Minh who had managed to escape the persecution set up the first partisan units. In February 1960 the infamous battle for Tua Hai broke out in Tay Ninh , during which the rebels succeeded in taking the headquarters of the 32nd Regiment and stealing very large quantities of weapons. Over the next two years, the uprising spread like wildfire across the country.

Hanoi also changed its previously defensive strategy, and in the course of 1960 some 4,500 guerrillas, originally from the south, infiltrated their home regions. Finally, on December 20, 1960, in a secret base not far from Saigon, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam was founded. It organized the political and military resistance against the regime on a new level. The rebel units were given a central command, and numerous committees were founded, which were organized at interzonal, provincial, district, city and village levels.

By the end of 1961, the military situation in South Vietnam changed dramatically. So far, the government representatives and soldiers of the ARVN have been able to move freely around the country and hunt down the supposed opponents of the state. But now the persecutors became the persecuted in many provinces. Even generous military and economic aid from the USA could not change that. At the end of 1961, the regime was finally on the defensive. More than 200 Diem supporters were killed each month, the number of injuries rose to more than 1,000. Diem himself had to admit that control of his country was slipping out of his hands. In June 1961 he wrote a letter to the newly assumed US President John F. Kennedy asking for money to build up the South Vietnamese armed forces . He also called for a military alliance and the deployment of American combat troops. Kennedy chose to meet these demands to some extent, and military and economic aid was massively increased and the number of military advisors nearly tripled - from 3,200 in December 1961 to over 9,000 a year later. US troops were to take over reconnaissance flights and air transport, and the "Military Aid Command Vietnam" (MACV) was founded. In addition, the Green Berets were sent into the Vietnamese forests to recruit national minorities and use them for their own purposes.

President Ngo Dinh Diem was the leader of the Saigon regime

In addition, the military village program, the so-called " Taylor-Staley Plan ", was started in March 1962 at great expense . This envisaged that large parts of the population should be relocated to villages fortified with barbed wire, moats and observation towers, thus keeping them away from the influence of the rebels. But very many farmers did not want to face the hardships of the resettlement. Corruption and mismanagement prevented the American funds allocated to the program from being distributed effectively. Apart from the central highlands, where the CIA ran the program, the Wehrdorf program was a failure. The NLF destroyed countless of these villages or brought them under its command. In 1963 the New York Times wrote: "You just rounded up some people, threw a roll of barbed wire over their heads, and the strategic village was done."

With the military village program, the government turned large parts of the population against itself. But from a military point of view, 1962 was definitely a successful year for Saigon. The Americans had given the ARVN numerous new weapons, such as armored personnel carriers, helicopters, combat bombers and artillery. Through the newly gained mobility, she was able to win several victories over the rebels. For a while it seemed that they had finally found a means to effectively fight the insurrection in their own country. The technical superiority of the Americans and the government troops posed a major problem for the NLF. It was only very slowly that it was able to adapt its tactics to the new circumstances.

Battle for Ap Bac

Preparations

In the years from 1960 to 1962, the Liberation Front succeeded in largely bringing the provinces of the Mekong Delta under their control. The confusing land of the delta, criss-crossed with canals, rice fields, swamps, impassable paths and dense bush, was the ideal terrain for guerrilla warfare. In doing so, they were able to fall back on Mao Zedong's concepts of guerrilla warfare, which was made for the Mekong Delta. The liberation front had an excellently functioning administration. Units of their army and political cadres could move freely. Woven Soviet stars stood in the rice fields of the delta, and hand-drawn guerrilla posters hung on primitive billboards. Nobody removed them and the peasants viewed them as symbols of a power that was being installed. Countless government officials have been killed or intimidated into volunteering with the NLF.

An early model of the M-113 armored personnel carrier

While the partisans were able to move unhindered at the gates of Saigon, the government troops, operating according to conventional strategies, had little to counteract. In late 1962, the Americans tried to regain control of the delta. They had particularly high hopes for the use of new weapon technology. The M113 light armored personnel carrier was specially developed for the swamp war . This could move in water and mud as well as on land, with it one hoped to finally be able to make progress.

At the end of 1962, the 514th Battalion of the Liberation Army was operating in the provinces of Dinh Tuong, Vinh Long and Kien Hoa. It was a battle-tested and well-equipped unit that has already won several victories over the ARVN. It had 4 machine guns, some carbines and automatic weapons, all of which were captured American rifles. However, the ammunition was insufficient for a prolonged fight. In October 1962 the battalion was operating in the area between My Tho and Saigon, and in November it was seen in northwestern Dinh Tuong Province. Throughout December, the NLF soldiers camped near the village of Babeo, a few kilometers southeast of the battlefield. On December 28, a battalion camp was finally discovered 3 kilometers west of Ap Bac, 80 km southwest of Saigon. At the urging of his American adviser Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, the commander of the 7th Infantry Division of the ARVN, Colonel Bui Dinh Dam, decided to attack the battalion. To carry out the attack, he mobilized three battalions of the 7th Division, two Ranger - companies , four companies of the Civil Guard, four companies of regional self-defense forces, 13 M113, a battery of six 105-mm guns and a grenade launcher company. These 3,500 soldiers were also supported by a squadron of American helicopters . It would be the first time the 7th Division had been brought into battle under the command of Colonel Dam.

Battalion commander Duyen learned of the planned attack on January 1 at 7:00 p.m. The NLF's intelligence service had eavesdropped on the ARVN's radio traffic and was informed of all planned measures. The next day Duyen moved his troops into the village and immediately began digging and paving trenches. The battalion with its 2 companies, a total of barely 240 men, was far outnumbered by the enemy, so Duyen called for reinforcements over the radio. At 3:45 a.m., 50 more fighters from the local guerrilla movement arrived. At that time, the village was somewhat fortified, and the tunnels and trenches that the villagers had already dug now benefited the guerrillas. Half an hour later, Duyen relocated his troops again. In the tree line in front of Ap Bac, the soldiers then dug themselves into the ground. On January 2nd, at 4:30 a.m., all preparations were completed. Around the same time, river boats put the units of the 7th Infantry Division ashore north of Ap Bac. Next, trucks brought more troops to an intersection south of the village. Armored personnel carriers and helicopters dropped even more soldiers north and west of the battlefield. The last unit finally arrived at 6:00 a.m. and completed the encirclement.

Course of the battle

At 6:00 a.m. on January 2nd, the ARVN artillery began shelling the village. Half an hour later the fire stopped and the 11th Battalion of the 11th Regiment landed north of the positions. The Americans and South Vietnamese had expected to surprise the enemy up to this point. But now they had to realize that he had prepared well for the battle. Special groups A and B, which consisted of two civil guard companies, landed south of the village. They were under the command of Dinh Tuong Provincial Commander Major Lam Quang Tho. To the west of the village the M113 troop transports were brought up, they were commanded by Captain Ly Tong Ba. The fields in the east were not occupied, because if the guerrillas flee in this direction, they could easily be destroyed by artillery fire and air strikes. At 7:00 a.m., the NLF soldiers were completely surrounded.

The two civil guard companies began the first attack. Duyen reported: "Our people only opened fire when the first wave was within 30 meters and the back row was still within range. Within a few seconds the enemy lost about 40 men and withdrew." A company commander was among the first to die. During the next 2 hours there were 4 more attacks, but all of them were repulsed by the 514th Battalion. “By 7:30 am he (the enemy) carried out three more attacks, each preceded by heavy fire and new bombing from the air. On the fourth, the enemy tried to attack us with two moves on the flank, while the main force pushed against the center again. ”During further fighting the northern flank had to retreat one kilometer behind its starting position. At 10:00 a.m. the battalion commander of the ARVN was seriously wounded by sniper fire, so that the attack came to a complete standstill. Now Colonel Dam decided to deploy 2 companies of the 7th Division reserve troops west of Ap Bac. John Paul Vann hoped that the guerrillas hadn't occupied this part of the village. The task force consisted of 7 CH-21 and 5 UH-1 Hueys, but when they started to land, they were immediately caught in heavy machine gun fire. The reserve force suffered heavy losses as soon as they tried to leave the helicopter. A US pilot said: "When these poor Vietnamese got out of the helicopters, it was like shooting ducks for the Viet Cong." 9 helicopters were damaged and another was left on the ground. When more helicopters tried to save the crew, three more machines were lost. While trying to organize a counter-attack, Captain Kenneth Good, a West Point graduate from Hawaii, was killed by machine gun fire. The survivors of the company came under heavy fire and were unable to move.

Plan of attack by the South Vietnamese troops

At 9:00 a.m. the artillery bombardment continued, but most of the projectiles missed their target and landed in the rice fields. Duyen commented on the shelling: “We were very well hidden. We didn’t lose a man either in this or in subsequent bombardments. ”Up to this point, the NLF fighters only had one dead and four wounded. Shortly after 10:00 a.m., the commander of the M 113 was given the order to advance in order to rescue the helicopter crews. But Captain Ly Tong Ba, a supporter of Diem, delayed the attack and initially refused to advance at all. One of the officers even destroyed his radio and later stated that because of this, it was unable to continue. The tanks took almost 4 hours to reach the battlefield, just 2 km away. Finally, the M 113 drove up behind the shot-up helicopter wrecks west of Ap Bac. Captain Ba handed command of the units to a non-commissioned officer and withdrew. Actually, the tanks were supposed to drive across the rice field towards the enemy positions and roll over the enemy. But the vehicles did not move. Kuno Knöbl reported on the reluctance of the ARVN soldiers: "What technicians had carefully thought out turned into a farce in the hands of men who refused to attempt an attack." Instead of undertaking a concentrated attack, it came about only to sporadic advances, which enabled the guerrillas to direct fire on one vehicle at a time. Only half an hour later did the vehicles move towards the positions of the 514th Battalion. In the meantime, Commander Duyen sent a special unit consisting of 15 volunteers to destroy the tanks. They crawled across the field in the direction of the M 113. As the tanks approached the positions, they jumped up and threw hand grenades. 13 of the 15 men were killed, but in return they succeeded in destroying 4 M 113s and damaging 2 others, which ultimately brought the attack to a standstill. The government soldiers in the tanks hid themselves and, abandoned by their officers, shot blindly into the area with their built-in machine guns. At 2:30 p.m. the remaining vehicles withdrew.

In the south Major Tho received orders to advance with his troops and stab the guerrillas in the rear. He had set up his command post 15 km southeast of Ap Bac and did not know what the situation was like on the battlefield. He was ordered to attack four times, but each time the provincial commander refused to obey. By 4:00 p.m. at the latest it had become clear that the battle could no longer be won and the guerrillas could no longer be driven from their positions. Meanwhile, a fifth American helicopter had been badly damaged, so that it was left lying in the fields around Ap Bac. Of a total of 15 helicopters, 5 were destroyed and 9 others were damaged during the battle. At 2 p.m., Major General Huyn Van Cao, commander of the III. Army Corps ordered to drop paratroopers west of Ap Bac in order to defeat the partisans. Colonel Dam and Vann actually wanted the soldiers to occupy the east of the village so that the enemy could not escape. But since General Cao had already suffered greater losses than planned, he refused. It was not until 6:20 p.m. that a paratrooper battalion landed behind its own lines and was immediately caught on fire in the falling darkness. 4 men were killed immediately and 11 others injured. In retrospect it turned out that the soldiers had been shot at by men of the enclosed reserve force. Lt. Col. Vann later commented on Cao's decision: "They would rather support a defeat than try to win." The American adviser to General Cao, Colonel Daniel Porter, said that Ap Bac should be shot at during the night. Field lighting was intended to prevent the enemy from retreating. General Cao, however, rejected these proposals and said that one should use the (American) light bombs sparingly.

Withdrawal and casualties from friendly fire

Meanwhile, battalion commander Duyen had expected that his retreat would be cut off that night. He gave his men the order to expand the defenses in order to be prepared for the coming fighting. But at 11:00 p.m. scouts reported to him that the ARVN had not occupied the area to the east of Ap Bac. So at midnight he ordered the 514th Battalion to retreat. In perfect order, it left its positions and retired to Binh Phong Thanh, a village 6 km from Ap Bac.

Although the troops of the Liberation Army had long since left their positions, there was no end to the death in Ap Bac. At 12:00 noon the following day, ARVN soldiers began loading the fallen into helicopters when Major Tho suddenly opened artillery fire on the village. Although the Americans immediately made the provincial commander aware that the enemy had long since withdrawn, Major Tho refused to stop the fire. The senseless artillery bombardment cost the government troops another 5 dead and 14 wounded through friendly fire .

On January 4th, part of the battalion returned to Ap Bac. But this time the South Vietnamese officers refused to attack. The Americans had no choice but to mobilize radio staff, mechanics and cooks to form a chain of locks that was supposed to stop the NLF soldiers. Five days later, the battalion returned to Ap Bac in full strength. Again the officers of the ARVN refused to advance. It was not until April that Corps Commander Cao advanced against Ap Bac with 5000 men. On the eve of the operation, the general sent a company of militiamen towards Ap Bac to secure the roads. But the company got caught in a well-prepared ambush and was worn down to the last man. The next day the ARVN finally marched into the village, but the enemy battalion had disappeared. Major General Cao said that he has now won "a great and significant victory".

Consequences

South Vietnamese

John Paul Vann (center) on the battle: "It was a damn miserable performance, as always."

The battle for Ap Bac had far-reaching consequences in many ways. In the course of the process, a number of errors with which the South Vietnamese regime was afflicted had come to light. Even though they had more than ten times as many soldiers as the NLF, the ARVN could not win. It became clear that modern technology, money and numerical superiority could not replace fighting spirit, training and courage. While the NLF had experienced officers, under Diem officers were not promoted because of their achievements, but only on the basis of sympathies and relationships with higher-ranking personalities. Excessive corruption and widespread nepotism did the rest. In addition, for many South Vietnamese officers their position was nothing more than an opportunity to rise above their subordinates. The morale of the normal foot soldiers, on the other hand, was bad. Many were forcibly recruited or had relatives themselves who fought in the ranks of the Liberation Army. In addition, it was hardly possible for ordinary soldiers to rise to higher positions unless they had contacts in the higher civil servants or the business elite. Even years later, this fact had practically not changed. In contrast, the guerrillas' morale and willingness to fight were high. Despite being numerically inferior and under enormous pressure, they withstood the attacks and did not panic. "The Viet Cong were brave men," an American pilot once said. "My God, we wanted to take out a machine gun position and made 15 attacks on it, and every time we thought we'd got him, and every time the shooter came back and kept firing."

US military

A few hours after the 514th Battalion withdrew from Ap Bac, the American Commander in Chief in Vietnam, General Paul Harkins, visited the corps commandant's command post. According to David Halberstam of the New York Times , he said: “Now we have them trapped. Now it is being closed. ”The Americans were very surprised at this assessment of the situation by their superiors. Like General Harkins with his visit, Major Tho also demonstrated with his belated artillery fire that the commanders on the ground were very poorly informed about the course of the battle. But instead of drawing conclusions from the disaster, the Americans did exactly the opposite. General Harkins desperately tried to gloss over the battle to a success. After some newspapers reported on the failure of the South Vietnamese officers and the powerlessness of the Americans, Ambassador Nolting asked his press officer to prepare a “white paper” on the “pernicious role” of overly critical journalists. President Kennedy tried in vain to get the New York Times to recall Halberstam.

National Liberation Front

For the troops of the People's Liberation Army, the battle for Ap Bac was a glorious victory. The North Vietnamese Commander in Chief General Vo Nguyen Giap commented personally on July 19, 1964 in the North Vietnamese party newspaper Nhan Dan : “The battle for Ap Bac, which ended with a victory for the Liberation Army and the local guerrillas of My Tho, shines a bright light the heroic struggle of the South Vietnamese people and created new courage to mercilessly pursue the enemy and kill him. ”For the first time, the partisans managed to put up severe resistance to government troops equipped with modern weapons. They had succeeded in developing tactics to counteract the technical superiority of the enemy. Duyen reported: “We had no more than 21 dead and 17 wounded. Some of our men were badly wounded, but they were so well cared for by the people of the village that none of them died from their wounds. ”After the battle, the Liberation Front even issued a 10 piastre stamp showing two guerrillas pointing to a US - Helicopters shot and read: “Victory at Ap Bac”.

In the period that followed, there were a few other battles that ran similar to the one at Ap Bac and in most cases also ended with a defeat for the ARVN, including the Battle of Thanh Phu. During this operation, almost exactly a year after the Battle of Ap Bac, the village was attacked by 3,000 soldiers, 26 M 113s and more than 50 helicopters. The UPI agency reported that the battle was the "largest attack in the history of the war carried out by helicopters." After two days of unsuccessful attacks and more than 600 dead and injured, the ARVN broke off the attack.

An unusual episode complements the story of the Battle of Ap Bac. When the 514th Battalion occupied the village for the second time on January 9, the commander sent a delegation of residents, accompanied by two of his men, to the provincial governor. They demanded redress for any damage done to the village during the battle - and the Americans paid.

literature

  • Wilfred Burchett: Partisans versus Generals . Verlag Volk und Welt, 1st edition Berlin 1965.
  • Marc Frey : History of the Vietnam War. The tragedy in Asia and the end of the American dream . Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-45978-1 .
  • Kuno Knöbl: Victor Charlie: Viet Cong - The Uncanny Enemy . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 4th edition, Munich 1968.
  • Terrence Maitland: Raising the Stakes . Boston Publishing Company, Boston 1982, ISBN 0-201-11262-0 .
  • Ronald Spector: After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam . The Free Press, New York 1993.
  • Neil Sheehan: A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam . Random House, 1988.

Individual evidence

  1. [Frey, History of the Vietnam War, p. 63]
  2. ^ [Knöbl, Victor Charlie: Viet Cong, p. 151]
  3. ^ [Knöbl, Victor Charlie: Viet Cong, pp. 288-89]
  4. [Frey, History of the Vietnam War, p. 89]
  5. ^ [Knöbl, Victor Charlie: Viet Cong, p. 212]
  6. a b c [Knöbl, Victor Charlie: Viet Cong, p. 70]
  7. a b [Burchett, Partisanen contra Generale, p. 130]
  8. a b c [Knöbl, Victor Charlie: Viet Cong, p. 72]
  9. [Maitland, Raising the Stakes, p. 50]
  10. ^ [Maitland, Raising the Stakes, p. 51]
  11. a b [Knöbl, Victor Charlie: Viet Cong, p. 77]
  12. a b [Knöbl, Victor Charlie: Viet Cong, p. 78]
  13. a b [Maitland, Raising the Stakes, pp. 51–52]
  14. a b [Frey, History of the Vietnam War, p. 143]
  15. [Burchett, Partisanen contra Generale, p. 394]