long binh ammo dump explosion 1968

We could ride, walk or be airlifted to war, and we arrived with many times the ammo and equipment that could be lifted in by helicopter. Although initially surprised, U.S. forces had reacted quickly. Back view of jeep with open doors. The VC had run out of ammunition and were trying to escape. License Agreement | Copyright Screenocean 2022 | Powered byImagen. GV EXPLOSIONS, AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN F/G. [2]:352[3]:2067, At approximately 05:30, the 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry Regiment, mounted on M113 Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicles (ACAVs) coming from Bearcat approached the Plantation from the southwest and formed a skirmish line to engage the VC, while helicopter gunships from the 3rd Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment swept in to rocket and machine gun the VC positions. [2]:347[3]:225, At 03:00, the PAVN 84A Artillery Regiment began a barrage of approximately 100 82-mm. 8. When the G3 adviser told me to lend the rangers a track, I told the sergeant that the M-113 was not a tank and to be extremely careful with it. We could use our tracks as a base of fire or in a blocking position as the company maneuvered dismounted. Now the fight was on. ", "We mustered everyone we could I sounded off, "who is there"? In addition we detained more than 20 probable VC fighters dressed in civilian clothes. View of surrounding areas. build bunkers, and help pick up the dead enemy across the fence. Over the two month recovery and clearing operation, tens of thousands of these hazardous munitions were recoverd by hand, one at a time. All I could think of to say was, Please clear that weapon!During the meeting, a master sergeant adviser to a Vietnamese ranger battalion ran into the compound. Ive just been told you work for me again. According to him, I told him that any fool could see that the VC did not have M-113s, and that we had 22 .50-calibers and a 106mm recoilless rifle and they, for sure, did not want us to return fire. A VC guerrilla hiding behind a parked ARVN jeep had fired the rocket. At 07:30 the VC/PAVN force stopped and made a stand in a cemetery where they continued to be hit by the gunships and the ACAVs of Company C. At 08:00 Company C was joined by a force from 2/47th Infantry and they proceeded to methodically kill all the VC/PAVN in the cemetery. Dressed as travelers returning to ancestral homes for the Tet holiday, the guerrillas had quietly drifted into their urban assembly areas and put together their weapons. Long Binh ammo dump was one of the biggest ordnance storage areas in the country. Activity in the area had picked up in November and Long Binh ammo dump was one of the biggest ordnance storage areas in the country. [2]:347, The ARVN 53rd Regional Force Battalion was responsible for security in the countryside around Bin Ha. After all had left for the Incredibly, nobody in my company had been killed the day before. I was well seasoned having been through all the scenarios that presented We opened up with everything we had and kept driving. The 2-47s enemy body count came in at more than 200, while the battalion suffered only four KIA. Widows Village made a perfect attack position, since it lay directly across Highway 316 from II Field Force headquarters. FAQs - How to Order | About two days later one the huge fuel bags next The attacks were repulsed with the VC/PAVN suffering heavy losses, having inflicted minimal damage on the bases. As dawn broke on February 1, it was deathly quiet. During Tet 1968, the 856th Radio . Relevant to these events; post recollections and descriptions, questions,. [4], The 179th Military Intelligence Detachment of the 199th LIB had been gathering intelligence on a pending attack on Long Binh for several weeks before the attacks based on human intelligence and ground radar. Simultaneously, platoon leaders reported finding discarded AK-47s. In the week preceding the attack these LRRP patrols engaged 2 PAVN/VC reconnaissance teams north of Long Binh. With a push-to-talk button stuck in the transmit position, no one could use the radio. GV EXPLOSIONS AND FIRES Click Here. PAVN/VC losses were 137 killed and 25 captured. Flames illuminated the clouds, forming an eerie glow; flares hung in the sky and helicopter gunships crossed back and forth firing red streams of tracers into the city. The Vietnamese brigadier general, who was the ranking man at III Corps, drew circles around two equal-sized areas of downtown Bien Hoa. After we finished clearing the area around the compound and as our wounded were being dusted off, I received an absolutely incredible order from III Corps. As the C-23 track in the lead, Stormy, turned into a side street, a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) slammed into its front, smashing the radiator and wounding several soldiers. When we arrived, we found the churchyard packed with thousands of civilians seeking refuge. 0.24 As the ammo dump burst into flames, secondary explosions erupted in other storage areas, and for the next three days, fires burned out of control. We had run through the rear of the 274th VC Regiment, which was attacking the airfield. A soldier, who has been hit, lying prone between two other soldiers, tries to get up. Vehicles drive past on roads between the Long Binh Post area. Listening to the scouts desperate fight on the radio, Charlie Company attacked with renewed vigor as we tried to get to Barnes and his men. Contact Us | During this fighting, both platoon leaders were wounded, Lieutenant Casper in the leg and Lieutenant Jones in the foot. ], The Laotian representative said six members of the Meo special forces were also cap tured with the American on May 7 in Xieng Khouang Province near the North Vietnamese bor der. SP4 Lawrence Korteum HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. 0.54 . We topped off our fuel tanks, replenished our ammo and continued to move toward our assigned blocking position. Another VC battalion infiltrated near the area of the 3rd Ordnance (Long Binh) ammunition dump [and] in a few moments, the huge dump became a fireball. 1 comment. When it went off my first thought was that it was a nuclear explosion because of the light dome that rose from the explosion. My Lightboxes | Then a report came in that a body had been found wearing a white shirt under a black pajama tunic. They ordered us to clear the VC from the houses surrounding the corps headquarters. Suddenly he came upon a VC RPG team drawing a bead on my command track, which was marked as a prime target by the number of radio antennas jutting from it. [2]:350, With the base returned to full operation, that afternoon C130s landed the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment to help ARVN forces fighting the VC in Bin Ha city. About Us | Artillery During December we made little enemy contact, probably because the Communists were lying low, preparing for Tet. Our outfit was a By late afternoon the 275th Regiment retreated north, leaving over 200 dead. Rocket Attack on Dong Tam - July 10, 1969. The bus ride to 90th Replacement was relatively short and everyone seemed exhausted from the long flight. Satchel charges blew pallets of artillery ammunition, creating a mushroom cloud that made us think the VC had set off a tactical nuclear weapon. Helicopter gunships took off from Bien Hoa AB to investigate, but were unable to locate the force in the darkness. The armed helicopter teams had a field day shooting guerrillas who tried to escape to the nearby jungles. In the early morning hours on 31 January, insurgent forces launched While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. We all knew that these moves were more than just precautionary. We rolled through Long Binh and out the main gate, then turned left onto Highway 316. It was We usually got mortared at night whenever Dong Tam was getting it from our district. a noise! II Field Force commander LG Frederick C. Weyand had also ordered the 9th Infantry Division to be prepared to send its 1st Brigade from Bearcat Base 16km south of Long Binh to Bien Hoa-Long Binh in the event of an attack. As we turned around to head back west, a tremendous blast shook the whole city of Bien Hoa. [3]:23950, In the late afternoon of 31 January after clearing the Widow's Village 2/47th Infantry advanced into Ho Nai from the south, the town appeared deserted. With a push-to-talk button stuck in the transmit position, no one could use the radio. The gun-jeeps were progressively replaced by M113s and XM-706 Commando armored cars. In April 1967 I was a first lieutenant commanding a rifle company in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. 4. In addition to the US bases, the city of Bin Ha was the headquarters of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) III Corps and home to a large prisoner of war camp. Now commanded by a brand-new second lieutenant, the men of Alpha Company balked when they were told to move. Many of the enlisted personnel with medical MOSs work two to three days per week at the 93 rd Evacuation Hospital, then came back to the 24 th to work on the various construction projects. It involved transfer of powder projectiles and fuses enough to keep After much frequency changing, I finally got the commander of the bunker guards on the radio. Zabecki remembers taking his place on the wall with his M-79 grenade launcher. An MP full colonel, along with a deputy sheriff from Los Angeles (dressed in his deputy uniform) and two jeeploads of Vietnamese National Police, drove up to my track. AIR V..EXPLOSION AMMUNITION DUMP. At 0400 Jones ordered us to pull in our ambushes and be prepared to move. We could use our tracks as a base of fire or in a blocking position as the company maneuvered on foot. The bombs descend and explode on structures in grove of trees near rice paddies 23 miles east of Binh Thuy on 19th August. I dismounted the platoons and placed them on line on each side of the road: the second on the left, or north, and the first on the right, or south. We never saw them again. secondary explosions. All night they scanned the jungles with Starlight scopes, seeing nothing. I called III Corps to report that we had detained all of these people, and was told to wait for the Vietnamese National Police to take charge. Initials PW/VS/JH/BB/ES PW/VS/JH/ES We were west of Highway QL1 along a road named 535. Sergeant was already tucked under a 5 ton truck parked about 50 feet I Then a report came in that a body had been found wearing a white shirt under a black pajama tunic. We were ordered to go there and detain every male between the ages of 16 and 80. The attacks by Vietcong (VC) and People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) forces were one of several major attacks around Saigon in the first days of the Tet offensive. I called battalion headquarters and was told to forget about them, which reinforced our sense that combat was imminent. His battalion was in heavy contact and he had several wounded rangers he needed to evacuate. Charlie Company quickly reinforced Alpha, and a daylong fight ensued. Normally, operations orders issued over the radio were encoded and sent by the operations officers radio operator. This was no surprise to us, since we could plainly hear the enemy rounds slamming into Long Binh. It dawned on us that the VC were throwing down their weapons, changing clothes and slipping away. He manned the .50 and, with a Charlie Company driver, started off down Highway 1. As we made the turn eastward on Highway 1, the lead platoon was ambushed. probably one of the best deals I had been Used for because the He manned the .50 and, with a Charlie Company driver, headed down Highway 1. As darkness settled in, Charlie Company was ordered back to the junction of Highways 1 and 316, where we would form a screen in front of the 199th LIB base camp. Service Battery that supplied ordnance to the big guns in our battalion. The colonel explained that since we were infantry soldiers and did not know the proper method of searching a house, he and his crew had come to teach us. He said the first thing he could remember was the He retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel. The unit left their position at Firebase Concord north of Bin Ha and moved east proceeding along trails north of Ho Nai towards the LRRP position. As he fell, a burst of automatic weapons fire stitched the wall right where he would have been had he not fallen.. We topped off our fuel tanks, replenished our ammo and continued to move toward our assigned blocking position. [2]:347, At 01:00, a 6-man LRRP from Company F, 51st Infantry Regiment spotted PAVN/VC moving through rubber trees several hundred meters to the north of Long Binh Post. Terms & Conditions | The Long Binh ammo dump had exploded. him in. I assigned areas of operation to my two rifle platoons, and positioned the weapons platoon inside the compound as a reserve and security force. The churches were cleared in short order. M-117 bombs explode near and on road on wooden slopes near river north of Pleiku near Dak To, on 18 August, 1968.