Battle of Khe Sanh

Background

The Battle of Khe Sanh during the Vietnam War was fought from Jan 21, 1968 until July 9, 1968. Khe Sanh Combat Base sat on a plateau in the far northwest of Quang Tri Province, a few miles from Laos and fourteen from the Demilitarized Zone, astride Route 9 and close to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The US Marine Corps had held it since 1966, and in the spring of 1967 fought the bloody Hill Fights for the surrounding heights — Hills 861, 881 South and 881 North. By late 1967 intelligence showed the North Vietnamese 325C and 304th Divisions massing around the plateau, and General William Westmoreland, who wanted the base as an anchor for operations into Laos, chose to reinforce and hold it. The press and the White House alike saw a parallel with Dien Bien Phu, where the French had been besieged and destroyed in 1954.

The Siege

On 21 January 1968 North Vietnamese artillery, rockets and mortars opened on the base, and an early round detonated the main ammunition dump. For the next eleven weeks the 26th Marine Regiment under Colonel David Lownds, with the 37th ARVN Ranger Battalion — about 6,000 men — held the base and its hill outposts under daily bombardment. On 7 February NVA infantry with PT-76 tanks overran the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei nearby, the first use of North Vietnamese armor in the war. The NVA dug trench lines toward the perimeter in the manner of Dien Bien Phu, but the assault on the main base never came. Everything the garrison used arrived by air — C-130s landing under fire, parachute drops, low-altitude extraction, and Marine helicopters flying the "Super Gaggle" to the hill outposts — while Operation Niagara put B-52 strikes and tactical aircraft on the surrounding hills in unprecedented tonnage. Operation Pegasus, led by the 1st Cavalry Division, reached the base in early April and lifted the siege.

Weapons

The Marines fought with the M16 Rifle, whose early reliability problems had first become a scandal after the 1967 Hill Fights here, though some Marines still carried the M14 Rifle. The M60 Machine Gun and M79 Grenade Launcher held the perimeter, scout-snipers used the new M40 Rifle, and the M1 Helmet was the Marine's headgear. The North Vietnamese infantry carried the AK-47 and SKS, supported by 130mm and 152mm artillery firing from Laos and from behind the DMZ, out of range of the Marines' own guns.

Aftermath

Official figures put Marine deaths at the base during the siege at about 205, though counts that include the hill outposts, Lang Vei and the relief operations run several times higher. North Vietnamese losses, mostly to air power, were estimated in the thousands to over ten thousand. In June 1968, under a new commander, the Americans decided that the base was no longer needed; it was razed and abandoned, the last Marines leaving in early July. Whether Hanoi meant to take Khe Sanh or to draw American strength away from the cities before the Tet Offensive remains one of the war's lasting arguments.