1966 - Vietnam - Staff Film Report of Operations

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Was it really as easy as
they make it look?

1966 was a big year for operations in Vietnam. It's not surprising then that the film below was shot during that year. As we said in our Editor's column at left, the movie below provides a compilation of vignettes about the kind of things that took place in Vietnam in 1966, to support the various operations that were being run.

If you've forgotten how busy it was back then, consider this:

"At the beginning of 1966, the number of U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam totaled 184,314. South Vietnamese military forces totaled 514,000 including the ARVN and the Regional Force and Popular Force ("Ruff-Puffs") militias. The North Vietnamese army numbered 400,000, most still in North Vietnam. 50,000 North Vietnamese cadre and soldiers infiltrated South Vietnam during 1965. Group 559, charged with transporting supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to supply communist troops in both South Vietnam and Laos, numbered 24,400 personnel. The U.S. estimated the number of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (PAVN) soldiers in South Vietnam at nearly 280,000 by June 1966, including part-time guerrillas."

[Quotes and statistics courtesy Wikipedia]

January 1966 kicked off with a bang...

• In January the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese bombarded a Special Forces Civilian Irregular Defense Group at Khe Sanh.

This was followed by Operation Crimp also known as the Battle of the Ho Bo Woods, just north of Cu Chi. Operation Masher followed that, an operation that included combined U.S., South Vietnamese and Korean troops, in Binh Dinh province.

 • In February the Battle of Suoi Bong Trang took place. Part of Operation Rolling Stone, it took place in  the vicinity of Tan Bihn, in central Binh Duong Province, 30 clicks northwest of the Bien Hoa airbase.

 • March saw the Battle of A Shau, a bloody two day fight that saw the fall of the Special Forces camp at that location.

 • In April Premier Ky sent five battalions of ARVN rangers and South Vietnamese marines to Da Nang to quell a Buddhist uprising. Not wanting to get involved in religious warfare among our allies, Westmoreland ordered that all American soldiers in Da Nang be confined to their quarters.

Yet try as he might his tactic didn't work. On April 9 a platoon of U.S. Marines was forced to deploy to block the passage of a convoy of pro-Buddhist ARVN soldiers en route to take over Da Nang airbase itself. The armed confrontation was resolved after negotiations between the two sides, but still, from that point on no one could be sure just who our real ally was: the local government or the local Buddhists.

Later that month the Battle of Xa Cam My took place. It sprang out of a Search and Destroy mission in a rubber plantation of that name, 68 clicks east of Saigon. Within two weeks this was followed with Operation Birmingham, which took place in War Zone C, north of Saigon.

April finally came to an end with Operation Beaver Cage, a joint U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy Operation in North Vietnam, along the coastline of the Bon Hai river.

 • May saw the pro-Buddhist Struggle Movement (that wanted Thieu and Ky replaced) take control of Da Nang and its surrounding countryside. In the process U.S forces found themselves holding off first Buddhists, then ARVN forces, then Buddhists again as the line of control over the city of Da Nang swayed back and forth. Eventually the government of South Vietnam regained full control over Da Nang. By then though 23 Americans had been wounded in the process and countless Buddhists self immolated.

 • Compared to all of this, June 1966 was a quiet month with only one uprising and only a couple of small Search and Destroy Operations taking place. As for the uprising, once again it was headed by a crowd of pro-Buddhist demonstrators. This time they stormed the U.S. Consulate in Hue and set it on fire, trying to make their point to the U.S. government that by backing Thieu and Ky we were backing two corrupt, incompetent men. While small by combat engagement standards, the optics of this did not bode well for the war back home in America. Most Americans did not think that sending their sons to fight against Buddhists was what this war should be all about.

 • The first week in July saw combat operations getting back to normal. Operation Hastings began on July 7, and carried on well into August. It was an attempt by our side to engage enemy troops in the Cam Lo area. The goal was to strike through the DMZ into the Cam Lo area, and take permanent control of that part of Quang Tre province.  

 • In conjunction with this, August saw the launch of Operation Prairie. Its purpose was to eliminate North Vietnamese Army forces south of the DMZ. This particular Operation, although it began in August, dragged on until October.

A week after Operation Prairie started, the 5th Battalion of the 33rd Regiment, along with the South Korean 3rd Battalion of the 1st Cavalry Regiment, began Operation Đức Cơ. Also known as the Battle of Đức Cơ, it proved to be a major engagement that harried the NVA trying to infiltrate into the Đức Cơ border area from Cambodia.

With this already underway, the Battle of Long Tan was fought in yet another rubber plantation near the village of Long Tần, about twenty seven clicks northeast of Vung Tau.

 • September saw Operation Attleboro, a Search and Destroy Operation run by the 196th Light Infantry Brigade, from... you guessed it, Attleboro, Massachusetts.

 • October was quiet, just a few small Search and Clear Operations. Strangely, almost to make the point that the year's fast paced effort to flatten the enemy via helicopter born combat operations wasn't working. U.S. Secretary of Defense McNamara released a memorandum to the President saying that while communist forces had suffered 60,000 killed that year, "there is no sign of an impending break in enemy morale and it appears that he can more than replace his losses by infiltration from North Vietnam and recruitment in South Vietnam."

He continued: "enemy...forces...are larger; terrorist and sabotage have increased in scope and intensity; more railroads and highways cut; the rice crop expected to come to market is smaller; we control little, if any, more of the population...in the countryside, the enemy almost completely controls the night."   

When Eisenhower got wind of this memorandum he criticized President Johnson for "hesitation, indecision, and even timidity." What Eisenhower was saying, although he never put it in writing, was that the only way to win this war was to take it to the enemy... the enemy's capital city and homeland—to invade the North and reduce Hanoi to, as people used to say in those days, a parking lot.  

 • November was even more quiet than October. Combat Operations had run their course and proved ineffective. Instead government leaders back in the States began to wrap their heads around how to end this thing.

 • December closed out 1966 with the kind of indecision Johnson was famous for. The only thing that came out of this month was a lot of data: MACV estimated that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces in the South numbered 282,000. The CIA said "the number of Viet Cong [alone] is closer to 600,000 and perhaps more." The Selective Service System chimed in to tell everyone that they had drafted 382,010 men into military service in 1966. By comparison, in 1962, they only managed to get 82,060 men under their thumb.

The truth was, back in 1966 the people that ran this war didn't have a clue what the hell they were doing. Not the President, not his cabinet; not Congress and certainly not the Generals fighting the war.

Enjoy the movie below. It'll bring back memories. Don't be surprised though if the strangely quiet, peaceful, almost lethargic pace at which life in Vietnam is shown in this 1966 movie brings a hint of feeling that maybe, just maybe, the mental state that prevailed in the minds of our country's leaders at the time was just as lethargic.

 Time: 00:23:54