The Battle of Ia Drang (Vietnamese: Trận Ia Đrăng, [iə̯ ɗrăŋ]; in English ) was the first major battle between the United States Army and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), as part of the Pleiku campaign conducted early in the Vietnam War, at the eastern foot of the Chu Pong Massif in the central highlands of Vietnam, in 1965. It is notable for being the first large scale helicopter air assault and also the first use of Boeing B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers in a tactical support role. Ia Drang set the blueprint for the Vietnam War with the Americans relying on air mobility, artillery fire and close air support, while the PAVN neutralized that firepower by quickly engaging American forces at very close range.
Ia Drang comprised two main engagements, centered on two helicopter landing zones (LZs), the first known as LZ X-Ray, followed by LZ Albany, farther north in the Ia Drang Valley.
LZ X-Ray involved the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment and supporting units under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore, and took place November 14–16, at LZ X-Ray. Surrounded and under heavy fire from a numerically superior force, the American forces were able to hold back the North Vietnamese forces over three days, largely through the support of air power and heavy artillery bombardment, which the North Vietnamese lacked. The Americans claimed LZ X-Ray as a tactical victory, citing a 10:1 kill ratio.
The second engagement involved the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment plus supporting units under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert McDade, and took place on November 17 at LZ Albany. When an American battalion was ambushed in close quarters, they were unable to use air and artillery support due to the close engagement of the North Vietnamese and the Americans suffered a casualty rate of over 50% before being extricated. Both sides claimed victory.
The battle at LZ X-Ray was documented in the CBS special report Battle of Ia Drang Valley by Morley Safer and the critically acclaimed book We Were Soldiers Once... And Young by Hal Moore and Joseph L. Galloway. In 1994, Moore, Galloway and men who fought on both the American and North Vietnamese sides, traveled back to the remote jungle clearings where the battle took place. At the time the U.S. did not have diplomatic relations with Vietnam. The risky trip which took a year to arrange was part of an award-winning ABC News documentary, They Were Young and Brave produced by Terence Wrong. Randall Wallace depicted the battle at LZ X-Ray in the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers starring Mel Gibson and Barry Pepper as Moore and Galloway, respectively.
Galloway later described Ia Drang as "the battle that convinced Ho Chi Minh he could win".
Background
By early 1965, the majority of rural South Vietnam was under limited Viet Cong (VC) control, increasingly supported by People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) regulars from North Vietnam. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) General William C. Westmoreland had secured the commitment of upward of 300,000 U.S. regulars from President Lyndon B. Johnson and a build-up of forces took place in the summer of 1965.
VC forces were in nominal control of most of the South Vietnamese countryside by 1965 and had established military infrastructure in the Central Highlands, to the northeast of the Saigon region. Vietnamese communist forces had operated in this area during the previous decade in the First Indochina War against the French, winning a notable victory at the Battle of Mang Yang Pass in 1954. There were few reliable roads into the area, making it an ideal place for the VC forces to form bases, relatively immune from attack by the generally road-bound Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces. During 1965, large groups of PAVN regulars moved into the area to conduct offensive operations. Attacks to the southwest from these bases threatened to cut South Vietnam in two.
By 1964 North Vietnam had established the B3 Front in the central highlands of South Vietnam. By early November 1965, three PAVN regiments – the 32nd, 33rd and 66th – and the H15 Local Force Battalion had been assembled in the area. The B3 Front commander, Maj. Gen. Chu Huy Mân, planned to target South Vietnamese positions in Kon Tum and Pleiku provinces. The city of Pleiku was the location of the South Vietnamese II Corps headquarters, commanded by Maj. Gen. Vĩnh Lộc, who had at his disposal nine South Vietnamese battalions: four Ranger, three Airborne and two Marine.
The U.S. command saw this as an ideal area to test new air mobility tactics. Air mobility called for battalion-sized forces to be delivered, supplied and extracted from an area of action using helicopters. Since the heavy weapons of a normal combined-arms force could not follow, the infantry would be supported by coordinated close air support, artillery and aerial rocket fire, arranged from a distance and directed by local observers. The new tactics had been developed in the U.S. by the 11th Air Assault Division (Test), which was renamed as the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). The division's troopers dubbed themselves the "Air Cav" (Air Cavalry) and in July 1965 began deploying to Camp Radcliff, An Khê, Vietnam. By November, most of the division's three brigades were ready for operations.
The U.S. deployment caused the B3 Front Command to bring forward an attack on the U.S. Army Special Forces Plei Me camp, some 45 km southwest of Pleiku, which was originally planned for December. The assault was instead launched October 19 with only two Regiments, the 32nd and 33rd, instead of the planned three, before the Air Cavalry troops were combat ready. The plan was to attack the camp with the 33rd Regiment while the 32nd Regiment would lie in wait to ambush the ARVN relief force that would inevitably be sent from Pleiku. Once the relief force was destroyed, the two regiments were to join and take the camp. The initial attack was repulsed with the help of strong air support, and a small relief force reinforced the camp on the morning of the 22nd. The main relief force, advancing south from Pleiku on route 6C, was duly ambushed at 18:00 the next day. After a two-hour battle the ambushing forces were beaten off, but the ARVN, discouraged from moving any further, set up a defensive position, and did not reach the camp at Plei Me until dusk on the 25th. The PAVN forces withdrew west towards the Chu Pong Massif.
At the end of October, after the siege of Plei Me was lifted, General Westmoreland ordered General Harry Kinnard to take his division on to the offensive and seize the initiative in Pleiku province. Initial operations were conducted by 1st Brigade, and on November 1 they captured a PAVN aid station south west of Plei Me. Further engagements over the next few days revealed the arrival of the PAVN 66th Regiment. Having taken increasing casualties, 1st Brigade was relieved by 3rd Brigade, the handover being completed over the period November 7–12.
On November 11, intelligence source revealed the disposition of the three PAVN regiments: the 66th at vicinity YA9104, the 33rd at YA 940010 and the 32nd at YA 820070. On November 12, the 3rd Brigade was given orders by General Stanley R. Larsen, I Field Force, Vietnam Commander and General Richard T. Knowles, 1st Air Cavalry Division Forward Headquarters Commander to prepare for "an air assault near the foot of the Chu Pongs", at 13°34′11″N 107°40′54″E / 13.56972°N 107.68167°E, 14 miles (23 km) west of Plei Me.
On November 13, 3rd Brigade Commander Colonel Thomas W. Brown, acting following the order issued by Gen. Larsen and Gen. Knowles, met with Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore the commander of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, and told him "to conduct an airmobile assault the following morning" and to conduct search and destroy operations through 15 November. Meanwhile, an ARVN intelligence source by intercept of radio communication indicated that some PAVN B3 Front recon elements and transportation units had already moved out of their assembly areas to attack the Plei Me camp.
Col. Brown selected Lt. Col. Moore and his men for the mission, with the explicit orders not to attempt to scale the mountain. There were several clearings in the area that had been designated as possible helicopter landing zones, typically named for a letter of the NATO phonetic alphabet. Moore selected:
Artillery support would be provided from fire support base "FSB Falcon", about 8 km (5 mi) to the northeast of X-Ray at 13°37′22″N 107°45′51″E / 13.62278°N 107.76417°E.
General Knowles stated that he had selected the initial landing zone used by Hal Moore and his troops, knowing quite well that the PAVN lacked anti-aircraft guns and heavy mortars that had been destroyed during the attack on the Plei Me camp and that the PAVN could have positioned on the hillsides overlooking the landing zone to gun down the helicopters and to decimate the cavalry troops landing on the ground.
LZ X-Ray was approximately the size of a misshapen football field, some 100 meters in length (east to west). It was estimated that only eight UH-1 Hueys could fit in the clearing at a given time. The 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry (1/7) was typical for U.S. Army units of the time, consisting of three rifle companies and a heavy weapons company: A-Alpha Company, B-Bravo Company, C-Charlie Company and D-Delta Company... about 450 men in total of the 765 of the battalion's authorized strength. They were to be shuttled by 16 Huey transport helicopters, which could generally carry 10 to 12 equipped troopers, so the battalion would have to be delivered in several "lifts" carrying just less than one complete company each time. Each lift would take about 30 minutes. Moore arranged the lifts to deliver Bravo Company first, along with his command team, followed by Alpha and Charlie Companies, and finally Delta Company. Moore's plan was to move Bravo and Alpha Companies northwest past the creek bed, and Charlie Company south toward the mountain. Delta Company, which comprised special weapons forces including mortar, recon, and machine gun units, was to be used as the battlefield reserve. In the center of the LZ was a large termite hill that was to become Moore's command post. Furthermore, the Bravo Company of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry closed in at 18:00.
LZ X-Ray
Day 1: November 14, 1965
Landings
On November 14, an ARVN intelligence source by intercept of radio communication indicated that before dawn, some assault elements of the PAVN B3 Front started moving out of their assembly areas to attack the Plei Me camp.
At 10:48, the first troops of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry (1/7) arrived at LZ X-Ray with members of B Company touching down after about 30 minutes of bombardment via artillery, aerial rockets and air strikes. The troops were inserted about 200 meters from the position of the PAVN 9th Battalion, 66th Regiment.
The air assault insertion had the effect of causing the B3 Front to postpone the attack on the Plei Me camp. B3 Front Command fell for the subterfuge, decided to postpone the attack on Plei Me camp, and met the new threat with its 7th and 9th Battalions, while the remaining units of its force were put on hold at their staging positions.
Accompanying Captain John Herren's B Company were Moore and his 1st Battalion command group. Instead of attempting to secure the entire landing zone with such a limited force, most of B Company was kept near the center of the LZ as a strike force, while smaller units were sent out to reconnoiter the surrounding area. Following their arrival, Herren ordered B Company to move west past the creek bed. Within approximately 30 minutes, one of his squads under Sgt. John Mingo surprised and captured an unarmed deserter from the PAVN 33rd Regiment. The prisoner revealed that there were three PAVN battalions on the Chu Pong Massif – an estimated 1,600 troops compared to fewer than 200 American soldiers on the ground at that point. At 11:20, the second lift from the 1st battalion arrived, with the rest of B Company and one platoon of Capt. Tony Nadal's A Company. Fifty minutes later, the third lift arrived, consisting of the other two platoons of A Company. A Company took up positions to the rear and left flank of B Company along the dry creek bed, and to the west and to the south facing perpendicular down the creek bed.
At 12:15, the first shots were fired on the three platoons of B Company that were patrolling the jungle northwest of the dry creek bed. Five minutes later, Herren ordered his 1st Platoon under Lt. Al Devney and 2nd Platoon under Lt. Henry Herrick to advance abreast of each other and the 3rd Platoon (under Lt. Dennis Deal) to follow as a reserve unit. Lt. Devney's 1st Platoon led approximately 100 yards (91 m) west of the creek bed, with Herrick's 2nd Platoon to his rear and right flank. Just before 13:00, Devney's 1st platoon was heavily assaulted on both flanks by the PAVN, taking casualties and becoming pinned down in the process. It was around this point that Herrick radioed in that his 2nd Platoon were taking fire from their right flank, and that he was pursuing a squad of PAVN in that direction.
Knowles called Kinnard to report that the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry had engaged the enemy and requested an additional battalion – the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry – to counter the PAVN 7th and 9th Battalions.