Boots on the Ground: The history of Project Delta

by Carpenter, Stephen

  Copyright © 2010 Stephen A. Carpenter

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1450528589

  ISBN-13: 9781450528580

  E-Book ISBN: 978-1-4392-8253-3

  DEDICATION

  Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” Isaiah 6:8

  “Boots on the Ground” is a work of love. It is my gift to all those men who volunteered and served with Project Delta; and to those they have left behind. It was a hell of a ride.

  I dedicate this book:

  To my wonderful wife of forty years, Paula. You are the love of my life and my best friend.

  To my son, Steve. You are already a better man than me.

  To my daughter, Debbie Burke. Your journey inspires me, your love makes me smile.

  To my mother, Margaret A. Carpenter. The hardest thing I ever had to do was kiss you goodbye.

  To my Dad, Wilbur A. Carpenter; my nephew, Cody Miller; my brother Craig, a fellow Army vet; my sister Amy Jo, the sweetest kid in the world; and my brother Derick, a fellow Delta Recon man. You were all taken too soon.

  “To the children and the grandchildren of these great men:

  I hope you know,

  and that the future generations of your family would know,

  that your father and your grandfather was,

  and is,

  a hero of our nation.”

  Lt. General Robert W. Wagner

  October 24th, 2008

  Project Delta Memorial Stone Dedication Ceremony

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Book

  Chapter I: Origin of a Mission

  Chapter II: The Situation

  Chapter III: Leaping Lena

  Chapter IV: Revitalization; Continue the Mission

  Chapter V: Vung Ro Bay; Changing the Tides of War

  Chapter VI: 1965; Ramping Up

  Chapter VII: 1966; Counter Offensive

  Chapter VIII: Regroup and Recovery

  Chapter IX: Counterinsurgency

  Chapter X: 1966; Disaster at Khe Sanh

  Chapter XI: 1967; Back to the An Lao Valley

  Chapter XII: Back to the Ashau

  Chapter XIII: Major Bruiser Allen, Break Contact, Continue Mission

  Chapter XIV: 1968; Tet

  Chapter XV: Tet Counteroffensive

  Chapter XVI: The Beginning of the End

  Chapter XVII: The Ashau, Again

  Chapter XVIII: The Last Hurrah

  Appendix I: Unit Citations

  Appendix II: Acronyms and Abbreviations

  Appendix III: Debriefing, Ranger Operations 1966

  Appendix IV: Battle of Hue

  Appendix V: Tips of the Trade

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  On October 24th, 2008, a memorial stone was dedicated in the Memorial Plaza at the United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) headquarters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The stone memorializes a small unit known as Detachment B-52, Project Delta, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces. Project Delta operated from 1964 through 1970 in the Republic of South Vietnam. The unit conducted operations and missions that remained classified until 1996. Project Delta was not a unit that was conceived and born from some blueprint for clandestine operations. It was a unit that evolved over its entire existence and not only defined and developed the basis for small unit tactics in Vietnam, but coincidentally had a profound effect on the prosecution of the war. Lt. General Robert W. Wagner, USASOC Commander, at the dedication ceremony proclaimed, “Today we honor you, the members of this heroic unit in Vietnam. Your accomplishments were invaluable. You operated at the tip of the spear before the term was coined.”

  General Wagner also alluded to the idea that someone should undertake the task of recording the history of Project Delta before all of the unit’s institutional memory was in the grave. Long time Project Delta member Jim Tolbert had a vision of creating a “coffee table” book about Project Delta that would contain the Project’s history, anecdotal accounts from Delta men and as many pictures as he could find. He established a website as a collection point for material and contacted as many men as he could for information. Unfortunately, Jim passed away before he could really get started. I volunteered to pick up the project and began to search for records to begin the background work. I obtained over three thousand pages of After Action Reports (AARs) and went through them word by word several times. They are noticeably devoid of team debriefings and personnel identification. I decided to pursue the book from a purely historical perspective and preserve the legacy of the unit for the survivors of those who served in it. The book does not chronicle the many adventures of the men on stand down from operations. It does not contain a roster of individuals who served in Project Delta or attempt to identify personal awards for valor. Lists exist, but they are corrupted by missing information and confused by listings of personnel mistakenly identified as having been assigned to Delta.

  Since 1996 much has been written and reported about the sister units that were modeled largely after Delta and operated under the auspices of MACV’s Study and Observations Group (SOG). These units operated in Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Their exploits have been memorialized by former SOG members John Plaster, Frank Greco, Ernie Acre, and John Meyer, to name a few. Their works are all well worth the read and do a great job of chronicling their unit exploits, victories and tragedies. Little has been written about Project Delta. In researching for this book, I confirmed what I already knew: the small group of men that were Project Delta are taciturn, humble, and truly reluctant to speak about themselves or their exploits. This is not to say that this was ever a quiet and tame group. Raucous and bawdy behavior defined this outfit at play just as the term “Quiet Professionals” defined them at work.

  Project Delta was born from a need for solid, verifiable, “seen with my own eyes” intelligence from across the border as well as from within Vietnam. There is no substitute for “boots on the ground”. Project Delta was not the first attempt at gathering useful information. Previous efforts by CIA and Special Forces trained indigenous personnel had varied levels of success, but ultimately did not supply needed information in useful and entirely credible fashion. Project Delta was the first successful intelligence gathering unit in the growing U.S. military presence in South Vietnam.

  Project Delta’s success did not come without a price. The unit developed methods and techniques through trial and error, through critical self evaluations after every mission and through the resourcefulness and intuition born of hard experience. Many of these developments followed the Delta men as they were called upon to provide the initial staffing and training for the MACV SOG units, conventional unit LRRP companies and the specialized units of other branches of the military.

  There are very few of these men left, but there were few to begin with. From the best efforts to gather records about this group, it is estimated that approximately 6oo men were assigned to Project Delta, of which some 250 were “boots on the ground” operators. Most ran reconnaissance; many advised the Rangers or commanded the Nungs or Roadrunners. A few were assigned from the Korean ROK, the Australian SAS and the TASS units as FACs. As with any military unit, the men on the ground would not succeed without a myriad of support functions being performed flawlessly. The operations and intelligence men, the communications crews, the supply and logistics people and, of course, the aviation units that supported Project Delta all contributed significantly and vitally to the missions of the unit
. Individuals from these support groups performed valiantly in combat situations that were outside their normal duties, volunteers all. The aviation units, from the Vietnamese crews and aircraft first assigned to the Project to the units attached for individual operations along the way, all performed to the best of their ability. The 281st Assault Helicopter Company with its absorbed units, the 145th and 171st ALCs, was the longest serving helicopter support unit over the Project’s history. Ask any Delta man and he’ll tell you that the 281st would get you out or crash beside you trying. The 281st lost many aircraft, pilots and crew heroically supporting Project Delta. All of these people are deserving of a recorded history of their own. I must apologize to all of the deserving men who served in these attached and support capacities for not including them in this historical perspective. There is not enough room to detail their significant and heroic contributions to the success of Project Delta. A second apology goes to all Delta men whose names are not mentioned and to those who I did not contact for interviews. One conclusion I arrived at early in my research was that not every story could be told and not every voice could be heard. There has to be a point at which there is enough to get the basic job of presenting a true historically accurate document about Project Delta. I chose a point and began to write. Every mission was an adventure and a story in itself. This compilation of historical fact is about the men on the ground. For all of these men, this war was up close and personal. The nature of the missions forged a brotherhood that is as strong today as it was forty plus years ago.

  The history of the Vietnam conflict has been invented by media pundits and misrepresented from the very beginning. Our own brothers and sisters were poisoned by the myths of this war that were presented as fact for years. Only with the prosecution of the first Gulf War in 1991 did the Vietnam veterans finally gain some measure of respect for their efforts. In fact, the Vietnam War became quite popular. The following was researched by Capt. Marshal Hanson, U.S.N.R (Ret.) and Capt. Scott Beaton, Statistical Source. This research effort was duplicated by B.G. Burkett in his book “Stolen Valor.105

  9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the official Vietnam era from August 5, 1964 to May 7, 1975.

  2,709,918 Americans served in uniform in Vietnam

  58,148 were killed in Vietnam

  As of January 15, 2004, there are 1,875 Americans still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War

  1,713,823 of those who served in Vietnam were still alive as of August, 1995 (census figures).

  During that same Census count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country was: 9,492,958.

  As of the current Census taken during August, 2000, the surviving U.S. Vietnam Veteran population estimate is: 1,002,511. During this Census count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country is: 13,853,027. By this census, four out of five who claim to be Vietnam vets are not.

  97% of Vietnam Veterans were honorably discharged, 91% of Vietnam Veterans say they are glad they served, 74% say they would serve again, even knowing the outcome

  Common Belief is that most Vietnam veterans were drafted. 2/3 of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers. 2/3 of the men who served in World War II were drafted. Approximately 70% of those killed in Vietnam were volunteers.

  Common belief is that a disproportionate number of blacks were killed in the Vietnam War. 86% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races. Sociologists Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, in their recently published book “All That We Can Be,” said they analyzed the claim that blacks were used like cannon fodder during Vietnam “and can report definitely that this charge is untrue. Black fatalities amounted to 12 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia, a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war.”

  The Common belief is that the domino theory was proved false. The domino theory was accurate. The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand stayed free of Communism because of the U.S. commitment to Vietnam. The Indonesians threw the Soviets out in 1966 because of America’s commitment in Vietnam. Without that commitment, Communism would have swept all the way to the Malacca Straits that is south of Singapore and of great strategic importance to the free world. If you ask people who live in these countries who won the war in Vietnam, they have a different opinion from the American news media. The Vietnam War was the turning point for Communism.

  The American military was not defeated in Vietnam. The American military did not lose a battle of any consequence. From a military standpoint, it was almost an unprecedented performance. General Westmoreland quoting Douglas Pike, a professor at the University of California, Berkley, “… a major military defeat for the VC and NVA.”

  The fall of Saigon happened 30 April 1975, two years AFTER the American military left Vietnam. The last American troops departed in their entirety 29 March 1973. The U.S. fought to an agreed stalemate. The peace settlement was signed in Paris on 27 January 1973. It called for release of all U.S. prisoners, withdrawal of U.S. forces, limitation of both sides’ forces inside South Vietnam and a commitment to peaceful reunification. The 140,000 evacuees in April 1975 during the fall of Saigon consisted almost entirely of civilians and Vietnamese military, NOT American military running for their lives. There were almost twice as many casualties in Southeast Asia (primarily Cambodia) the first two years after the fall of Saigon in 1975 then there were during the ten years the U.S. was involved in Vietnam. Thanks for the perceived loss and the countless assassinations and torture visited upon Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians goes mainly to the American media and their undying support of misrepresentation made by the anti-War movement in the United States.

  As with much of the Vietnam War, the news media misreported and misinterpreted the 1968 Tet Offensive. It was reported as an overwhelming success for the Communist forces and a decided defeat for the U.S. forces. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite initial victories by the Communists forces, the Tet Offensive resulted in a major defeat of those forces. General Vo Nguyen Giap, the designer of the Tet Offensive, is considered by some as ranking with Wellington, Grant, Lee and MacArthur as a great commander. His folly during Tet of 1968 serves to dispel that myth as well. Militarily, the Tet Offensive was a total defeat of the Communist forces on all fronts. It resulted in the death of some 45,000 NVA troops and the complete, if not total destruction of the Viet Cong elements in South Vietnam. The Organization of the Viet Cong Units in the South never recovered. The Tet Offensive succeeded on only one front and that was the media/ political arena. This was another example in the Vietnam War of inaccuracy becoming the perceived truth. However, inaccurately reported, the News Media made the Tet Offensive famous.”104

  The sad truth is that the media, perhaps to curry favor among the liberal anti-war delegation in Washington, did not record history, they invented it. It is small comfort to those left living, who made history, to finally be able to set the historical record straight. There is no accurate and complete record of all those who served in Project Delta. Likewise there is no complete and accurate record of each and every mission run in the Project. Every mission was an adventure and it would be impossible to chronicle them all. Not every man who served in Project Delta is given his due in this record, again, an impossibility. For that I offer a humble apology. The story of Project Delta is about the unit, not the individual. That’s the way it was then and that’s the way it is today.

  The military, like most government bureaucracies, thrives on abbreviations and acronyms. Those of us who spent even a small amount of time using them have little trouble remembering them or figuring them out. For the rest of us I have included a list of acronyms and abbreviations used in this text as Appendix II.

  CHAPTER I: ORIGIN OF A MISSION

  The art
and science of long range reconnaissance within conventional units is nothing new to the history of warfare. It made sense, even in ancient times, for each side to evaluate the opposition before committing to battle. Vietnam presented unique challenges both military and political. Early on, it became obvious that the North Vietnamese were supplying cadre, weapons and supplies to the VC paramilitary in the South. Much of this came across the borders to the west, from the sovereign and neutral nations of Laos and Cambodia. The U.S. and South Vietnamese made several attempts at collecting intelligence by using indigenous people crossing the borders. The ultimate result was the inception of Project Delta with the plan of running all indigenous teams across international borders for the purpose of gaining precious information. The cross border operations were short lived and Project Delta emerged as the in-country intelligence gathering arm of the joint US/RVSN effort. Conceived in secrecy because of cross border operations, Project Delta remained a classified special operations unit for the remainder of its life, mainly because the unit was utilized primarily to locate and identify enemy units far from friendly operations. Once identified, the coalition would commit a conventional force to conduct operations against the newly located enemy. The plan was to keep Project Delta a secret so that the enemy wouldn’t know how they had been discovered. Once the conventional units assumed the responsibility for operations against the enemy they would rely on their own reconnaissance elements to supply real time information. Another little known aspect of Project Delta’s operations was that they were often conducted in conjunction with the cross border operations of its sister units that comprised SOG. Both Project Delta and the SOG units came under the auspices of the 5th Special Forces Group’s Special Operations Augmentation, although the SOG units were kept separate and distinct from any reporting or organizational responsibility to 5th Group. The intelligence term for this is compartmentalization. They reported directly to MACV in Saigon. Both units were a single layer away from Capitol Hill in their reporting structure, a move specifically designed to prevent either group from being able to compromise the other. The net effect was that Project Delta and SOG collected intelligence on both sides of the border areas at the same time resulting in collection of intelligence over a significantly larger contiguous Area of Operations.