Boots on the Ground: The history of Project Delta

by Carpenter, Stephen

  Project Delta stood down for twelve days at the conclusion of Trojan Horse and left the FOB in place because the Project would return and continue with Operation Trojan Horse II. The following is a personal account of what it was like to stay behind and guard the FOB rather than return to Nha Trang and engage in the antics of relaxation.

  Some operations lasted longer than a few weeks or a month. Such was the series of operations run out of the FOB at Mai Loc from August to November, 1969. The FOB was set up a half mile or so from the front gate of A-101 at Mai Loc. The A camp had been plagued with a steady stream of thefts, deceptions and attacks from local insurgents. It wasn’t long before rockets, small arms, and mortars were directed at the Delta FOB, the helicopter pads, and at any aircraft attempting to take off or land from the small air strip. When some new volunteers arrived in September, they were taken on a local mission to prepare for the ‘real thing.’ Led by D.J. Taylor, the group encountered a group of local bad guys engaged in hiding arms pilfered from the A Detachment. An engagement followed in which one of the new guys, Tom Crosby, was shot in the neck. He was saved by the brilliant actions of medic Dennis McVey, who managed to stop the bleeding from a severed artery. All this to say that it never got really quiet at Mai Loc.

  In the Fall of the year, the weather became such that aircraft couldn’t support the Project’s mission. Low cloud cover, steady rain, and wind all added up to reasons for Delta to stand down for a couple of weeks in Nha Trang. It also gave the CO time to straighten out the credibility problem that seemed to persist with the conventional units we were OPCON to. They didn’t want to believe or react to the real time information that the teams provided. The FOB could not be left unguarded or unattended, so four young Recon guys volunteered to stay behind and keep an eye on things. A company of the Project’s Ranger Battalion also stayed near the compound to provide security. The four volunteers included SSG Jim Thornton, SGT Chester Howard, SGT Bob ‘Archie” Inscore, and, SGT Steve Carpenter. The compound consisted of a few tents that housed the Recon, Staff, and Commo personnel, a briefing tent, and the TOC tent. The compound perimeter consisted of multiple coils of concertina wire, some noisemakers and a few claymores. A mortar pit was located close to the Recon tent area, as were several metal Conex boxes used to store rations and equipment. The routine on stay behind was pretty simple: somebody manned the TOC at all times, a few random inspections were done every day and night, and the rest of the time was spent drinking beer, staying dry and playing cards. The excitement of the day was lifting the cargo pallets in each tent to determine how many venomous snakes had sought refuge from the wet weather. One evening, as Jim Thornton manned the TOC, Chester, Archie, and I were roused by the sound of small arms fire and radio traffic from the Ranger company requesting fire support. As the qualified mortar man, I grabbed my weapon and web gear and ran to the mortar pit and began to unwrap the 81 mm mortar and position it for use. Chester clambered to the top of a conex container and began to relay fire requests to me from the radio. The call for fire put Chester on a straight line between the mortar pit and the NW perimeter, which was being attacked. He called out a range; I positioned the tube, charged the round and called ‘fire in the hole!’ Although on a straight line path toward Chester, the mortar round travels in a high arcing trajectory enroute to its target and would pass well overhead. Several revolutions out of the tube, the round loses the locking pin on the detonator and arms itself. The first round, a white phosphorous illumination round, exited the tube with a ‘bloop’ and traveled the twenty feet to Chester’s conex in very slow motion. Chester turned toward the pit as the round launched and watched it come slowly toward him like a slow pitch softball, and hit the side of the conex box just inches below his feet. His eyes grew to the size of dinner plates and he stammered his way through some kind of exclamatory expression replete with four letter expletives. I began to laugh at the surreal image of Chester dancing and swearing in the strobe like flashes atop the conex box. I charged another round and sent it his way, with the same result. By this time the person on the other end was calling for High Explosive rounds, so I complied. This time I changed the charge and the round hit the conex two inches higher and closer to Chester. By this time, I could hear Archie laughing, and I was becoming hysterical with laughter. I quickly grabbed a pry bar and opened a different box of rounds, took the charges from that box, and started again. This time almost everything went where it was supposed to go. After another fifteen minutes of illumination and HE fired on the perimeter, the fight was over. A total of eleven rounds lay at the base of the conex container, the product of charges rendered useless by the humidity. By this time Archie and I were laughing so hard we were rolling in the mud and Chester joined in.

  Early the next morning, we gathered at the pit to assess our next move. We cautiously transported the enabled but unexploded rounds to the bottom of the deep gully that ran just North of the recon tents and stacked them neatly. I placed five pounds of C-4 under them with a thirty minute delayed fuse and retreated to the recon area to wait it out. The four of us each cracked a beer and sat on a cot, wondering aloud how big a bang it would make. When it finally went off, we were apparently not the only ones impressed with the magnitude of the bang and the ensuing cloud. Within minutes, a jet from Quang Tri was flying over at low altitude asking if we thought we’d been nuked. Thornton replied in his slow, laconic style, “Nope. Just a couple of kids havin’ fun.”

  “Winter-Spring 1970”, 1 November 1969-30 April 1970. An increase in enemy-initiated attacks, at the highest level since 4-5 September signaled the start of the first phase of the Communist winter campaign. This was highlighted by intensified harassment incidents, and attacks throughout the Republic of Vietnam. In November-December these were heaviest in Corps Tactical Zones III and IV (around Saigon), primarily directed against Vietnamese military installations in order to disrupt the pacification program. The most significant enemy activity occurred in November with heavy attacks upon Bu Prang and Duc Lap in CTZ II (Central Vietnam).

  By February 1970 the focus of enemy activity began to shift to CTZ I and II. Attacks increased steadily, reaching a peak in April 1970. Hostile forces staged their heaviest attacks in the Central Highlands near Civilian Irregular Defense Group camps at Dak Seang, Dak Pek, and Ben Het in I CTZ. The enemy also conducted numerous attacks by fire and several sapper attacks against U.S. fire support bases. This high level of enemy activity began in I CTZ in April and continued through May.

  During the period 1 November 1969 through 30 April 1970 U.S. and allied forces concentrated on aggressive operations to find and destroy enemy main and local forces, the penetration of base camps and installations and the seizure of enemy supplies and materiel. These operations sought to deny the enemy the initiative and to inflict heavy losses in men and materiel. Further progress was made in Vietnamization through improving the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces. As a result of these advances three brigades of the 1st U.S. Infantry Division and several major U.S.M.C. units were withdrawn from Vietnam during this period.

  The enemy made several efforts to take the offensive at Dak Seang, which was attacked on 1 April 1970 and remained under siege throughout the month, and at Quang Duc in the Bu Prang-Duc Lap area which ended on 28 December. Only Vietnamese forces were engaged in both of these operations, the Quang Duc campaign involving some 12,000 ARVN troops. South Vietnamese forces again took the offensive on 14 April in a bold 3-day operation in the Angel’s Wing area along the Cambodian border. The Vietnamese Army completed this mission in an aggressive professional manner without U.S. support, further evidence of their growing proficiency.65

  Project Delta returned to Mai Loc on October 13th and conducted Operation Trojan Horse II through November 9th, 1969, this time OPCON to the 101st Airborne Division. Project Delta launched 9 Recon, 9 Roadrunner, 3 Ranger and 1 BDA operations. The weather conditions that had limited operations during Operation Trojan Horse continued to worsen throughout Trojan Horse II. The
101st divided an already small AO into four smaller reconnaissance zones. Their plan was for Delta to move through the zones one at a time, releasing the zones back to the 101st after completion of the missions. The problems associated with this too conventional method were that limiting the reconnaissance zones allowed the enemy to pattern the missions and either prepare for attacking the teams or to focus their activities outside the reconnaissance zone resulting in a loss of the element of surprise. It also put all of Delta’s assets at risk because they became channeled and easily patterned. Operation Trojan Horse II began with over flight of all areas on Airborne Personnel Detection (APD) or Sniffer missions where the areas were searched with infrared heat detectors. All areas were characterized as having moderate to high concentrations of enemy.85

  One of the new methods of operation that Delta was introduced to by the 101st Airborne Division was the use of Pink Teams. A Pink Team consisted of the small two man OH-6 helicopter, often called a LOACH, and three Cobra gunships. The Pink Team’s OH-6 would fly at treetop level drawing enemy fire and searching for likely targets and the team’s three Cobras would hang above and behind the OH-6 at a thousand feet or so. When the observer on the OH-6 identified a target, he would drop a smoke grenade to mark the target, and the three Cobras, armed with 7.62MM mini-guns and 2.75 inch rockets, would dive and fire on the marked target. Close coordination was maintained between Project Delta and this Pink Team to ensure they knew where the Project had deployed ground operations and the Pink Team would stay out of those areas. Project Delta’s Area of Operation was large enough that it was thought to be unlikely the Pink Team would interfere with ground operations. Project Delta’s Reconnaissance Section developed a close relationship with this Pink Team when it was realized that a real close up look at Recon Areas of Operation (AO) could be had while flying in the observer seat of the OH-6. Recon team leaders (RTLs) flew several missions with the Pink Teams at Mai Loc. The assigned OH-6 observer didn’t mind at all letting someone else go out and get shot at in his place, and it provided a close up look at recon AOs.

  As observers, RTLs flew in the left seat (copilot’s seat) of the OH-6 with a red smoke grenade in their left hand and the pin pulled. When a target was identified, the grenade was tossed out and the pilot broke off at a right angle. As soon as the Cobras saw the smoke, they dove and fired their mini-guns and rockets at the smoke. The 2.75-inch Flechette rockets the Cobras fired were especially deadly. Each rocket was packed with over 2,000 tiny steel darts that rained down after the warhead exploded over the target area. When fired on troops in the open, one Flechette rocket could reliably kill or wound everything within an area the size of a football field, and each Cobra could carry up to eighteen of these Flechette rockets in its two rocket pods. Cobra rocket pods were usually loaded with a mixture of Flechette (Nails), High Explosive (HE), and White Phosphorous (WP). The Pink Team could handle any target they happened upon, from troops in the open or troops in a tree line, to troops in bunkers or troops in vehicles.102

  A total of twenty-two reconnaissance and surveillance operations were conducted in the area of operation (AO). These, combined with local security operations, training operations, and continuous aerial surveillance (i.e., SLAR, RED HAZE, APD, URS Reports and Aerial Photograph) established the following intelligence conclusions.

  Elements of the 7th Front were operating within Project Delta’s AO. The 7th Front was concentrating maximum effort in a food collection program and construction of food storage areas; taxation of the local populace was included in this program. Captured enemy documents reflected a noticeable amount of rice and other food products that were being collected by elements of the 7th Front. For the month of September 1969, cadre from the 7th Front organized with local civilian economic groups, collected the following amounts of rice from areas as indicated: 31,317 kilos Lowlands, 3,768 kilos Ba Lang, 11,872 kilos Western Area. Previous information showed that a food shortage had existed throughout this area since the beginning of 1969. Captured enemy documents from elements of the 7th Front Headquarters make reference to a regulation that specifies rice allowances were discontinued for sick or wounded personnel due to the fact that rice was reserved for fighting personnel only. Very strict regulations controlling food and money were enforced to include personnel whom may be visiting or passing through. A warning from the 7th Front Headquarters had been published and passed down to squad size elements stating that violators of this regulation would be dealt with in a serious manner. A careful plan was formulated pertaining to the logistical activities of the 7th Front. This plan included contingency plans of pre-selected transportation routes which would be used in the event primary routes were blocked by US/Allied interdicting fires. The enemy was active in transporting weapons, ammunition, and other supplies from storage areas believed to be located along the Laos border on the Western boundary of the AO. The majority of supplies were being transported by porters, but the enemy possessed the capability of resupplying and/or reinforcing troops by motorized means for approximately one third of the total distance. The distances involved were from main storage facilities located along the Laos/SVN Border to preplanned storage areas, located within the Rear Services Area of the 7th Front located within Project Delta’s area of operation. When transporting equipment, the unit involved was formed in a long column, well dispersed with security squads to the front and rear of the column. The security elements were prepared to fight if necessary to accomplish the mission. Enemy units were hesitant in initiating contact with U.S./Allied Forces. The time involved from start to completion was a 3-6 day journey by foot. Other capabilities noted among the enemy forces within the area of operations gave insight to his communications capabilities and his awareness of allied communications procedures. During insertion and extraction of recon teams, 108 minutes of jamming was noted on both UHF and VHF bands. By his jamming techniques, the enemy showed his interest in interception and interdiction of allied communications. It was assumed that the enemy had linguists and other personnel trained for this mission. In regards to the degree of sophistication of his communication equipment, it was determined that enemy equipment spanned the entire spectrum ranging from crude homemade devices to the most modern Russian and Chinese Communist products. The enemy was known to cannibalize commercial products and convert them into reliable and effective equipment.85

  Elements of the 7th Front appeared to be the units committed for the initiation of the Winter/Spring Offensive. Indications were that the primary targets would be within the cities, villages, and hamlets in Quang Tri Province and US/Allied Base Areas throughout I Corps. Various sources indicated that the 5th NVA Regt, subordinate to Tri Thien Hue Military Region (TTHMR), were located in the mountainous region east of the AO. Their exact location, strength, and mission were unknown. The 6th NVA Regiment, subordinate to the TTHMR, showed signs of increased activity near the southwestern border of the AO. They were believed to be assisting elements of the 7th Front by securing routes of transportation from the Laotian Border north through the central portion of the AO along the Da Krong River and into the mountainous areas, known to be the AO of the Rear Service Group of the 7th Front. It was reported that the 803rd NVA Regt was located in Laos to the northwest of the AO, near the Laos/SVN Border. Strength, mission and further plans were unknown. The 803rd Regt is subordinate to TTHMR. It was assumed that these units could be part of a major plan to reinforce elements of the 7th Front. Captured enemy documents listed the total strength of the 7th Front to be 1,789 personnel. Three (3) units, K.8, K.14 and K.34 that were subordinate to the 7th Front, were listed as being up to only 60% fighting strength. Problems existent among enemy units were critical food shortages, and under strength fighting elements. Captured documents listed personnel percentages that were plagued with malaria to be in the range of 1/3 of total troop strength. All indications were that the enemy was concentrating maximum effort in support of a plan to launch a winter/spring offensive campaign against U.S. and Allied Forces to inc
lude base areas, cities, villages, and hamlets throughout I Corps.85

  During Operation Trojan Horse II, contacts with the enemy were sporadic and short lived as the enemy avoided prolonged combat. Enemy sightings were frequent and air strikes were utilized to destroy base areas and fortifications. The deteriorating weather was the biggest enemy of the operation and at least one team was inserted only to be told to go to ground because there was no way to attempt an extraction with the heavy rain and low cloud cover. Communications relay aircraft were grounded much of the time, severely limiting the ability of teams on the ground to maintain contact with the FOB. After several consecutive days of “no fly weather” Operation Trojan Horse II was terminated on November 9th, 1969 and Project Delta was moved by convoy to Quang Tri and an airlift back to Nha Trang.85