Lam Son 719 was an offensive against
North
Vietnamese
forces
in
Laos. The U.S. provided logistical and tactical
support,
but the South Vietnamese did the ground fighting. It was a test
of the Vietnamization policy--the South Vietnamese forces' ability to
stand on their own and execute a campaign. We airlifters did
everything possible to support
them.
Phase 1: Quang Tri and Dong Ha
On January 22, 1971 the 834th Air Division received a message with
phase 1 airlift
requirements--move the ARVN 1st Airborne Division and the 258th
Vietnamese Marine Brigade (9,970 troops and 1,810 tons of equipment)
from Tan Son Nhut to the
northernmost part of South Vietnam. The airfield at Khe Sanh was
not usable yet, so we began moving the ARVN's to the closest airfields
available.
Quang Tri was a small airfield
13
miles from the DMZ and 25
miles from Khe Sanh. It was
too small to handle the planned volume of air traffic, so an abandoned
airfield a few miles farther north was reactivated:
Dong Ha.
10 additional C-130's and 14 crews rotated in from CCK. Flights
to Quang Tri
and Dong Ha started running 24 hours a day on January 27th.
My first mission to Quang Tri was two days
later and
to Dong Ha 3 days after that.
C-130's completed a
total
of
247
sorties
to these airfields by
February
7th.
(A
year
later
both Quang Tri and Dong Ha were
overrun by the North Vietnamese.)
Phase 2: Khe Sanh (Ham Ngai)
The Khe Sanh airfield was an ideal jumping-off point for the Lam Son
719 invasion because it was just
10
miles from the
Laotian border. But the old airstrip was unusable.
Friendly artillery was always a hazard in Vietnam, and our navigators
spent much of their time inflight
contacting
artillery sites to verify
that they were not firing into the path we planned to fly
through.
Khe Sanh could
only accommodate a few
C-130's on the ground, so inbound
flights had to be paced according to ground turnaround time.
During peak operations, C-130's landed and took off
every 8 minutes.
The airspace around Khe Sanh was swarming with Army helicopters.
Each did his own thing and paid little attention C-130 traffic or the
tower.
C-141 Support
During this time, most Vietnam C-130 sorties were dedicated to Lam
Son 719 and there weren't enough airplanes or crews to cover the
routine passenger and cargo runs. So
MAC
C-141A's
were brought in to handle these non-combat-essential sorties to
large airfields around Vietnam.
