The tactics and technologies of modern air assault – vertical deployment of troops by helicopter or similar means – emerged properly during the 1950s in Korea and Algeria. Yet it was during the Vietnam War that helicopter air assault truly came of age and by 1965 the United States had established fully airmobile battalions, brigades, and divisions, including the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).This division brought to Vietnam a revolutionary new speed and dexterity in battlefield tactics, using massed helicopters to liberate its soldiers from traditional overland methods of combat manoeuvre. However, the communist troops adjusted their own thinking to handle airmobile assaults. Specializing in ambush, harassment, infiltration attacks, and small-scale attrition, the North Vietnamese operated with light logistics and a deep familiarity with the terrain. They optimized their defensive tactics to make landing zones as hostile as possible for assaulting US troops, and from 1966 worked to draw them into 'Hill Traps', extensive kill zones specially prepared for defence-in-depth. By the time the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) withdrew from Vietnam in 1972, it had suffered more casualties than any other US Army division. Featuring specially commissioned artwork, archive photographs, and full-colour battle maps, this study charts the evolution of US airmobile tactics pitted against North Vietnamese countermeasures. The two sides are analysed in detail, including training, logistics, weaponry, and organization.

The tactics and technologies of modern air assault – vertical deployment of troops by helicopter or similar means – emerged properly during the 1950s in Korea and Algeria. Yet it was during the Vietnam War that helicopter air assault truly came of age and by 1965 the United States had established fully airmobile battalions, brigades, and divisions, including the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).This division brought to Vietnam a revolutionary new speed and dexterity in battlefield tactics, using massed helicopters to liberate its soldiers from traditional overland methods of combat manoeuvre. However, the communist troops adjusted their own thinking to handle airmobile assaults. Specializing in ambush, harassment, infiltration attacks, and small-scale attrition, the North Vietnamese operated with light logistics and a deep familiarity with the terrain. They optimized their defensive tactics to make landing zones as hostile as possible for assaulting US troops, and from 1966 worked to draw them into 'Hill Traps', extensive kill zones specially prepared for defence-in-depth. By the time the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) withdrew from Vietnam in 1972, it had suffered more casualties than any other US Army division. Featuring specially commissioned artwork, archive photographs, and full-colour battle maps, this study charts the evolution of US airmobile tactics pitted against North Vietnamese countermeasures. The two sides are analysed in detail, including training, logistics, weaponry, and organization.

This military history chronicles the combat operations of the Blackhorse Regiment, which paved the way for armored cavalry tactics in the Vietnam War. South Vietnam, September 1966. When the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment came ashore at Vung Tau, it faced a number of challenges. In addition to the threat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, the terrain and weather posed their own dangers, adversely affecting the use of bulletproof vehicles and helicopters. The dearth of doctrine and tactics for the employment of armored cavalry in a counterinsurgency was equally challenging—especially during pre-deployment training and initial combat operations. But despite all this, the leaders of Blackhorse Regiment found a way to accomplish their mission. Within a year of their arrival in Vietnam, Blackhorse troopers overcame ambushes that featured anti-tank weapons, numerous landmines, and coordinated assaults. They not only defeated an enemy division twice their size, but also demonstrated how to succeed while operating on and off the roads, in the jungle, and during both the wet and dry seasons. By the spring of 1967, army leaders were beginning to realize the value of troops stationed in Vietnam. And with the Blackhorse Regiment leading the way, armor came to be considered an essential part of the combat team. Written by a Blackhorse veteran, this regiment history features firsthand accounts from soldiers who served in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Using firsthand accounts from Vietnam soldiers, this book “tells it like it is, warts and all . . . [an] honest account of a cavalry squadron’s experience” (Military Review). The 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, of the 1st Armored Division deployed to Vietnam from Fort Hood, Texas, in August 1967. Search and Destroy covers the 1/1’s harrowing first year and a half of combat in the war’s toughest area of operations: I Corps. The book takes readers into the savage action at infamous places like Tam Ky, the Que Son Valley, the Pineapple Forest, Hill 34, and Cigar Island, chronicling General Westmoreland’s search-and-destroy war of attrition against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. Exploring the gray areas of guerrilla war, military historian Keith Nolan details moments of great compassion toward the Vietnamese, but also eruptions of My Lai-like violence, the grimmer aspects of the 1/1’s successes. Search and Destroy is a rare account of an exemplary fighting force in action, a dramatic close-up look at the Vietnam War. “Nolan’s research, his comprehension of the political as well as the military actions, his careful concern for those who were there, and, most of all, his writing, are superb.” —Stephen Ambrose

This study explains how the armies of North and South Vietnam, newly equipped with the most modern Soviet and US tanks and weaponry, fought the decisive armored battles of the Easter Offensive. Wearied by years of fighting against Viet Cong guerillas and North Vietnamese regulars, the United States had almost completely withdrawn its forces from Vietnam by early 1972. Determined to halt the expansion and improvement of South Vietnamese forces under the U.S. “Vietnamization” program, North Vietnam launched a major fourteen-division attack in March 1972 against the South that became known as the “Easter Offensive.” Hanoi's assault was spearheaded by 1,200 tanks and was counteracted on the opposite side by Saigon's newly equipped armored force using U.S. medium tanks. The result was ferocious fighting between major Cold War-era U.S. and Soviet tanks and mechanized equipment, pitting M-48 medium and M-41 light tanks against their T- 54 and PT-76 rivals in a variety of combat environments ranging from dense jungle to urban terrain. Both sides employed cutting-edge weaponry for the first time, including the U.S. TOW and Soviet 9M14 Malyutk wire-guided anti-tank missiles. This volume examines the tanks, armored forces and weapons that clashed in this little-known campaign in detail, using after-action reports from the battlefield and other primary sources to analyze the technical and organizational factors that shaped the outcome. Despite the ARVN's defensive success in October 1972, North Vietnam massively expanded its armor forces over the next two years while U.S. support waned. This imbalance with key strategic misjudgments by the South Vietnamese President led to the stunning defeat of the South in 1975 when T54 tanks crashed through the fence surrounding the Presidential palace and took Saigon on 30 April 1975.

Published to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Tet Offensive, this new paperback edition brings back into print a book that became an essential source for a 2006 study of the battle by the U.S. Army s Center of Military History. It takes a critical look at what went wrong in early 1968 during one of the first engagements of Tet, when a U.S. infantry battalion was ordered to attack a large North Vietnamese force near Hue City without air or artillery support. The tragic military foul-up resulted in over 60 percent casualties for the 2d Battalion, 12th Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, when the soldiers were surrounded by the enemy and began running out of ammunition. The bold decision by battalion commander Lt. Col. Richard Sweet to break out with his remaining soldiers under cover of darkness saved this encirclement from being a total disaster. Author Charles Krohn, the unit s intelligence officer at the time, provides a much-needed analysis of what took place and fills his account with details that have been confirmed as factual by other survivors. Krohn examines the battalion s involvement in two other major attacks for lessons learned when vital systems break down lessons, he says, that are timeless and applicable anywhere. This book is published in cooperation with the Association of the United States Army.

The Pleiku campaign of October–November 1965 was a major event in the Vietnam War, and it is usually regarded as the first substantial battle between the US Army and the People's Army of Vietnam. The brigade-sized actions involving elements of the US 1st Cavalry Division at Landing Zones X-Ray and Albany in the valley of the river Drang have become iconic episodes in the military history of the United States. In 1965, in an effort to stem the Communist tide, the Americans began to commit substantial conventional ground forces to the war in Vietnam. Amongst these was the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), a new type of formation equipped with a large fleet of helicopters. On 19 October, North Vietnamese forces besieged a Special Forces camp at Plei Me, and after the base was relieved days later, the commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, General Harry Kinnard, advocated using his troops to pursue the retreating Communist forces. A substantial North Vietnamese concentration was discovered, but rather than the badly battered troops the US expected, these were relatively fresh troops that had recently arrived in the Central Highlands. On the morning of 14 November 1965, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, commanded by Lt. Col. Hal Moore, landed at LZ X-Ray to start the first major set-piece battle of the Vietnam War. This title explores the events of the campaign that followed, using detailed maps, specially-commissioned bird's-eye views, and full-colour battlescenes to bring the narrative to life.