"Attleboro Battered Reds' Supply System"

Saigon--More than 1,000 communists were killed in 43 days of bitter fighting, but U.S. military spokesmen say the most significant result of Operation Attleboro was the severe blow struck against the communists' supply system. The operation was officially ended Friday. The Reds lost some 2,400 tons of precious rice that was to feed their troops for months. They also lost more than 25,000 grenades, 127 individual weapons, 19 crew-served weapons, more than 1,000 pounds of ammunition, bombs, clothing, cooking oil, bicycles, tobacco, fifth and other food supplies.

The final toll of communist troops was 1,106 killed, 44 captured and 60 suspects detained. Nine base camps were destroyed, as were 260 buildings, 124 tunnels or caves and 502 bunkers.

Troops of the 196th Light Inf. Brigade first began uncovering stockpiled Viet Cong supplies about Nov. 1, two weeks after Attleboro began. Day after day, as they advanced through the thick jungle forests, they came upon VC camps and storage areas. At first it was considered a joke when a unit would stumble onto a large rice cache. Later, such a discovery was turned into drudgery, since the captured supplies and equipment had to be loaded and evacuated.

The first big battle of Operation Attleboro began on Thursday, Nov. 3, when A Co. of the 1st Bn., 27th Inf., 25th Inf. Div., fought an estimated company of Viet Cong and captured a jungle war factory 12 miles northeast of Tay Ninh City.

The following morning, A Co., joined now by C Co., moved out of the clearing into heavy jungle--and suddenly came under intense fire from Viet Cong well-shielded in bunkers. Both companies took heavy casualties before being reinforced by nine infantry companies rushed in by helicopter.

Within a week, the operation had become so big that 17 U.S. infantry battalions and two Republic of Vietnam Ranger battalions had been committed, with heavy support by artillery, helicopters and Air Force fighter planes and heavy bombers. At one time, the entire 1st Inf. Div. and units of the 25th Inf. Div., the 196th Light Inf. Brigade, the 173d Airborne Brigade, the 11th Armored Cav. Regt., and elements of the 2d Bn., 34th Armored, were fighting.

On 20 days of the campaign, B-52 bombers saturated suspected enemy concentrations with high-explosive bombs. And 1,571 sorties were flown against the enemy by fighter aircraft.

The enemy throughout the campaign was the 9th Viet Cong Div., reinforced by the 101st north Vietnamese Regt. No heavy contact with the enemy has been reported for more than two weeks, although there were almost daily fire fights and nightly mortar attacks.

Friday night, only 15 minutes before the operation officially closed, the Tactical Command Post of the 2d Brigade, 1st Inf. Div., was hit with 30 rounds of enemy mortar fire near Dau Tieng.

Artillery, mortars, armed helicopters and a rejuvenated old Gooney Bird with 20th Century gatling guns responded.

ATTLEBORO was to be a search and destroy operation conducted by the 196th Light Infantry Brigade in an area generally described as a rectangle twenty kilometers wide by sixty kilometers long located east and north of Tay Ninh city.

The operation was initiated by the 196th on 14 September 1966 with the airmobile assault of a single battalion followed by a search and destroy operation of but a few days in which only two significant contacts with the enemy were made. After the initial assault battalion was committed elsewhere, another battalion of the 196th continued the mission from 18 to 24 September; it made no significant contact. It, too, was diverted to another area but returned to ATTLEBORO on 6 October and conducted search and destroy operations for ten more days. During this time the battalion destroyed tunnel complexes, trenches, and fighting positions and captured two tons of rice, many documents, and some enemy arms. It was not until mid-October, as the result of a decision taken at the Military Assistance Command commanders' conference, that ATTLEBORO was expanded to a multi-battalion operation with the 196th committing two battalions to its search and destroy activities. Through the end of October action was light and sporadic with no major contact. In fact, the action was so light that between 4 October and 1 November only two immediate air strikes were called in to support the operation.

Meanwhile, the Viet Cong 9th Division was starting to stir again. After its beating in EL PASO II in June and July 1966, the 9th had withdrawn to its sanctuaries deep in War Zone C next to the Cambodian border and had retrained, re-equipped, and absorbed replacements. The plan of the 9th was to use these bases to launch a winter offensive against objectives in Tay Ninh Province. Among its objectives was to be the Special Forces camp at Suoi Da, located twelve kilometers northeast of Tay Ninh city in the shadow of Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin Mountain, which rose, as if by mistake, some three thousand feet above the surrounding plain. The division also hoped to lure some allied forces into the area in response to an attack by one of its regiments so that these forces might be ambushed by the remaining regiments of the 9th. By late October the regiments assigned to the 9th Viet Cong Division - the 271st, 272d, 273d, and the 101st North Vietnamese Regiment - had commenced deploying in War Zone C. On 28 October elements of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division made contact with a battalion of the 273d just east of the ATTLEBORO operational area. The commanding officer of one of the companies of the 101st North Vietnamese Army Regiment, captured on 8 November, revealed that his regiment had left its base area on the Cambodian border about 1 November to move south along the eastern boundary of the ATTLEBORO area toward resupply camps.

Sweeping operations by American units near Dau Tieng on 31 October uncovered a major enemy supply base. On 1 November ATTLEBORO became a brigade-size operation with the 196th Brigade assuming operational control of a battalion from the 25th Division. Two days later an airmobile assault by this battalion made contact with elements of the 9th Viet Cong Division; on the same day, 3 November, elements of the U.S. 5th Special Forces Group's mobile strike force, which had been inserted into landing zones near Suoi Da, were also engaged by forces of the 9th Division. Operation ATTLEBORO was about to erupt.

By 5 November it was apparent that a very large enemy force was involved; operational control was initially passed to Major General William E. DePuy, Commanding General, U.S. 1st Infantry Division, and subsequently to the commanding general of II Field Force. Before the operation ended on 24 November, the 1st Division, elements of the U.S. 4th and 25th Infantry Divisions, the 173d Airborne Brigade, and several South Vietnamese Army battalions were committed to it, over 22,000 U.S. and allied troops in all. It was the largest U.S. operation of the war to that time.

It was not only the number of U.S. and allied troops eventually involved which made ATTLEBORO a large operation. There was also during November a total of over 1,600 close air support sorties flown, expending nearly 12,000 tons of ordnance (225 were B-52 sorties carrying 4,000 tons). Cargo aircraft flew 3,300 sorties in transporting 8,900 tons of cargo and 11,500 passengers during the period 18 October-26 November. The enemy left 1,106 dead on the battlefield and had 44 captured. (Friendly losses were 155 killed and 494 wounded.) Later military intelligence reports confirmed the high casualties sustained by the enemy, listing 2,130 killed- including over 1,000 by air strikes, almost 900 wounded, and over 200 missing or captured. Headquarters of the Central Office of South Vietnam was reported struck by B-52 bombers on more than one occasion with the destruction of great quantities of supplies, equipment, and documents. Four Viet Cong battalion commanders and 5 company commanders were reported killed in the operation.

Not only would its' casualties pose a serious problem to the Viet Cong 9th Division, so too would the pillaging of its depot area by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. Over 2,000 tons of rice were captured, as were many tons of salt, 19,000 grenades, 500 claymore mines, and many individual and crew-served weapons. Uncovered and destroyed were regimental and battalion headquarters sites, a mine factory, and a vast tunnel complex containing immense quantities of supplies ranging from bolts of cloth to weighing scales. As General DePuy commented, "It is the largest haul we've made."

Hurting from the whipping it had taken, the 9th Division once again disappeared into its sanctuaries to lick its wounds, regroup, and reorganize. It would not be seen on the field of combat again until the spring of 1967.

Operation ATTLEBORO introduced the large-scale, multi-organization operation to the war, albeit as an accident, in response to the Viet Cong 9th Division's Tay Ninh campaign. But ATTLEBORO proved that, within a matter of hours, well-trained and professionally led organizations with proper logistic support could deploy large numbers of battalions to an active operational area and commit those battalions to immediate combat against a highly disciplined enemy. It proved that large-scale operations, perhaps involving the majority of the forces available in corps zone, have a place in modern counterinsurgency warfare and can effectively destroy large enemy forces and equipment and neutralize major base areas.

However, the next time such large forces were used in a single operation, it would not be by accident, as CEDAR FALLS and JUNCTION CITY were soon to verify.

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