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Ian and I have come to the end of our Nijmegen game and now Ian has agreed to play the NLF side in a game of CSV. I've already created the challenge for both sides so he has his choice really but I hear that he's chosen the NLF side which is fine by me. I rather like to work with units whose names I reccognize from my years over there. I want to SouthEast Asia twice and I have a lot of war stories I'd like to publish in this AAR if that's okay with you guys.

This is a picture of Charles Frederic Fenter, airman first class. This picture came from my camera because he gave me a ride over to the civilian side of the base ( Ubon, Thailand ) so I could catch the big silver bird back to the world and I asked him to stand still for a minute so I could take a picture of him. We were living in the same barracks and he came to see me often. We were friends. He saw I was going to take a picture of him and struck this pose. I took the picture of Freddy and this one stripper MP dude said that he had to have my film since I took a picture of the flightline. I had my flight suit on and he could see that I was an aircrew member and so was Freddy and I just stared at him and eventually he turned around and walked away. So I got to keep my picture of Freddy.

Freddy was shot down in December of 1972 while I was at home on emergency leave so I always think of it as he took my place on one of the missions and now he's dead. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I went to see his mother, he lived in Tucson, and she took my picture and we talked about Freddy a while. I was glad I went to see her. Give her some closure, you know.

It seems that his plane was over some classified area in northern Laos and a radar-guided gun came on line all of a sudden, painted the sky for about a second and a half, ascertained the position of the AC-130, and fired soon thereafter so the crew had no time to react and the shells hit the plane in the left wing root severing a fuel manifold. Jet fuel poured out of the wing tank into the crew compartment and soon everybody was ankle deep in JP-4. They threw some chaff out the windows and launched a chaff flare [ non-illuminating, just spreads chaff ] and they flew clear of the area and started the journey back to the base. Everybody in the back put on their parachutes and stood by the ramp just in case the bail out bell rang anytime soon. They got within about 50 miles of Ubon near Pakse, Laos and the plane was engulfed in flames and the guys in the back were blown out the rear of the plane. Freddy has been listed on the missing in action rolls ever since that night. He's been promoted along with his peers and now is a Master Sargent. Good for him. There was a survivor from the crash that relayed all this information.

I expect Ian to accept my challenge any time now. He and I are in alternate time zones and he's probably asleep right now. We'll have to wait.

On the left side of the map in the off-map area are some playing aids and game system units. And some bases in Thailand and on the far right side in the middle are the bases of Guam and the Phillippines and everything in between is the battlefield. I see some red units already on the map. They are probably out of country and I probably can't get at them. I've got 4 squadrons of SVN A-1E's near Saigon and one squadron of SVN F-5's in the north country. I'm using the A-1's as CS and the F-5's as AS. The NLF has a squadron of Mig-17's probably. Or Mig-21's I'm not sure. For the NLF to capture Saigon is an instant victory for Ian so I'm probably going to hang around the Saigon area a lot. I need to disband some of the game system units to get more planes and troops in-country. When I flew to Vietnam the first time in Nov. of 1970 I arrived at the 90th Replacement Depot at Bien Hoa and was assigned as a weapons mechanic to work at Bien Hoa, near Saigon. It so near Saigon that it's near the Mekong river which runs through Saigon. A weapons mechainic is the guy who loads bombs and bullets on the planes.

The VC are overrunning the south and it's going to take a huge effort to clear out the delta. During the early war phase I'm going to leave the mountains to the bad guys and try to clear out the coastal roads and rails and get some security built into the areas around the airbases.

At Bien Hoa there would be midnight rocket attacks every week. Once a week. The search helicopters would launch while the sirens were wailing and lights would go on all around the perimeter and the whole thing would be over in about half an hour. And we'd go back to work. Usually about 02:00 in the morning or so. They were shooting 122mm rockets and every once in a rare while mortars. Several people were killed while I was there at Bien Hoa.

This should be a good game.

Hi Larry.

Please do post such tales...it shows the sacrifice many of your generation made and brings a whole new feeling to the AAR. Thanks for sharing it .[&o]

As far as my first turn goes I had little to do with just two VC battalions mobilised in the far South West in Chong Thien province so I try to make a nuisance blowing some bridges and then hopefully disappearing into the heat haze.

A start is made on improving the Ho Chi Minh trail and my few Mig 17's wait nervously in Hanoi to get hammered !



I haven't played this scenario at all before but I will give it my best shot and I do love the sound of all the different options...

I will go into strategic thinking in a turn or so once things settle down...now we wait for the US Marines to ship in....

Here's a look at the Saigon - Bien Hoa area and you can see that there's only a few units and there's a lot of terrain to search and north of Saigon is the HoBo Woods and enemy units lurk in there or did at the time. Just for safety I'd best drive some units up that way to make sure there's no bad guys there. It's just a short hop from the HoBo woods to Saigon and with so few units I might not be able to stop them right away, depending how many there are. And in the early war period there's liable to be a few. 1965 was the year that all the Army advisors became operational all over the country in a major way. They were using Army advisors since the 1950's but now they were to take operational roles with their counterparts and actually go into combat with them and help them learn how to fight the American way. If you get into an area where there's a lot of bad guys and you don't want to actually venture very far you could call up an airstrike and do some armed recon of the area. Drop a bomb and see who runs away if anybody. Actually striking potential enemy positions with arty and or air strikes instead of driving people into the area. Once the bombing stops THEN venture into the area and count the BDA if any. BDA means Bomb Damage Assessment, it's a holdover term from WWII expanded to include ground combat. The idea is to use the planes and arty to do the heavy lifting. Find the bad guys with the ground troops and then call in strikes on them, the bad guys I mean. It's a way to burn off all that KOREAN-era ammo and keep losses low.

I think I need some Marines up north near the DMZ to keep the North Vietnamese from making trouble. And I feel like I need the 1st Air Cav to operate in the middle of the country, the MACV support group which brings in a lot of helicopters, lift helicopters. I'll see if I can't use them with the SVN Rangers. And the 2nd Air group will hopefully bring in a lot of the F-100's that were ubiqutous in Vietnam. Lots of F-4's up north and lot's of F-100's all over the country. Bou Cou of them at Bien Hoa.

Here's a look at the DMZ. The ARVN 1st Division has responsibility for the DMZ and the area just south of it. I don't thlnk they are a good match for the NLF tanks and mechanized units so I'm going to delegate the Marines for responsibility for the DMZ and use the 1st ARVN division as backup. I may need to call in the 5th Mechanized Division to handle the NLF tanks depending on how bad it gets in future turns. And it can get fairly bad. We were losing a platoon of Marines per week in 1968 when I graduated high school. I got one deferment from the draft because I was a college student but I was afraid that my draft number was going to come up next so I joined the Air Force on 04Nov68 and started active duty. I was in the Air Force for five years 10 months and 10 days. I got an early out as the war was winding down in August of 1974.

Basic Training was a breeze. Some recruit fell dead after getting a flu shot and running the obstacle course so the higher ups decreed that there should be no running on the base for any reason. So basic training was as easy as high school. Six weeks of training how to salute and march and how to wear the uniform and that's about it.

The technical school they sent me to was Lowry AFB, Colorado, where for 14 weeks they taught me how to load bombs and bullets and missiles and napalm and rockets, and mines, and some special equipment that probably shouldn't be mentioned. Fuel-air bombs that can devestate any standing structures like small villages. Instant landing zone...that sort of thing. And some equipment to rescue shot-down pilots like powders and gasses that put you to sleep etc. So they could gas the bad guys, wait for them to collapse and walk in and get the pilot out. There was some kind of blow up about it being against the Geneva convention to use gasses or powders so they decided to make it non-lethal to skirt the regulations about the Geneva convention. Chemical and biological weapons were sensitive subjects back then. Maybe it still is, I donno.

After the specialized training I was sent to Luke AFB, near Phoenix, Arizona where I was assigned to load the training F-100's with these little red 25-pound bombs that had a shotgun shell in them to mark where they hit the ground on the gunnery range. They were training the pilots in close support and they were training me to load planes. It was a win-win. I got tired of that after a while so I volunteered to take part of the Air Force acceptance of the A-7D from the Navy. This was way before the A-10 and the air force needed a ground support aircraft designed specifically for ground support and the navy had some A-7D's that they weren't using for anything so they gave them to the air force and we used a lot of them in Vietnam. After about a year of that and several promotions I volunteered to go to Vietnam and got my orders to go very soon after that. I ended up at Bien Hoa, RVN. This is the first time I went over there. I worked as a weapons mechanic loading F-100's and A-37's and OV-10's and A-1E/H's and then I heard they were needing volunteers to fly as gunners on the AC-130E/H's and I volunteered. They sent me to Hurlburt Field Florida to learn how to be an aerial gunner, how to load and unload the gun, fix it in the dark using a small mouth-held flashlight and aircrew training which involved water survival, jungle survival, escape and evading, use of the pistols they gave us and so on. I found myself going back to SouthEast Asia again in August of 1972 as an aerial gunner.

When I first arrived at Ubon, Thailand it was in the monsoon season and we would take off in the rain and follow the Mekong river over to Pakse, Laos and then follow the river all the way though Cambodia to Saigon where we would orbit for several hours on CAP. Then about 03:00 we'd land at Tan Son Nhut, there in Saigon, deplane to go to the chow hall for breakfast while they serviced the plane, refueled it, etc. and then we'd take off again about 04:30 and orbit until the sun started to come up and then fly back to Ubon. It was called the Tan Son Nhut turnaround. I did that for several months and then after I got some experience they started sending me on missions to northern Laos and deep in Cambodia and some places just south of China which they wouldn't tell us what that was all about. And we'd get shot at every night. Mostly near misses, never closer than about 50 yards away from the plane but still it was exciting. The rules of engagement were that anything that moved after dark was considered enemy. We once found a boat moving down the river and sank it. It was still burning when we returned to base several hours later. It was in the schedule for a crew to fly every other night so you could recuperate from having just spent close to 5 hours in the air getting shot at. But we enlisted men found ways to get intoxicated and have some light fun. But I ramble.

There's some blown bridges in the south, evidence that there's some VC afoot. I can't move the Ruff Puffs so he'll just have to do without some supply for a while. I need to get some engineers out there to fix the bridges to get those folks some supply. I looked through the OOB and didn't see any engineers anywhere. I'll bet some come in with the Marines though. If not I may have to look into calling in some more MACV support or something.

I found a lift helicopter unit near Saigon that has one aircraft in it. I dare not fly it for fear that it would be shot down and then the whole unit would be lost. I'll leave it on the ground for a while until I get more aircraft in that unit. Lift helicopters are good for moving the ARVN Rangers around in-country. I'll be using them a lot for this game. The 1st Cav Division has it's own organic helicopters. Which reminds me that I need some lift helicopters for the Da Nang area to move the Marines around. I'll ask for them next turn, after the marines arrive. This first turn is for me to get some units ready for action and move them to better spots and set a defensive posture. A lot of this game is me reacting to the movement of the enemy units. The playback seemed to show me two VC units operating in the Delta and not much action in the rest of the country. So far so good.

Ian and Larry,

I expect that you will produce an excellent AAR and give us all an opportunity to learn - both about the game and about history!

Thanks for sharing,

Jan '65

Most unsportingly the ARVN navy blows a VC AA unit to kingdom come when it was putting its feet up on the Cambodian coast but otherwise my couple of VC battalions operating in the south west are left unscathed and this turn they are joined by a small artilery unit which lobs a few shells at ARVN units near Hue causing 10% casualties.

In the south west meanwhile more bridges are blown as I try to strangle supply from isolated ARVN units in pro VC areas.

A full strength VC regiment in the shape of the 271st arrives from Cambodia and rail engineers fail miserably to improve the Ho Chi Minh trail...

Spies note ARVN troops concentrating just south of the DMZ in the north and NVA Divisions are redeployed as a response...

The news feed shows a significant ramp up of US forces early on...the 1st Marine Divn,MAF Support Group,1st Air Cavalry MACV Support Group and 2nd Air Divn are all shown as arriving in theatre...if the blown bridges are indeed responsible for Larry calling on the MACV Support Group I am happy with that......these moves...if I am reading it right........ indicate a +36 to EEV levels.

ORIGINAL: MikeJ19

Ian and Larry,

I expect that you will produce an excellent AAR and give us all an opportunity to learn - both about the game and about history!

Thanks for sharing,

Thanks Mike...

Any learning will be from Larry's direction.........

As a typical insular Brit my knowledge of the Vietnam War is less than encyclopaedic [:)]

Ian,

I do not know much more as a northern neighbour to the Americans...

T2
That one medium lift helicopter unit that had a single aircraft in the entire unit now has a second one. That kind of distribution feels like we're low on med. helicopters. So I went to the inventory and discovered that the unit received 25% of everything that was on hand and that's respectable, and it's true that there's not many in the inventory. I'll have to wait until the 1st Cav arrives in-country before there will be lots of lift helicopters. I just now made 5 of them and 1 of them got distributed to the unit and now there's 20 assigned total. That's not a lot. I'll have to find out where they all are before I get too far along this turn.

We had a visit from the VC last night and they dropped a bridge on the road leading south out of the complex and I drove the MACV unit down there to repair the bridge because I need that bridge to be working for the plans I have. I see neither hide nor hair of the VC unit that dropped the bridge so I'm guessing he disbanded after dropping the bridge. Just in case, I'm going to send some MP's down to clear out the area around the bridge. In fact, it might not be a bad idea to station them ON the bridge so that a second visit from the VC won't drop the bridge.

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

T2
That one medium lift helicopter unit that had a single aircraft in the entire unit now has a second one. That kind of distribution feels like we're low on med. helicopters. So I went to the inventory and discovered that the unit received 25% of everything that was on hand and that's respectable, and it's true that there's not many in the inventory. I'll have to wait until the 1st Cav arrives in-country before there will be lots of lift helicopters. I just now made 5 of them and 1 of them got distributed to the unit and now there's 20 assigned total. That's not a lot. I'll have to find out where they all are before I get too far along this turn.

We had a visit from the VC last night and they dropped a bridge on the road leading south out of the complex and I drove the MACV unit down there to repair the bridge because I need that bridge to be working for the plans I have. I see neither hide nor hair of the VC unit that dropped the bridge so I'm guessing he disbanded after dropping the bridge. Just in case, I'm going to send some MP's down to clear out the area around the bridge. In fact, it might not be a bad idea to station them ON the bridge so that a second visit from the VC won't drop the bridge.

Disbanded Larry ? You have been misinformed...most of the unit are even now hard at work as barmen in US Marine frequented bars in Saigon.......[;)]

So I looked up the location of all the medium lift helicopters and found out that besides the two that are based near Saigon, the rest of them belong to the 1st Cav and they rotated out of the Phillippines and are in-country this turn, it's just that I haven't decided where to put them yet. Originally I planned on using them in the I Drang area, in the mountains because they have the most mobility of any of the units and could round up the bad guys in the mountains better than any other unit but now I'm seeing VC raiders in the Saigon area and I'd like to get that whole area sanitized and the 1st Cav would be ideal for that too. I'll leave the mountains for later, right now I need the roads and rails cleared for the flow of supply to all the units. Keeping the roads cleared might be trying to roll a bolder up a hill in terms of effort required. I can't count on the ARVN to pull much of the load with the single exception of the ARVN Rangers. Trained by American Rangers in the same Ranger school American Rangers graduate from they are some of the best of the ARVN units. I can usually count on them. They are a valuable asset. I counted 5 Ranger groups, units, in the OOB and I need to get all 5 busy if possible.

I looked over the units in the Phillippines and found a unit that's pure trucks. Almost a thousand trucks. And the inventory says we're just about out of trucks so I'm going to have to disband that unit to get a lot of trucks into the on-hand column so that the units that lose one will have one almost instantly, and it looks like I've already lost one. I guess that's when I moved MACV south to repair the bridge. One of their trucks must have blown a head gasket or something.

EDIT: I checked out the MACV HQ unit and it doesn't have any trucks for equipment so the one lost truck didn't come from it. I'll check the recent battles panel and see who's been in combat recently.

So I drove some MP's to a spot that looked suspecious and sure enough there's a VC in the hex. I'll have to get busy and surround that bad boy and kill it. Luckily, I have the entire 1st Cav Division to do the job.

I found the unit that lost a truck. It's one of the regiments of the ARVN 1st Infantry Division near Hue and they lost more than just a truck. I hate when that happens. Often they can shoot off some 140mm rockets and then disband or disappear into the jungle and leave me without a chance to shoot back but not this time. He's still on the map and vulnerable to air strikes and some ARVN Rangers can look into the situation for me.

So the 51st Regiment is split into three parts and they move into positions surrounding the VC rocket unit. Now my task is to find some more units yet to make sure he doesn't get away. I think if I surrround him he won't be able to disband in his turn I'm thinking. That's the theory.

It turns out that it's raining in the target's hex and that's probably going to attenuate the bombing results of any airstrikes I lay on. I'll have to fly more than one aircraft to give enough juice to destroy the rocket unit.