Khe Sanh and the 26th Marines, 1968

The trench line of the 1st Battalion, 26th Marines at Khe Sanh, 1968. Photo: Michael Braukus Collection, USMC Archives, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The Vietnam War · People and units

Khe Sanh and the 26th Marines

Seventy-seven days on a plateau near the Laotian border: a Marine regiment, the hills around it, the aircraft that kept it alive and the question of whose trap it was.

21 January – 15 April 1968Khe Sanh Combat Base · Hills 861, 881S, 950 · Lang Vei · Route 9~12 min read

Khe Sanh lies on a plateau in the north-western corner of South Vietnam’s Quảng Trị Province, a few miles from the border with Laos and some 15 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone. Route 9, the old colonial road from the coast to Laos, ran past it. In 1967 the Marines built a combat base there with an airstrip, to watch the infiltration routes from Laos and to anchor the western end of their positions below the DMZ. In January 1968 North Vietnamese divisions surrounded it.

For 77 days, from the morning of 21 January 1968, the base and the hill outposts around it were shelled, probed and cut off by road. The garrison, the 26th Marines under Col. David E. Lownds, with the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines and the South Vietnamese 37th Ranger Battalion, held. It was supplied entirely by air, and around it American aircraft carried out one of the heaviest bombing campaigns of the war in support of a single position. The siege was lifted in April by Operation Pegasus. In July the base was abandoned and destroyed.

Khe Sanh was watched from the White House almost daily, compared in the press with the French defeat at Điện Biên Phủ, and argued over ever since: was it the target of the North Vietnamese offensive of 1968, a diversion to draw American forces away from the cities before Tet, or both? This page sets out the record. The siege in the wider story of 1968 is told in Chapter 6.

The plateau and the hills

The French had kept a fort at Khe Sanh. In 1962 American Special Forces set up a camp there to recruit and train local Bru Montagnards as Civilian Irregular Defense Group troops and to watch the trails from Laos; it later moved a few miles west to Lang Vei, on Route 9. Marine units first came to the plateau in 1966. In April and May 1967 the 3rd Marines fought the PAVN 325C Division for the hills that overlook the airstrip, 861 and the two 881s, in what the Marines call the Hill Fights. The base was then held by the 26th Marines, a regiment reactivated in 1966, under Colonel Lownds from August 1967.

Through late 1967 American intelligence detected North Vietnamese divisions moving toward Khe Sanh. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, commanding MACV, reinforced the base rather than withdraw. He believed it was needed to block infiltration and for possible future operations into Laos, and he wanted the enemy to attack it, where American firepower could be concentrated against massed troops.

21 January: the siege begins

Before dawn on 21 January 1968 the PAVN attacked Hill 861 and began shelling the main base. One of the first rounds hit the base’s main ammunition dump, which exploded and burned for hours, destroying much of the garrison’s stock of shells. The same day North Vietnamese troops attacked Khe Sanh village, where the district headquarters held out until it was evacuated. From then on the base and the hill outposts were under fire day and night from artillery, rockets and mortars, some of the heaviest guns firing from positions in Laos out of reach of the Marines’ own artillery.

Seventy-seven days

Holding the hills

The outposts on Hills 861, 861A, 881S, 558 and 950 were the base’s eyes. Without them the North Vietnamese could have looked down on the airstrip from close range. They were held by companies of the 26th Marines throughout the siege and could be supplied only by helicopter, often under fire from the surrounding ridges. From late February the Marines flew supplies in under the “Super Gaggle” system, in which A-4 Skyhawks laid smoke and suppressed the guns while a large flight of CH-46 helicopters dropped in to the hill tops at the same moment.

The ARVN 37th Ranger Battalion held the eastern end of the perimeter, facing the main North Vietnamese approach trenches. South Vietnamese soldiers fought at Khe Sanh throughout the siege, a fact often left out of American accounts.

Supplied from the air

With Route 9 cut, everything came by air: ammunition, food, water, fuel, replacements, and the evacuation of the wounded. Air Force C-130s and C-123s and Marine KC-130s landed on the strip under fire until losses forced a change of method; after that much of the cargo came by parachute, and by the low-altitude parachute extraction system, in which a C-130 flew a few feet above the runway and a parachute pulled the load out of its open ramp. Transport crews of the Air Force, the Marines and the Army flew through the siege, and aircraft were lost on the strip and on approach.

Operation Niagara

Around the base Westmoreland’s headquarters directed Operation Niagara, the concentration of Air Force, Navy and Marine fighter-bombers and B-52 bombers against the North Vietnamese positions, guided by ground sensors dropped along the approaches and by radar. B-52 “Arc Light” strikes were brought closer to friendly lines than ever before. The tonnage dropped during the siege is usually given as about 100,000 tons; the exact figure depends on the period and the aircraft counted. How many North Vietnamese soldiers were killed by the bombing is not known. American intelligence estimated 10,000 to 15,000 dead; 1,602 bodies were counted.

Washington watches

In Washington, Khe Sanh became a symbol. Newspapers and television compared it with Điện Biên Phủ, where an isolated French garrison had been destroyed in 1954. President Johnson followed the siege daily; he had a terrain model of the plateau built for the White House Situation Room and, according to several accounts, asked the Joint Chiefs for assurances in writing that the base would hold. Westmoreland was confident that it would, and that it offered the chance of inflicting a heavy defeat on massed North Vietnamese divisions.

Pegasus and after

Operation Pegasus began on 1 April 1968. The 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), with Marine battalions and a South Vietnamese airborne task force, leapfrogged west along Route 9 by helicopter, building landing zones and firebases as it went, while engineers repaired the road. There was less resistance than expected: by then most of the North Vietnamese forces had withdrawn. Cavalry troopers reached the base on 8 April, Route 9 was open on 11 April, and Pegasus ended on 15 April. The Texas Tech Vietnam Center gives its cost as 92 Americans killed, 667 wounded and five missing, and 33 South Vietnamese killed.

On 23 May 1968 President Johnson attached the Presidential Unit Citation streamer to the colours of the 26th Marines at the White House. A month later, under Westmoreland’s successor Gen. Creighton Abrams, the decision was taken to abandon the base; the Marines destroyed it and withdrew by 6 July. Hanoi presented the withdrawal as a victory.

Whose trap?

The argument over Khe Sanh has never been settled. One view, held by Westmoreland and many Marines, is that Hanoi meant to take the base, as it had taken Điện Biên Phủ, and was defeated by American firepower and the garrison’s endurance. A second view is that the siege was a deliberate diversion that drew American attention and reserves to the remote north-west just before the Tet Offensive struck the cities. A third, increasingly common among historians, is that Hanoi kept both options open and that Khe Sanh served as both a lure and an opportunity. Vietnamese accounts present the campaign as part of the general offensive and claim victory.