Hamburger Hill

Informationen zum Autor Samuel Zaffiri is a military historian and a former soldier. He is the author of Westmoreland: A Biography of General William C. Westmoreland and Hamburger Hill: The Brutal Battle for Dong Ap Bia, May 1120, 1969 . Klappentext The battle for Ap Bia Mountain (Hill 937), was one of the fiercest of the entire Vietnam War.CHAPTER 1 APACHE SNOW H-hour for Operation Apache Snow was scheduled for 0710 hours. May 10, 1969, though parts of the operation had already been in progress for fifteen days. Daily between April 25 and May 9, Air Force CI30s had been prepping thirty possible landing zones in the A Shau Valley with daisy-cutters, giant 15,000-pound bombs designed to explode just above the ground, clearing away all trees and vegetation without cratering the LZ. To confuse the North Vietnamese as to the actual locations of the combat assault, the thirty LZs were scattered randomly across the entire length of the valley, from the southern plains around the abandoned American Special Forces camp to the far northern valley below Dong So Ridge. Of the thirty LZs, only five would actually be used this day. 0600 Hours, LZ 2, Dong Ap Bia The Montagnard tribes in the area called it the mountain of the crouching beast, though there is no mention in their oral traditions that explains why. On maps of Vietnam, it is labeled simply Dong Ap Bia or Ap Bia Mountain. Unlike most other mountains on the western side of the A Shau, it is not part of a larger chain, but stands alone, 970 meters above sea level at its peak, bordered on the west by the Trung Pham River and the Laotian border, on the north by Dong So Ridge, and on the south by the Rao Lao River. From this peak, like the tendrils of some giant sea creature, a number of large ridges and fingers and a labyrinth of deep ravines and wide draws branch out in all directions. Two of these ridgesHill 937 on the north and Hill 916 on the southeastform mountains of their own, and, like all the rest of Dong Ap Bia, lie under a thick, double- and triple-canopy jungle. Under this canopywhich in places rises to heights of two hundred feet grow layers of smaller trees, all interwoven with a tangle of vines, thick brush, and almost impenetrable stands of bamboo. The OD green UH-ID Command and Control helicopter arrived over the mountain just after first light. Lt. Col. Weldon Honeycutt, the commander of the 3/187th, sat in the back of the ship before a bank of radios. Next to him sat his sergeant major, Bernie Meehan; and next to him, Capt. James Deleathe, the artillery liaison officer. The 3/187th was one of the five battalions that would be combat-assaulting into the northern A Shau Valley, and Honeycutt had arrived to direct the prep of its LZ before the landing. The pilot, with his ship at one thousand feet, flew across the mountain from southeast to northeast, then back in the opposite direction. On the second pass, a heavy machine gun opened up on the ship from a position somewhere on the southwest slope of the mountain. The bullets made a thackthack sound as they passed under the ship's rotors. The door gunner on the left side of the ship tensed and brought his M60 machine gun around, looking for the telltale sign of a muzzle flash, but whoever had fired had slipped back into cover. The pilot circled the mountain for a while and then followed a large ridge northwest for eighteen hundred meters, until he came over the small field that would be used as the LZ for Honeycutt's battalion in less than two hours. The field, covered by waist-high elephant grass and a few stunted bushes, stood in sharp contrast to the towering jungle that ringed it like the walls of a stockade. It was a deep Indochina jungle, a triple-canopy rain forest that, except for the breaks of a few narrow valleys, flowed on without interruption for miles in all directions. Most of the trees...

Autorentext
Samuel Zaffiri is a military historian and a former soldier. He is the author of Westmoreland: A Biography of General William C. Westmoreland and Hamburger Hill: The Brutal Battle for Dong Ap Bia, May 11–20, 1969.

Klappentext
The battle for Ap Bia Mountain (Hill 937), was one of the fiercest of the entire Vietnam War.

Zusammenfassung
The battle for Ap Bia Mountain (Hill 937), was one of the fiercest of the entire Vietnam War.

Leseprobe
CHAPTER 1
 
APACHE SNOW
 
H-hour for Operation Apache Snow was scheduled for 0710 hours. May 10, 1969, though parts of the operation had already been in progress for fifteen days. Daily between April 25 and May 9, Air Force CI30s had been “prepping” thirty possible landing zones in the A Shau Valley with daisy-cutters, giant 15,000-pound bombs designed to explode just above the ground, clearing away all trees and vegetation without cratering the LZ. To confuse the North Vietnamese as to the actual locations of the combat assault, the thirty LZs were scattered randomly across the entire length of the valley, from the southern plains around the abandoned American Special Forces camp to the far northern valley below Dong So Ridge. Of the thirty LZs, only five would actually be used this day.
 
0600 Hours, LZ 2, Dong Ap Bia
 
The Montagnard tribes in the area called it “the mountain of the crouching beast,” though there is no mention in their oral traditions that explains why. On maps of Vietnam, it is labeled simply Dong Ap Bia or Ap Bia Mountain. Unlike most other mountains on the western side of the A Shau, it is not part of a larger chain, but stands alone, 970 meters above sea level at its peak, bordered on the west by the Trung Pham River and the Laotian border, on the north by Dong So Ridge, and on the south by the Rao Lao River. From this peak, like the tendrils of some giant sea creature, a number of large ridges and fingers and a labyrinth of deep ravines and wide draws branch out in all directions. Two of these ridges—Hill 937 on the north and Hill 916 on the southeast—form mountains of their own, and, like all the rest of Dong Ap Bia, lie under a thick, double- and triple-canopy jungle. Under this canopy—which in places rises to heights of two hundred feet— grow layers of smaller trees, all interwoven with a tangle of vines, thick brush, and almost impenetrable stands of bamboo.
 
The OD green UH-ID Command and Control helicopter arrived over the mountain just after first light. Lt. Col. Weldon Honeycutt, the commander of the 3/187th, sat in the back of the ship before a bank of radios. Next to him sat his sergeant major, Bernie Meehan; and next to him, Capt. James Deleathe, the artillery liaison officer. The 3/187th was one of the five battalions that would be combat-assaulting into the northern A Shau Valley, and Honeycutt had arrived to direct the prep of its LZ before the landing.
 
The pilot, with his ship at one thousand feet, flew across the mountain from southeast to northeast, then back in the opposite direction. On the second pass, a heavy machine gun opened up on the ship from a position somewhere on the southwest slope of the mountain. The bullets made a thackthack sound as they passed under the ship’s rotors. The door gunner on the left side of the ship tensed and brought his M60 machine gun around, looking for the telltale sign of a muzzle flash, but whoever had fired had slipped back into cover.
 
The pilot circled the mountain for a while and then followed a large ridge northwest for eighteen hundred meters, until he came over the small field that would be used as the LZ for Honeycutt’s battalion in less than two hours. The field, covered by waist-high elephant grass and a few stunted bushes, stood in sharp contrast to the towering jungle that ringed it like the walls of a stockade. It was a deep Indochina…

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