The first US combat troops arrived in Vietnam on March 8, 1965. The entire world was able to watch on television the landing of the marines (the famous marines) on the beaches of Da Nang, a coastal town northern South Vietnam. Until then, Washington's presence in the country had been based mainly on advisors to help Saigon in its military operations.
It was more of a staging than an action of war. The enemy did not appear, and only the mayor and several local residents were found, who welcomed them with flowers.
Very soon the Marines discovered that they were in a war very marked by political conditions. Its main mission was to protect the large air base that the US had installed in Da Nang and provide support to the South Vietnamese allies. But the role of the North American ground troops was purely defensive, since they had explicit orders not to launch a major offensive against the communist Viet Cong guerrillas.
This is how the situation remained for several weeks. The commanding officer of the Marine Corps, General Wallace M. Green, verbalized his men's exasperation at taking action by saying that “the mission of the Marines is to kill Viet Cong.”
The US had come to the aid of its ally, South Vietnam, which was only accumulating defeats against the forces of Hanoi and the guerrillas. Washington needed to demonstrate that his troops could be useful, and he encouraged commanders on the ground to be more active in the fight against the communists. The intention was to carry out the first major operation with the exclusive participation of Uncle Sam's soldiers.
On the ground, political pressures resulted in General William Westmoreland, commander in chief of US forces in the Asian country, urging the Marines to devise plans to attack their opponents.
With the offensive vocation that has always characterized the Marine Corps, the leathernecks (the nickname by which the Marines have been known since the US War of Independence) gladly accepted the change of orders. But the enemy continued to be elusive. The only action those troops saw were brief firefights with the Viet Cong during jungle patrols.
The elusive attitude of the guerrillas was explained because they were testing the US troops. U.S. forces had limited the chances of a quick Communist victory, but the Viet Cong did not want to sit idly by. The idea of the insurgency was to strike a big blow to show Washington that she was willing to face a long and costly war.
The target chosen by the communists was the North American base of Chu Lai, a facility near Da Nang. Preparations for the attack were secret, but in August 1965, US intelligence intercepted guerrilla communications. He even identified the forces involved: the 1st Vietcong Regiment. It was a hard-working unit, with officers experienced in the war against the French (1945-1954) and, more recently, in actions against the South Vietnamese.
The Americans handled the data they obtained with great care. They did not want to reveal that they had obtained them by intercepting enemy communications, but instead told their South Vietnamese allies that they had collected them thanks to a Viet Cong deserter. There were well-founded suspicions among US commanders that many officials in Saigon worked for the Communists.
On August 15, American intelligence refined further, determining the location of the 1st Vietcong Regiment: the Vân Tuóng Peninsula. It was a place very close to Da Nang, so Lieutenant General Lewis Walt, commander of the Marines in Vietnam, did not hesitate for a moment: his men would strike first.
The Marine Corps did not stop at words, and, in a display of the tactical flexibility they boasted, in just forty-eight hours they presented a plan to trap and eliminate the bulk of the 1st Viet Cong Regiment.
From the outset, the first major American military action in Vietnam was going to be named Operation Satellite. But there was a power outage in the bunker for the staff typing the documents, so they had to work by candlelight. The poor visibility caused an administrator to transcribe the name wrong, which ended up being “Starlite.”
The situation looked favorable for the marines. Not only did they have detailed information, but the enemy was confident because they believed that the Americans did not have enough helicopters to attack Vân Tuóng. The insurgency estimated that any US approach would be by land, giving them time to escape. They did not expect that they were facing marines.
The Viet Cong were right: the Marines did not have enough air transport. However, the Americans had other cards up their sleeves. A part of their forces would go by helicopter, but the rest would take advantage of the fact that Vân Tuóng was a peninsula to make a landing. This would trap the 1st Regiment between two forces.
In total, for the first phase of the operation, the Marines mobilized three battalions, about 3,300 men. One of them would be in charge of the heliborne assault, another would have responsibility for the landing and a third remained in reserve.
Operation Starlite began on August 18, 1965. Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Regiment were the first to go into action, landing on the beaches near the village of An Cuóng at first light in the morning. Unlike other amphibious assaults seen previously, there was no prior bombing to avoid endangering civilians. The Marines' mission was to locate the headquarters of the Viet Cong forces in the area.
The communist forces were surprised by the arrival of the amphibious armored vehicles and deployed hasty resistance that did not prevent the marines from taking control of the beaches with relative ease.
Shortly afterwards, to cut off the retreat of the communist forces from An Cuóng, the aforementioned airborne assault took place. The Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Regiment descended on three points: LZ Red, LZ White and LZ Blue (LZ). The first two were easy to secure after receiving only light weapons fire, which seemed to confirm that the Viet Cong were going to flee as they had done to date.
But everything changed in the LZ Blue. Convinced that the enemy would retreat, the marines attempted to take two objectives at once: the strategic Hill 43 and the village of Nam Yên. Suddenly, the American advance was stopped by fierce resistance from the fighters of the 1st Regiment, who had camouflaged bunkers as cabins. From them they unleashed intense machine gun fire on the surprised marines.
On the coast, the situation also began to get complicated for the Americans. After the initial surprise, a Viet Cong officer, Lieutenant Phan Tan Huan, organized a group of his best men and held off the Marine advance, giving them time to evacuate the 1st Regiment headquarters.
Little by little, throughout the 18th, the Marines imposed their greatest firepower thanks to the landing of more armored vehicles and tanks. Air and artillery support was also essential to defeat the Vietcong. Despite their inferiority in resources, the guerrilla achieved notable successes against the helicopters: they shot down one aircraft and half suffered serious damage at the end of the first day of operations.
During the night of August 18 to 19, the Vietcong took the opportunity to withdraw from Vân Tuóng, after suffering six hundred deaths in combat with the marines. The American ranks recorded fifty-four dead and about two hundred wounded. US senior commanders were satisfied with the casualties inflicted on the enemy and the territory they had secured. Lieutenant General Walt sent two reinforcement battalions to pursue the guerrillas.
These reinforcement troops were unsuccessful and only fought brief skirmishes in the following days. Despite confirming the flight of the 1st Vietcong Regiment, General Westmoreland accepted the results of Operation Starlite as good, especially due to the number of casualties, and presented it as a victory. This optimism of the military leader was based on his firm defense of the “body count” doctrine, which measured the success of an operation based on the deaths inflicted on the enemy.
On the political front, President Lyndon B. Johnson was also delighted with the operation. Direct intervention in Vietnam finally offered tangible fruits and reversed the months of defeats of the Saigon government against the communists.
The Marines also sanctioned the tactics used, combining an amphibious operation with a heliborne assault. They were pleased with the precision of the air and artillery support to the ground troops, and boasted that they had not had any friendly fire incidents. Although the leathernecks also learned to respect the communist insurgents, whom they began to see as a very capable enemy in jungle combat and not as fleeing shadows.
The communist side gave their own version of Starlite. He minimized his own losses, and only acknowledged half of the dead. The Vietcong claimed to have killed or wounded nine hundred enemy soldiers, shot down thirteen helicopters, and destroyed twenty-two armored vehicles. Beyond these proclamations, considered propaganda by historians, the guerrillas drew useful lessons for the coming years of war.
The most important conclusion for the insurgency was that they had to fight at close range from their enemies. Thus, the Americans could not request air or artillery support without putting their own troops at risk. This technique that the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese army came to use was baptized by the Americans as “Grab them by the belt buckle.”
In short, after Starlite, the North American military forces were convinced that their enormous firepower would be enough to win the war. A very partial conclusion that did not take into account other complex factors, typical of a counterinsurgency war, which is why, in the first major confrontation in Vietnam, the US planted the seeds of some errors that would lead to final defeat.
