Battle for Hue - 1972Battle for Hue - 1972
Note the low elevation of gun
1 June Saigon (UPI) - 
outh Vietnamese paratroopers and rangers backed by tanks drove almost to the border of Quang Tri Province Thursday in an effort to knock out a North Vietnamese regiment and blunted an expected attack on Hue. They moved with virtually no air support and came under heavy artillery fire.
Bad weather settled on North Vietnam and the northeastern quarter of South Vietnam but the U.S. command said its planes knocked out two more of Hanoi's power plants Wednesday with 50 130mm artillery shells and that U.S. Air Force Phantom jets shot down two of four attaching MIG 21 jets over a 30-minute period near Hanoi.
The Hanoi official army newspaper Quan Doi Nhan Dan admitted in an issue reaching Saigon that the U.S. air offensive was hurting North Vietnam's war effort. It said the fight to maintain communications and supplies to the south was becoming more strenuous.
Field officers along the My Chanh River defense line 22 miles north of Hue said the northward striking South Vietnamese armored force of 2,000 men was hit be a barrage of week - and that there were 'quite a few' casualties.
UPI correspondent Donald Davis reported from Hue that the 3 battalions of government troops reinforced by armor were seeking to capture or destroy a battalion of 650 North Vietnamese troops in the hills just southwest of My Chanh, or drive it back north.
The U.S. command said Thursday 10 Americans were killed and 35 wounded in the Indochina war last week. Eleven others were listed as missing in action and 10 dead from non-hostile causes. The casualties compared with 8 killed and 22 wounded the previous week.
The Saigon command said 5,218 Communist troops were killed on Vietnam battlefields last week. The spokesmen reported South Vietnamese losses last week of 750 men killed and 2,781 wounded.
The fire and smoke above is the result of the shelling in the 1st picture above.
3 unknown shipmates in the center.
Far right: RM3 Neil "Jewels" Apple.
3 June Saigon (AP) - 
he U.S. 7th Fleet said Saturday one of its destroyer escorts warned a Soviet spy ship away from the mined harbor of Vinh off North Vietnam's central Coast and got a Russian thanks in return.
The Navy said the destroyer escort McMorris signaled the Soviet surveillance trawler Izmeritell last Tuesday by flashing lights and flags. One of the McMorris' crewmen, who spoke Russian, also talked to the Soviet crew by radio.
The Russian trawler altered her course after the warning and signaled: "Thank you for your cooperation and have a pleasant voyage."
4 June Saigon (Compiled from Wire Services) - 
ad weather also slowed activity in the north, where South Vietnamese troops began on operation Thursday intended to seal a gap in defenses about 25 miles northwest of Hue, where enemy infiltration had been expected.
There have been indications in the past few days that North Vietnamese trucks, troops and tanks may be preparing an offensive somewhere between the town of Mychanh and the mountains to the west, where the defense line protecting Hue is especially thin.
5 June Hong Kong (AP) - he Ticonderoga is now in Subic Bay, in the Philippines, Sources said the mission of the Vietnam War is to "hunt and kill submarines." Her twin-engine planes are not equipped for air strikes against the railroads, roads and industrial installations in North Vietnam which are the targets for the planes from the other carriers operating in the Tonkin Gulf.
he assignment of the Ticonderoga to Vietnam has been described as precautionary; presumably U.S. strategists think her presence might deter hostile submarine activity by the Russians or the Chinese.
From Que Son, Vietnam, it was reported that the North Vietnamese offensive has been slowed at An Loc, Kontum and Hue. But in the Que Son Valley south of Da Nang it moves relentlessly forward, and the South Vietnamese are still losing fire bases and villages. "We are balanced on the knife's blade," said the Que Son district chief, Maj. Nguyen Cong Chinh, as he described the methodical 56-day enemy push that has captured one neighboring district, threatens another and has Que Son in a stranglehold.
2 July Saigon (UPI) - 
ommunist gunners lobbed 20 rockets and artillery rounds into Hue today, killing 8 civilians and wounding at least 2 soldiers. It was the first rocket attack on the old imperial capital since the current Communist offensive began March 30.
U.S. Maj. Gen. Alexander Haig, chief military adviser to White House official Henry Kissinger, arrived in Hue soon after the barrage. Haig is on a fact-finding mission for Kissinger and President Nixon.
Field reports said most of the shells fired at Hue appeared to be from a Soviet-made 122mm field gun which has never been used extensively in Vietnam. The artillery piece fires a 23-pound shell and has a range of 13 miles.
A dozen of the same type shells were fired against Camp Eagle, base camp for the South Vietnamese 1st Infantry Division just outside Hue.
21 July Saigon (UPI) - outh Vietnamese troops, backed by artillery, napalm-dropping American warplanes and offshore gunfire fought Friday to keep North Vietnamese soldiers from cutting Highway 1, the vital supply link between Hue and 20,000 government troops trying to drive the Communists out of Quang Tri Province.
Field commanders told UPI correspondent Donald Davis that 1,000 Communist troops apparently outflanked government soldiers guarding the highway and at least temporarily severed the two-lane blacktop road.
The Communists want to control the highway and cut South Vietnamese supply lines, forcing allied officials to re-supply the soldiers by air. Government troops moved into the province three weeks ago to try to drive the Communists back into North Vietnam.
The North Vietnamese overran the province May 1, one month after the current offensive began.
Some 2000 miles to the south, a 7,500-man South Vietnamese task force recaptured Bong Son, a district (county) capital, in the coastal province of Binh Dinh. The Communists also took over most of Binh Dinh soon after the current offensive started on March 30.
Most of the fighting along the northern front was concentrated near the village of Phong Dien, just south of the Quang Tri Province border.
The battle along Highway 1 was the same spot where two members of an American Broadcasting Company (ABC) film crew were feared killed Thursday in a North Vietnamese ambush. The U.S. command reported an American adviser was killed and two others wounded Thursday night when North Vietnamese rickets hit a South Vietnamese marine unit near Quang Tri City.