USS MULLINNIX DD-944

Battle for Loc Ninh - 1972

Unknown Date & Location. Courtesy of Dale Schultz.

n the months before Easter 1972, the Communist buildup had been noted, but Washington and Saigon underestimated the scope, magnitude, and character of the coming attack. Thus, the North Vietnamese achieved considerable tactical surprise. Hanoi’s invading forces thrust into three of South Vietnam’s four military regions.

In Military Region III, one regular North Vietnamese division and two Viet Cong divisions - some 30,000 men combined - sallied from their Cambodian salient to attack An Loc and Loc Ninh in hopes that a quick victory would lead to a drive down Highway 13 to Saigon itself.

After mounting massive conventional warfare assaults near the DMZ and in the Central Highlands on 5 April 1972, Hanoi extended the deadly arm of the Nguyen Hue (Easter Offensive), to South Vietnam's Military Region III (MR III), formerly known as III Corps. North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces quickly overran Loc Ninh, a tiny district town in Binh Long Province near the Cambodian border. One week later, three NVA divisions, supported by tanks and massive amounts of artillery, launched an all out attack on An Loc, the capital of Binh Long Province, 60 miles north of Saigon.

When the 5th Viet Cong Division struck Loc Ninh on 5 April, the magnitude of the artillery barrage that preceded the attack was unprecedented in MR III. Two days later Loc Ninh fell and intelligence reports from the rubber plantations north of An Loc noted large numbers of NVA tanks already in place.

Back to 1972 Major Battles.
Home