Vietnam Climax
Siege of Khe Sanh

Charlie Knocks...We Drop

by John Prados

Official United States documents in White House files list the supply requirement for Khe Sanh as set by the III Marine Amphibious Force as 235 tons per day. That number, it turns out, was calculated to replenish Khe Sanh's stocks after the losses in the big ammunition dump fire and other setbacks suffered by the Marines. Actual consumption at Khe Sanh averaged 125.6 tons, against Marine staff planning figures for a force of this size, which stood at 131.4 tons per day. Since there was no overland to transportation Khe Sanh, all of those supplies had to travel by air. In this too Khe Sanh would be like Dien Bien Phu.

Air Units of the 1st Marine Air Wing and the 834th Air Division of the Air Force worked hard to make Khe Sanh possible. There were times when the pace of air activity at the plated strip serving as Khe Sanh's portal to the outside world rivaled that of major airports in the continental U.S. And that was without taking into account efforts by Hanoi's troops to obstruct that traffic.

On February 5 came a close call when machine guns as a C-130 "Hercules" landed ignited a fire in its cargo of boxed ammunition. The crew managed to extinguish the fire, unload rapidly, and take off again. Six days later serious damage to another C-130 of the Air Force, following the total loss of a Marine KC- 130, forced Khe Sanh to close to landings except to smaller C-123 "Provider" and C-7 "Buffalo" planes. The Air Force landing ban would be ignored a few times by Marine KC- 130s until February 25, when Khe Sanh reopened to all planes. Several C-123s were lost to ground fire during the siege, while eight C- 123s and at least 18 C-130s incurred major damage. Helicopters had vulnerabilities of their own but steadfastly worked to deliver supplies directly to the outlying hill strongpoints.

In Washington, attempting to reassure President Johnson, national security adviser Walt W. Rostow delivered a paper which claimed the capability for delivery of up to a thousand tons a day. In fact, Khe Sanh never attained anything close to that scale of supply-- 310 tons delivered on January 27 would be the peak, and the daily average just under 250 short tons.

At Dien Bien Phu daily deliveries had varied between 117 and 123 tons with a peak of 196 tons, for a garrison of about 10,000 French Union troops. By comparison the 6,700 defenders of Khe Sanh were supplied, if not lavishly, at least adequately. In fact, during operation PEGASUS arriving troops of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) were able to draw supplies from Khe Sanhs own stocks.

A very direct link between Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh exists in connection with parachute riggers. As part of U.S. military aid to the French in 1954, riggers of the 8081st Quartermaster Company did much of the preparation work for both aerial deliveries and those by the CIAcontract outfit Civil Air Transport (later known as Air America). Later in the 1950s the Army reconstituted this unit. With the U.S. buildup in South Vietnam in 1965, General Westmoreland insisted on a regular parachute rigger unit in country, and personnel from the renamed unit were reassigned to Fort Lee, Virginia, where they became the 383rd Quartermaster Detachment (Air Delivery), which deployed to Qui Nhon that June. Reassigned for a time to Saigon, the 383rd moved to Cam Ranh Bay in November 1966. With Cam Ranh as the main location for both C130 activities and special operations squadrons, the 383rd became responsible for packing most resupply missions.

During 1967 a subunit of the 383rd moved up to Da Nang, where it joined Marine parachute riggers at the base there, a reunion of sorts since Marine riggers had trained at Fort Lee in the Army course with the Army men. At Cam Ranh and at Da Nang riggers of the 383rd played the primary role in packing (the term of art was "out rigging") shipments for Khe Sanh.

For example, when the Marines decided to resurface the runway at Khe Sanh, installing a new steel plate strip, the 2,350 tons of mats, asphalt, and other materials arrived courtesy of the 383rd. Similarly the lumber Marines used for their command posts and other key bunkers had to be rigged by the 383rd. Timber was a novel item for air shipment; manuals, packing charts, and other data were nonexistent. Major Al Lanier's men had to come up with the correct loading factors themselves. Film footage taken at that time shows stacks of lumber on the tarmac at Da Nang surrounded by empty pallets. Fork lifts and other equipment were used to move the supplies and position them aboard aircraft.

At both Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay the quartermasters were housed remotely from their rigging lines. At the latter base, in fact, the company area stood as much as ten miles away from the workplace. There were two rigging lines under tents, essentially similar to an automated car wash. An empty pallet would be laid down at the entrance then moved down a conveyor belt, the load put on it, and each rigging specialist adding his own restraining belt or parachute connection to the pallet. Five ton Low Boy trucks brought supplies from the depot to be distributed, then moved to the end of the rigging line and picked up completed pallets for the flight line where fork lifts moved the pallets aboard aircraft.

It was hard work for a small unit -- Major Lanier had just one other officer, a warrant officer, and sixty-one enlisted; of the total only twenty-three were riggers. Some were specialists on heavy equipment packing, others on containers. There were also mechanics, fork lift operators, and so on.

During 1967 Lieutenant Colonel Edwin G. Laub's 109th Quartermaster Company came out from the States and was sent to Bien Hoa. The 383rd would be redeployed to join it. Cam Ranh had not been heaven -- the company area had no electricity and the men had to take turns at night going out to run generators, but at least men could go to the beach. Veteran Ray Anderson recalls generator detail as one of his least favorites. At Bien Hoa, however, the loaders had to start almost from scratch, refurbishing a barracks and perimeter defense positions, all the while continuing to meet demands for supplies.

The December 1967 redeployment seems to have been designed to support Westmoreland's planned EL PASO offensive, starting with an attack into the Shan valley, but it would be shortcircuited by Ter. Suddenly the men of the 109th and 383rd were working shifts of 24 hours on, 6 hours off, to succor bases all over South Vietnam. Not only Khe Sanh, but Green Beret camps in the Central Highlands and beleaguered posts in the Delta required aerial supply. Even so they rose to the task. It did not hurt that the 109th had an authorized strength of 267 men.

With the danger of enemy fire at Khe Sanh making landings very problematical, the Air Force used special cargo extraction techniques that had been developed earlier in the 1960s. One was the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System (LAPES), which arrived at the combat base on February 16, 1968.

In this method a C-130 flew low to the runway without landing, released a chute out the cargo ramp, and the Parachute then dragged the palletized supplies out of the plane. This worked pretty well, although a mistake could transform a ten ton cargo into a heavy projectile. There were five accidents in the course of LAPES deliveries, resulting in the deaths of two Marines and five others injured. Nevertheless fifty-two LAPES deliveries proved completely successful.

Another technique would be the Ground Proximity Extraction System (GPES), which worked the same way an aircraft carrier lands a plane. Arrestor lines of steel cable were strung across the runway and the C-130s trailed a hook attached to their cargo. Hooks would catch the lines and the cargo would be pulled out of the plane. When GPES was tried for the first time at Khe Sanh, in mid March, one anchor of the arresting gear came loose and the delivery failed. But better installation corrected the problem. There were fifteen GPES deliveries, and the system was good enough to ship eggs with minimal wastage. Though the GPES technique proved unpopular, it was 109th Quartermaster personnel who had worked on its trials at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, and a determining factor was apparently that the tests had been performed with C-7 aircraft whose nose wheels on each approach barely cleared the resting gear, making for a heart-in-the-mouth approach. At Khe Sanh GPES worked very well.

All the LAPES and GPES loads were rigged at Da Nang, with the various bases sharing the work on other shipments. There were 4,3 10 tons delivered by the Air Force and 1,904 by the Marines in standard landing operations, but 8,120 prepared by the parachute riggers. Fully a thousand tons of the latter were rigged on an emergency basis. The 383rd Quartermasters lived up to its motto, "Charlie Knocks, We Drop!" Truly, air made Khe Sanh possible.

Vietnam Climax Siege of Khe Sanh

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