Operation Starlight
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Operation Starlight
Operation Starlite (also known in Vietnam as Battle of Van Tuong) was the first major offensive action conducted by a purely U.S. military unit during the Vietnam War from 18 to 24 August 1965. The operation was launched based on intelligence provided by Major general Nguyen Chanh Thi, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) I Corps commander. III Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF) commander Lieutenant General Lewis W. Walt devised a plan to launch a pre-emptive strike against the Viet Cong (VC) 1st Regiment to nullify their threat to the vital Chu Lai Air Base and Base Area and ensure its powerful communication tower remained intact. The operation was conducted as a combined arms assault involving ground, air and naval units. U.S. Marines were deployed by helicopter insertion while an amphibious landing was used to deploy other Marines. The VC used a variety of tactics to counter the Marine assault, fighting from prepared positions and then withdrawing as the Marines gain ...
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Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was United States in the Vietnam War, supported by the United States and other anti-communism, anti-communist Free World Military Forces, allies. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist states by 1975. After the French 1954 Geneva Conference, military withdrawal from Indochina in 1954 – following their defeat in the First Indochina War – the Viet Minh to ...
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III Marine Expeditionary Force
III Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF) is a formation of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force of the United States Marine Corps. It is forward-deployed and able to rapidly conduct operations across the spectrum from humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) to amphibious assault and high-intensity combat. It maintains a forward presence in Japan and Asia to support the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan (1960) and other alliance relationships of the United States. III MEF also conducts combined operations and training throughout the region in support of the National Security Strategy for Theater Security Cooperation. The Marines and sailors of III MEF engage in more than 65 combined, bilateral and multilateral training exercises annually throughout the Asia-Pacific region, in countries including treaty allies Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia. These exercises build partner capacity, develop and main ...
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General (United States)
In the United States military, a general is the most senior general-grade officer; it is the highest achievable commissioned officer rank (or echelon) that may be attained in the United States Armed Forces, with exception of the Navy and Coast Guard, which have the equivalent rank of admiral instead. The official and formal insignia of "general" is defined by its four stars (commonly silver and in a row). The rank of general ranks above a three-star lieutenant general and below the special wartime five-star ranks of General of the Army or General of the Air Force. The Marine Corps and Space Force do not have an established grade above general. The pay grade of general is O-10. It is equivalent to the rank of admiral in the other United States uniformed services which use naval ranks. It is abbreviated as GEN in the Army and Gen in the Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force. Since the ranks of General of the Army and General of the Air Force are reserved for wartime use only, ...
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COMUSMACV
U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was a joint-service command of the United States Department of Defense. MACV was created on 8 February 1962, in response to the increase in United States military assistance to South Vietnam. MACV was first implemented to assist the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) Vietnam, controlling every advisory and assistance effort in Vietnam, but was reorganized on 15 May 1964 and absorbed MAAG Vietnam to its command when combat unit deployment became too large for advisory group control. MACV was disestablished on 29 March 1973 and replaced by the Defense Attaché Office (DAO), Saigon. The DAO performed many of the same roles of MACV within the restrictions imposed by the Paris Peace Accords until the Fall of Saigon. The first commanding general of MACV (COMUSMACV), General Paul D. Harkins, was also the commander of MAAG Vietnam, and after reorganization was succeeded by General William C. Westmoreland in June 1964, followed by ...
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Chu Lai
Chu Lai is a seaport, urban and industrial area in Núi Thành District, Quảng Nam Province, Vietnam. The city is served by Chu Lai International Airport. It is also the site of the Chu Lai Open Economic Zone (Vietnamese: ''Với Khu Kinh Tế Mở Chu Lai''). History Vietnam War Chu Lai was a United States Marine Corps military base from 1965 to 1970, and a United States Army military base from 1970 to 1971 during the Vietnam War. Roughly southeast of Đà Nẵng, the base had an airfield to supplement the major base at Đà Nẵng. It was not named for any local geographic feature, but rather was named by then Major General Victor Krulak using the Mandarin Chinese characters for his own name. Lieutenant General Victor H. "Brute" Krulak, then the commanding general of Fleet Marine Force, Pacific. Da Nang Air Base was the first major airfield used by the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. Shortly after conventional ground forces began arriving in country ...
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Da Nang
Nang or DanangSee also Danang Dragons ( ; vi, Đà Nẵng, ) is a class-1 municipality and the fifth-largest city in Vietnam by municipal population. It lies on the coast of the East Sea of Vietnam at the mouth of the Hàn River, and is one of Vietnam's most important port cities. As one of the country's five direct-controlled municipalities, it falls under the administration of the central government. Da Nang is the commercial and educational centre of Central Vietnam and is the largest city in the region. It has a well-sheltered, easily accessible port, and its location on National Route 1 and the North–South Railway makes it a transport hub. It is within of several UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the Imperial City of Huế, the Old Town of Hội An, and the Mỹ Sơn ruins. The city was known as during early Đại Việt settlement, and as (or ''Turon'') during French colonial rule. Before 1997, the city was part of Quang Nam - Da Nang Province. On 1 Janua ...
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Guerrilla Warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or Irregular military, irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, Raid (military), raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactics, and Mobility (military), mobility, to fight a larger and less-mobile traditional military. Although the term "guerrilla warfare" was coined in the context of the Peninsular War in the 19th century, the tactical methods of guerrilla warfare have long been in use. In the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu proposed the use of guerrilla-style tactics in ''The Art of War''. The 3rd century BC Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus is also credited with inventing many of the tactics of guerrilla warfare through what is today called the Fabian strategy. Guerrilla warfare has been used by various factions throughout history and is particularly associated with revolutionary movements and popular resistance agains ...
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North Vietnam
North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed from 1945 to 1976 and was recognized in 1954. Both the North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese states ceased to exist when they unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. During the August Revolution following World War II, Vietnamese communist revolutionary Hồ Chí Minh, leader of the Việt Minh Front, declared independence on 2 September 1945, announcing the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The Việt Minh ("League for the Independence of Vietnam"), led by communists, was created in 1941 and designed to appeal to a wider population than the Indochinese Communist Party could command. From the very beginning, the DRV regime sought to consolidate power by purging other nationalist movements. Meanwhile, France moved in t ...
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South Vietnam
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of the Cold War after the 1954 division of Vietnam. It first received international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam within the French Union, with its capital at Saigon (renamed to Ho Chi Minh City in 1976), before becoming a republic in 1955. South Vietnam was bordered by North Vietnam to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and Thailand across the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest. Its sovereignty was recognized by the United States and 87 other nations, though it failed to gain admission into the United Nations as a result of a Soviet veto in 1957. It was succeeded by the Republic of South Vietnam in 1975. The end of the Second World War saw anti-Japanese Việt Minh guerrilla forces, led by communist fi ...
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Air Assault
Air assault is the movement of ground-based military forces by vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft—such as the helicopter—to seize and hold key terrain which has not been fully secured, and to directly engage enemy forces behind enemy lines. In addition to regular infantry training, air-assault units usually receive training in rappelling, fast-rope techniques and air transportation, and their equipment is sometimes designed or field-modified to allow better transportation within aircraft. The US Army field manual FM 1-02 (FM 101-5-1) describes an "air assault operation" as an operation in which assault forces (combat, combat support, and combat service support), using the firepower, mobility, and total integration of helicopter assets, maneuver on the battlefield under the control of the ground or air maneuver commander to engage and destroy enemy forces or to seize and hold key terrain usually behind enemy lines. Due to the transport load restrictions of helicop ...
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United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combined arms, implementing its own infantry, artillery, aerial, and special operations forces. The U.S. Marine Corps is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. The Marine Corps has been part of the U.S. Department of the Navy since 30 June 1834 with its sister service, the United States Navy. The USMC operates installations on land and aboard sea-going amphibious warfare ships around the world. Additionally, several of the Marines' tactical aviation squadrons, primarily Marine Fighter Attack squadrons, are also embedded in Navy carrier air wings and operate from the aircraft carriers. The history of the Marine Corps began when two battalions of Continental Marines were formed on 10 November 1775 in Philadelphia as ...
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Combined Arms
Combined arms is an approach to warfare War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regul ... that seeks to integrate different combat arms of a military to achieve mutually complementary effects (for example by using infantry and armoured warfare, armour in an urban environment in which each supports the other). According to the strategist William S. Lind, combined arms can be distinguished from the concept of "supporting arms" as follows: Combined arms hits the enemy with two or more arms simultaneously in such a manner that the actions he must take to defend himself from one make him more vulnerable to another. In contrast, supporting arms is hitting the enemy with two or more arms in sequence, or if simultaneously, then in such combination that the actions the enemy must take t ...
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