16
CAPTURING PHAN RANG
On 13 April, the lead sections of the Coastal Column’s First Element, which had departed Danang on 7 April—a battalion of the 203rd Tank Brigade and the 101st Regiment, 325th Division—arrived at Cam Ranh Bay. Traveling right behind them was Major General Nguyen Huu An. Given the Coastal Column’s tight timetable and the fighting the last two days against the ARVN blocking positions on Route 1, Lieutenant General Le Trong Tan told An to commit the newly arrived armor and infantry to a deep-penetration strike to capture Phan Rang. An promptly drafted a daring strike straight down Route 1 to capture the besieged city.
An’s attack plan consisted of an armor spearhead of twenty tanks and armored personnel carriers from the 4th Tank Battalion, 203rd Tank Brigade, reinforced by an infantry battalion from the 101st Regiment. Some infantry would ride on the armor while the rest would travel in trucks interspersed among the tracked vehicles. A small tactical headquarters from the 101st Regiment, defended by several 37-mm anti-aircraft guns, would follow closely behind the lead element. Next would be a truck convoy carrying the remaining two 101st Regiment infantry battalions, along with long-barreled 85-mm artillery pieces to provide direct fire support. An air-defense battalion at the column’s rear would protect against the A-37s. The column would use the speed and firepower of the massed armor, infantry, and anti-aircraft artillery, called an “attack from the march,” to overwhelm the defenders. This type of fast-moving assault was a Soviet armor tactic designed to penetrate an enemy defensive position and rapidly reach the enemy’s rear, thereby creating havoc. If the first spearhead failed, An would commit a second column comprising the 18th Regiment, 325th Division, and the 5th Armored Battalion. To concentrate artillery for the attack, the 325th Division would deploy its artillery next to the 3rd Division’s artillery so that they could coordinate their fire. Since the 325th Division attackers were not familiar with the area, the deputy commander of MR-6 would ride on one of the first tanks.
An gave missions to the other PAVN elements as well. Since successful air strikes would slaughter the infantry riding in the trucks, the corps staff assigned two air-defense regiments to cover the two columns, and it gave the 673rd Air Defense Division overall air-defense responsibility for the attack. The 3rd Division would hold its positions and let the deep-penetration column pass through. Then the division would launch a secondary attack with two organic regiments and the independent 25th Regiment. One regiment would advance down the western side of Route 1 and seize villages and key terrain right up to the airbase perimeter. Another regiment would attack on the eastern side of Route 1 and capture the small port of Ninh Chu, located a mile north of Phan Rang. The third regiment would remain in reserve. The reinforced 25th Regiment would launch another assault against the Thanh Son airbase. A recently formed local-force battalion would attempt to cut Route 11 between Thanh Son and Phan Rang, while guerrillas would harass the Airborne and Ranger positions throughout the night before the main assault. The main elements would depart from an assembly area near Cam Ranh at 10:00 P.M. on 15 April. The attack would begin at 5:00 the next morning, and the 325th Division was ordered to capture all targets by the end of the day.
This strike was, to this point in the war, the largest PAVN combined-arms operation ever conducted. It showed just how far the North Vietnamese had come since the Easter Offensive. There would be no repeat of An Loc in 1972, when armor attacked without adequate infantry and anti-aircraft support. No American unit in Vietnam ever faced anything remotely as powerful as this assault. In essence, PAVN had massed forty armored vehicles and two infantry regiments, supported by an air-defense division and two artillery regiments, into an enormous one-two punch that would barrel straight down South Vietnam’s best highway to capture a target ten miles from its starting point. Once the column punctured the ARVN lines and entered Phan Rang, units in the lead element would fan out in several directions to secure the city. They would then assist the assault on the airbase, and set up a blocking position on Route 1 south of Phan Rang to seal off ARVN’s overland escape route.
Nguyen Huu An was worried about the South Vietnamese bombers, but he felt confident that his artillery barrages against Thanh Son would restrict Air Force operations enough to enable his assault column to enter Phan Rang before the planes could react. Absolute secrecy was to be maintained to ensure the element of surprise. To emphasize the corps commander’s intent, the chief of the Armor Branch personally issued instructions to the 4th Tank Battalion’s commander: “You must attack at high speed, use heavy firepower to break through the enemy’s outer defense lines, and rapidly penetrate all the way into Phan Rang. No matter what happens, do not stop your attack.”1
The South Vietnamese (and the Americans) were completely unaware of the PAVN plan. It was on 14 April that Lieutenant General Nghi received the top-secret cable informing him that Tran Van Don, the former general and recently appointed minister of defense in the new Nguyen Ba Can government, would arrive at Thanh Son. Don was coming for an inspection, and he arrived at noon on 15 April. Don was not the only visitor. On 13 April, James Lewis, a former Special Forces officer now secretly assigned to the CIA, arrived at Thanh Son. Lewis spoke fluent Vietnamese and knew the area well. He had been stationed at the Nha Trang consulate until the evacuation. Lewis’s job at this point was to provide the CIA with information on the situation at Phan Rang.
On the morning of 15 April, after the first Cabinet meeting of Can’s government, Defense Minister Don called together ARVN’s senior leadership, including Cao Van Vien and Nguyen Van Toan, to formulate a strategy to defend the country. After the meeting, Don and Toan flew to Thanh Son. As Nghi had requested, Colonel Luong took Don and Toan on an inspection tour. The group then returned to the airbase for a more formal briefing by Nghi and his staff.
After Nghi outlined the situation, he requested the return of the 2nd Airborne Brigade, and specifically asked to retain one of the Airborne battalions still present at Phan Rang. Colonel Biet from the Rangers and Brigadier General Nhut, commander of the 2nd Division, then outlined the problems their units faced: lack of supplies, fuel, and equipment, and low morale. Don empathized with his former colleagues, and promised that when he returned to Saigon, he would order the JGS to send Luong’s 2nd Brigade back to Phan Rang. He would also try hard to find the equipment the units defending Phan Rang lacked, such as radios, sighting devices and ammunition for the artillery, and fuel for the airplanes and M-113s. Regarding the political rumors, Don told them a partition line would be created to form a new Republic of Vietnam, with Nha Trang as the end point of a line running from Tay Ninh to the coast. To solidify RVN claims to this territory, Don ordered Colonel Luong to retake Nha Trang. A flabbergasted Luong informed Don that it would require the entire Airborne Division to recapture Nha Trang, hardly a feat his two remaining battalions could accomplish. Don and his party, disheartened by the state of affairs at Phan Rang, departed in mid-afternoon.
As night fell on 15 April, and as Nguyen Huu An was preparing to drive a dagger into the heart of Phan Rang’s defenses, the South Vietnamese forces in Ninh Thuan province were arrayed in the following manner: The Air Force would provide air support from Thanh Son airbase, while the Navy cutters Tran Nhat Duat (HQ-03) and Tran Binh Trong (HQ-05) and several other ships sailed along the coast supplying naval gunfire support. Commodore Hoang Co Minh commanded this ad-hoc naval task force.
On the ground, ARVN units were concentrated around Thanh Son airbase. Nhut had his 4th Regiment defending the western side along Route 11, while the 5th Regiment held the area south of the airbase. Since Colonel Luong was in the process of withdrawing, he had placed most of his brigade in close proximity to Thanh Son. He had only three companies from the two remaining Airborne battalions still protecting the Route 1 avenue of approach: one company from the 3rd Battalion was still at Kien Kien, while the two companies from the 11th Battalion had withdrawn south to Ca Du Mountain, the high ground that controlled the western approach to Phan Rang on Route 1. The 31st Ranger Group had one battalion north of the airbase, while the elements of the 52nd Ranger Battalion at Ba Rau also had pulled back to guard the airbase perimeter. (Nguyen Van Tu’s 31st Ranger Battalion had been destroyed at the Du Long Pass.) Artillery was limited to a few guns. One battalion of RF troops defended Phan Rang, while another helped secure the airbase.
Only a few ARVN troops stood on Route 1 between the PAVN forces and the city. It is not clear why Nghi left the highway so lightly defended. Perhaps he thought PAVN would be unable to make any direct attack on Phan Rang for another week, since Colonel Le Van Thao’s pilots had reported that the bridges on Route 1 from Cam Ranh to the Du Long Pass had been destroyed. Therefore, on the crucial morning of 16 April, at the place at which the South Vietnamese had their last realistic hope of preventing the massive Coastal Column from advancing and participating in the attack against Saigon, the entire ARVN force physically present on Route 1 consisted of one platoon of paratroopers. The remaining Airborne soldiers along Route 1 were dug in on the hills overlooking the highway. After having been conditioned for years in infantry tactics, which in this case meant holding the high ground and covering the road with artillery and airpower, the South Vietnamese were completely unprepared for a high-speed armor attack.
A LIGHTNING STRIKE
Despite An’s orders that “absolute secrecy” be maintained, at 2:00 A.M. on 16 April, the orbiting EC-47 radio-intercept plane began picking up clear-text messages being transmitted from a PAVN headquarters element (probably the forward headquarters of the 325th Division) code-named “Red River.” The headquarters was trying to coordinate the movement of the various mechanized and infantry units for the attack. The EC-47 landed at Thanh Son and immediately informed Colonel Thao that the Communists planned to launch a large armor assault at 5:00 A.M. Thao quickly informed Sang and Nghi of this new intelligence, and requested permission to bomb the PAVN forces. Sang agreed, and Thao’s pilots spent the night flying missions into the Du Long Pass area, attacking enemy convoys on Route 1.
Based on reports from the returning pilots, at 3:00 A.M. on 16 April, Thao informed Nghi that a large number of enemy vehicles were moving through the Du Long Pass. Nghi was stunned. He demanded to know how PAVN had moved so close if the bridges had been knocked out. Sang and Thao were perplexed, and started quizzing some of the pilots. They soon discovered the answer: the over-stressed pilots, afraid of the growing SA-7 threat, had dropped their bombs as close to the bridges as they could and then reported them destroyed. The Army had not destroyed the bridges during the initial retreat, in order to enable the civilian population to escape. Only a few bridges near Kien Kien had been knocked out, leaving many others closer to Phan Rang untouched. Worse, in the absence of instructions, ARVN had failed to wire the bridges with explosive charges so that in an emergency they could be quickly destroyed. It was another major mistake.
While Nghi, Sang, and Thao were absorbing this information, local Communist guerrillas, per Major General An’s plan, launched the first attacks. Colonel Luong’s troops on the airbase perimeter and on Ca Du Mountain were hit with shelling and infantry probes, as were the Rangers north of the base. Nghi’s headquarters had spent the night trying to raise the JGS in Saigon to warn it of the impending attack and to ask for immediate resupply, but his communications team was unable to contact Saigon.
At precisely 5:00 A.M., the Communist artillery batteries opened fire. Explosions shook the foxholes of the Airborne platoon along the shoulders of Route 1 near Kien Kien. Soon the deep-penetration column of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and trucks loaded with infantry rumbled forward and passed through the positions held by the 3rd Division. When the lead tank appeared in front of the ARVN lines, an anti-tank rocket knocked it out, but other tanks quickly returned fire. The PAVN infantry jumped off their vehicles and dispersed the paratroopers, and the column soon resumed its advance down Route 1.
Despite the heavy shelling and the fact that they were exhausted from the previous night’s missions, Thao’s A-37 pilots took off again. The distance between Thanh Son and the enemy tanks on Route 1 was so short that the pilots barely had time to retract their landing gears before they were dropping bombs. Despite the early-morning fog, the smoke from the artillery rounds, and the heavy barrage of anti-aircraft fire, the pilots pressed in. First one, then another tank was hit. Still the armor kept coming. Repeatedly the A-37s dove in, their bombs setting trucks and tanks on fire. Armed gunships from Le Van But’s squadron soon joined the fray. The deep-penetration column, however, fought back hard, blazing away at the A-37s with numerous anti-aircraft weapons. Several planes sustained heavy damage and limped back to base. Despite the air assault, the PAVN tanks grimly pressed on. Bypassing the blown-up bridges near Kien Kien, within an hour, the lead tanks had reached the outskirts of Phan Rang.
The rapid reaction of Thao’s airplanes and But’s helicopters, however, had dramatically slowed the second part of the lead column, the trucks carrying the rest of the 101st Regiment’s infantry. While the armor pushed ahead, the trucks had to stop and take cover from the constant air bombardment. Worse for the North Vietnamese, the anti-aircraft units that were supposed to support them had not kept pace. Consequently, the truck column had outrun its anti-aircraft umbrella but fallen behind the lead armor. Spotting this development, the Air Force bored in, and the North Vietnamese once again felt the sting of Thao’s A-37s. According to the 2nd Corps history: “Between 6:00 A.M. and 9:00 A.M. enemy aircraft made thirty-seven bombing sorties attacking the [second] assault formations of 101st Regiment. These attacks destroyed six vehicles, damaged ten other vehicles (including one tank), and killed or wounded a number of cadre and enlisted men. The cadre and soldiers . . . resolutely continued their advance, but the savage air and artillery attacks on the column greatly slowed their progress. . . . The 120th Anti-Aircraft Battalion, however, was still in the Du Long area and its guns did not have sufficient range to cover the skies south of [Ho Diem]. The howitzer positions of 3rd Division and of the [325th’s] Artillery Regiment were too far back to reach and paralyze Thanh Son Airbase and had not yet been able to suppress the enemy artillery positions firing from inside the airbase and from the area of Ca Du Mountain.”2
With his forces caught out in the open, the 325th Division commander personally took control of the two battalions of the 101st Regiment. The 2nd Corps headquarters ordered the air-defense commander to push his units forward to provide cover for the beleaguered infantry, but his units remained too far back to protect the trapped truck column. The advancing armor was slowly being stripped of its badly needed infantry support.
At this moment, the 3rd Division came to the rescue. Following the original plan, after the lead tank element had passed its positions, the troops of the 3rd started attacking. However, after one battalion had captured several villages west of Route 1, moved up close to Thanh Son airbase, and pinned down the Rangers, the regiment deviated from the original plan. It sent another of its battalions to capture Ca Du Mountain and block the Airborne troops from moving down to the road and attacking the advancing armor with anti-tank weapons. The 3rd Division infantrymen then joined the lead element while the 3rd’s other regiment advanced on the eastern side of Route 1. With the new infantry reinforcements, the composite force on Route 1 quickly resumed its advance. The attackers soon ran into the last South Vietnamese defenders outside the city, an RF unit dug in outside Phan Rang. After forty-five minutes, they routed the RF, but only after losing two more tanks and dozens of men. Having destroyed the final barrier, the armored column roared into the city and quickly captured the province chief’s headquarters. Although the lead element had lost a quarter of its tanks and much of its accompanying infantry, by 7:00 A.M. PAVN controlled the city. Phan Rang had fallen.
Following their battle plan, several tanks and trucks quickly split off from the main column. One group headed for the main port and another to an important bridge on Route 1 just south of the city. Grabbing the bridge in a quick firefight, the Communists continued south and captured a nearby district capital, effectively sealing off the overland escape route. At the port, a T-54 roared onto the dock. Spotting ships desperately fleeing the inner harbor, the tank fired and sank one small ship. Other troops moved out from the city to link up with the rapidly approaching regiment from the 3rd Division advancing along the eastern side of Route 1. By 9:30 A.M., this mixed force had overwhelmed all remaining ARVN resistance and secured the Ninh Chu port. With both ports now in Communist hands and Route 1 cut off, the noose around Nghi’s command was rapidly tightening.
As the fighting progressed, Nguyen Huu An moved his forward-headquarters element closer to the battle area. From his position on Route 1, he could see the planes taking off and bombing his troops. With Phan Rang captured, he moved to eliminate the last vestiges of South Vietnamese resistance by ordering the 325th Division to send a combined tank/infantry spearhead from Phan Rang to capture Thanh Son. The division commander in turn ordered the two infantry battalions still struggling down Route 1 to get to Phan Rang immediately.
By 8:45 A.M., a battalion-sized task force made up of infantry and tanks began pushing along Route 11 toward Thanh Son. Standing between Phan Rang and the airbase was Tran Van Nhut’s 5th Regiment. Just before the North Vietnamese ran into Nhut’s troops, the column divided into two elements; one drove straight into the 5th Regiment, while the other swung around to attack the airbase. The recently formed Communist local-force battalion, coordinating its assault with the main armor thrust, began attacking Nhut’s 4th Regiment on Route 11. At the same time, the reinforced 25th Regiment launched its attack on the northern side of the airbase. Using explosives, the infantry cut through eleven rows of barbed wire and charged the airfield. Three North Vietnamese prongs were now converging on the embattled Thanh Son airbase.
On the ARVN side, earlier that morning, Nghi had ordered Nhut to move his headquarters closer to the III Corps Forward Command to facilitate coordination. After completing this move, Nhut left to inspect his units, while Nghi and Sang remained on the airbase monitoring the air strikes. Then at 9:00 A.M., an SA-7 missile fired from a hilltop near the airfield hit a helicopter gunship. Shortly afterwards, several other planes taking off were also hit by anti-aircraft fire. At the same time, the 4th Regiment reported it was engaging enemy forces. According to Sang, “At this point, Lieutenant General Nghi still had confidence in 4th Regiment’s ability to protect the airfield and 5th Regiment’s ability to stop enemy forces from surging through Gate Number 1 of the airbase.”3That confidence was misplaced. Nhut’s analysis of his troops’ morale was correct. Although the 4th easily stopped the local-forces unit, Nhut’s hodgepodge 5th Regiment, after a short firefight, broke and ran at the sight of the PAVN armor. Shortly thereafter, Nhut informed Nghi that his 5th Regiment had fled. The tanks soon captured the airbase’s main gate. On the other side of Thanh Son, the Rangers were also under heavy artillery and infantry attack. Colonel Biet radioed Nghi that his defenses were collapsing. The 25th Regiment had brushed aside the Rangers guarding the northern gate and captured the bomb-storage area. The Communist soldiers then began moving toward the center of the airfield.
Colonel Luong ordered his reconnaissance company to retake the bomb-storage area, but the vastly outnumbered paratroopers were unable to accomplish their mission. The base defenses continued to crumble, and, soon, camouflaged PAVN soldiers were spotted running on the tarmac. With no other troops available, Luong’s deputy brigade commander, Lieutenant Colonel Tran Van Son, led the brigade headquarters company in a mad charge to prevent the enemy from capturing the control tower. Fighting desperately, the paratroopers engaged the PAVN troops, but then a burst of automatic fire hit Lieutenant Colonel Son in the stomach. He died on the spot. The remaining paratroopers were quickly overwhelmed. By 9:30 A.M., PAVN troops from the 101st Regiment, 325th Division, and the 25th Regiment had linked up at the airbase control tower. South Vietnamese resistance had been crushed, and PAVN now controlled Thanh Son.
With no other alternative, Lieutenant General Nghi ordered all elements to retreat toward Ca Na, a rocky peninsula nineteen miles south of Phan Rang. Here Route 1 ran right along the shoreline, and it provided an excellent defensive position. A group of soldiers and civilians soon moved toward the main gate of Thanh Son airbase, but found it blocked by PAVN tanks. Luong ordered his engineers to cut a hole in the fence, and the three officers, Nghi, Sang, and Luong, along with James Lewis and a large group of military and civilians, escaped. Using his own communications, Lewis had managed to inform CIA officers at the U.S. Embassy that Thanh Son was falling. Outside, the group linked up with the portion of the 11th Airborne Battalion that was still near the airbase. Moving slowly because of the civilians in their midst, by noon the group had traveled about three miles and reached a sugar-cane field located between Thanh Son and Phan Rang near Route 11, where they rested in a large irrigation ditch.
Learning of the impending collapse of the Phan Rang front, Airborne Division commander Brigadier General Le Quang Luong, now based in Saigon, sent an O-1 observation plane and twenty-five helicopters to help rescue his soldiers. That afternoon, Colonel Luong’s communications team established contact with the orbiting plane. The rescue team requested permission to land the helicopters at a nearby field. Nghi, fearing for the safety of the civilians if they panicked and rushed the helicopters, denied the request. He ordered Colonel Luong to tell the helicopter commander to try again in the morning, when their group would have moved further south. A reluctant Luong passed the order to the circling airplane.
Nghi decided to wait until night to continue moving south, hoping the group would remain undetected. However, the civilians were moving around searching for food, and this alerted the North Vietnamese to the group’s presence. Around midnight, Luong ordered an Airborne company to break through the PAVN troops guarding Route 11. Launching a quick attack, the Airborne swept aside a few troops and made it across the road. However, other PAVN soldiers nearby began firing heavily into the underbrush and wounded the 11th Airborne commander. In the darkness and the confusion of the gunfight, Nghi, Sang, and Lewis were separated from the Airborne. While Luong and the Airborne continued heading south, the other three men and a portion of the group returned to the ditch. By 2:00 A.M., troops from the 3rd Division had the ditch surrounded, and an officer soon called on the South Vietnamese to give up. Seeing no alternative, they surrendered. Nghi was the highest-ranking officer ever captured on the battlefields of South Vietnam. Phan Rang, designed as a major ARVN blocking position, had been destroyed. The road south to Saigon and ultimate victory now lay open for the North Vietnamese.
As for the other South Vietnamese who had tried valiantly to hold the Phan Rang line, Lieutenant Colonel Le Van But had escaped with Sang’s group. He eventually made it back to Saigon by walking along Route 1. He later jokingly told the author, “I was bombed by my own Air Force the entire way home.” At the last minute, just as Thanh Son was being overrun, Colonel Le Van Thao radioed one of his A-37s, which landed and picked him up. They flew to Tan Son Nhut with what remained of Thao’s wing. Of the seventy-two A-37s that he had had in early March, only a third of them escaped on 16 April, after more than a month of virtually non-stop fighting. No other unit of the Vietnamese Air Force in the spring of 1975 fought with as much courage or aggression as Thao’s 92nd Tactical Air Wing.
Nguyen Van Tu, commander of the 31st Ranger Battalion, escaped on foot with some of his men. They made their way to the sea, where they found fishing vessels that took them to Vung Tau. From there they went by bus to Saigon. Brigadier General Tran Van Nhut escaped by helicopter to a Vietnamese Navy ship offshore. He then radioed JGS headquarters and provided the ARVN command the first news of the disaster at Phan Rang. Colonel Nguyen Thu Luong, although he had crossed Route 11 and was moving south, was ordered the next day by Lieutenant General Toan to return and rescue Nghi and Sang. Luong was captured several days later. The portion of the 11th Airborne Battalion that punched through the ring around the sugar-cane field eventually turned east to find ships. Upon arrival at the coast, however, they were quickly spotted by PAVN troops. Called upon to surrender, they answered with rifle and machine-gun fire. After being pounded with mortars on the exposed beach, they capitulated. The commander of the 3rd Airborne Battalion, Captain La Qui Trang, and his one company out alone on Route 1 retreated to a nearby mountaintop, where they were rescued several days later by helicopters. The rest of his battalion shed their uniforms and moved on foot back to Saigon. Almost 80 percent of the battalion returned safely. Generals Nghi and Sang, along with James Lewis, were quickly taken to Nha Trang, then Danang, and then flown to North Vietnam. Lewis was released in December 1975 after having suffered terrible torture. He returned to active duty, and was killed in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon in 1982. Nghi was released in 1987, but has refused to discuss the events at Phan Rang.
As for Brigadier General Pham Ngoc Sang, he was not released until 1992. His courage inspired his men to stand their ground in the chaotic days of early April. One of his senior staff wrote to him many years later: “I sometimes proudly tell my friends that I was fortunate to serve under a commander such as you—someone who did not, as other commanders and their units did, flee even before the enemy arrived. I must thank you for giving me that source of pride. If it had not been for you, perhaps I would not have been imprisoned, my life might have been easier, and my children might have been more successful in life, but for my entire life I would have carried with me the feeling that I had not lived up to my responsibilities. If we had acted as others did, then we would not have the peace of mind that we enjoy now.”4
On the Northern side, there was only one notable fatality. The 673rd Air Defense Division commander was killed when his vehicle was accidentally ambushed by local Communist guerrillas. PAVN dodged another major calamity when Nguyen Huu An narrowly escaped death on 16 April. As he later recounted: “This is a funny story, the kind that turns your hair gray. In the afternoon, after we captured Phan Rang and Thanh Son, I visited the [ARVN] 3rd Corps Forward Headquarters [at Thanh Son]. There I selected a new jeep equipped with command radios that I could use to go back to inspect Second Element, 2nd Corps, which was still back at Nha Trang. Hearing about my plans, the deputy commander of Military Region 6 asked if he could hitch a ride with me. At about 10:00 that night it was raining and the road was slick, so we were afraid to drive too fast. The jeep with three of my bodyguards was driving ahead of us, and I was driving a [jeep] with another bodyguard sitting in the back seat. Just after leaving the city, I heard shots, ‘Bang, bang.’ I thought to myself, ‘Those damn kids are shooting off their weapons again, just for the fun of it!’ Suddenly I noticed that my vehicle was leaning to one side and I realized we had just been ambushed. I turned off my headlights and drove blindly another mile, and then stopped. When I got out I saw that two of my tires were flat. . . . After an hour the driver of the lead vehicle noticed that I was not behind him and turned back to look for me. We all worked together to repair the vehicle and did not get to Nha Trang until 2:00 A.M.”5
The fighting left Phan Rang in ruins. As PAVN Major General Le Quang Hoa, the Coastal Column’s political officer, put it: “On the morning of 17 April, Le Trong Tan and I entered Phan Rang city. The streets still reeked with the odor of gunpowder. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, military trucks, and artillery pieces, large and small, were lying upended or abandoned everywhere we looked. Many fires still burned that we had not yet had a chance to extinguish. We saw groups of [enemy] soldiers on the streets, all of them acting shocked and stunned. I have had many opportunities to talk to defeated troops, but this time I saw something different in these troops. The difference was that they had suffered an internal collapse, a collapse of their morale and their spirit.”6
Not only was Hoa was right about ARVN morale, but just as important, a significant number of irreplaceable South Vietnamese units were destroyed in this battle. The 6th Air Division was shattered, the two newly reconstituted 2nd Division regiments were smashed, the 31st Ranger Group was eliminated, and the bulk of the 2nd Airborne Brigade was crushed. On the PAVN side, the 3rd Division and the 25th Regiment had taken the brunt of the casualties, leaving the main 2nd Corps units largely intact.
Still, Giap was taking no chances. He sent a cable congratulating the Coastal Column on its victory, but he urged it to immediately advance. Giap wanted Le Trong Tan’s forces to rapidly capture Binh Thuan and Binh Tuy provinces in order to prevent ARVN forces from organizing new blocking positions, and then to assist in the attack on Xuan Loc.
To complete that new mission, Nguyen Huu An ordered all elements to strengthen themselves with newly captured weapons, ammunition, and equipment and prepare to depart. On 17 April, after turning control of Phan Rang over to MR-6, the 2nd Corps organized a new advance unit of First Element as follows: “5th Armored Battalion, with the soldiers of . . . 18th Regiment riding on the armored vehicles; 15th Battalion of 284th Anti-Aircraft Regiment; one 85-mm gun platoon . . . and one engineer company. . . . The march formation of 325th Division was also reorganized. 18th Regiment moved up to lead the division’s formation and, alongside other forces, attack and liberate Phan Thiet and Binh Thuan province. 101st Regiment moved back to the rear of the Division’s formation.”7
After two years of preparations, the North Vietnamese had vehicles and men to spare. The 325th Division simply moved a fresh spearhead—the 18th Regiment and the 5th Armored Battalion—forward to replace the tired units of the 101st Regiment and the 4th Tank Battalion, which had led the charge that took Phan Rang. The 3rd Division was reinforced by another thousand new recruits, who had departed from Haiphong on 16 April and landed three days later at Cam Ranh Bay. Major General An also attached to the division a battery of 130-mm guns and a tank company, and gave it a new mission: while the 2nd Corps would proceed to Saigon, the 3rd Division would move independently and liberate Phuoc Tuy province and the port city of Vung Tau.
For the new First Element, the movement to Phan Thiet along Route 1 would not be easy. Unlike the road march from Danang, the corps would now have to fight its way through areas still under South Vietnamese control. The First Element would have to destroy RF blocking positions, repair destroyed bridges, and fight off air raids. At the same time, it had “to strike back at counterattacks by the enemy Navy and guard against the possibility the enemy might launch an attack from the sea to cut our troop column in two.”8 In addition, the section of the highway at the Ca Na Bay ran right along the seacoast, where the corps would be vulnerable to naval gunfire. But Le Trong Tan could not allow the South Vietnamese to slow him down. His orders were to be in an assembly area near Xuan Loc by 25 April. It is 190 miles from Phan Rang to Xuan Loc, and Tan had nine days to get there.
An placed the 203rd Tank Brigade commander in control of the lead element. To facilitate control, the “brigade command post advanced just to the rear of the lead armored battalion. . . . As the advance guard of 2nd Corps, at this time the 203rd Brigade was responsible for commanding all attached units and performed the role of a combined-arms force commander. To ensure that the road was cleared and the corps could advance quickly, the brigade commander ordered the lead armored units to engage and drive right on through any light enemy resistance encountered along the route. Only if the enemy force was powerful should the armored units stop to organize a strong, certain attack.”9
At 6:00 P.M. on 17 April the new First Element of the 2nd Corps moved out. It immediately came under attack by South Vietnamese forces. As the corps history notes: “The enemy detected our movement down Route 1 toward Saigon. They attacked our column with aircraft and naval gunfire, destroying a number of vehicles, killing, and wounding a number of cadre and soldiers. . . . On the night of 17 April, in spite of repeated attacks by enemy aircraft and warships, and enemy mines, roadblocks, and destroyed bridges, 5th Armored Battalion, supported by local armed forces and civilians, liberated a string of district capitals . . . and crushed and scattered many outposts along the battalion’s route of advance.”10
At Ca Na Bay, Route 1 winds its way down from the mountains and runs along the sea. Here was a natural chokepoint that the South Vietnamese Navy and Air Force could use to halt the PAVN armor. Unfortunately, the Navy’s main ships did not have the armament to provide effective naval gunfire, especially without observers to adjust the rounds. Plus, the Navy’s priority was to rescue escaping civilian and military personnel. One LST, the Vung Tau (HQ-503), was sent on 17 April to Ca Na Bay to pick up some 2nd Division soldiers who had escaped from Phan Rang. Unable to beach his ship because of the rocky shoreline, the captain of the Vung Tau, Nguyen Van Loc, paid some local fishermen to shuttle the men to his ship. Just after the rescue was completed, Communist gunners spotted the Vung Tau. A number of artillery rounds hit it, severely wounding the captain and heavily damaging his ship.11 The cutter Ngo Quyen (HQ-17) moved in to fire back, but artillery shells soon bracketed HQ-17, and it retreated.
On 18 April, units of the 2nd Corps fought several intense battles in the Ca Na Bay section of Route 1. When Second Element reached the area, a number of South Vietnamese Navy ships appeared offshore and began shelling Route 1 where it ran along the seashore. The Chi Linh (HQ-11)—one of the smaller Patrol Escort ships, built thirty years before and equipped with only one three-inch gun—spotted the Communist tanks driving down Route 1 near the district seat. Despite being hopelessly outgunned, the HQ-11’s captain, Lieutenant Commander Phan Dinh San, crept in close. The ship fired over one hundred rounds onto the road trying to stop the advancing column. To make his gunfire more effective, San maneuvered his ship even closer to the beach. As the Chi Linhmoved in, PAVN struck back. The 2nd Corps ordered the 164th Artillery Brigade to deploy 130-mm and 122-mm guns in a direct-fire mode. Soon, the HQ-11 was under heavy fire. The captain later wrote: “Enemy tanks fiercely returned fire toward HQ-11; about 3:45 P.M., a shell directly hit the starboard of HQ-11 near the stern, damaging the crew quarters. A shell fragment killed Chief Petty Officer Nguyen Van Bang when he climbed up the mid-deck via a panel to install an alternate antenna cable. His head was blown away and his heavy body dropped into the crew quarters.”12 The damage to his ship forced San to retreat.
With no senior ARVN commander or staff officer coordinating the various ground, naval, and air elements, these scattershot attempts to slow the PAVN advance were hopeless. Even if the South Vietnamese Navy had massed all the ships it had in the area, the combined firepower was minimal. The former U.S. Coast Guard cutters were armed with only one five-inch gun, and the smaller Patrol Escort ships had only one three-inch gun. Even if Hoang Co Minh had sent the four cutters under his command to Ca Na Bay on the morning of 18 April, the firepower of the four cutters combined barely equaled that of a single U.S. destroyer. Moreover, the lead PAVN unit, the 5th Armored Battalion, had already passed through the chokepoint. As for air attack, the Air Force was not capable of flying a significant number of strike missions against the advancing Coastal Column. The PAVN forces were too far away, and the VNAF was heavily occupied hitting Communist forces near Saigon. Moreover, the closest VNAF base, Bien Hoa, was currently under sporadic artillery bombardment.
Undoubtedly Nghi had positioned himself at Thanh Son to boost troop morale in the Phan Rang area, but his headquarters staff and communications should have been in the rear at Phan Thiet. When Nghi and his staff were overrun, and with Phan Thiet under heavy pressure, the next closest major headquarters was III Corps in Bien Hoa, two hundred miles away. There was no South Vietnamese command-and-control organization higher than a district headquarters in the area between Phan Rang and Phan Thiet. The III Corps staff was strained to the limit by the pressures of Communist attacks at Xuan Loc, in the Tay Ninh/Cu Chi area, and on Route 4 south of Saigon. With little coherent information on enemy activities along Route 1, III Corps headquarters failed to coordinate RVNAF defenses in this area. A few brave ship captains, local RF/PF units, and VNAF planes tried to fight, but without a coordinated effort their attempts were useless. The JGS should have taken the reins and synchronized the South Vietnamese forces, but by this time it was completely demoralized. As a result, by noon on 18 April, the entire First Element had arrived in an assembly area only nine miles from Phan Thiet. It immediately began preparations to attack the provincial capital.
The Binh Thuan province chief, Colonel Ngo Tan Nghia, was one of South Vietnam’s better provincial leaders. In March, he had stayed at his post, rallied his Regional and Popular Forces, and fought back against Communist forces attempting to seize Binh Thuan. In early April, implementing President Thieu’s orders to hold the remaining land, Lieutenant General Toan had reinforced Nghia’s provincial RF battalions with the survivors of the 24th Ranger Group who had walked out of Quang Duc province back on March 21. Later he sent the 6th Regiment, 2nd Division, plus an M-113 troop from the 23rd Division. In addition to these forces, Nghia could call on occasional Air Force and Navy fire support. As with Brigadier General Sang at Phan Rang, Nghia’s leadership was the reason the South Vietnamese still held Phan Thiet.
Despite his efforts, however, Nghia’s defenses were slowly being compressed. The city was under constant rocket attack, most of the civilian population had fled, and the PAVN armor was rapidly advancing down Route 1. Following Tran Van Tra’s previous orders, MR-6 forces had already encircled the city. The 812th Regiment, augmented by a local-force sapper battalion and province guerrillas, had captured the district town of Thien Giao on 9 April, dealing a serious blow to Phan Thiet’s northern defenses. Simultaneously, two Communist local-force battalions attacked and slowly pushed back RF units guarding the outlying villages on the western approaches to the provincial capital. Thus, when the 203rd Tank Brigade arrived at the assembly area on 18 April, its commander found an embattled city ripe for “liberation.” He met with the local Party leadership, and they worked out a plan to capture Phan Thiet using the same tactics that had been so successful at Phan Rang. PAVN would send the First Element, in coordination with local forces and the 812th Regiment, straight down Route 1 and into Phan Thiet.
At 5:00 P.M., the PAVN armor began moving. In the lead was an advance guard—standard Soviet armor doctrine—of one tank and six APCs. After crossing a bridge over a river north of the city that ARVN had hoped to use as a defensive line, the 5th Armored Battalion, with infantry and local guides riding on the vehicles, punched through. The ARVN forces had no air support and only limited anti-tank weapons. The results were the same as at Phan Rang. Half an hour later, the lead tanks entered the city and quickly captured the town center and the province headquarters. By 10:30 P.M., Phan Thiet had fallen. The Rangers and most of the RF, seeing they were hopelessly outgunned, retreated to the beaches. The 6th Regiment put up almost no resistance. In despair over the destruction of his regiments at Phan Rang, Tran Van Nhut had earlier ordered his men to flee rather than fight when the main Communist attack hit. In his defense, he was trying to save the lives of his men rather than sacrifice them in what he believed was a hopeless cause. As he later wrote: “I was certain that Phan Thiet would be the next city to fall, so I privately instructed [the 6th Regiment commander] to assemble a number of civilian fishing boats to use when evacuation became necessary. I told him to sail to Vung Tau when the time came.”13
Under intense pressure to continue toward Saigon as fast as possible, the 2nd Corps turned over city administration to local forces and departed that night. The local Communists were not particularly eager to press their advantage, and Nghia, who had escaped to a VNN ship, coordinated the rescue of three thousand of his men from the beaches south of the city. A South Vietnamese RF officer later described the scene: “On the morning of 19 April, although the Communists were in control of Phan Thiet, the area of the ship docks . . . and the airfield were still in ARVN hands. The beach was covered with soldiers from every branch of service: airborne, rangers, and 2nd Division troops still stuck after retreating from the battle of Phan Rang, and provincial RF and PF units. . . . In the end, thanks to their discipline and patience, all the soldiers present along the beach . . . were rescued. At that time the tide was falling, so the large ships had to anchor more than [half a mile] off the coast. However, using LCM landing craft, all the units, even a troop of APCs from the 8th Cavalry Squadron operating in Phan Thiet, were picked up and taken south. . . . The Navy ships docked safely at Vung Tau at 3:00 A.M. . . . 20 April 1975.”14
Meanwhile, the Coastal Column continued rolling south. Trying to stop the advancing PAVN, on the night of 19 April ARVN troops blew up a major bridge on Route 1. It made no difference. Within forty-five minutes, PAVN engineers had improvised a ford to enable vehicles to cross. By 20 April the column had arrived at Rung La, a village only twelve miles from the besieged Xuan Loc.
With the arrival of the 2nd Corps at Rung La, all South Vietnamese positions along the central coast, from Quang Tri to Ham Tan, had fallen to the PAVN armor. By 3:00 A.M. on 24 April, the entire 2nd Corps was gathered in the assembly area near Xuan Loc. For Nguyen Huu An, it was a incredible accomplishment, one of which he was justifiably proud: “The corps had moved through three different enemy military regions, including eleven provinces and eighteen cities and towns. We had covered an average of sixty miles per day, fighting as we advanced. We had fought five infantry battles in coordination with local forces; three division-sized combined-arms battles. We had . . . crushed the long-range defense line protecting Saigon, defeated the enemy’s ‘withdrawal and consolidation’ tactics, and cleared Route 1 from Hue all the way down to the gates of Saigon. The entire corps arrived at the assembly area exactly at the time specified in the General Staff’s time schedule.”15
Another arm of General Van Tien Dung’s mighty army had arrived to face the beleaguered ARVN forces defending Saigon.