Pleiku

by J.D. Coleman

Book Overview

They were the first air assault division in the history of the U.S. Army. Their job was to test the innovative air-mobile concept and break the Army's dependence on surface transport. This is their story, told by a man who was there, at America's first victory against the Vietnamese. Martin's.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312914687
• ISBN13: 9780312914684
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

An excellent sory of two of the most famous battles of the Vietnam War

This is a good story, though a little bit too, too much like an after action report. Still, the fact that it was written by one who was there during the battles at LZ XRay and LZ Albany make it an especially good book to read. Also included are the accounts of how the helicopter air arm of the army came into being and why and why it proved so effective. Simply said: get the book. It is a good read again and again and again. The movie, "We were soldiers" came from the actions described in his book.

Quite Accurate

I came across this book back in 1989 when a friend asked me if my father was Sgt. Eugene Pennington who served in Vietnam. It turned out that he was reading this book and came across my father's name mentioned in it. I had been hearing my father talk of his experiences in Vietnam over the years and was amazed to find a book that so accurately informed the reader of the Vietnam experience. By reading this book, I became quite familiar with the tactics that my father had been trying to relate to me. I bought a copy of the book and gave it to him for Father's Day. To this day I still believe that it was the best gift I ever gave him. I would greatly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about helicopter warfare in the Vietnam era.

Where to begin a study of modern U.S. Air Assault tactics

If you want to know where America's Air Assault tactics came from, how they developed in Vietnam and by implication how Army Aviation is in trouble today--begin with this book! Have your highlight pen ready when you examine the decisions and actions of the brave pioneers who created 3-D Air Assault capabilities in our Army at the behest of Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara (he could do good things once in a while!). If you read carefully you will see that to get the drastic Army structural changes needed, the capabilities of helicopters were oversold--to get large numbers of helicopters, the ground vehicle was dismissed as a tool with the helicopter doing EVERYTHING. General Kinnard and his wizards of the 11th Airborne Division [later reflagged the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)] went about having helicopters do everything---place troops around the battlefield, act as CAS gunships, fly-in artillery for fire bases--except stay in the "death ground" of enemy fire (re: Colonel Bolger's book: "Death Ground: America's Infantry in battle") as an armored shield and protected transportation means carrying superior levels of firepower. So while Air Assault operations could "run circles" around the enemy on the map board, once Sky Troopers left their mounts, they were vulnerable to enemy fire fighting the enemy "even" at best---as the more numerous enemy could absorb untold casualties without ill effect at home. Its interesting that the helicopter-replacing-everything hubris negated the understanding of the need to field a helicopter-transportable light Armored Fighting Vehicle (AFV) that could "Air-Mech" with Sky Troopers into battle and give them dominance from that point on in the operation. The M551 Sheridan light tank was available though 7 tons too heavy for the CH-47 Chinook; (I have seen photos of it lifted by the CH-54 Sky Crane heavy lift helicopter) why it wasn't airdropped from fixed-wing C-130 Hercules aircraft and used for 3-D maneuver fire support by the one parachute-qualified Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division is a mystery--the French Airborne parachuted all over the countryside in the first Indo-China war. Perhaps it was the urgency of getting a force that could maneuver deep into the Central Highlands of Vietnam before the enemy cut the South into two over-rode deeper analysis and force-on-force war games to reveal structural flaws and correct them. America was at war.As you read this superb book which should be a companion to LTG Hal Moore/Joe Galloway's "We were Soldiers once and young" account of the Ia Drang battle fought by the 1st Cav, you get a sense that we miscalculated and were thinking "big blue arrows"--operationally impressed by helicopter distance/speed 3-D maneuver capability and overly reliant on distant artillery howitzer/aircraft supporting arms and overlooked the up close "belt buckle" fight that the enemy chose to fight whenever possible because it would curtail our lon

Concise history of First Cav's Ia Drang Valley campaign.

Coleman chronicles the history of the Ia Drang campaign from the viewpoints of many levels of the combatants - from brigade, battalion and company commanders to platoon and squad NCO's and skytroopers. Also insights from captured NVA documents and maps on their battle plans. I found his chapters covering the LZ XRay and LZ Albany actions gripping text.

Accurate, documentary-style history by one who was there.

The author makes history interesting. He covers probably the most significant transition in tactics undertaken by the U.S. Army in the 20th century--"freeing infrantry from the terrain". The First Cav tactics would later be emulated by most of the U.S. infantry units in Vietnam, and later by the ARVN, but no other units ever had anywhere near the rotary wing assets available as did the Cav. What the Cav initiated tactically in the Ia Drang Valley battles led to the evolution to their "pile on" tactics employed later in the war. Their massive airlift capability was the great equalizer in later battles with numerically- superior and well-armed NVA units--battles often (perhaps generally) initiated by Cav "Blue" Platoons of its 9th Cavalry Squadron. Readers interested in this book will find even greater detail, and a much more focused account of the battles at LZ Xray and LZ Albany in Harold Moore's and Joe Galloway's book: "We Were Soldiers Once--And Young". Other good reading is Mathew Brennan's "Brennan's War" (his personal account serving as a member of a Cav Blue Platoon in 1967-69), and his:"Headhunters" (also about Blue Platoons in the Cav), and "Hunter/Killer Teams" (about scout/cobra "Pink" teams). J.D. Coleman also wrote an excellent book about 1st Cav operations in 1969-70, including the invasion of the Cambodian "sanctuaries" in May of 1970, entitled "Incursion".