Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Vietnam statistics

Fixed wing losses were staggering as well:

Air Force: 2197

Navy: 854

Marines: 271

Total fixed wing fatalites, not including passengers aboard: 3322

Also saw some stats on small arms that were lost or left behind
when Saigon fell. Cant remember where or when I read it though.

That's about as sad as it gets.

Found the other I was looking for:

Fixed wing losses, Army: 305 aircraft

Rotary wing losses: 5086 aircraft

Sad indeed.

I have that in one of my books but cant find it right now. The figure of 900,000 M-16's sticks in my mind.

when John F. Kennedy, and his successor Lyndon Johnson got us into that war, we were all feeling like Patriots.

Affirmation Viet Nam was something that the Johnson group pushed back in '66 and '67. Defense Secretary McNamara was milking the American public for every ounce of blood they could squeeze from the Patriotic community.

a high school graduate i graduated with was kilt in Vietnam in 1968. a volunteer type, he served well. i remember him and give honor to his service.

it's a shame that skirmish and dirty little SE Asian war ever occurred, but it did.

President Nixon got us out that mess. he deserves an immense amount of credit.

Gus,

Shut the [bleep] up.

After the statements you made about some of our Vietnam HEROS, you can STFU.

I could barely read through the first post, it puts a perspective on the numbers that just make you feel terribly sick.

Thanks to All of Those who Served Back Then - and Now.

Stephen

if you can't do anything positive except attack the messenger, then i'm sorry for you, bro.

i served during that inopportune time in our Nation's history. w/the First Cavalry Division..working with the Doctors caused me to see the world in a different light.

may you also be so blessed, while still breathing air down here on the Earthen.

Speaking of fixed wingers, I'll mention FACs.

From Wikipedia: During the Vietnam War, FACs participated in every major military action against the enemy except the strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam.[49] American fighter-bombers dropped over four times the weight of bombs dropped in all of World War II�nine and a half million tons. Laos became the most heavily bombed country in history. All fighter-bomber ordnance dropped in that nation was directed via forward air control. Much of the bombing in South Vietnam and Cambodia was also FACed; so was the bombing in southern North Vietnam.[50] A total of 338 USAF forward air controllers were lost in action.

The only correction I'll make to that is that it wasn't just "Much" of the bombing in South Vietnam that was controlled by a FAC, but ALL. The Rules of Engagement were that no bomb could be dropped in SVN unless under the direct control of a FAC, either airborne or on the ground. For almost all of those nine and a half million tons of bombs, a FAC flying overhead gave specific clearance.

Here's a webpage by my acquaintance Tom Pilsch, fellow O-2 driver. FAC

THANK YOU to ALL the Veterans of Vietnam.

To those that did not make it home. Rest in Honored Peace.

Has anyone googled Vietnam fact vs fiction before? Lots of
stats on there.

The first person KIA where i grew up in Lee County , VA was Wesley Rasnic . I was still in High School.

OLEN WESLEY RASNIC


PFC - E3 - Army - Selective Service
1st Infantry Division

Length of service 1 years
His tour began on Jul 28, 1965
Casualty was on Jan 20, 1966
In , SOUTH VIETNAM
Hostile, died of wounds, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Body was recovered

Panel 04E - Line 80

Jim Wilson's second book he has chosen to tell a story of the toll of the war on a single community: Bardstown, Kentucky.

quote:


Bardstown has the setting for such a story. A town of less than 6,000, where lives are intertwined by connections of kinship, friendship, and geography. A town with a fierce independent streak, illustrated by its tradition of manufacturing moonshine whisky (today, licensed distilleries still produce Maker's Mark and Jim Beam bourbons). And a town imbued with a martial spirit, symbolized by the nearby armored calvary center at Fort Knox.

Bardstown has the history for such a story. Though never a community of more than a few thousand, it has sent more than its share of men to war. Fifty men from Bardstown joined the volunteers who followed Sam Houston and Davy Crockett from Tennessee to help Texas win its independence. One man returned. Bardstown's sons divided to fight on both sides in the War Between the States; its volunteers fought in Cuba, World Wars I and II, and Korea.

More important, beginning on April 11, 1968, Bardstown would produce the narrative for such a story. That was the day Lyndon Johnson's secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford, announced a call up of 24,500 reserves and National Guardsmen--105 of them from Bardstown--10,000 of whom were to ship out to Southeast Asia immediately, since Tet had consumed the resources of our standing army and the country was being asked to give more. Wilson quotes the editor of the town's weekly newspaper, the Kentucky Standard: "...[W]e supported the idea because we felt like it was the thing to do. After all, you have a national administration that has a lot more information than you have, so, more or less, you put your faith in your leaders."

The perversity of the summons in April 1968 is enormous considering the historical moment. For this call-up came after Clifford had decided the war was unwinnable after the critical White House meeting of the Wise Men on March 26 that finally convinced President Johnson that we had to get out of Vietnam; and after LBJ had withdrawn from the 1968 presidential campaign. These men--the boys from Bardstown and from so many other towns and cities--were innocents conscripted to die in a war their government, at the highest levels, had secretly decided was lost.

At the time, the call-up changed the nature of the impression Vietnam made on many communities because it took men not individually but in unitsized groups. On a small town like Bardstown, for example, taking 105 men in one blow was devastating . The fabric of that tightly woven place was suddenly ripped apart as young fathers, husbands-to-be, college students, craft apprentices, and entrepreneurs were shipped to Fort Hood, Texas. The men of Battery C of the 113th Artillery from Bardstown were suddenly on their way to fight in a war they hardly knew beyond the flickering images on television at the evening news hour. Wilson describes it as a belated announcement of the war: "Bardstown would become a symbol of how deep into America the war had reached, and few, if any, communities in this land felt the impact of the war as did the people here."

In Vietnam the 113th Artillery became known as a spirited and effective unit. ... On June 19, 1969, on a hill called Fire Base Tomahawk , Viet Cong troops attacked the base with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s. Explosions ripped the ammunition storage area, bunkers, weapons pits, ammunition carriers, trucks, and artillery pieces. In a matter of minutes in that furious melee in the darkness, 10 men in Battery C were killed and 45 wounded. Half of the dead were guardsmen from Bardstown.

Within days, first one and then another olive drab army car appeared driving slowly through Bardstown's streets. Each carried two officers, one an Army chaplain. Word spread that something terrible was visiting the community.

"People actually positioned themselves at the roads leading into Bardstown from Fort Knox, and if an Army sedan with two officers in it showed up, they'd call ahead and alert the townspeople that more bad news was coming," one resident recalls. "Then someone would follow them to see where it stopped, and it wasn't but 10 minutes later that the whole town knew about it."

Before the claim on Bardstown would be complete, Vietnam's toll would be 16. Five of those died in the single action at Fire Base Tomahawk; by some accounts, that figure ought to be six--the mother of two casualties shot herself to death with a shotgun at home after the news came.

As Wilson writes in a defining vignette, a member of Battery C some years later "[S]tood before the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. As he made rubbing after rubbing of names on the wall, a woman ventured forward and asked, 'Sir, you couldn't possibly know all those people.'

"'Yes, ma'am,' he answered, 'I surely do. I know every one of them personally.'" un-quote

Sycamore

+1

To any POW's, YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN!

You are a cheap shootin', hit-and-run, cowardly, old bitter [bleep]....

BTW Manlicker what the [bleep] did you ever do for your country?

....Outside of making several divorce lawyers rich?

France left Vietnam in 1954.

Mannlicher, how can you write such blatant falsehoods?

Thanks to jorgeI and Take_a_knee for pointing it out.

I thank all who served/serve from the bottom of my heart. I am almost 47 and I can still remember sitting watching evening news with my Dad (WWII navy) and hearing the casualty reports every [bleep] night...I was just a little boy but I can still here them in my mind...."and in combat action today in Viet Nam...X killed, X wounded, and X missing" . Cronkite, Huntley, all the big names reading the network news...eerie to this day 40+ years later.

Because Cronkite, Huntley, etc., were liberals hoping to stir up remorse and/or hate of real Americans, who were serving in Nam. And must keep in mind, that while it means a lot to a lot of people, the Vietnam Memorial was NOT meant to list those who died in Vietnam and honor them, but to make people just see the numbers and names and come away with a "no more wars" attitude. In that sense it was meant as a put down of those who served and died there. In case you forget who was behind it, it was John Kerry's bunch, the Vietnam Vets Against the War. What those people can never understand is, those of us who served (I wasn't in Nam, had been discharged before it heated up, but was in on the Cuban blockade etc), are the ones who really want no more wars, because we see what goes on, and are the ones fighting in them. I don't know of a more pacifist type of person than a good military person. I think I speak for most military people when I say I'd love to see the world get along, and there be no more wars.