On 2 January 1963 South Vietnamese troops, backed by American helicopters, armored personnel carriers and artillery, attacked a Viet Cong battalion near Ap Bac in the Mekong Delta. The Viet Cong held their positions all day, shot down five U.S. helicopters, killed three American advisers and slipped away after dark.
The plan
In 1963 Americans in South Vietnam served as advisers and helicopter crews, not in combat units. The operation near Ap Bac, a hamlet about 35 miles (some 65 kilometers) southwest of Saigon in Dinh Tuong Province, belonged to the 7th Division of the South Vietnamese army, working with provincial Civil Guard troops. Its senior American adviser was Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann.1
Intelligence reported about a company of Viet Cong in the area. The plan was to land infantry by helicopter to the north of Ap Bac while the Civil Guard battalions moved up from the south, with a company of M113 armored personnel carriers, artillery and air support. The enemy turned out to be much stronger: Futrell and the State Department's editors speak of a battalion, Starry of three main-force companies with local guerrillas, armed with machine guns and 60 mm mortars and dug in along a canal and its tree lines.2
A day of failures
The Civil Guard set off early in the morning and soon ran into the Viet Cong positions. The first three helicopter lifts landed safely, but when the fourth came in, the Viet Cong opened fire from the tree lines. Fourteen helicopters were hit and five were shot down.3
The M113s were sent forward to reach the downed helicopters, but the Viet Cong concentrated their fire on the machine gunners, who stood exposed from the waist up, and the armored attack came to a halt. Late in the day a South Vietnamese parachute force was dropped near Ap Bac, but on the west side rather than the east, so it could not block the line of retreat. During the night the Viet Cong withdrew, and next morning their positions were empty.4
The cost
Three American advisers were killed. Cosmas counts 63 South Vietnamese dead and Futrell 65, and both give about 100 wounded. Five American helicopters were shot down. The Viet Cong got away with light losses: the State Department's editors say so, and Futrell notes that the Viet Cong later admitted 18 killed.5
Victory or defeat?
Vann judged the operation a failure and spoke bitterly to reporters about the wrong decisions made during the battle. American newspapers called Ap Bac a defeat. General Paul Harkins, the American commander in Saigon, publicly defended the South Vietnamese and denied that they had been beaten.6
In mid-January the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a team under General Earle Wheeler, the Army Chief of Staff, to Vietnam. Cosmas sees in Ap Bac an example of the military failings of the South Vietnamese army, and Futrell writes that the South Vietnamese and the Americans lost prestige and their reputation for power. Two years later American combat troops were fighting in Vietnam themselves, as at Ia Drang in 1965.7
