packagenomad.blogg.se

The chart below is not all inclusive but includes most of the helicopter units that served during the Vietnam War.

Large groups of soldiers could be air-lifted into a battle and then be withdrawn after a few hours and flown to another area to reinforce other units or to engage the enemy again in a different portion of the country. This is also the main reason that soldiers in Vietnam saw more action than those soldiers of preceding wars. Cobra helicopters totaled 1,110,716 flight hours in Vietnam. Without helicopters, it would have taken three times as many troops to secure the 800 mile border with Cambodia and Laos (the politicians thought the Geneva Conventions of 1954 and the Geneva Accords of 1962 would secure the border).Īrmy Huey’s totaled 9,713,762 flight hours in Vietnam between October 1966 and the end of American involvement in early 1973. The helicopter provided unprecedented mobility. The average lapse between being wounded and reaching a hospital was less than one hour, and as a result, less than one percent of those wounded died of their wounds within the first 24 hours. MEDEVAC helicopters flew nearly 500,000 missions, airlifting 900,000 patients (nearly one-half were Americans). 75,000 Vietnam Veterans are severely disabled. Although the percent of dead is similar to other wars, amputations or crippling wounds were 300% higher than in World War II.

As a result, 58,169 were killed and 304,000 wounded out of 2.29 million who served. One out of every ten Americans who served in Vietnam became a casualty. "It’s an excellent book for anyone with an interest in the details of 20th-century infantry weapons, especially historians and collectors.Photo above from 7/15/66 shows the crash that killed two men from the Fulton/Montgomery County area of upstate New York just west of Albany, SGT Robert R. They understand.that there is no strategy or tactic that equals victory in armed conflict if it does not include that muddy, grimy, dog-tired infantryman with just his personal weapon to help him survive in a life-and-death encounter." Men and women who carried a new generation of weapons to war into places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, who have returned with a fresh understanding about the crucial importance of small arms in warfare. "We have a new generation of combat veterans among us these days. Viewing these images is like studying a primer about one of America’s longest and deadliest wars. There are rare and stirring images here that depict what it was like to fight in the jungle-covered mountains and in the rice paddies.

Divided into easily digestible sections and preceded by cogent discussions of each weapon type, the authors have presented an intriguing collection of photographs that depict the primary small (and not so small) infantry arms most common on Vietnam battlefields. There were huge numbers of other weapons used by both sides, but they are often ignored and rarely seen being used in combat action. This was particularly true during the long, frustrating war in Vietnam, but much of the focus in studying that conflict has been either on aerial weapons-strike aircraft or armed helicopters-or on the originally much-maligned M16 rifle. Small arms come into play when contact is close and potentially lethal. Infantry weapons-often referred to as small arms-have fascinated soldiers and scholars for decades as they are the most personal aspects of combat. Those who understand warfare from research or from personal experience generally realize this about the conflicts that have plagued mankind since the dawn of time.

With modern military emphasis on whiz-bang weapons technology and the constant quest for things that make a bigger bang on the battlefield, it’s easy to forget that at the dark heart of war stands an infantryman and his individual weapons.