On 22 February 1967 American and South Vietnamese forces launched Operation Junction City in War Zone C, the forested borderland of Tay Ninh province north of Saigon. At 9 a.m. that morning 845 men of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade, together with an attached artillery battery, jumped from transport aircraft near Katum. It was the first battalion-size American parachute assault of the Vietnam War, and no other airborne operation of that scale followed. The operation was one of the largest of the war, yet its main target slipped away.
Hunting for COSVN
The planner was Lieutenant General Jonathan Seaman, commander of II Field Force, Vietnam. His target was the area along the Cambodian border where American commanders hoped to find the Central Office for South Vietnam, known as COSVN, the headquarters that directed communist forces in the south. According to HistoryNet, the stated objectives were to engage the 9th Viet Cong Division and the 101st North Vietnamese Army Regiment, to destroy COSVN headquarters and to destroy enemy base camps.1
The plan was a hammer and anvil. Units of the 1st and 25th Infantry Divisions and the 173rd Airborne would arrive by helicopter, parachute and road to form a horseshoe of blocking positions, and then the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and a brigade of the 25th Infantry Division would drive north into the open end. Sandboxx News gives some 250 helicopters, and PBS writes of 240 sweeping over Tay Ninh province at the start of the operation. The operation took its name from Junction City, Kansas, although HistoryNet and Sandboxx give different reasons for the choice.2
The jump
Near dawn a B-52 strike hit the objective area, and helicopters began landing a 1st Infantry Division battalion near Katum. At 9 a.m. the paratroopers of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry, went out of the doors. The Air Force Historical Foundation counts 23 C-130s carrying 700 troops, HistoryNet writes of C-130s, and Sandboxx says the men jumped from C-130 and C-123 aircraft. HistoryNet places the drop to the north of the helicopter landings near Katum.3
According to HistoryNet, the descending men took only sporadic fire from the ground, which helicopter gunships quickly silenced, and only one paratrooper was wounded. The jump had worked, but it found almost no one. In the first five days the fighting left 28 Americans and 54 communist soldiers dead. COSVN was nowhere to be found, and Sandboxx describes it as a loose, highly mobile team that could slip into Cambodia, not the fixed headquarters American intelligence imagined.4
Battles at the firebases
The real fighting came later and mostly where the communist commanders chose. On 28 February a company of the 1st Infantry Division was ambushed and beat off several assaults in a four-hour fight, losing 25 dead, while 167 enemy bodies were counted. On the morning of 21 March the 272nd Viet Cong Regiment attacked Fire Support Base Gold near Suoi Tre. HistoryNet describes the attackers breaking through the perimeter until gunners fired flechette rounds at point blank range and armor arrived. The Americans counted 647 enemy dead there and lost 31 killed and 109 wounded.5
According to HistoryNet, at Landing Zone George, about 12 miles southeast of Katum, about 600 attackers were found dead on 1 April against 17 Americans killed. These figures are American body counts made on the battlefield, and they should be read with that in mind.6
A tactical win without a decision
Even the length of the operation is given differently. Sandboxx describes an 82-day operation and PBS one of 72 days. HistoryNet's summary dates it from 21 February to 14 May 1967, while its text says Junction City was brought to an end on 15 April. The American count of enemy dead was 2,728, and US losses were 282 killed. HistoryNet notes that a captured COSVN document claimed 13,500 Americans killed.7
The main quarry escaped. COSVN and many units moved across the border into Cambodia. HistoryNet argues that the heavy losses in battles like these helped push Hanoi toward the decision to attack the cities in 1968, which became the Tet Offensive. For an earlier test of airmobile war in Vietnam, see the Battle of Ia Drang, and for the siege that opened 1968, Khe Sanh.8
