Word: danang
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...That Ship. The marines were shot at once during the landing operation, when a Viet Cong rifleman hit the wing of a C-130 Hercules transport as it approached Danang with a load of marines from camps on Okinawa. But no real damage was done...
Under slate-grey skies, U.S. Marine landing craft plowed through 5-ft. waves in the Bay of Danang, came to a halt with gravelly crunches, and dropped their ramps. Out poured hundreds of U.S. marines in full battle dress, with M-14 rifles held at high port. They were the vanguard of a 3,500-man force, the first marines since Korea to hit the beaches in a combat zone, and the first U.S. combat-as opposed to "advisory" -troops to arrive in South Viet...
...decision to send in combat units had been weighed for weeks. Only after it became evident that the big Danang airbase in the northern tier of South Viet Nam was critically threatened, did Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommend sending in two reinforced Marine battalions and a squadron of 24 helicopters. By then, at least twelve Viet Cong battalions-roughly 6,000 men-were in the Danang area; they launched an attack at Mieubong, only three miles away, the day before the marines landed...
Half of the marines landed by ship. Scarcely 24 hours after the orders to move came from Washington, a Navy destroyer and four transports hove to in the foam-flecked bay half a mile off Nam O Beach north of Danang, renamed "Red Beach Two" by the marines. A dozen LVTs (landing vehicles, tracked) were lowered from the transports and nosed toward the beach carrying 1,400 men of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade. For two months the marines had been floating in the South China Sea, just waiting. "When the temperature went up," said Brigadier General Frederick J. Karch...
...took just 65 minutes to put 1,400 marines ashore with rifles, machine guns, rocket and grenade launchers. At Danang, the brigade's other battalion came in the easy way-by air from Okinawa. Both battalions came prepared for heavy combat: they had 105-mm. howitzers, M48 medium tanks, 106-mm. recoilless rifles...