Word: laotians
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...dead and 2,763 wounded. Even if the figures are accurate, the operation has so far yielded far fewer enemy supplies than did the invasion of Cambodia last year. More impressive in the eyes of U.S. officers is the estimate that one-third of the Communist battalions in the Laotian panhandle have been put out of commission...
...Drowsy pilots walked out to their UH-1 Hueys and malevolent-looking OH-6 Cobra gunships, checked out the oil levels, the instruments and the control linkages, and then strolled back to their tactical operations centers. The call to combat came as it has almost every day since the Laotian operation began, well before midmorning. At the heavily sandbagged T.O.C. of the 4th Battalion, 77th Field Artillery, 101st Airborne Division, blond, mustachioed Warrant Officer Fred Hayden, 27, set down his cup of tea and sprinted out onto the oil-soaked pad. Zipped into his brown flame-resistant flight suit...
Walters dipped the Cobra's nose and rolled out to the northwest. A set of scrambled alphabet letters came in over the T.O.C. radio, and Hayden pulled out his "Whiz Wheel" decoder to decipher the grid coordinates of his mission. As their chopper raced over the bomb-pocked Laotian countryside, a second Cobra pulled up alongside. Twenty minutes later, the Cobras arrived over a scene of total chaos. As Hayden and Walters carved circles in the sky several thousand feet above the fire-scarred hilltop, they watched errant rockets from choppers already on the scene blazing into friendly...
...puts it, "nobody knew what was going on.'' In the week-long battle for the hilltop fire base, a number of U.S. helicopters were shot down, and more than a few of those that wobbled back to Khe Sanh were thoroughly shot up. Since the Laotian operation began on Feb. 8, the loss rate of U.S. helicopters -normally about one per 16,000 sorties -has quadrupled. So far during the Laos operation, Communist gunners have knocked out no fewer than 61 helicopters, about 10% of the fleet originally committed to Lam Son 719. More than 160 other birds...
Advancing North Vietnamese forces this weekend sent the remnants of what was once an elite South Vietnamese army hurtling back across the Laotian border towards the protection of American units. American helicopters, jet fighters, and B-52s flew hundreds of missions in an attempt to keep the South Vietnamese units from being completely wiped...