Ia Drang Valley Incident

Moore’s mission was to find the enemy and strike them first. His troops ended up fighting for their survival against a numerically superior force. Two MIAs remain from that battle.

On November 14, 1965, the 1st Battalion (Bn), 7th Cavalry Regiment (Regt), 1st Air Cavalry (Cav) Division (Div) was sent on a search and destroy mission deep into the jungles of a plateau in the Central Highlands in the Ia Drang River Valley, thirty-seven miles west of Pleiku in the Gia Lai Province, Republic of (South) Vietnam (RVN). There they met the 32nd, 33rd, and 66th Regts of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). The U.S. had fought against local Vietnamese Communist (Viet Cong) forces in small skirmishes since the withdrawal of the French in 1954; however, the Ia Drang Valley marked the first time U.S. forces faced off against trained North Vietnamese regulars in the battle that has become synonymous with the beginning of full scale U.S. involvement in the RVN. While the Battle of Ia Drang constitutes roughly a month-long period, the two major battles occurred at Landing Zones (LZ) X-Ray and Albany.

In mid-October, the month prior, 32nd Regt had surrounded and attacked the American Special Forces camp at Plei Me, seventeen miles to the east. Using an old ploy, the 32nd Regt stopped short of destroying the camp in the hopes of drawing Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops into an ambush set by the 33rd PAVN Regt. At the behest of ARVN forces, the U.S. joined the fight and severely crippled the 33rd PAVN Regt. Remaining members of both PAVN regiments retreated westward into the Ia Drang Valley, which bordered Cambodia along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The U.S. Military decided to send the 7th Regt of the 1st Cav Div, led by LTC Harold G. Moore, to investigate the Ia Drang Valley. Up to that point, contact with the enemy had been limited. When Moore touched down with the men in the first wave of sixteen helicopters at LZ X-Ray near the base of the Chu Pong Massif, he found no enemy. Moore remained cautious. With only 90 men on the ground and the next ninety at least an hour away (34 miles to Plei Me and back), he was operating lightly in a region largely unexplored and that American Intelligence had suggested could be filled with a regiment of enemy forces. During the first hour, Moore’s men captured an enemy private; a boy. He informed Moore that there were two PAVN regiments on the mountain next to them that “wanted very much to kill Americans but have not been able to find any.” There were, in fact, three. At that point Moore knew he would be fighting a battle for survival rather than mounting a first strike. His premonitions were confirmed when roughly 90 minutes after landing, his forces met with enemy fire. The battle at LZ X-Ray would last for three days and two nights as members of Moore’s 1st Bn, and later 2nd Bn replacement, fought for survival against a numerically superior force

On the morning of the seventeenth, the 2nd Bn, 5th Cav (2-5), the 2nd Bn, 7th Cav (2-7), and one company of 1st Bn, 5th Cav (1-5) would march out of LZ X-Ray. Shortly thereafter, the 2-7 and 1-5 broke off toward LZ Albany. At one point, strung out over a narrow road, these battalions halted to question two prisoners who had been captured. Unbeknownst to them, the enemy commander, Lt. Col. Nguyen Hu An’s 66th PAVN Regt was resting adjacent to U.S. forces under the cover of the jungle. As the battle-weary Americans rested, the PAVN Regt attacked with mortar and sniper fire. Over the next six hours, a bitter fight claimed the lives of 155 American men and 120 wounded. Unfortunately, some of these casualties were friendly fire incidents, as the fighting devolved to a situation where artillery and napalm airstrikes were called in to alleviate the pressure from PAVN forces

At the battles at LZ X-Ray and LZ Albany, 234 men were killed and more than 250 were wounded in a period of four days. In the 43-day Ia Drang campaign, 545 Americans were killed. Enemy deaths have been estimated at 3,561. It was the greatest loss of American life in the Vietnam War at that point, and a premonition of how determined the enemy was. The DPAA and its predecessor organizations have completed 130 Joint Field Activities in Socialist Republic of Vietnam (S.R.V.) to recover the remaining 1,251 personnel still missing there. Those activities involve excavations, conducting oral interviews with Vietnamese veterans and villagers, and work with the Ministry of National Defense archives to locate information pertaining to the still unaccounted-for Americans. In FY2018, the DPAA’s 2nd Joint Field Activity will range from the Gia Lai Province, where the Ia Drang Valley is located, to the southernmost province of Cau Mau.

Two U.S. service members remain unaccounted-for from the Battle of Ia Drang:
       • Specialist 4 Jerry Allen Hiemer, U.S. Army, was lost on November 14, 1965, when his unit was ambushed near LZ ALBANY
       • Captain Paul Truman McClellan Jr., U.S. Air Force, was lost on November 14, 1965, when his A-1 Skyraider was shot down

This article originally appeared in the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency:

https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaFamWebInIaDrang

To read more about these battles on my website, click on the magnifying glass on the top right of this page and type IA DRANG or ALBANY then <enter>. A drop-down menu will list all the available articles. After reading an article, use the back arrow on the top left of the page to return to the search results.

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