Convoy Ambush on Highway

by

John Albright

When the 11th Armored Cavalry-the 'Blackhorse Regiment'- arrived in the Republic of Vietnam in September 1966, the threat of ambush hung over every highway in the country. Since the regiment's three squadrons each had a company of main battle tanks, three armored cavalry troops, and a howitzer battery, the Blackhorse was well suited for meeting the challenge.

Each of the cavalry troop's three platoons had nine armored cavalry assault vehicles (ACAV's). The ACAV was an M113 armored personnel carrier modified for service in Vietnam and particularly adapted to convoy escort. With the M113's usual complement of one .50-caliber machine gun augmented by two M60 machine guns, all protected by armored gun shields, and with one of its five-man crew armed with a 40-mm. grenade launcher, the vehicle took on some of the characteristics of a light tank. Fast, the track-laying ACAV could keep pace with wheeled vehicles and also deliver withering fire.

Aware that convoy escort would be a primary mission of the 11th Cavalry, the regiment's leaders had concentrated in the five months between alert and departure for Vietnam on practicing counter ambush techniques. In countless mock ambushes, the cavalrymen learned to react swiftly with fire. The first object was to run thin-skinned vehicles out of the killing zone; the armored escorts would then return to roll up the enemy's flanks, blasting with every weapon and crushing the enemy beneath their tracks.

In mid-October, a month after arriving at a staging area at Long Binh, a few kilometers northeast of Saigon, the regiment issued its first major operational order. The Blackhorse was to establish a regimental base camp on more than a square mile of ground along Interprovincial Highway 2, twelve kilometers south of the provincial capital of Xuan Loc. (See Map 1 )