Viet Cong Attacks Near Pleiku

February 7, 1965

Army officers at Pleiku assess the damage from the sapper attack

Overview

Early in the morning, while it is still dark, approximately ten Viet Cong insurgents breach the fenced perimeter of the U.S. Army advisory facility near Pleiku, in the South Vietnamese Central Highlands. The infiltrators place demolition charges against several structures, detonate them, and begin throwing additional charges and mortar rounds through windows and damaged walls. The attack lasts for about ten minutes.

At the same time, a few kilometers away, two five-man Viet Cong mortar teams enter the aircraft parking area of Camp Holloway, an Army helicopter base and headquarters for the 52d Aviation Battalion. Over the course of ten minutes, the Viet Cong teams fire mortar rounds and detonate charges against parked aircraft and barracks buildings.

The attacks kill eight Americans and wound over 100 others. Over a dozen aircraft are destroyed or damaged. The attackers escape both the advisory base and Camp Holloway with no casualties.1

¹Carl Berger, ed. The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia: An Illustrated Account (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1977), 69; Robert F. Futrell, The Advisory Years to 1965, The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1981), 265–66; Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald, From Military Assistance to Combat, 1959–1965, The United States Navy and the Vietnam Conflict Volume II (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1986), 496–497; Ronald Bruce Frankum, Like Rolling Thunder: The Air War in Vietnam, 1964–1975, (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 15–18; Spencer C. Tucker, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2nd edition; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 214–215. Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Airpower: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 58–61.