Operation JUNCTION CITY Begins

February 22, 1967

Overview

Elements from multiple U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, and South Vietnamese army units take part in Operation JUNCTION CITY. The operation is the primary offensive of the overall campaign in III Corps and its objective is to encircle and destroy the Viet Cong 9th Division, which controls the area northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border. JUNCTION CITY represents one of the largest helicopter actions of the war, and the offensive begins with the only major parachute assault of the war.

The operation lasts until May. U.S. troops capture 850 tons of food and about 500,000 pages of documents, kill over 2,700 enemy soldiers, and force Viet Cong commanders to move their southern headquarters into Cambodia.¹

¹George L. MacGarrigle, Combat Operations: Taking the Offensive, October 1966 to October 1967, United States Army in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1998), 113–19, 123, 140–43; Spencer C. Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2nd edition; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 555–57; John Schlight, The War in South Vietnam, The Years of The Offensive, 1965–1968, The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1999), 251–55.