Operation MASHER/WHITE WING Begins

The U.S. Army 1st Cavalry Division begins Operation MASHER in Binh Dinh Province on the Bong Son Plain, a strip of land along the central coast of South Vietnam. MASHER is a large search-and-destroy operation employing multiple airmobile assaults into the narrow valleys, mountain spurs, and coastal plains north of the town of Bong Son. Shortly after the operation begins, presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy requests that MACV change MASHER’s name, because the Johnson administration fears the reaction it might elicit from an American public that is increasingly skeptical of U.S. troops commitments. Bundy believes the title “MASHER” is inflammatory. In response, General William C. Westmoreland changes the operation’s name to WHITE WING.

Operation MASHER/WHITE WING lasts for 41 days. Airmobile cavalrymen make a series of assaults into the Viet Cong-dominated region and, in a string of running engagements, push Communist forces toward blocking positions occupied by American, South Vietnamese, and Korean troops. Allied forces deal the Communist troops a heavy blow, killing 1,300 men, capturing 600 prisoners, and taking in 500 defectors. American losses include 228 dead and 834 wounded. The 1st Cavalry also captures several significant weapon and supply caches.

MASHER/WHITE WING comes on the heels of the Ia Drang Valley fighting and cements in U.S. commanders’ minds that airmobile and search-and-destroy tactics are effective. When the operation ends in early March, however, parts of the region remain unsecured, and Communist forces reoccupy much of it in the subsequent months and years.¹