Marble Mt 28 Oct 1965

I join you in remembrance of these lost Brothers RIP ! I was at Marble Mt during the day visiting old Marine Brothers. I returned in the evening to the Danang Air Strip side. I heard the explosions & gun fire that night. Semper Fidleis PM

Adding Marine Report 28 Oct 1965

My old friends were at Marble Mt on 28 Oct 1965 (Msgt Leroy Garrison & others. They invited me over for a BarBque & Beer afternoon on that Wednesday. I had a good visit & plenty of beer as did my friends. As I left that evening I joked , " Good time for the VC to visit you" I returned to the Danang air base side where I was working with the VNAF Unit. About Midnight I heard loud explosions & lots of gun fire. Next day I went over & viewed many destroyed & damaged helicopters including several of the old H37 (HR2S helicopters.)- SF PM
MAG-16 AFTER-ACTION REPORT - 28 October 1965:

On the evening of 27-28 October, the VC struck the newly built Marble Mountain helicopter facility on the Tiensha Peninsula. The Communist attack on Marble Mountain was larger and better coordinated. A VC raiding party of approximately 90 men quietly assembled in a village just to the northwest of the Marble Mountain Air Facility. Under cover of 60mm mortar fire, four demolition teams struck at the Marble Mountain airstrip and a hospital being constructed by the Seabees. At least six of the enemy, armed with bangalore torpedo's and grenades, reached the MAG-16 parking ramp.

Colonel O'Connor, the MAG-16 commander, remembered:
I awoke to the sound of explosions shortly after midnight...arriving at the group command post, I received a phone call from General McCutcheon. He was warning me that the airfield at Chu Lai had been attacked and to be on the alert. I told him no one was asleep at Marble Mountain, as we had also been under attack for about 15 minutes. After leaving the command post, Colonel O'Connor drove to the aircraft parking ramp where "Helicopters were burning all over...VMO-2 was practically wiped out." Before the VC could be stopped they destroyed 19 helicopters and damaged 35, 11 of them severely. Across the road, much of the hospital, which was nearing completion, was heavily damaged. After 30 minutes, the Viet Cong withdrew, leaving behind 17 dead and four wounded.

American casualties were three killed and 91 wounded. During the attack, Lieutenant Colonel Verle E. Ludwig's 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, south of Marble Mountain, came under small arms fire, but apparently this was a feint designed to fix the unit in its defensive positions. All units at Da Nang went on full alert, but the damage had been done. The VC attacking forces at both Chu Lai and Da Nang were not ordinary guerrillas. "There were indications that these troops were from hardcore main force VC units, although the VC unit which attacked Marble Mountain was better trained than the one which hit Chu Lai. Captain Hoa, the Hoa Vang District Chief, believed that the enemy group which attacked Da Nang was North Vietnamese, but the four prisoners captured by the Marines there came from small hamlets in Quang Nam and Quang Tin Provinces.

The enemy had been well equipped for the mission. At Marble Mountain, Marines recovered a considerable stock of fragmentation, concussion, and thermite grenades, as well as three bangalore torpedoes, several Chinese Communist B-40 antitank rockets and miscellaneous ammunition. The American troops also captured several weapons, a 7.62mm AK assault rifle, two .43 caliber automatic weapons, and a 7.62mm Tokarev automatic pistol."

Colonel O'Connor observed that the destruction of the helicopters at Marble Mountain resulted in "a 43 percent loss of division mobility" and that it ' 'put a crimp in division plans for several months afterward." Col Thomas J. O'Connor, Comment on draft MS, dtd 27Nov76 (Vietnam Comment File). Submitted by Fred E. White, H&MS-16, MMAF

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