A Review Of The Battle Of Lz Albany History Essay

A Review Of The Battle Of Lz Albany History Essay The battle in review is LZ Albany. This battle took place during the Vietnam War under Operation Pleiku. LZ Albany was an ambush on American troops en route to landing zone Albany by NVA regulars. The battle took place on the afternoon of November 17, 1965. The fight involved the US Army 2nd battalion of the 7th Cavalry (2/7) and the NVA 8th battalion of the 66th Regiment. Although the end result of the battle is considered an American victory, the losses suffered were horrendous. It is safe to say this was a pyrrhic victory for the US, only due to the fact that they held the ground at Albany at the end of the battle. This did alter the amount of troops the NVA could attack LZ Columbus with as a side effect. The battle itself would teach many lessons to the US army in regards to the importance of security and the role support by fire played in this theatre of combat. The Vietnam War was a civil war in which the United States was actively involved in. The Northern faction of Vietnam adopted Communism, and thus gained Russia and China as allies. Vietnam until this point was a French territory which was in the process of being liberated by the North Vietnamese. They had defeated France and driven them from parts of the country. France and South Vietnam sought aid from the United States. In reply the United States rendered aid and advisors to South Vietnam. This was due to US foreign policy at the time and staunch opposition to Communism by the US government. If Vietnam fell to Communism it also posed a great economic threat to US interests in South Asia as well. By 1965 the US Armed Forces no longer played the role of advisors for the South Vietnamese in the Vietnam conflict. We were at the point of actively engaging the North Vietnamese in combat. (Stewart 386-320) Under Operation Pleiku, US Army divisions were first employed against the North Vietnamese. This is exactly what the North Vietnamese commander Gen. Nguyen Chi Tranh had desired. His main strategy enc ompassed liberating a vast majority of South Vietnam from southern control and inflicting mass casualties on US forces. The idea was that the American public would not support a war in which multitudes of American soldiers lost their lives. His intent was to shatter the American public’s support and thus drive another foreign imposer out of the country. This plan was titled the Dong Xuan Campaign. (Coleman.51) American forces had already been occupying the provincial capital of Pleiku. Frequent attacks and skirmishes by the NVA gave the impression that they were probing for the best possible place to attack to retake the city. This indicated to US commanders that there was a sizable force of enemy soldiers in the Northern plateaus that needed to be dealt with. A series of landing zones were reconnoitered for probable attack positions. The Army’s objective was simple: to destroy the enemy threat in the area and their will to fight. After securing LZ X-ray, it was the jo b of the 2/7 Cavalry to sweep the gap between LZ X-ray and LZ Columbus, which held US artillery. Their mission was also very simple: to sweep the area between LZ Columbus and LZ Albany, and engage whatever enemy they found.