Early Covert Action on the Ho Chi Minh Trail

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Under Minh’s command, the special forces were next called to duty to assist BV 33 inside Laos in the spring of 1961. On May 5 a half-battalion task force — comprising both commandos and troops from the ARVN 1st Infantry Division — crossed the border. There, the infantry helped the remnants of BV 33 form a new defensive position at Ban Houei Sane. The special forces, meanwhile, positioned themselves six kilometers farther west, to serve as a temporary blocking force. South Vietnamese artillery also moved to the border outpost at Lao Bao to provide fire support.

While that was happening, the administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy was fuming at the Communist power play in Laos, especially since the land-grab along the eastern corridor had come immediately prior to a scheduled cease-fire. On May 6, 1961, Washington authorized a top-secret program of action in response to the North Vietnamese — inspired moves across mainland Southeast Asia. As part of that plan, the 1st Observation Group was slated to expand operations against the VC inside South Vietnam. Additionally, the group was to infiltrate teams under light civilian cover into southeastern Laos to locate and attack Communist lines of communication. Those teams would be used in conjunction with South Vietnamese assault units numbering between 100 and 150 commandos.

To implement the Lao portion of the program, Washington turned to the Combined Studies Division (CSD), the cover designation for the small CIA paramilitary support office located in the Saigon embassy. Colonel Gilbert Layton, the CSD chief, took the mandate to Major Tran Khac Kinh, the PLO deputy and a graduate of Cycle Cramer. Working together, they quickly planned for Project Lei Yu (Mandarin for ‘Thunder Shower’), a program that soon became known by the more dramatic English translation — Typhoon.

Kinh relied upon existing units in the 1st Observation Group for Typhoon’s intelligence teams. Rather than using 15-man teams, however, he reconfigured them as 14-man units. ‘This allowed for four 3-man sub-units, plus a team leader and a radio operator,’ he later recalled, which would ‘enable them to split if they came under pressure.’ By midsummer, 1961, 15 14-man teams — numbered 1 through 15 — had been gathered at a new Typhoon camp established near the Thu Duc Infantry Academy on the outskirts of Saigon. As all team members already had completed airborne and commando training, they underwent only mission-specific instruction at that point.

The PLO and CSD had to start from scratch in establishing the assault units. Authorized to recruit two companies, Kinh first approached the Kontum-based 22nd Infantry Division, which was composed primarily of Tai tribesmen who had fled their traditional homeland in the hills of North Vietnam for the relative freedom of South Vietnam. The 160 Tai selected were brought down to Thu Duc, just north of Saigon, in July and given three months of airborne and ranger training. Upon graduation, the newly dubbed 1st Airborne Ranger Company was placed under the command of Captain Luong Van Hoi, a Tai from Dien Bien Phu who had fought with the 3rd Airborne Battalion during the First Indochina War.

Kinh also approached the Song Mao-based 5th Infantry Division, which was dominated by Nung tribesmen originally from the coast of northernmost Vietnam. He selected a company of Nung and brought them to Thu Duc as well. Designated the 2nd Airborne Ranger Company, the 160-man team was commanded by Lieutenant Voong Chay Menh, a veteran of the Nung-based White Star anti-Communist guerrilla movement that had been supported secretly by the Republic of China on Taiwan during the First Indochina War.

While the two airborne ranger companies were undergoing final outfitting, Major Kinh went ahead with the first deployment of intelligence teams in August 1961. The initial group of 14 commandos — Team 1, under Lieutenant Nguyen Van Ton — boarded an unmarked Douglas C-47 at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Air Base and headed across the Laos border into Attopeu province. The team parachuted into the jungle east of the provincial capital, along the riverbanks of the Se Kamane. All were outfitted in sterile uniforms and carried Swedish K submachine guns, offering Saigon some measure of plausible deniability in the event of their capture.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Vietnam War