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Ripley's Believe It or NotBy Fred L. Borch | Vietnam | Single Page | 3 comments | Print This Post | Email This Post When Ripley returned to his bunker after checking out the situation, he received a call from Lt. Col. Gerald H. Turley, assistant U.S. senior adviser to the Vietnamese marine corps. Turley informed him that a number of enemy tanks were heading south along Highway 1. Initial reports of 20 tanks soon grew to 200. Ripley and the Vietnamese marine battalion commander, Major Le Ba Binh, had solved many tactical problems during their time together, but the threat at the bridge was different—Binh's marines had little capability to stop Soviet-built T-54 tanks. Subscribe Today
Ripley asked Turley about getting Air Force ordnance to take out the NVA armor, but was told that the ceiling was too low to call in airstrikes and that, even if aircraft were available, there were other threats.
As Turley put it, as big as the threat facing Ripley was, "It ain't the only war in town…every fire base up here is taking crap and some have already gone under….You're all we have…you've got to hold that goddamn bridge and you've got to do it alone…. There's nothing here to back you up with…do you read me?" Ripley replied to Turley that he understood. But when he learned minutes later that a spotter plane had observed enemy tanks stretching all the way from the Dong Ha Bridge back to the DMZ, he realized that the only way to stop them was to destroy the bridge. He knew that if those 200 tanks and 20,000 North Vietnamese troops crossed the bridge, the enemy could be in Hue by nightfall, and it might well be the beginning of the end for South Vietnam. Pressing for Permission "We've got to blow that bridge at Dong Ha," Ripley radioed to Turley. "Got to buy some time." Turley told him that he could not get permission to destroy the structure, explaining that higher headquarters wanted to save the bridge—for a counterattack.  Marine Capt. John Ripley in 1971 (U.S. Marine Historical Division) While Turley agreed that blowing up the bridge was the right thing to do, he didn't have the authority to give Ripley the go ahead. But, as Ripley later recalled, "Lt. Col. Turley took matters into his own hands. He had accepted an enormous responsibility and assumed the authority." Turley shouted to Ripley over the radio, "Do it, and worry about the consequences later!" But before Ripley could take action, the NVA launched another intense barrage of hundreds of rounds of artillery to smash any resistance to their advance at Dong Ha. Ripley, more determined than ever to get to the bridge, realized that there was a South Vietnamese tank battalion nearby and that he could use one of its M-48A3 tanks to get up to the bridge. The South Vietnamese tankers were not enthusiastic when Ripley asked for one of their tanks, but he managed to persuade them with help from Army Major James E. Smock, the Vietnamese armor unit's adviser. More important, when Ripley and the tank moved out for the bridge, Smock went with him to provide critical aid. Retired Marine Colonel John G. Miller, author of the book Bridge at Dong Ha, explains that when Ripley and Smock reached the bridge, "the two Americans discovered that South Vietnamese Army engineers had brought TNT [trinitrotoluene] to the bridge…but these engineers had not placed the explosives under the bridge, much less attempted to rig it for destruction, since they were terrified of being so far forward." Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
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3 Comments to “Ripley's Believe It or Not”
What a fantastic story…I Can't imigine why this brave man was never awaraded the Medal of Honor. If what he did, is not "beyond the call of duty", I don't know what is.
Chuck in Montana
By Chuck on Aug 11, 2009 at 7:13 pm
The article “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” in the October 2009 issue of Vietnam Magazine repeated the usual litany of myths and half-truths about Captain John Ripley and the bridge at Dong Ha that have come to be accepted as fact. While no one can deny that Ripley was a brave man who performed a daring act of courage at the bridge that day in April 1972, a couple of points should be made.
First, rendering the bridge impassable did not alter the North Vietnamese plans in northern I Corps, nor did it “change the outcome” of the battle as the article claims. The enemy order of battle was oriented from the west, not the north across the DMZ because Hanoi understood that the series of west-to-east flowing rivers in Quang Tri Province would be difficult to cross unopposed. Therefore, the North Vietnamese plan called for only a single regiment to be oriented along Highway 1, with two others to the west and east of the road respectively. The other five regiments, plus the 308th Division headquarters, were far to the west and southwest. Had the North Vietnamese been able to cross the Dong Ha bridge they might have had an easier time of it, but they were in no way thwarted by the loss of the bridge. They understood that the destruction of any of the major bridges would halt them in their tracks. So when the tanks met opposition at Dong Ha they quickly withdrew to the west and crossed there, as the author states. In fact, the tanks were already gone by the time Ripley set the explosives, though some North Vietnamese infantry remained there and were firing at Ripley as he set the charges.
The second issue is how the bridge was actually blown up. Daily journals and other documents indicate that, although the explosives were rigged under the bridge, they probably failed to detonate. At around 1600, elements of the South Vietnamese 1st Armored Brigade, accompanied by U.S. Army adviser Lt. Col. Louis Wagner, pulled up to the south side of bridge and apparently countermanded any orders to blow the bridge. This was six hours after Ripley was preparing to set his explosives (the daily journal at First Regional Assistance Command, the advisory headquarters for I Corps, has the entry “friendly elements are preparing to destroy the bridge” at 0953). Wagner, Ripley, and a handful of others even walked out onto the bridge. Shortly afterward, a Combat Skyspot air strike (an early version of the smart bomb that used laser beams to “guide” the bombs) hit the bridge, cratering its entire length and apparently setting off the explosives set by Ripley on the on the south side. Another armor adviser, Col. Raymond Battreall, recalled “a horrendous damn shrieking, swishing sound came down out of the overcast, and the bridge went sky high.” Colonel Wagner’s report of the incident indicated that “Aircraft began bombing north of the river…. Demolitions on the bridge exploded at this time, dropping a span on the south side. The explosion appeared to be a sympathetic detonation, although it could not be verified whether friendly personnel had blown it deliberately or not.”
The photo on page 51 shows the bridge smoking in a dozen places all along its span (it was made of steel and concrete, not wood, as the caption indicates). How could Ripley’s explosives have done all that? Did he crawl all along the bridge’s underside, a distance of well over a hundred yards? He never made such a claim. In fact, a closer examination reveals that the southernmost span (lower left corner of the photo) dropped cleanly. That was where Ripley set his explosives.
Finally, mostly as an aside, the photo on page 49 of Ripley “narrowly escap[ing] the blast of a mortar round” is hard to believe. The “blast” looks like mud being thrown from the tracks of the M113 behind which he is running. A mortar round that close would certainly have killed or badly wounded Ripley—not to mention the photographer taking the picture from atop the vehicle.
By Dale Andrade on Dec 14, 2009 at 2:04 pm
More on COMBAT SKYSPOT ,which is briefly noted in the article:
http://combat-skyspot.tripod.com/index.htm
By Mike Steeves on Dec 26, 2009 at 3:09 pm