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  • Home at Last: MIAs Since the End of the War

    The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office leads the effort to find, recover and identify remains of Americans missing in action (MIA). Since 1973, remains of more than 700 MIAs in Southeast Asia have been returned to the U.S. and identified. Around 1,800 remain unaccounted

  • North Vietnam: Linebacker and Linebacker II

    GOING DOWNTOWNIn response to the North Vietnamese "Easter Offensive" into South Vietnam in 1972, President Nixon suspended peace talks on May 8 and ordered OPERATION LINEBACKER, the renewed bombings of North Vietnam and the aerial mining of its harbors and rivers. When North Vietnam seemed ready to

  • Airman 1st Class William H. Pitsenbarger

    Born in 1944 in Piqua, Ohio, William H. Pitsenbarger was an ambitious only child. He wanted to quit high school to join the U.S. Army Special Forces' "Green Berets," but his parents convinced him to stay in school. After graduating in 1962, Pitsenbarger joined the Air Force.A1C Pitsenbarger learned

  • North Vietnam: Rolling Thunder

    GOING NORTHAlthough the U.S. Air Force began sending advisory personnel to South Vietnam in 1961, and carried out combat missions in South Vietnam shortly thereafter, US forces did not initially strike North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese Navy attack in the Tonkin Gulf in August 1964, however, led to

  • Secret War: Green Hornets, Dust Devils and Blackbirds

    To supply their forces in South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese built a secret road system through neutral Laos and Cambodia. This supply line, named the Truong Son Road but called the "Ho Chi Minh Trail" by Americans, consisted of a network of roads and hiding places concealed by jungle. In an effort

  • Laos: The Panhandle and the Ho Chi Minh Trail

    THE TRAILThe confused situation caused by the civil war in Laos permitted North Vietnam to use southern Laos -- known as the "Panhandle" -- to move troops and supplies to South Vietnam. In 1959 the communists began traveling along the same network of paths through the Panhandle's mountains and

  • Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard in SEA

    During the Southeast Asia War, the Air Force Reserve (AFRES) and Air National Guard (ANG) primarily remained a Cold War strategic reserve in case a wider war broke out. As such, it operated mostly outside the combat theater, helping fill the gaps left when active duty units deployed for combat.In

  • South Vietnam: Build-Up and Engagement

     THE WAR INTENSIFIESIn early 1965 the Viet Cong further intensified their guerilla war and began direct attacks on U.S. forces. The VC also scored some impressive victories over South Vietnamese troops. With the passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, the U.S. increased its forces even more. Military

  • Down in the Weeds: Ranch Hand

    The dense jungle in Southeast Asia allowed the enemy to ambush vehicles and boats on transportation routes, creep close to stage attacks on bases, move men and materiel and hide their own camps. Ranch Hand crews denied the enemy this cover by spraying herbicides in key areas. To accomplish the