Night Thrust operations information
for C/3/4 CAV 25 INF

For date 671125


C/3/4 CAV 25 INF was a US Army unit
Primary service involved, US Army
Hau Nghia Province, III Corps, South Vietnam
Location, Cu Chi
Description: Dwight Birdwell and Keith Nolan provide a compact summary of armored cavalry operations in late 1967 used by the 3/4th Cav. At that time the Squadron did a lot of convoy escort and road security missions. To prevent the VC from mining Highway 1 under the cover of darkness, the Cav conducted Night Thrust operations which were better known as Running the Road. Spread out and moving fast in single file so as not to give some VC with an RPG an easy shot, each platoon (three M48s and seven M113s on paper, but usually only two tanks and four or five tracks were operational) would cruise up and down their 10 or 15K section of the highway all night long. Each platoon had a command track, four scout tracks, a mortar track, and the infantry track. The mortar track had a built-in 4.2-inch tube on a rotating base plate that could be fired through the top hatch. The infantry track had a .50-cal manned by the TC, a driver and two M60 machine gunners. The seven-man squad rode on the back deck with the gunners during moving patrols. The standard configuration was a lead tank, a tank in the middle, and a tank as drag. The lead tank blazed away with the searchlight mounted atop its 90mm main gun. They would occasionally stop, herringbone on the road - that is, one vehicle would pivot to the right, the next to the left, and so on down the line - and while the crews catnapped, one GI would remain on watch behind the .50 cal of each vehicle and scan the field on his side with a Starlight scope. The civilians were under a dusk-till-dawn curfew, so when they approached the little villages along the road, they would dismount their infantry, leaving only a driver and a .50 gunner in place, and sweep forward on both flanks in advance of the column to disrupt possible ambushes. They even went through people's houses with flashlights. Sometimes they would suddenly encounter hastily made roadblocks of brush and small chopped-down trees. Assuming them to be booby trapped, they tore them down with a grappling hook attached to a long rope or blew them away with plastic explosives. The enemy used simple, homemade mines - a burlap sack stuffed with C4 plastique or black powder and buried with a pressure-type detonator of tin and bamboo connected to a battery with cheap wire. They were devastating. During the day, the burlap sacks soaked up the morning dew and left wet circles on the unpaved highway. Once a mine was spotted, they preferred to gingerly dig it up with bayonets, cut the wires, move it to the ditch, and blow it up with C4 so it would not further crater the highway.
Comments: SGT Birdwell, Dwight W.; tanker; ;

The source for this information was A 100 Miles of Bad Road by D. Birdwell & Keith Nolan P:12, 24+


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Date posted on this site: 05/13/2023