Bait: The Battle of Kham Duc Special Forces Camp

Jim McLeroy was the resident OIC of the covert SOG Op 35 launch site in the Kham Duc CIDG camp, when it and a Mike Force camp site five miles south of it called Ngok Tavak were attacked by two regiments of the 2nd NVA Division. More than 1,500 people were evacuated under fire, but twelve aircraft were shot down, one of them carrying 183 civilians. One pilot received the Medal of Honor.

B-52 bombing during the three-day battle and two days afterward, plus some 350 sorties by more than 100 tactical bombers on the third day of the battle, caused an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 casualties in the two NVA regiments. The largest NVA assault on the SF camp was annihilated by a danger-close napalm strike on the camp’s most vulnerable perimeter defended by the SOG troops.

This first-person, deeply researched account of the battle radically contradicts all the other published accounts of the battle of Kham Duc.