Battle of Da Lat
1968 Vietnam war battle
The Battle of Da Lat began on 31 January, 1968, as part of the Tet Offensive, launched by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong against South Vietnam to coincide with the Lunar New Year. On the morning of 31 January, Viet Cong forces attacked and took control of the city. After a protracted battle that was estimated to have left around 200 Viet Cong dead, South Vietnamese and American forces regained control of Da Lat on 11 February.
Planning
Along with Phan Thiet, Da Lat was one of two regional centres in II Corps that were to be taken over. An official post-war communist history acknowledged that the attack and the Tet Offensive as a whole were premature, noting "they had been given only enough time to prepare an ordinary campaign, and the conditions were not yet ripe... They could not be sure of achieving these goals, especially the capture of Dalat." It further said that their "thinking, planning, and organization was still at a simple level, while there were many things that could not be done in time." Finally, the timing of the attack was the subject of confusion because of a misunderstanding about the lunar calendar.
Battle
The Viet Cong attacked Da Lat at 1:00 am on 31 January, and cut off the roads and communications into the city. The US Military Police compound was levelled by mortar and rocket fire, wounding two MPs. A reaction force was sent to evacuate all MPs from their accommodation to a medical villa. The Viet Cong would attack the medical villa continuously with mortars.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle of Da Lat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.