Category: War
On the morning of Dec. 22, 1961, three trucks carrying members of the 3rd Radio Research Unit, their intelligence counterparts in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and an ARVN security detail rolled out the gate of their compound at Tan Son Nhut Air Base on the outskirts of Saigon. This compound was a high-security area surrounded by barbed wire fences. Only people with a legitimate reason for being there and “a need to know” were admitted. The small convoy was embarking on a mission west of Saigon.
When it ended, all but one member in the third truck would be dead. Among the casualties was Spc. 4 James T. “Tom” Davis, age 25, the first American to die in a ground combat action in Vietnam.
TOP SECRET UNIT
Davis grew up in the small town of Livingston, Tennessee, about 100 miles northeast of Nashville. It was a rural area with lots of mountains, streams and woods. According to his family, Davis was an “outdoor person” who spent most of his time fishing, hunting, trapping and roaming the woods. After high school, Davis attended Tennessee Polytechnic Institute but left to enlist in the Army.
When he completed basic training Davis was sent to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, for Morse intercept training at the Army Security Agency. Afterward he was selected for radio direction finding school, where the Army sent its most promising ASA students to learn how to locate enemy communications signals.
In early 1961, under increasing pressure from communist guerrillas, the South Vietnamese government requested additional assistance, including military support from the United States. On Saigon’s wish list were equipment, personnel and training to support an intelligence program to monitor the communications of the North Vietnamese-backed Viet Cong.
In response to this request, the U.S. Army sent radio receivers as well as AN/PRD-1 direction finders. Shortly thereafter, the ASA formed the 3rd Radio Research Unit. The term “radio research” was chosen to disguise the unit’s secret connection to the ASA. The troops needed for this deployment were assembled and equipped at Fort Devens within three days after President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order establishing the unit on April 27,1961.
The newly formed ASA radio research unit developed plans for two operations. Operation Whitebirch was a 77-man unit established to target Viet Cong communication transmitters. The second operation, Sabertooth, would field a 15-man team to train ARVN communications intelligence operators. The highly skilled, highly trained and highly secret 92-man contigent of the 3rd Radio Research Unit arrived at Tan Son Nhut on May 13, 1961.
It was the first entire Army unit to deploy to Vietnam, although the men who got off the plane wore civilian clothes, a reflection of their secretive assignment. Previously, members of the military arrived as individuals and were placed in units after they were in-country. U.S. personnel in Vietnam in May 1961 were assigned to Military Assistance Advisory Group-Vietnam, formed in November 1955. The U.S. had approximately 3,000 military personnel in Vietnam at the time.
SEARCHING FOR A COMMUNIST TRANSMITTER
For several months during the fall of 1961 intelligence reports indicated a significant increase in enemy troop strength and activity around the town of Duc Hoa in Hau Nghia province, some 15 miles west of Saigon. That area had a history of communist insurgency dating back to French colonial days. By late fall Viet Cong activity had increased significantly. The ARVN command, their American MAAG-V counterparts and U.S. and South Vietnamese intel specialists suspected the Viet Cong had established a battalion headquarters and communication center in the vast expanses southeast of Duc Hoa.
By December, teams from the 3rd Radio Research Unit had begun to make forays into that area searching for a suspected communist transmitter. The most recent mission took place on Dec. 18 when the unit detected very strong radio signals from the suspected transmitter. The radio research troops were confident that they had acquired an accurate “fix” on its location.
Spc. 4 William Bergman, a member of the radio research unit, said in email correspondence with this article’s author, “The sad thing about the ambush is, that four days earlier on Dec. 18, we had obtained a fix on the enemy’s transmitter. On the mission of the 18th, I was in the lead unit, and we had set up just off the edge of the road. When their transmitter came up, it nearly blew out my eardrums.” The transmitter appeared to be sited in vast pineapple fields south of the villages of Cau Xang and Chau Hiep.
Even though the Americans had obtained what they considered accurate and actionable intelligence, ARVN commanders in Saigon ordered yet another mission to reconfirm the transmitter’s location, now designated as Target 627-C. They refused to commit their troops on an operation without another confirmation. Thus on Dec. 22, members of the 3rd Radio Research Unit and their ARVN counterparts set out yet again to confirm the transmitter’s location.
The troops on the mission were divided into three separate radio direction finding teams. Each team consisted of one American, several ARVN radio technicians and a small detachment of ARVN security personnel. While the teams normally operated out of three-quarter-ton trucks, essentially pickup trucks, this time they requested three bigger 2½-ton cargo trucks to carry a larger security group, a response to an ambush earlier that month near Duc Hoa. Only two 2½-ton trucks arrived the morning of Dec. 22.
One team had to use a three-quarter-ton truck—and thus fewer security personnel. That was Davis’ team.
AN ISOLATED LOCATION
Team 1 was headed by Bergman, a radio direction technician who took the front passenger seat in the cab of a 2½-ton truck. In the second large truck was Pvt. Richard Simpson and his team. The three-quarter-ton truck brought up the rear, with Davis in the front passenger seat.
The teams headed to the Cau Xang-Chau Hiep area, about 9 miles west of Saigon in the vicinity of Duc Hoa. The road, Highway 10, was narrow, rough and dusty, but it was the highest elevation for miles in all directions and provided an excellent view. As the three-truck convoy moved west the terrain changed from dry, lightly populated uplands to marshy emptiness as far as the eye could see, spreading south into the Mekong Delta and westward to the Cambodian border. The countryside consisted mostly of rice paddies and reeds, interlaced with hundreds of canals and a few scattered patches of woods. The rest was the old French Thieng Quang pineapple plantation. The three teams were nearing their destination by midmorning with the villages of Cau Xang and Chau Hiep just ahead.
The teams on the Dec. 22 mission had figured out the enemy radio transmission schedules on previous missions and planned to use those schedules to confirm the location of the transmitter. Radio direction finding teams preferred to take bearings from several different directions, but this area’s extensive wetlands and the lack of roads made that impossible. The radio technicians would have to make calculations from only three positions along the same road. The teams established a 3-mile baseline along Highway 10 near Cau Xang and waited for the Viet Cong transmissions to begin.
In the typical process, once the transmissions begin an operator shoots a bearing using a radio direction finder, a receiver that picks up the transmitter’s signal and determines the direction it’s coming from. The operator draws a line on a map from his location outward in the direction of the signal. This process is conducted simultaneously at each of the other two teams’ locations. Once completed, notes are compared. The point at which the three lines intersect should be the location of the enemy transmitter.
A FATAL DECISION
Two teams believed they were at good signal detection points, but “Tom was not satisfied with the quality of his signal and had made a request by radio to Control Net for permission to move to a better location,” Bergman recalled. Davis needed to move quickly, however, because the next transmission was scheduled to take place shortly.
The similar operations conducted by radio research teams in recent weeks had not gone unnoticed by communist forces in the area. The three Dec. 22 teams needed to complete their mission and get out as fast as possible.
The lead truck with Bergman was parked on the north shoulder of the road at an old French fort a hundred feet or so west of the Cau Xang Bridge when Davis’ request for one more transect came over the radio about 11:30 a.m.
Shortly after Davis got the go-ahead, his truck came over the bridge and drove past Bergman’s to get a better location for that last bearing. Bergman watched as Davis proceeded west on the road. About two minutes later, “I saw a black plume rise vertically from the roadbed,” Bergman said. “Then I heard and felt the explosion and the sound of automatic weapons…then silence.”
Bergman’s team raced to help Davis and the 10 ARVN troops in his team. By the time Bergman’s men arrived, the engagement was over, and the enemy had vanished. The sole survivor of the ambush was Davis’ ARVN driver.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
According to the driver’s account, recalled by Bergman, the Viet Cong had set off a remotely detonated mine (later determined to be a Czechoslovakian-made artillery shell) buried in the road. The mine was triggered a little late and exploded just after the truck passed over it. Even so, the explosion disabled the vehicle, which continued down the road about 30 yards, then rolled into a ditch. Intense small-arms fire from Viet Cong ambushers hiding alongside the road ripped into the vehicle. All nine ARVN soldiers in the truck’s cargo area died from the explosion or the subsequent VC gunfire.
Davis survived the explosion unscathed. He grabbed his M1 carbine and scrambled off the truck, taking with him a satchel containing secret communication codes and other classified materials. He immediately threw the satchel into the water to keep it out of enemy hands and returned to the truck as small arms-fire cracked all around him. He pulled his wounded ARVN driver from the vehicle, while still under intense fire, and shoved the man into a culvert to hide him from the Viet Cong.
Davis then ran west on the gravel road, turning and firing his carbine to draw enemy fire toward himself and away from other team members. He ran a short distance, turned and fired on the ambushers again. Davis was hit and fell, some 50 feet or so from the vehicle. The Viet Cong, no longer receiving any return fire, rushed to the wounded Davis. They shot the American in the head, killing him.
According to the driver’s testimony, the attackers searched Davis for anything of value including his watch. However, Davis, an experienced radio direction finder, kept his watch in a breast pocket so it would not interfere with the direction-finding process. The Viet Cong didn’t have time to search his body any further. Bergman’s team and an ARVN relief force were rapidly approaching from the east. The attackers quickly fled.
THE AFTERMATH
A radio call was made to ASA headquarters at Tan Son Nhut. Within an hour an officer from the 3rd Radio Research Unit and a member of the ARVN general staff were dispatched to the ambush scene. Arriving by helicopter, they picked up the wounded driver and retrieved the bodies of Davis and the nine dead ARVN soldiers. All were returned to Saigon on an aircraft that was part of the 57th Transportation Company (Light Helicopter), which had arrived in Vietnam less than two weeks earlier.
On Dec. 11, 1961, the carrier USS Core docked in downtown Saigon with 32 Army Piasecki CH-21 Shawnee helicopters and 400 men belonging to the 57th Transportation Company (Light Helicopter) from Fort Lewis, Washington, and the 8th Transportation Company (Light Helicopter) from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This event was the first major symbol of American combat power in Vietnam and the beginning of a new era of airmobility in the U.S. Army.
The morning following the Dec. 22 ambush, 30 CH-21s of the 8th and 57th Transportation companies were loaded with several hundred troops from ARVN’s elite Airborne Brigade. Using fresh intelligence from Davis’ outfit, the 3rd Radio Research Unit, they headed west to attack the Viet Cong at the Thieng Quang pineapple plantation in Operation Chopper, the first helicopter assault of the Vietnam War.
Already in place along a canal south of the target was an ARVN blocking force to prevent a VC escape. The lead helicopter in the formation was piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Bennie Potts of the 57th Transportation His co-pilot was Capt. Emmett Knight, the operations officer of the 57th and the man responsible for planning the aviation component of the mission. “We were looking for a large sugar mill near the distinctive ‘Y’ intersection with the An Ha and the Kinh Xang canals,” Knight, who retired as a colonel, said in an interview with this article’s author. “From there, we were to bank to the left and begin our descent to the LZ about 5 clicks [kilometers/3 miles] to the south. We flew in at 500 feet and initiated a 500 foot per minute decent.”
The location of a radio transmitter suspected to be part of the Viet Cong command center for the Saigon region had been verified by Davis and the two other radio direction finding teams the previous day and was one of the assault’s targets.
As the choppers headed south along the Kinh Xang canal they flew over portions of the pineapple plantation and passed a huge statue of Buddha sitting only a half-mile south of Cau Xang. Later in the war and for many decades beyond, this would be known as The Lonely Buddha.
The choppers landed about 3 miles south of of Cau Xang. Reports indicated the Viet Cong were completely surprised by the speed with which the ARVN airborne troops surrounded them. The radio transmitter was put out of operation and an unknown number of Viet Cong killed and captured.
Operation Chopper’s success was directly attributed to the Americans of the 3rd Radio Research Unit and their Vietnamese counterparts, who diligently searched for and located the transmitter—for which Davis and nine ARVN soldiers paid the ultimate price.
Davis was buried in his hometown at Livingston’s Good Hope Cemetery on Jan. 3, 1962. On Jan. 10, less than three weeks after his death, the Army Security Agency officially named the 3rd Radio Research Unit’s Tan Son Nhut compound “Davis Station.” V
Mark D. Raab served in Vietnam February 1970-March 1972 as a specialist 4 in the 277th Field Artillery Detachment, 23rd Artillery Group, II Field Force. A student of Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War, he has returned to Vietnam four times beginning in January 1989. He retired as a superintendent of Natural Resources in Howard County, Maryland, in 2015. He lives in Reisterstown, Maryland.
At 0900 in the morning on 4 December 2020, a group of young men began gathering in the Palestinian village of al-Mughayir northwest of Ramallah. These Palestinians were protesting the establishment of a new Israeli settlement near Ras a-Tin. IDF soldiers were posted nearby in hopes of keeping the peace.
Emotions were running high, as seems always the case. Folks have been fighting over that remarkable patch of dirt since the very beginning of time. In short order the Palestinians were throwing rocks. The Israeli soldiers responded with rubber bullets and tear gas.
The main part of the conflict unfolded at a range of roughly seventy meters. Two hours after the first confrontation ten IDF soldiers were in firing positions with a direct line of sight to the protestors. The rocks were still flying hot and fast. Some 150 meters distant, around 100 local residents had gathered to spectate. Among them was Ali Abu ‘Alia, a local Tenth Grader. It was the boy’s fifteenth birthday.
By 1330 hours the protest had been ongoing for four and one half hours. Everyone was tired. What happened next was naturally disputed by both sides.
According to Palestinian witnesses, the boy was simply crossing the road. He suddenly clutched his midriff and shouted, “My stomach! My stomach! I’m hit! I’m hit!” before collapsing. Bystanders rushed the young man to the nearby Ramallah hospital. There was a small, almost bloodless entrance wound just above his navel and no exit wound. By 1830 he was dead, yet another tragic casualty of the never-ending war in the Levant.
Abu ‘Alia was hit in the belly with a “Two-Two.” That’s IDF slang for a sound-suppressed Ruger 10/22 rifle ostensibly used for less-lethal crowd control. His sordid story serves as a somber reminder that the diminutive .22 rimfire, though small, is still plenty deadly.
It Only Takes a Moment…
The man was going to kill a lazy Saturday out tearing up the swamp on his four-wheeler alongside a friend. The weather was gorgeous. In our part of the world that meant snakes. As a result, his pal produced a .22 pistol and a shoulder holster. Our hero threw the rig on, and the pair struck out for the wilderness.
It had been a great day, and the men were ready to get home. As they manhandled a four-wheeler into the pickup, the heavy vehicle slipped. My buddy threw his shoulder into it, and the hammer of the pistol caught on something, twisting in the holster.
The hammer retracted far enough to light the primer but not far enough to catch the sear. When the gun went off it didn’t make a great deal of noise. That was because the muzzle was mashed against the man’s chest. The zippy little 40-grain bullet pithed the man’s left lung, missing his heart by millimeters. It then bounced off the inside of his right scapula before angling downward. The dying round tracked through his right lung top to bottom, penetrated his diaphragm, transited his liver, and finally came to rest nestled within his entrails. Never let anyone tell you the humble .22 rimfire lacks in penetration.
What followed was a frenetic ride to the hospital. The surgeons filleted the man like a fish but saved his life. He has fully recovered today. Part of that is because he had the good fortune to be shot in America and not Ramallah.
Shot placement, particularly with small caliber weapons, is indeed critically important. What’s an even bigger deal, however, is the inimitable power of random. Both people were shot with the same round, but Abu ‘Alia likely had the little bullet centerpunch his abdominal aorta. Unless you’re in just the right place and very, very lucky, this is reliably bad.
The Round
The technical appellation for the .22 Long Rifle is the 5.6x15mm R or Rimmed. Developed in 1887, the .22LR is hopelessly obsolete today. Despite its age, however, annual production of this zippy little cartridge is nonetheless estimated to be between 2 and 2.5 billion rounds per annum worldwide.
I have seen these little cartridges made, and it is indeed fascinating. The cases are punched out of a big strip of brass and then formed to shape. A small pellet of moist primer compound is then inserted into the empty case. When this primer mix is wet it is inert. When it is dry it becomes shock sensitive. Each case is then spun vigorously in a big machine. Centrifugal forces push the wet primer mix out into the periphery of the rim. The case is then cooked to remove the moisture. There follows a fixed volume of powder and a bullet, most commonly somewhere between 36 and 40 grains. Repeat as necessary 2.5 billion times per year.
The .22LR is the most popular rimfire firearm cartridge on the planet. It is widely used by organizations ranging from the Boy Scouts of America to the US Army. .22 rimfire conversions for both M16 rifles and 1911 service pistols were used for decades as military training aids. Almost every serious shooter in the world got his or her start behind a .22. Amongst countless millions of .22-caliber firearms, one lithe little rifle reigns supreme.
The Gun
Designed in 1964 by Bill Ruger and Harry Sefried II, the 10/22 is the most popular .22 rifle in the world. More than seven million copies have been produced. The 10/22 is one of those rare designs that has actually gotten cheaper over time.
Those first 10/22 rifles cost $54.50. However, those are 1964 dollars. That would be about $519 today. The MSRP for a new-made 10/22 nowadays is $379. That is because the gun is designed from the outset to be easy and inexpensive to make in quantity.
The 10/22 sports an investment cast receiver mated to a cold hammer-forged alloy steel barrel via a unique two-screw, V-block system. The rifle comes from the factory drilled and tapped for an included scope mount. It feeds from a ten-round rotary magazine.
The 10/22 is one of the most customizable firearms ever made. There are companies thriving today that produce rifles on a 10/22 action that do not include a single Ruger component. The rifle that the IDF sniper was wielding when he shot Abu ‘Alia was itself heavily customized.
IDF Use
Beginning with the Intifada in 1987, Israeli soldiers found themselves beset by angry rioters with limited defensive options. Live 5.56x45mm rounds were proven manstoppers, but shooting otherwise unarmed rioters would have been a great way to win the battle while losing the public opinion war. Given the range limitations of CS gas and rubber-coated metal bullets, IDF planners went looking for something else. That something else was the humble 10/22 plinking rifle.
The IDF began with standard wood-stocked 10/22 rifles modified by the Italian firm of Sabatti. These guns were fitted with heavy bull barrels and integral sound suppressors. The receivers were drilled and tapped for a full-sized Weaver base upon which was mounted a 4x optic. A Harris-style adjustable bipod rounded out the package. Here are the published applications of these custom weapons:
- Killing hostile dogs.
- Injuring leaders of violent demonstrations or violent participants of a violent demonstration.
- Use as a mid-range system that is “less lethal than” military-caliber rifles (5.56mm/7.62mm) while remaining capable of dissuading demonstrators from committing further violence (e.g. throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails).
- Providing greater accuracy at longer distances than rubber bullets or baton rounds.
- Applications when it is not safe enough to get sufficiently close to use a rubber bullet or baton round.
Ideally, IDF sharpshooters could use these little rimfire rifles to shoot critical leaders in violent protests in the shins, taking them out of the fight without killing them. The illustrious Colonel Jeff Cooper had this to say about using the .22 rimfire for riot control in his 1998 classic To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth—
“It would seem desirable to devise a system which would make sure, first, that the riot would stop; and second, that only the leaders would feel the weight of social disapproval.
“Let us consider such a means – the 22-caliber rimfire rifle. This weapon, properly sighted and equipped with a noise suppressor, may be used with surgical delicacy to neutralize mob leaders without risk to other members of the group, without noise and with scant danger of death to the subject. A low-velocity 22 bullet in the lung will not knock a man down, and in these days of modern antisepsis it will almost never kill him if he can get to a hospital in a reasonable time. It will, however, absolutely terminate his interest in leading a riot.”
The problem is that the real world of violent confrontation is seldom so sanitary. In the heat of battle it can be tough to confine your rounds to extremities. That and extremity wounds can be unexpectedly deadly as well. Additionally, these are still firearms. As in the case of Abu ‘Alia, this battlefield was absolutely dirty with noncombatants. Between 2015 and 2020 local commentators claim there were ten Palestinians killed by IDF marksmen wielding Two-Two’s.
And therein lies another problem. You cannot believe anything anybody says over there. Everyone has an agenda, even me. I have spent some time in Israel, and I was powerfully moved by the work ethic, patriotism, and sense of community exhibited by the Israeli people, something we could use a great deal more of over on our side of the pond. However, I will admit that if Native Americans tried to push me off my family farm because their ancestors owned it 250 years ago that would aggravate me as well. I’m just not sure I would blow up a school bus full of children in response. Alas, I don’t pretend to know the answer to those timeless problems.
Ruminations
One observer to Abu ‘Alia’s shooting made this statement: I…can’t find any justification for the sniper’s shooting. He killed a boy who was standing quietly and wasn’t endangering anyone. He didn’t even take part in the protest.
Pelting heavily-armed soldiers with rocks for four hours seems like a great way to get shot. Standing close by watching heavily-armed soldiers get pelted by rocks for four hours seems like a great way to get shot accidentally. There seems to be plenty of blame to go around.
The .22LR has a long history of military use with Israeli forces. Modified versions of the ArmaLite AR7 survival rifle were issued to IAF aircrews. Israeli air marshals, Mossad operatives, and Sayeret Matkal have long used the .22LR Beretta 71, often with a suppressor, in covert operations. These guys know a thing or three about armed combat, and they clearly still take the humble Two-Two quite seriously.
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