First Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in Vietnam 1969 US Army The Big Picture TV-748 ( First Air Cavalry Division)

more at http://quickfound.net/

'The story of how air mobility is helping the First Air Cavalry, the "First Team," win the battle for freedom in Southeast Asia.'

Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Cavalry_Division_(United_States)

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The 1st Cavalry Division ("First Team") is a combined arms division and is one of the most decorated combat divisions of the United States Army. It is based at Fort Hood, Texas. It was formed in 1921 and served during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, with the Stabilization Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the Iraq War, in the War in Afghanistan and in Operation Freedom's Sentinel. As of October 2017, the 1st Cavalry Division is subordinate to III Corps and is commanded by Major General Paul T. Calvert.

The unit is unique in that it has served as a Cavalry (horse) Division, an Infantry Division, an Air Assault Division and an Armored Division throughout its existence...

The 1st Cavalry Division next fought in the Vietnam War. No longer a conventional infantry unit, the division had become an air assault division as the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), commonly referred to as the 1st Air Cavalry Division. The use of helicopters on such large scale as troop carriers, cargo lift ships, medevacs, and as aerial rocket artillery, was never before implemented, but by doing so it freed the infantry from the tyranny of terrain to attack the enemy at the time and place of its choosing. In 1965, colors and subordinate unit designations of the 1st Cavalry Division were transferred from Korea to Fort Benning, Georgia, where they were used, along with separate elements of what had been the 2nd Infantry Division, to reflag the existing 11th Air Assault Division (Test) into the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Concurrently, the personnel and units of the 1st Cavalry Division, which remained in Korea, were used to reflag the division into a new 2nd Infantry Division...

Shortly thereafter, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) began deploying to Camp Radcliff, An Khe, Vietnam, in the Central Highlands and was equipped with the new M16 rifle, the UH-1 troop carrier helicopter, UH-1C gunships, the CH-47 Chinook cargo helicopter, and the massive CH-54 Skycrane cargo helicopter. All aircraft carried insignia to indicate their battalion and company...

The division's first major operation was to help relieve the Siege of Plei Me near Pleiku and the pursuit of the withdrawing North Vietnamese Army which culminated in the Battle of Ia Drang, described in the book We Were Soldiers Once...And Young, was also the basis of the film We Were Soldiers. Because of that battle the division earned the Presidential Unit Citation (US), the first unit to receive such in the war. In 1966, the division attempted to root the communist Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army (PAVN) out of Binh Dinh province with Operation Masher, Operation Crazy Horse and Operation Thayer. 1967 was then spent conducting Operation Pershing, a large scale search and destroy operation of communist base areas in II Corps in which 5,400 communist soldiers were killed and 2,000 captured. In Operation Jeb Stuart, January 1968, the division moved north to Camp Evans, north of Hue and on to Landing Zone Sharon and Landing Zone Betty, south of Quang Tri City, all in the I Corps Tactical Zone.

In the early morning hours of 31 January 1968, the largest battle of the Vietnam War, the Tet Offensive, was launched by 84,000 communist soldiers across South Vietnam...

In March 1968 the 1st Cavalry Division shifted forces to LZ Stud, the staging area for Operation Pegasus to break the siege of the Marine combat base at Khe Sanh—the second largest battle of the war. All three brigades participated in this airmobile operation...

On 29 April 1971 the bulk of the division was withdrawn to Fort Hood, Texas, but its 3rd Brigade remained as one of the final two major US ground combat units in Vietnam, departing 29 June 1972. However, its 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, Task Force Garry Owen, remained another two months.

In the Vietnam War, the First Cavalry Division suffered more casualties than any other army division: 5,444 men killed in action and 26,592 wounded in action...