Granite/Kentucky II and III

(26 October - 4 November, 6 - 16 November 1967)

On 26 October, Operation Granite began for STY Alpha with an early morning helicopterborne assault into the Hai Lang Forest. Granite was a two battalion search and destroy operation in the region of Communist Base Area 114. The two assault battalions, the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, and STY Alpha's BLT 1 / 3, conducted Granite under the operational control of the 4th Marines.

The first day of Granite was uneventful for the Marines of BLT 1 / 3, but during the next nine days the enemy 'continuously harassed the BLT . . . staying within a few hundred meters . . . ,' and night probes were made with a consistency not normally experienced.

By the afternoon of the 30th some of the BLT Marines began to believe that Granite was a joint operation; supporting arms mistakes were becoming costly. A friendly air strike, short of target, wounded two Marines on the morning of the 29th. At dusk a short 60mm mortar round wounded another Marine, and just after midnight a short artillery round wounded still another BLT Marine. Fortunately, this was the last Granite casualty inflicted by friendly forces.

BLT 1/3 never did find the enemy base area in the Hai Lang Forest, but it had no doubt of the presence of enemy troops there. When the battalion finished its sweep of the rugged terrain on 4 November, its journals revealed that it had called in 59 fixed-wing sorties and 652 artillery fire missions during the last 10 days. The battalion captured five AK-47s and killed 17 Communists. The tangled vegetation of the Hai Lang hid the rest of the story. All of the BLT returned to Camp Evans before dark on 4 November. Granite ended with three Marines dead and 24 wounded.

The SLF Alpha battalion did not stay at Camp Evans after Operation Granite. Just before noon on 6 November, the division shifted BLT 1/3 to the 9th Marines' operational control. The BLT spent the rest of the day moving west to Cam Lo where it joined Operation Kentucky as the 3d Division reserve. Kentucky began on 1 November, the day after Operation Kingfisher ended. The Kentucky area of responsibility, including Con Thien and Cam Lo, was nothing more than the eastern portion of the old Kingfisher TAOR. Kentucky was the assigned TAOR of the 9th Marines while Lancaster, to the west, was the 3d Marines' responsibility.

BLT 1/3 celebrated the 192nd birthday of the Marine Corps with an early morning move from Cam Lo north to attack positions less than two kilometers east of Con Thien. With the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, comprised of only two companies and a command group, on its right, BLT 1/3 jumped off on Phase II of Kentucky the next morning. The BLT's mission involved making a sweep from east to west around the northern face of the Con Thien base. The 9th Marines conceived the operation as a spoiling attack to disrupt suspected Communist concentrations around Con Thien.

The Kentucky planners were right. At 0830 on the 11th, Company D hit an enemy platoon from the east, the blind side of the well-dug-in and concealed Communist position. The Marines forced the surprised NVA to fight; seven died. That afternoon Company D hit another dug-in enemy unit. This one suffered a similar fate; six more NVA soldiers died. One survivor, a squad leader, told his captors that his battalion had been in the Con Thien area for about a month. Apparently, Kentucky, with excellent timing, upset Communist plans for Con Thien.

The SLF battalion's combat commitment to the opening phases of Kentucky ended the morning of 12 November. The battalion marched back to Position C-3, a base area in the strong point/obstacle system, and then moved on to Dong Ha by truck. BLT 1/3 remained at Dong Ha, again as 3d Marine Division reserve, from 12 November until released by the 9th Marines at 0900 on the 16th, at which time the BLT started reembarkation. SLF Alpha, however, would see Kentucky again.

While the BLT phased out of Kentucky, III MAF provided some relief for the loss of mobility caused by the grounding of CH-46s. On 15 November, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel M. Wilson's HMM-361 flew its UH-34Ds out to the USS Iwo Jima to become the new SLF Alpha helicopter squadron. The reliable 34's were a welcome addition, especially since circumstances forced the BLT to rely on other sources for helicopter support during all of Kentucky II and III.