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Daisy Cutter

In mid November 1968, Project Delta redeployed from a Forward Operating Base (FOB) at the An Hoa U.S. Marine Corps Base in I Corps and flew directly to III Corps to establish an FOB beside the runway at the Dong Xoai Special Forces Camp. There had been no stand down between the two deployments, but we were told the Project planned to shut down operations around 20 December, leave a security element to secure the FOB, and the Recon Section, along with some of its support elements, would return to Nha Trang for a Christmas and New Year stand down. However, those who were there must remember the Christmas Stand Down of 1968 never came to pass; Project Delta continued operations through both Christmas and New Year Holidays.

A week before Christmas, just as my Recon Team was preparing to pack up and return to Nha Trang for our promised stand down, we were summoned to the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) for a mission briefing and my Recon Team was assigned a 10 Kilometer by 10 Kilometer square for a Reconnaissance Area of Operation (AO) in the heavily forested area east of An Loc, Binh Long Province where intelligence reports indicated numerous NVA company/battalion sized base camps were located. Later that day, I flew out with our U.S. Air Force Forward Air Controller (FAC), Major Roscoe, in an O-1 Bird dog to take a look at my recon AO and select my infiltration and exfiltration LZs.

Before the advent of the GPS, finding the exact 10K by 10K AO out in an area like that devoid of any prominent terrain features was no easy task, but we finally agreed an area between two small rivers constituted my recon AO, and I commenced to look for an LZ in the area I could use for my infiltration. It wasn’t long before I caught sight of something in the northwest corner of my AO I had never seen before, and I asked the FAC if he knew what it was. When he replied, “That’s a Daisy Cutter crater,” I remembered reading in The Stars and Stripes about the BLU-82B “Daisy Cutter” bomb, but I had no idea they made a crater like the one I saw below.

What I saw was not a hole in the ground crater like bombs usually made, but it was a perfect circular clearing over 200 meters in diameter, filled with white sand, and located in the deep green of a densely forested area. According to the story in The Stars and Stripes, a Daisy Cutter was a huge bomb that exploded several feet above the ground’s surface, left no hole in the ground but exploded laterally completely removing all vegetation and top soil within the blast’s radius and creating an excellent 4 to 5 helicopter LZ. It didn’t take much imagination to see that white disk cut out of the green as a Daisy, thus the BLU-82’s nickname “Daisy Cutter.” I could have picked any of the several small clearings in my AO as an infiltration LZ, but the Daisy Cutter had peaked my curiosity and I just had to have a closer look at that magnificent LZ, so I selected it as my Primary Infiltration LZ, and that was a decision I would soon regret.

When we first saw the Daisy Cutter crater, I asked Major Roscoe if he knew why the U.S. Air Force had dropped the bomb there and he knew nothing about it. He went on to say he had met a C-130 pilot who had dropped several of these Daisy Cutters and these bombs had scared the Hell out of the pilot. The C-130 pilot had said the Daisy Cutter was rolled off the ramp and dropped by parachute at about 6,000 feet AGL so the C-130 could get out of the area in time to escape the blast of the bomb’s 13,000 pounds of High Explosive. If the parachute failed, the bomb would hit the ground while the C-130 was still inside the blast area with deadly consequences for the C-130 crew.

Back at the FOB, I checked with our S-2 and they knew nothing about the crater and had no information about a recent ground operation in the area. I thought that was a bit curious, but bombs were dropped on Vietnam every few seconds and no one could expect S-2 to keep up with all of them. However, as I thought the sole purpose of a Daisy Cutter was to cut an LZ for a ground operation, I did think it was odd that the LZ had been created and there was no record of a following ground operation.

The next afternoon, my recon team packed up, briefed back and we flew out for a last light infiltration. The FAC easily vectored us in and, of course, the UH-1H (Huey) “Hole Bird” had no problem at all setting us down in that “Mother of all LZs.” As soon as the helicopter touched ground, my recon team exited and attempted to run into the wood line, but there was no wood line. We ran into a solid barrier of logs, limbs, brush and debris towering to 50 feet above us.

In the failing light of EENT (End Evening Nautical Twilight) we looked around and across that expanse of sterile white sand and saw the barrier before us completely encircled the crater. The Daisy Cutter had impacted in triple canopy jungle where the trees ranged in size from 200 feet down to 50 feet, and when the bomb exploded, it probably vaporized all the trees in a 50-meter radius from the point of impact; then it cut down trees for the next 50 meters and pushed them out into the trees beyond. For the final 100 meters of the blast radius, this mass of logs uprooted the trees in its path, pushed them outward, and finally deposited the trees in a 50-meter thick wall that was 40-50 feet high and completely encircled the blast area. The blast created by 13,000 pounds of High Explosive had cut a circular clearing, roughly 250 meters in diameter, and had deposited the contents of that clearing along its outer boundary in the form of a 50 foot high wall of logs, limbs, brush, and debris.

My recon team was inside a 50-foot high log corral and the only way we were going to be able to get off the LZ was to climb out. It would soon be too dark to safely climb onto that entanglement so we would have to hurry or we would have to RON (remain over night) on our infiltration LZ, and that was unthinkable. We started moving around the edge of the crater looking for a relatively solid place to climb out until it became too dark to continue the search and we did the unthinkable; we RONed on our Infiltration LZ.

The next morning at sunup we continued our search for a way off the LZ until we came upon our tracks from the night before; we had completely circled the LZ without finding a way out. The problem wasn’t that this was a solid wall of logs. The problem was that this was a haphazardly piled mass of logs and debris that was extremely unstable. We had made attempts in several places to climb out, but our weight would cause the logs to shift, roll and threaten to bury us in its entanglement. A couple of times we had climbed almost to the top only to find that if we were to continue we would have to either climb over logs too unstable to support our weight or we would have to crawl under them, so we would turn around and climb back down into the crater.

By mid-morning, we were still on our infiltration LZ, it was apparent there was no safe way to climb out of the crater, but it was also apparent it was even more dangerous, as exposed as we were, to remain in that crater. The term “Shooting fish in a barrel” came to mind. We were the fish, the crater was the barrel, and the VC would do the shooting if they ever got to the top of that log wall from the outside before we could escape from inside the crater.

Rather than expose the entire six-man recon team on the side of the log and debris wall while hunting for a way out, we searched until we found a fairly solid looking spot and sent the point man to the top, but within seconds of him arriving at the top, he turned around and hurriedly scrambled back down. Our point man reported he had seen an abandoned NVA/VC base camp on the other side of the wall, but he couldn’t be absolutely certain it was abandoned. It was highly unlikely there would still be any NVA/VC in the base camp after such a narrow miss by a Daisy Cutter, but one could never be absolutely certain about those things, so I sent the point man back up to observe the base camp for at least 30 minutes before we put the entire team over the wall. After about 30 minutes, our point man signaled us he had seen no activity, so we climbed over the wall one at a time.

My recon team re-grouped on the other side and proceeded to cautiously examine the remnants of the VC/NVA base camp. The base camp consisted of about 10 bunkers the blast from the Daisy Cutter had collapsed, but we couldn’t tell if any of the enemy had been in the camp when the bomb fell or if any of them had been killed by the blast. There was no fresh sign of enemy activity, and the bunkers appeared to have been abandoned for at least three months.

By the bunkers’ positioning, we could tell they were just part of the outer defenses of a large base camp, and the main part of the camp had been where the crater was now located. Because of this, we believed the Daisy Cutter had not been dropped simply to cut an LZ, but it had been dropped as part of a tactical air strike to take out a large VC/NVA base camp. The team spent that day and the next patrolling the area around the crater and found several other places where the base camp’s outer defenses protruded from the crater. To us, this confirmed a direct hit had been made on a VC/NVA base camp of at least battalion size.

We patrolled our recon AO for the full five days and never found any fresh sign of VC/NVA activity in the area, and we hoped if any VC/NVA were left alive after the Daisy Cutter blast, they were now out looking for Chieu Hoi (surrender) Leaflets they could redeem at any of the local U.S. or ARVN outposts. A Daisy Cutter may have left something to be desired as an LZ cutter, but as a tactical or psychological weapon it was unsurpassed by anything except possibly an Arc Light. As I had crossed over the top of the log barrier around that crater, I had looked back into its wide expanse to admire the destructive power of a Daisy Cutter’s 13,000 pounds of HE, and if I had been either a VC or an NVA soldier, the sight would have been enough to make me find religion then and there.

After we were extracted, had completed our debriefing, and had adjourned to the Beer Tent, Pat Walters, my back up on this patrol chuckled and said, “Someday, we’ll look back on this and laugh.” I had thought then that he was joking because there was absolutely no way anyone could ever look back on what had just happened and laugh, but the other day I did just that. Our last recon mission of 1968 had been a Dry Hole, and we thanked God for the Christmas present, but the gift would have been much better if He had kept the damned Daisy out of it.

In recent years, the BLU-82B (Daisy Cutter) has made the news several times when they were dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan during tactical air strikes. As they report these air strikes, the news anchor or reporter always adds, “… and this BLU-82 bomb, the Daisy Cutter, was used in Vietnam to clear Landing Zones for helicopters.” Whenever I hear this, I cringe and remember the worst LZ I ever selected was a Daisy Cutter LZ. The BLU-82 may be an excellent tactical or psychological weapon, but believe me it makes a sorry LZ.