Operation Black Lion III

Operation Black Lion III
Part of Laotian Civil War; Vietnam War
Date 18 October 1972 – 22 February 1973 Location Southern Laotian panhandle Result Royalist capture Salavan, fail to take Paksan
Belligerents
Kingdom of Laos Supported by  United States	North Vietnam Supported by:  Soviet Union  People's Republic of China
Units involved
Commando Raiders Groupement Mobile 41 Groupement Mobile 42 Groupement Mobile 43 Groupement Mobile 33 22nd Special Operations Squadron	9th PAVN Regiment
Strength
Regimental-size	Regimental-size
Casualties and losses
Unknown	Unknown

Operation Black Lion III (18 October 1972 – 22 February 1973) was one of the last Royal Lao Army offensives of the Laotian Civil War. Aimed at regaining the Lao towns of Paksong and Salavan and their associated airfields for Lao usage, the three regiment offensive captured Salavan on 20 October 1972, and Paksong shortly thereafter. Although the besieged Royalists would hold through early February 1973, they would be routed by PAVN tanks and infantry just before the 22 February 1973 ceasefire ended the war.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail was crucial for the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) strategy for conquering South Vietnam during the Second Indochina War. North Vietnamese victory depended on the logistic supply line of the Trail, which was located in the Kingdom of Laos. An ongoing air campaign by the United States seeking to destroy the Trail had little perceptible effect on the Communist resupply effort.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) backed a number of guerrilla intrusions onto the Trail in an attempt to cut supplies going into South Vietnam. The huge Operation Lam Son 719 attack of February 1971 proved insufficient to sever the supply conduit of the Trail. Nevertheless, after these failures the CIA continued its attempts to disrupt the Trail's activities. Among them were a series of similarly named offensives: Operation Black Lion, Operation Black Lion III, and Operation Black Lion V.

Even as Operation Black Lion ground on, two Royalist irregular regiments from Military Region 4 (MR 4) were undergoing retraining and re-equipping. Both Groupement Mobile 41 (GM 41) and Groupement Mobile 42 (GM 42) graduated in early October 1972. They were promptly earmarked for an attack on Salavan, as part of a land grab prior to an expected ceasefire. The operation was dubbed Black Lion III, and was a rerun of the previous year's Operation Sayasila. With truce talks in progress, the military emphasis was on a land grab to gain territory before a ceasefire ended the secret war.

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