Operation Maeng Da

Operation Maeng Da was a Royal Lao Government military offensive aimed at disrupting the crucial communist supply route of the Second Indochina War, the Ho Chi Minh trail. Launched from a rendezvous point near Vang Tai, Laos, on 2 July 1970 as a three-battalion assault on the major People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) transshipment center at Tchepone, Laos, it ran into stiff resistance from the PAVN 9th Regiment from 11–15 July. An attempt on 16 July to reinforce the Royalist Blue, Black, and Mobile 1 battalions by White Battalion was thwarted by PAVN ground fire and hazardously heavy air traffic over the battlefield. On 17 July, the worst hit Royalist unit, Black Battalion, was airlifted back out of battle. The other two Royalist battalions exfiltrated away from the PAVN troops. In the process, the commander of Mobile 1 was killed; the battalion lost all combat discipline. Both retreating battalions regrouped at the operation's start point. Although ancillary followup operations occurred in the vicinity throughout September, the Maeng Da offensive would not resume. However, the Central Intelligence Agency, which had trained and supported the Royalist guerrilla battalions, prepared the Tchepone Operation to follow it.

After World War II, France fought the First Indochina War to retain French Indochina. As part of its loss of that war at Dien Ben Phu, it freed the Kingdom of Laos. Laotian neutrality was established in the 1954 Geneva Agreements. When France withdrew most of its military in conformity with the treaty, the United States filled the vacuum with purportedly civilian paramilitary instructors. A North Vietnamese-backed communist insurrection had begun as early as 1949. Invading during the opium harvest season of 1953, a North Vietnamese communist force settled in northeastern Laos adjacent to the border of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

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