The Raid: The Son Tay Prison Rescue Mission
by Benjamin F. Schemmer
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Description
Minutes after 2 A.M. on November 21, 1970, more than one hundred U.S. war planes shattered the dark calm of the skies over Hanoi. Their mission: rescue sixty-one American POWs from Son Tay prison. Less than thirty minutes later, the raid was over, but no Americans had been rescued. The prisoners had been moved from Son Tay four and a half months earlier and that wasn’t all. Part of the raiding force landed at the wrong compound, a “school” bristling with enemy soldiers, but the show more soldiers weren’t Vietnamese . . . Replete with fascinating insights into the workings of high-level intelligence and military command,The Raidis Benjamin Schemmer’s unvarnished account of the courageous mission that was quickly labeled an intelligence failure by Congress and a Pentagon blunder by the world press. Determined to ferret out the truth, Schemmer uncovers one of the CIA’s most carefully guarded secrets. From the planning and live-fire rehearsals to the explosive reactions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff watching the drama unfold to the aftermath as the White House and Pentagon struggled for damage control, Schemmer tackles the tough questions. What really happened during the twenty-seven minutes the raiders spent on the ground? Did the CIA know the whole time that the Americans were gone? Had the Agency in fact been responsible for the POWs being moved? And perhaps most intriguing, why was the rescue—though it never freed a single prisoner—not a failure after all? show lessTags
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The unsuccessful American raid on Son Tay prison, North Vietnam. Even though the prisoners had been moved, the raid really lifted morale for a lot of POWs who knew they hadn't been forgotten. There's also a theory that a large motivation for the raid was to kill Chinese advisers to the NVA who were at the camp.
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Author Information
4 Works 201 Members
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1976
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 959.704 — History & geography History of Asia Southeast Asia: Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam Vietnam 1949-
- LCC
- DS557.8 .S6 .S34 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania Asia History of Asia Southeast Asia French Indochina Vietnam. Annam Vietnamese Conflict
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 127
- Popularity
- 256,877
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.95)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 6
