Conv-Faulty Ammunition Given to the Enemy

From: Rick Fredericksen
Dated: June 28, 2019
Subject: US Gave Ammo to the VC

Fascinating!

Rick

Faulty Ammunition Given to the Enemy

June 2019

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From: Dick Ellis

Dated: June 28, 2019

Subject: US Gave Ammo to the VC

The US purposely gave ammo to the Communists in the Vietnam War

Why on Earth would an army provide its enemy with ammunition? So they would use it, of course. The United States wanted the North Vietnamese to use the ammo they provided because they would take out the weapon (and maybe even the person) using it. There was no unconventional war like the one that played out behind the scenes of the greater war in Vietnam. One small aspect of that hidden war was Project Eldest Son, a plan that would take out the enemy's individual infantry rifles using its own ammunition. Inline image
It was carried out by a U.S. military entity called the Studies and Observations Group, the Special Forces unit that was behind many of the top secret missions and operations inside the Military Assistance Command Vietnam. The unit was in many of the major battles and offensives of the war, including the Tet Offensive and the Easter Offensive. But Project Eldest Son was different. It was a slow burn, a subtle influx of materiel into the enemy's supply and ammunition depots, with one marked difference ? one that wouldn't show itself until it was too late.

  Starting in 1967, the United States and the MACV-SOG began sending the Communist forces throughout the area ammunition for the AK-47, machine guns, and even mortars. They all looked ordinary, but they didn't work like any ordinary ammo ? and they weren't just duds, either. These rounds were filled with high explosives, enough not just to fire the projectiles, but enough to destroy the weapon and severely wound the shooter. For the mortar rounds, the explosives together could kill an entire mortar crew.
After a while, the United States hoped the Vietnamese Communists would be afraid to use their own weapons and ammo. Killing the enemy was a good side effect, but the SOG needed some of them to survive.
  For two years, special operators all over Vietnam would capture ammunition and supply centers, infuse cases of ammo with the faulty ammunition and then let it end up back in the hands of the enemy. Like seemingly everything in Vietnam, you never knew what might be booby-trapped. Eventually, the SOG would have to warn U.S. troops against using Communist weapons and ammo over the defective new M-16 to prevent the explosives from killing friendlies.
  The program only ended because it was leaked to the media in the West, but even so, the efficacy of the program was never fully known.
   A few posts ago Mike55 asked if anyone else had read about the special forces operation in Viet Nam in which our troops slipped exploding cartridges into enemy ammo supplies. He was referring to Project Eldest Son, which, from a Gun Nut perspective, is the most fascinating covert operation ever. I cannot improve on this account of Eldest Son written by Major John Plaster, who participated, but in the meantime, here's the Cliff Notes version:
In 1967, the Joint Chiefs approved of a plan to booby trap ammunition dumps found by Studies and Observation Group (SOG) teams in Laos by leaving exploding ammunition behind. The trick had been used in colonial wars by British troops who let booby trapped .303 ammunition fall into Pathan hands on India's Northwest Frontier.
The idea of Eldest Son was not to kill large numbers of the enemy but to destroy confidence in their Chinese-made arms and ammunition. After CIA ordnance techs proved it was feasible to load a 7.62x39mm round with enough high explosive to drive the bolt back into the skull of the soldier firing the weapon, the work of sabotaging thousands of rounds began. It took a month for the CIA to pry bullets from captured ammo, replace the powder with an identical-looking, HE substitute, then reseat the bullets and reseal ammo cans and crates so there was no sign of tampering. The sabotaged rounds generated up to 250,000 psi, more than five times the pressure of a normal 7.62x39mm round and enough to blow up the weapon. Several hundred 12.7 mm machine gun rounds and nearly 2000 82mm mortar rounds were booby-trapped as well, the latter being designed to explode when they hit the mortar tube's firing pin.
  Green Berets carried booby trapped rounds with them and slipped them into enemy ammunition caches whenever possible. They would also load them into the magazines of rifles found near dead enemy soldiers. They were always careful to leave just one round at a time so all the evidence of sabotage would be destroyed when the round was fired.. When the ammo turned up in the front lines, weapons began exploding, killing enemy riflemen and sometimes entire mortar crews. Then, the second part of Eldest Son kicked in: the dissemination of forged Chinese and NVA documents about the problem as well as U.S. intelligence briefs designed to fall into enemy hands. One bogus enemy report read "We know that it is rumored some of the ammunition has exploded in the AK-47. This report is greatly exaggerated. It is a very, very small percentage of the ammunition that has exploded." There were even Armed Forces Radio and TV PSAs about the dangers of using captured weapons due to their "faulty metallurgy" which were, of course, meant for the enemy to overhear.
Eldest Son was compromised when its details appeared in US press in 1969. The name was changed to Project Italian Green, and later, to Pole Bean and the rest of the ammunition was quickly placed in ammo caches, although without the leave-no-trace finesse of the Eldest Son operations. Nevertheless, even when the enemy knew the dump had been tampered with, it was nearly impossible to detect which round was booby-trapped so Italian Green and Pole Bean also succeeded in sowing seeds of doubt.