Phantom Warriors: Book I: LRRPs, LRPs, and Rangers in Vietnam [Paperback]

Here are some of the most courageous missions executed by six-man teams on their own deep behind enemy lines.Gary Linderer is the publisher of Behind the Lines, a magazine that specializes in US military special operations. He served in Vietnam with the LRPs of the 101st Airborne Division, earning two Silver Stars, the Bronze Star with V device (for valor), the Army Commendation Medal with V device, and two Purple Hearts.B-52 (Project Delta), 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne)
 
Many of the standard operating procedures employed by long-range reconnaissance patrols during the Vietnam War were established by the men of Project Delta. The program started in May 1964 as an outgrowth of an earlier, covert operation known as Project Leaping Lena. Project Delta grew quickly from a single twelve-man A detachment to a battalion-size command containing nearly one hundred Special Forces personnel and more than twelve hundred indigenous soldiers.
 
B-52 was organized into twelve recon teams, twelve CIDG “roadrunner” teams, a Chinese Nung camp security company, and a South Vietnamese Airborne Ranger battalion as a reaction force. Their primary mission was to infiltrate hostile territories inaccessible to conventional units. Project Delta teams went into these areas to locate enemy units, gather intelligence, ambush small enemy elements, coordinate air and artillery strikes, perform bomb-damage assessments, harass and confuse the enemy, and sometimes to conduct special-purpose raids. It was because of the success of Project Delta that Gen. William Westmoreland decided to authorize the formation and utilization of special reconnaissance elements for the conventional army forces deploying to Vietnam. So he sent a directive to 5th Special Forces Group to establish a permanent three-week-long school based on the concepts developed by Project Delta. He named the school “Recondo” after three well-known terms associlã