Situation unchanged. Medical evacuations did not take place.
Paradrops of reinforcements in progress.
Summary of the attack on HUGUETTE 6:
- Friendly losses: 23 killed including one officer, 112 injured including 3 officers and 86 missing.
- Rebel losses: 800 killed counted (numerous losses), plus a number outside the position in the approach trenches.
240 paratroopers were dropped by the Dakotas. The operation had to be interrupted at 12:30 a.m. due to a storm in the basin. A stick of around twenty deported men fell among the enemy. 12 Dakotas out of 14 were able to drop their personnel.
These “Banjo” missions will be among the trickiest and most dangerous. The paratroopers had to be dropped at 400 meters on a short DZ, in two passes, or even three. The obligation to always pass over the same place, in a straight line, at parachute speed, meant that we were shot like pigeons.
The paratroopers did not have time to learn how to jump (the planes were taken for operational missions). Some had made one or two jumps, the others none: they were dropped into the furnace of Diên-Biên-Phù, at night, without training. Some absolutely wanted to fight, others panicked at the last moment. They had to unhook their SOA (automatic opening strap), and that delayed the others. Sometimes it even happened that one of them, to be sure not to be pushed by force by the dispatchers, opened his belly in the plane. Hello damage!
In total the four groups, “Franche-Comté”, “Anjou”, “Béarn” and Senegal” will carry out 164 Banjo missions and drop 3,024 paratroopers.
In semi-darkness, the Dakotas are lined up in the parking lot where there is the excitement that precedes the Banjo missions. The paratrooper sticks which will jump in a few hours, at night, into the furnace of Diên Bien Phu, are being prepared.
The crew of the “Franche-Comté” of the C-47 n° 545 F-RAYA, the pilot LAMARQUE, the NCA, a certain captain…, the mécano VLASSOF and radio RUBEL, observe the paratroopers, lined up, whose equipment we check before boarding.
How many of them will return from Dien Bien Phu? There will be those who will receive a bad reception upon arrival on the ground and who will immediately experience the infirmary, those who will fight and who will end up either dead or injured or escaped but prisoners in conditions such that few will escape. In fact, I think I didn’t ask myself too many questions at the time when I was 21. The mission was there and it had to be executed.
The paratroopers boarded, started up, taxied, took off and headed for Diên Bien Phu. Routine…
As with all night missions, flash hiders and discretion are essential. Even glow worms are prohibited on board! …
As they approach the DZ, the paratroopers attach their SOA and the dispatcher, to check them, turns on his electric lamp, allowing only a thin ray of light to filter through his fingers. Immediately our NCA yells at him: no light!
Alignment for the first pass. Top drop…and instead of‘press the release bell, our good NCA…turn on the headlightslanding!!!
It’s immediately a festival of tracers converging on us. Lamarque, furious, nudges the navigator’s arm, turns off the headlights while turning and “evading”. The two passages to blow up the paratroopers will be done without the help of the navigator. With all that we only took two impacts. But what heat!
HUGUETTE 5 attack ; rebels stopped.