It was November of 1967, and the United States was in the midst of building up its forces in Vietnam. Throughout the month, American troops struggled to secure strategic areas in the surroundings of the town of Dak To in a flat valley surrounded by sharp peaks nearly a mile-high. The area served as a forward staging base for some of the most top-secret US special forces missions of the Vietnam War.

The battles fought during those weeks would go down in history as some of the most brutal of the entire conflict. However, it wasn’t only the enemy that posed a threat to American ground troops.

On November 19, in Hill 875, the 2nd Battalion of the 173rd Airborne Brigade was in dire need of support to counterattack a significant movement of North Vietnamese troops. Help was on the way, but it wasn’t what anyone expected. As a US Marine Corps A-4 Skyhawk approached with two 500-pound bombs, chaos reigned, and one of the darkest moments of the war was about to take place...

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