Ban Bak

Ban Bak: A Historians Notebook “Ban Bak” is a definitive study of events associated with the discovery of a North Vietnamese logistics center on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Southern Laos December 1969. Credited with blunting a probable repeat of the 1968 Tet Offensive Forward Air Controllers (FACs... call sign “Covey”) discovered suspicious vehicle movements near the village of BAN BAK. Subsequent air strikes resulted in continuous secondary explosions extending over a period of several days and resulted in the total destruction of this key facility. The ferocity of the aerial bombardment earned the operation the sobriquet of the “Covey Bomb Dump” but details were withheld from public knowledge at the time of the event by a USAF SECRET classification. Highly classified USAF “after-action” reports subsequently ignored many significant details of the BAN BAK but research by COVEY FAC Gary Beard corrects those errors with first-person accounts by participants and exhaustive research of actual events. Additional information both historical and fictional is included in the book penned by a litany of published authors. Their capable writings provide both resource and context to the BAN BAK story. Ban Bak is the third of three FAC related volumes associated with Forward Air Controllers in the Vietnam War Cleared Hot Volumes I and Vol. II published by the FAC Association being first person accounts of aerial action by the FACs themselves. BAN BAK extends these accounts by including tributes to fallen FACS a time-line of Forward Air Controllers in history an Lexicon of FAC terms and information a classified report on “COMBAT “INK” surveillance methods and an extensive bibliography of FAC related literature and sources useful to any reader of Vietnam war history. Ban Bak is 474 pages in length 8 ½ inches X 11 inches it is available in “Perfect” binding only post paid from the author.