52 Years Ago Today: AFVN TV Station Attacked. Staff Killed or Become POW's

     The Armed Fores Vietnam Network (AFVN) TV Station called Detachment 5 was originally located in Hue, and the staff there was killed or taken prisoner in the infamous1968 Tet offensive. The guts of the station were in a trailer.

      Several of the personnel were killed, and others taken prisoner for five years.
     You can read a good narration of the events HERE. 

"The NVA attack on Hue was one of the strongest and most successful of the Tet Offensive. Even though more than 100 towns and cities across the country were attacked during Tet, the five-week battle for Hue was the only one where communist forces held a significant portion of the city for more than a few days. On the second day of Tet, the power-generating station in Hue was taken out and the telephone lines to the AFVN compound were cut. The crew became isolated."

 

     After that Tet offensive, the station was then moved to Quang Tri, and it became my U.S. Army assignment in 1970, though to be honest I don't believe I knew that recent history when I arrived at the station.

  I've read that there were still bullet holes in the trailer, though, again, I was 19 and blissfully ignorant of those events.
   There was a "hootch" built next to the trailer, the green building to the left in the photo below, and it served as the studio for the TV newscasts.

 My first on-air TV experience was anchoring the 10:00 PM News weekdays. Detachment 5 was much safer in Quang Tri, since it was inside the perimeter of a rather large base. In Hue, the station was in a civilian area though to be safe from attack.

UPDATE: Photos from Dennis Woytek, PhD, Duquesne University-Retired

They show the station being installed in Quang Tri after the Hue assault. I thought the building under construction was the eventual studio I am in above, but DR. Woytek was there, and he explains:

"The building was actually a generator shed because we had a huge 200kw generator I “acquired ” as only a Seabee can. My Seabees from CBMU 301 were a big help building the hooches and the shed. I left there in the fall of 1969 to spend a month on the hospital ship Sanctuary. I was officially transferred out of my Seabee unit CBMU 301 and attached to AFVN Det 5 in the late spring of 1968. The van was already transferred to the site. I have a lot of other images on 35mm slides and will scan them in soon." ( from an email from Dr. Woytek)

You can read a lot more of his experience in Vietnam with AFVN Radio & TV HERE.