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Time magazine, on 9 February 1968, recapitulated the events this way:
Into Saigon in the days just before Tet slipped more than 3,000 Communist soldiers armed with weapons ranging up to machine-gun and bazooka size. Some came openly into the open city, weapons concealed in luggage or under baskets of food, riding buses, taxis and motor scooters, or walking. Others came furtively: some of the Viet Cong who attacked the U.S. embassy had ridden into town concealed in a truckload of flowers. Once in town, they hid their weapons. Only after the attack did Vietnamese intelligence realize that the unusual number of funerals the previous week was no accident: the Viet Cong had buried their weapons in the funeral coffins, dug them up on the night of the assault. They even test-fired their guns during the peak of the Tet celebrations, the sound of shots mingling with that of the firecrackers going off.... An enemy force of at least 700 men tackled the city's most vital military target: Tan Son Nhut airstrip and its adjoining MACV compound housing Westmoreland's headquarters and the 7th Air Force Command Center, the nerve centers of U.S. command in the war. The Communists breached the immediate base perimeter, slipping past some 150 outposts without a shot being fired, and got within 1,000 feet of the runways before they were halted in eight hours of bloody hand-to-hand combat. All told, the Communists attacked from 18 different points around Tan Son Nhut, getting close enough to MACV to put bullets through Westy's windows. Westmoreland's staff officers were issued weapons and sent out to help sandbag the compound, and Westmoreland moved into his windowless command room in the center of MACV's first floor. Other Communist units raced through the city shooting at U.S. officers' and enlisted men's billets (BOQ's and BEQ's), Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker's home, Westmoreland's home, the radio and TV stations. Wearing ARVN clothes, raiders seized part of the Vietnamese Joint General Staff Headquarters, turned the defenders' machine guns against helicopters diving in to dislodge them.
There is no doubt that the quick reaction of the armed helicopters saved Tan Son Nhut and Bien Hoa from serious danger of being overrun. In the first few hours they were the only airborne firepower since the Air Force aircraft could not get clearance to even take off. An Air Force sergeant describing the action on a tape recorder at Tan Son Nhut kept repeating over and over, "Oh, those beautiful Huey gunships!" One of the men in those gunships, Captain Chad C. Payne, a fire team leader, said, "I received fire everywhere I turned. My ships received seven hits, but this was nothing considering the amount of ground fire directed toward us. There were hundreds of VC bodies everywhere in the vicinity of the Tan Son Nhut perimeter. I've never seen anything like it."
Another tribute to the effectiveness of the gunships came from a member of Advisory Team 100 at Tan Son Nhut. When he received word that Tan Son Nhut was under attack, he assembled