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[desig]nated the 44th Special Tactical Zone, were supported by the 7th of the 1st Cavalry, organized as Task Force BLACKHAWK. A general support task force was organized at Can Tho with the assets of the 307th Aviation Battalion. This latter unit was assigned the general support mission because it had the Chinook and Mohawk companies. This task force organization had a marked impact on the effectiveness of airmobile operations in the Delta and was warmly welcomed by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam commanders and their senior advisors. Colonel Maddox insisted that the battalion commanders visit each division they supported on a daily basis for personal coordination with either the division commander or his senior advisor.

The 13th Aviation Battalion had a long and proud history of airmobile support in the Delta even before there was a major U.S. presence in Vietnam. During the buildup in 1965, operations in the Delta received a lesser priority because of the overwhelming need to provide aviation assets to the major U.S. units arriving in country. Nevertheless, throughout this growth period the 13th Aviation Battalion was supporting major Army of the Republic of Vietnam operations against a well-organized powerful enemy.

In 1965 the IV Corps Tactical Zone was organized into 15 separate provinces. An additional province—Sa Dec—was formed in 1966. Each one of their provinces had an airfield at or near its provincial capital. Colonel Maddox set up a system of rearm and refuel points at each one of the fifteen airfields. This gave the 13th Aviation Battalion a "grid" across the Delta so that, with the exception of the extreme southern tip of the Ca Mau Peninsula, no aircraft was more than twenty minutes away from a place where it could be rearmed and refueled.

Colonel Maddox would recall that when he arrived in 1965 refueling was accomplished by sending fuel trucks to the nearest airfield in the proposed area of operation on D-1. This was an obvious message to the Viet Cong that an operation was to take place and was a completely unreliable method of establishing a refueling point. Colonel Maddox pressured the appropriate Vietnamese and U.S. agencies to establish a pool of a million gallons of petroleum, oils, and lubricants which was broken out among the 15 airfields. Eventually, these same refueling points would handle rearmament as well.

In 1965 it was conservatively estimated that the Viet Cong had a strength in the Delta of 26 battalions including some very strong provisional battalions. One of these, known as the Tay Do Battalion in Can Tho Province, was considered to be a far more deter[mined]