About This Site
How It's Researched, Sourced, & Edited
This is a memorial site, but a memorial that earns its keep is one that tells the truth. Every claim here should be traceable to a source. Every contradiction should be named, not buried. The men of Project Delta are owed the record as it actually exists — not a sanitized version, and not a romanticized one.
What This Site Is For
This site preserves the operational and personal history of Detachment B-52, Project Delta, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), from the unit's founding as Operation Leaping Lena in May 1964 through its deactivation at Nha Trang on 30 June 1970.
It is built primarily for three audiences:
- ◆ The veterans of Project Delta — and the families of those who didn't come home.
- ◆ Researchers and historians — who need primary-source-grade material with sources cited.
- ◆ Anyone trying to understand what these men did, why it mattered, and what it cost.
Editorial Principles
The site holds itself to seven standards:
1. Every claim sourced
Operation dates, casualty counts, unit assignments, and quoted statements are tied to a named source — an AAR, a published book, a veteran narrative, or a public record. Where a source is missing, that absence is named explicitly rather than papered over.
2. Contradictions named, not buried
When two sources disagree — the 281st AHC list against the era page, a memoir against an AAR, a family memory against a roster — both are presented and the disagreement is flagged. Readers are told what we don't know.
3. Both sides shown
Operations are presented in two voices: the official record from after-action reports and command summaries, alongside the firsthand accounts of the men who flew them. The contrast itself is part of the history.
4. Veterans speak in their own words
When a Project Delta veteran wrote down what they remembered, we quote them directly with attribution rather than paraphrasing. The unit's memory belongs to the men who lived it.
5. Mistakes acknowledged
Project Delta lost six men in a single day in the An Lao Valley because a commander overrode a warning and departed from doctrine. That is part of the unit's record. A site that hides operational failures dishonors the men who died on them.
6. The dead are named
Where casualties exist for a given operation, the names appear with rank, date, and burial or panel reference. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Wall of Faces is the canonical reference; we link to it.
7. Corrections welcomed publicly
If you can correct, expand, or contradict anything on this site — especially if you were there — please use the
Contribute page. Corrections are reviewed and applied; we say what changed and when.
Source Tiers
Not all sources are created equal. Where claims rest on different grades of evidence, we want readers to know which they're looking at.
1
Primary records (highest confidence)The B-52 After Action Reports held at the U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD (Record Group 472). Declassified, written contemporaneously by the unit. The closest thing to ground truth.
2
Veteran narratives, contemporaneous photographsPieces written by Project Delta veterans about operations they personally participated in. Photographs taken in-country during the operation. Subject to memory drift but speaking from firsthand experience.
3
Published unit and supporting-unit historiesCarpenter's Boots on the Ground: The History of Project Delta (2010), built from declassified AARs. The 281st Assault Helicopter Company's I Corps operations history compiled by Bob Mitchell from B-52 and 281st AARs. Beckwith and Knox, Delta Force (1983). Jim Morris's Project Delta writings in the Special Forces Chapter 78 Sentinel.
4
Encyclopedic and tertiary sourcesWikipedia, USASOC press releases, encyclopedia entries. Useful for context and to flag claims that need verification, but never used as the sole source for a substantive claim.
How Books Are Quoted
Several copyrighted books inform this site — particularly Carpenter, Beckwith, and Morris. We use them three ways:
- · Facts are extracted and paraphrased. Operation dates, place names, what happened on a particular day — the underlying facts aren't copyrightable, and we use them freely with attribution to the book and page.
- · Short passages are quoted directly. One to three sentences at a time, in quotation marks, with the author and page. This is fair use for historical commentary.
- · Substantial passages are not reproduced without explicit permission from the author or publisher. If you wrote one of these books and want a longer passage included, please contact us.
If you wrote a book about Project Delta or a related Vietnam Special Forces unit
We would be honored to quote your work in greater depth on the relevant operation pages. Please reach out via the
Contact page or send a permission note through
Contribute.
Where the Gaps Are
Open sources cannot fill every part of Project Delta's story. The following are known, named gaps — explicit on the relevant pages so readers know what they're looking at:
- · The 1965 numbered operations (1-65 through 12-65) under MAJ Beckwith.
- · Several rebuilding-period operations in 1966 (3-66, 6-66, 7-66, 11-66).
- · The post-Tet refit period of mid-1968.
- · The specific operation SP4 Stephen Spiers died on (10 March 1970).
- · A complete AAR for the unit's final combat operation, BARBER GLADE.
Filling these gaps will most likely require pulling AARs from NARA Record Group 472 directly. If you have access to material that closes any of these, please share it.
The Two Sites
This site exists in two layers:
- · The modern site at
/new/ — redesigned, sourced, kept current, and linked from the main navigation.
- · The original Project Delta Net — the site as Chester Howard and the original veterans built it, preserved verbatim with all of its original content. Reachable via the “Original Site →” link in the footer of every modern page.
The modern site is self-contained — it does not silently link out to the legacy archive. Visitors choose, explicitly, when they want to step back into the original.
Who Maintains This Site
Originally created by Chester Howard and the men of Project Delta at projectdelta.net. Restored and maintained by the Allen family. This is not an official U.S. Department of Defense website.
Contact and Corrections
The standard channels are Contribute for stories, photos, identifications, and corrections, and Contact for general inquiries. Every submission is read by a human and corrections are applied within days, not months.
