Customer Reviews

Inside the LRRPs: Rangers in Vietnam

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
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I have read this book, and allthough it is not the best that I have read, I still enjoyed it very much. I don't know if Michael had a personnal expierence with the LRRP/RANGERS, but he still did an excellent job of depicting the things that many of our young RANGER boys went through. Roadrunner6 out

I was lucky enough to find this used for less than a dollar. What a deal. The book is brief but crammed with details, less on the personal accounts as a LRRP (author was a LRRP platoon leader himself, briefly) and more on technical stuff and hard facts. Really a good read and worth adding to any Vietnam or special operations-related book collection.

"Inside the LRRPs: Rangers in Vietnam" should really be named "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about LRRPs." Author Michael Lee Lanning has done a tremendous amount of work in compiling this operational and background history of the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol units that fought in the Vietnam War.

"Inside the LRRPs" covers every known detail that went into forming, training and operating these units during the Vietnam War years. The reading can be dry at points--the evolution of US Army Field Manual 31-18 over the years won't raise your heartbeat--but the author can only be commended for covering his subject thoroughly and providing every detail he possibly could.

Inevitably what would have revved up this book, and what's largely missing, are recollections from actual LRRPs themselves. To be clear, there are several stories throughout the book and a few vignettes at the beginning, but simply not enough to warrant the title of "Inside the LRRPs." Soldiers' tales told at the beginning of each chapter would have done much more to excite the reader, since that is what he/she was no doubt looking for when he picked up this book.

Lanning's book stands as an important contribution to the LRRP story and to the history of the Army Rangers of today, as it provides a structure of how these units were formed, how they trained and how they operated in Southeast Asia.

This is an older book, but the info is timeless and very good compared on what is available today.

As a former recon soldier under the rather more peaceful setting of an European conscript army, though also with experience of military service in a somewhat "hotter" setting though not in a reccie capacity, I find any sort of documentation relating to "the art of reconaissance interesting.
Be it the Reconaissance corps of the WW-2 British army, Finnish army LRRP of WW-2, the role of recce forces in the Israeli/Arab wars of post WW-2 or the rolle of recce forces during the Vietnam war.

As such I wouldn't rate Michael Lee Lannings "Inside the LRRP's" as outstanding, though it is still a good piece among the puzzle of books on Vietnam war LRRPs.
Being, along with Shelby L. Stantons book on the subject, a supplement to the more directly hands on memoire litterature written by former "lurps" like the "Six silent men" triology and similar stories mostly written by the "101st airborne author mafia".

I found the book to be more of an "Outside and Around the LRRPs". Other than two very short personal accounts of LRRP operations, the book presents a history of LRRP type operations going back to 1675. Although well researched, I was looking for more tactical, personal accounts of LRRP missions in Vietnam rather than a description of the type of man, his training and equipment, and how the LRRPs fit into the Department of the Army's organizational structure.