To help keep the PAVN at bay, a Marine airborne controller flying an airplane fitted with a radar transponder established an aerial checkpoint over the battlefield.

Air strikes proved essential in expelling the PAVN holding out in the village, fighting from new concrete-walled houses, many of them built by the families of Thuong Duc's defenders.

[1]: 86 On 28 September, after the South Vietnamese district chief reported that all noncombatants had departed, a CIDG force attacked the village, but became pinned down in the marketplace because their supporting 106-mm recoilless rifles could not penetrate the sturdy buildings nearby.

Fighter-bombers repeatedly swept low over the target, and frantic messages crackled over a captured PAVN radio being monitored by members of the Thuong Duc Special Forces detachment.

The struggle for Thuong Duc lasted until the morning of 30 September, when a MIKE Force, landed from Army helicopters the previous day, helped drive off the PAVN.