From: jewell@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Larry Jewell)
Subject: Limited War (III)
Organization: Purdue University
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 01:46:20 GMT


From:         * <@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU:PBRUSH%SESCVA@SNYBUFVA>
Subject: Re: Limited War

Why We Fought A Limited War

*******************************

1.  One of the characteristics of the limited nature of the US
effort in Vietnam was restrictions placed on US bombing of the
north. It is clear that Rolling Thunder was a limited effort. It is
not at all clear that greater effectiveness would have been
realized with fewer limitations.

In a memorandum to Secretary McNamara dated 10Nov65, the Joint
Chiefs asserted that the only reason the bombing campaign had not
worked thus far was because of the "self-imposed restraints."

"We shall continue to achieve only limited success in air
operations in D.R.V./Laos if required to operate within the
constraints presently imposed," the Joint Chiefs said.

In a separate memorandum the same day, the Joint Chiefs said that
an attack on DRV POL (petroleum, oil, lubricants) "would be more
damaging to the D.R.V. capability to move war-supporting resources
within the country and along the infiltration routes to SVN than an
attack against any other single target system."  The Chiefs
contented that "recuperability of the D.R.V. P.O.L. system from the
effects of an attack is very poor."

Ah, the perfect targets! 97% of the DRV POL storage capacity was
concentrated in 13 sites and were highly vulnerable to air attack.

The strikes began on 29Jun. The Haiphong dock facility appeared
about 80% destroyed and the Hanoi tank farm was apparently knocked
out. The Seventh Air Force in Saigon called the operation "the most
significant, the most important strike of the war." The US lost
only one aircraft.

Throughout the summer of 1966, Rolling Thunder was concentrated on
destroying oil-storage sites. By the end of July the DIA reported
that 70 percent of NVN's original storage capacity had been
destroyed.

By August the DIA was reporting that with the large storage sites
already destroyed, and the small, dispersed sites hard to find and
bomb, "it was simply impractical and infeasible to attempt any
further constriction of NVN's POL storage capacity."

The DIA study concluded that the flow of men and supplies from NVN
to the VC continued "undiminished." "It was clear that the P.O.L.
strikes had been a failure. . . .There was no evidence that NVN had
any time been pinched for P.O.L."

Bombing didn't only not work against POL; it simply didn't work. In
the summer of 1966 a secret seminar of leading scientists under
government sponsorship was studying the over-all results of Rolling
Thunder. The meeting was held in June, July, and August under the
auspices of the Jason Division of the Institute for Defense
Analyses.

Their report said:  "As of July, 1966, the U.S. bombing of North
Vietnam had no measurable direct effect on Hanoi's ability to mount
and support military operations in the South at the current level."

The group felt that NVN could not be hurt by bombing because it was
a subsistence agricultural country with little industry and a
primitive but flexible transport system. The report claimed it
"quite unlikely" that an expanded bombing campaign would "prevent
Hanoi from infiltrating men into the South at the present or a
higher rate."

(Quotes from _The Pentagon Papers_, NY Times edition).

*******************************

2.  Another restriction was that the US did not invade Laos in
order to effectively cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. General
Westmoreland believed such a plan was doable and during the summer
and fall of 1967 he projected a series of four operations (code
named YORK) that would be carried out in 1968 to sweep to the
Laotian border in the northern part of SVN. But logistical problems
became apparent in the planning stage and the plan was considerably
scaled down.

Was an invasion of Laos feasible? In 1983 General Nguyen Xuan
Hoang, chief of the historical office of the PAVN, told former
Marine William Broyles that the NVA always kept some of its best
troops, several divisions worth (Broyles calls it a "corps"), in
Laos in anticipation of just such a scheme. The 1971 invasion of
Laos by the ARVN supports this claim.

General Westmoreland expected this and wanted to mount a corps-size
invasion. In the US military, a "corps" is two or more divisions.
Standard army planning calls for *each* division to receive 411
tons of supplies for the first day of a meeting engagement, 835
tons for the first day of full-scale offensive combat, and 516 tons
for each succeeding day.

The corps would be supported by heavy artillery. 155mm artillery
battalions require 150 tons/day; 8-inch artillery requires 145
tons/day. A corps would be supported by a number of these units.

Using a hypothetical three-division corps with five artillery
battalions in support, the supply requirement for the first week of
an invasion of Laos would be 16,500 tons, or 2,350 tons/day.

One reason Westmoreland held on to Khe Sanh was to use its
facilities to support the invasion of Laos. The airstrip at Khe
Sanh could handle 300 tons/day. The rest would have to come to the
staging area via Route 9 from the east and south.

Route 9 between Khe Sanh and Ca Lu was a dirt road on which a truck
could not turn around. Route 9 from Khe Sanh to the Laotian border
was not much better than a jeep trail. The supply requirement of a
corps-sized Laotian operation would be 800 trucks/day. The path of
Route 9 between Ca Lu and the Laotian border lends itself nicely to
ambush, and a single successful ambush would have left the entire
Laotian invasion force out on a limb.

*******************************

3.  Another limiting factor was that the US never invaded NVN.
Deputy National Security Advisor Walt Rostow compared the idea of
an amphibious landing around Vinh with the Inchon landing during
the Korean War, that brilliant flanking move that changed the whole
logic of operations.

Unlike the Laos operation, which could only be sustained during the
dry season, a sea-borne invasion of NVN at a narrow point just
above the DMZ could be executed with less consideration of the
weather. Further, the long supply lines associated with an invasion
of Laos would not be a factor.

Both the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union did send
combat troops to NVN to play active roles (e.g., the Soviets helped
operate NVN antiaircraft defenses). An invasion around Vinh could
be expected to involve some of these troops on the ground. The
response of Peiping and Moscow to having its troops shot at by
invading US troops is not knowable, but certainly is not an
insignificant factor.

If one goal of NVN was to kill as many Americans as possible in
order to turn domestic opinion against the war, an invasion around
Vinh would have helped nicely. NVA supply lines would have been
shorter. Military action would have taken place on terrain and with
a population actively hostile to the Americans. Remember what
Churchill said the British would do to the Germans who invaded
Britain? Remember the predictions by the US as to how many troops
would be killed by the Japanese if Japan was invaded? I'm glad
these three invasions were all non-events.

General Hoang claimed that the PAVN ". . . could easily defeat as
many as a hundred thousand men there." Vo Nguyen Giap commented on
the prospect of an invasion, explicitly raising the specter of
intervention because the US/ARVN would be attacking "the mainland
of a member country of the socialist camp." Giap asked where the
invading troops would come from.  "Attacking the north means
opening another large battlefield.  The American imperialist forces
would become more scattered and would be annihilated more easily."

Lastly, an invasion of the DRV would mean conducting a major ground
operation requiring air support squarely within the NVN air defense
environment, which has been described as the most sophisticated
since the defense of the Ruhr by Germany in World War II.

******************************

4.  Mine Haiphong? We did. Mine it earlier than we did? What about
the problem of Warsaw pact shipping being sunk by US mines? Isn't
that an act of war? If we closed the harbor at Haiphong, shipping
could be re-routed to Sihanoukville (which already served an
entrance point for VC/NVA arms into the area). Mine Sihanoukville?
Can't do that legally - Cambodia is a neutral country, and mining
is an act of war. Invade Cambodia? We did.

If the US could have closed Haiphong and Sihanoukville completely,
arms would have been imported overland from China. Close the NVN-
China border? Not possible; the US was unable to close the SVN/NVN
border, which was less than one-tenth as long.

******************************
5.  Use more troops? Every US troop increase was matched by a
corresponding PAVN troop increase. Further, even at the highest
rate at which US forces were killing NVN troops, the birth rate in
the north allowed them to increase their pool of available
recruits. The population of both SVN and NVN increased during the
second Indochina war, and at a faster rate than the rate of
increase of the US population.

In a memorandum for Secretary McNamara ("Force Levels and Enemy
Attrition") from Alain Enthoven, Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Systems Analysis, dated 4May67, Enthoven commented on General
Westmoreland's request for 200,000 additional troop (which would
have brought the ultimate strength of US forces in VN to 671,616
men):

"On the *most optimistic* basis, 200,000 more Americans would raise
[the enemy's] weekly losses to about 3,700, or about 400 a week
more than they could stand. In theory we'd wipe them out in *10
years.*"

<Emphasis added>

Ten years!

-- 
#L.W. Jewell Moderator at the Veterans Information Site (veteran@cc.purdue.edu)#
#& WWII-L Listowner: "Sunday's horoscope is note worthy because of its strange,#
#sudden and wholly unpredictable and inexplicable occurrences, affecting all   #
#phases of life." "Your Horoscope" L.A. Evening Herald Express, Sat, 12/06/41  #
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