A War Too Long 

The USAF in Southeast Asia 

1961-1 975 

John Schlight 

Air Force History and Museums Program 

1996 
A War Too Long 

The USAF' in Southeast Asia, 1961-1976 

The Air Force instinctively disliked the slow, gradual way 

the TJnited States prosecuted its war against the Vietnamese communists. While Americans undoubtedly delayed a 

comrnunist victory in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia 

long enough to spare Thailand and other Southeast Asian 

countries a similar fate, the American public grew very 

tired of this war years before its dismal conclusion. Due to 

questionable political policies and decision-making, only 

sporadic and relatively ineffective use had been made of air 

power's ability to bring great force to bear quickly and decisive1.y. The United States and its Air Force experienced a 

decade of frustration made more painful by the losses of its 

personnel killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. Fighting resolute1.y and courageously, the Air Force played the decisive 

role in forcing North Vietnam to the peace table in 1973. 

The demands of the Vietnam War forced new developments 

such as laser-guided-bombs that would eventually radically 

transform the shape of air warfare. 
The Communist ChaZZenge 

When President John F. Kennedy took office in January 

1961, communist-led wars of national liberation loomed on the 

horizon. Earlier that month, Nikita S. Khrushchev, the Soviet 

leader, had endorsed this kind of warfare before a world communist conference in MOSCOW, and Kennedy interpreted the 

speech as a warning to the West and a definitive statement of 

Soviet policy. Consequently, the new Chief Executive could not 

help but be concerned about the attempt of one communist faction, the Pathet Lao, to seize control of the kingdom of Laos and 

the attempt of another communist force, the Viet Cong, to overthrow the government headed by Ngo Dinh Diem in the Republic of Vietnam, also called South Vietnam. Although warned by 

his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, that Laos held the key 

to control of Southeast Asia, Kennedy soon became convinced 

otherwise, for close study revealed that the kingdom was; sorely 

divided with no strong anticommunist leadership. He quickly 

concluded that the best the United States could hope for in 

Laos was neutrality, however fragile, in which the communist 

and noncommunist factions offset each other politically and 

militarily . Kennedy i3nd his advisers concluded that, in comparison to 

Laos, South Vietnam afforded a more favorable battleground in 

what they v~ewed as a worldwide struggle against communistinspired insurrections. President Diem, despite challenges by 

armed political factions and mutinous army officers, had remained in power since 1954 as prime minister or president, and 

American military advisers already were in place with the 

South Vietnamese armed forces. Moreover, Kennedy believed, 

incorrectly as was soon revealed, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization had a special interest in the independence of ithe Republic of Vietnam. Logic therefore persuaded the youthful 

Kennedy to choose the more stable nation of South Vietnam as 

the site of a imajor American effort to contain communism. 

Although the Diem regime seemed strong in comparison to 

the government of Laos, the Viet Cong posed a far greater 

threat than the Pathet Lao. Like the Kennedy administration 

in the United States, the leadership of the Democratic Rlepublic 

of Vietnam, lor North Vietnam, nudged Laos into the wings and 

thrust South Vietnam to center stage for the next act of a 

1 
drama that began in 1946 with the uprising against the 

French. Tl-te North Vietnamese intended to unite all of Vietnam 

under the control of the communist regime at Hanoi, thus winning the victory denied them by the Geneva Conference of 

1954, which resulted in two Vietnams, North and Soutb. North 

Vietnam s principal instrument for that purpose was the Viet 

Cong, the name a contraction of a term that meant Vietnamese 

communists. Originally composed mainly of South Vietnamese, 

some trained in the North, the nature of the revollutionary 

forces changed over time, for the Hanoi government in the 

spring and summer of 1959 established routes of supply by sea 

along the coast and overland through southern Laos to sustain 

the war. The maze of roads and trails in Laos came to be called 

the Ho Chi Minh Trail, after the leader of North Vietnam, and 

served not only to supply and reinforce the Viet Cong, but also, 

later in the war, to introduce combat units of the North Vietnamese Army into the South. The North Vietnamese, however, 

had not yet taken over the fighting; during 1960 the Viet Cong 

waged war with perhaps 4,000 full-time soldiers backed by 

twice as many part-time guerrillas, but the numbers were increasing. 

The presence of so large a force, and its ability to carry out 

ambushes and assassinations with near impunity, testified to a 

deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the Diem government. To a 

typical peasant, the Saigon regime seemed a far-off entity that 

imposed taxes and enforced arbitrary rules, but failed to address issues, like the ownership of land, that were truly vital to 

rural villagers. However stable it might appear in co:mparison 

to Laos, Diem’s Republic of Vietnam was beset by rivalriesthe landless against those who owned the land, (Catholics 

(among them Diem) against the more numerous Buddhists, 

persons who had fled the communist North against natives of 

the South, and finally Diem’s family (his brother Ngo Ilinh Nhu 

and Nhu’s wife) against the nation’s politicians and the American diplomats and military advisers in what became a. struggle 

for the ear of an increasingly suspicious and arbitrary ruler. 

Whatever his failings, Diem headed a functioning government, and this fact helped South Vietnam obtain the support of 

an American administration that had twenty Vietnams a day to 

handle, according to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the 

President’a brother. Nonetheless, not even crises of the magni2 

tude of the Soviet threat to force the West from Berlin obscured 

the serious shortcomings Diem and his government displayed 

in their struggle against an insurgency sustained from the 

North. In fact, as early as 1961, Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor (at the 

time, military adviser to the President, but subsequently Chairman, Joint, Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Vietn am) argued for sending American ground troops, but 

Kennedy chose not to involve the United States to thait extent. 

The President believed that Diem, with American advice, 

backed by economic aid and military assistance, could defeat 

the Viet Cong in battle and embark on programs to improve the 

lot of the peasants, winning their loyalty by providing them 

both land and security. This executive decision represented a 

middle course: the President did not want to risk charges that 

he was losing Vietnam, as President Harry S. Truman allegedly 

lost China; neither did he want a major war in Southeast Asia 

when Khrushchev was exerting pressure elsewhere arid America’s general purpose forces were not yet fully organized, 

trained, 01 equipped in accordance with the doctrine of flexible 

response. 

The activity of the U.S. Air Force in what became South Vietnam began during France’s struggle to retain control of Indochina. In return for active French participation in tlhe North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United States supported 

France s ambitions in Southeast Asia, sending munitions, aircraft, and mechanics and other technicians to repair and maintain the American-supplied equipment. In 1955, i3fter the 

victory of the communist Viet Minh and the division of Vietnam 

into North and South, the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory 

Group, Indochina, active since 1950, and its air section, formed 

in 1951, became the Military Assistance Advisory Group, Vietnam. Thus, since the departure of the French advisers, a comparative handful of Air Force ofEcers and enlisted men had 

worked to strengthen the South Vietnamese Air Force. By early 

1961, six squadrons were ready for combat-ne fighter, two 

transport, two liaison craft, and one helicopter. Meanwhile, 

people and supplies moved down the Ho Chi Minh Trail; and as 

many as 15,000 Viet Cong were armed, supplied, and active in 

the vicinity of Saigon, the capital city, and elsewhere in the 

South. By this time, the armed forces of the Republic of Vietnam resembled their American models with ground, sea, and 

4 
(as the existence of the six squadrons testified) air components, 

but the Viet Cong still fought exclusively as a guerrilla army, 

organized and trained to strike swiftly, preferably from ambush, and to engage in calculated acts of terrorism. 

General ‘Taylor conceded that his recommendation to send 

combat troops carried the risk of depleting the Army’s strategic 

reserve and setting the nation on a course of action with an unpredictable outcome. Consequently, the Kennedy administration chose to encourage the development of a stable soci.ety and 

a self-sustai~ning economy as prerequisites for the defeat of communism in ,South Vietnam, but took a few military measures in 

1961 to signal American support for the Diem government, to 

increase th.e effectiveness of the South Vietnamese armed 

forces, and to lay the foundation for future American deployments, should they become necessary. Among these measures, 

a Combat l~evelopment and Test Center at Saigon evaluated 

equipment and techniques for counterinsurgency and some 400 

soldiers of the Special Forces, the Army’s counterinsurgency 

arm, built defensive outposts along the border with Laos to 

challenge the infiltration of men and supplies over the Ho Chi 

Minh Trail. 

The Air Force buildup during 1961 had the same basic purposes of syrnbolizing American concern, improving the military 

skills of the South Vietnamese, and preparing for a possibly 

greater involvement by the U.S. Air Force. In September, the 

first permanent unit, a combat reporting post, with sixty-seven 

officers and airmen assigned, installed radars at Tan Son Nhut 

Air Base, which also served as Saigon’s airport, and began 

monitoring air traffic and training South Vietnamese to operate 

and service the equipment. This organization formed the nucleus of what became a tactical air control system foi- a vast 

fleet of South Vietnamese and American aircraft. During the 

following month, four RF-101s and a photo processing unit 

joined the combat reporting post, with the reconnaissance craft 

flying photographic missions over South Vietnam and Laos 

within a few days of their arrival. The aircraft soon began 

working with a similar photo reconnaissance detachment based 

at Bangkok, Thailand. 

The assignment of advisers and the various other measures 

taken in support of the Republic of Vietnam had little military 

effect. C1as:hes with the Viet Cong became more frequent, and 

5 
the enemy began using battalions in pitched battles instead of 

dispatching small raiding parties or lashing out from ambush. 

Consequently, the American involvement in South Vietnam 

changed from giving advice and technical assistance to serving 

as a partner in prosecuting the war. The President. demonstrated this limited partnership in October 1961 when he sent a 

special Air Force detachment to South Vietnam that flew combat missioiis even as it trained Diem’s air arm. By midl-November this Air Force counterinsurgency unit, called Fai-m Gate, 

had assembled a collection of elderly C-47s7 T-28s7 and B-26s 

at Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon. The transports conducted reconnaissance or psychological warfare missions; the bombers 

and armed trainers attacked the Viet Cong, ostensibly to train 

South Vietnamese airmen. Soon, U.S. Army helicopters carried 

South Vietnamese troops into action, as American door gunners 

fired at the enemy and Farm Gate bombed and strafed in support of the operation. 

The Kennedy administration was not yet ready, however, to 

acknowledge how rapidly the American share in the partnership was expanding. Besides being limited, with comparatively 

few Americans performing certain carefully defined duties, the 

new activity was deniable. Until forced to do so by casualties 

and reports in the press, spokesmen for the administration refused to acknowledge that Americans were fighting the Viet 

Cong except unavoidably and in the course of their traiining duties. To preserve the illusion that combat was somehow a byproduct of the training function, Farm Gate aircraft wore South 

Vietnamese insignia and usually carried a South Vietnamese, 

nominally a trainee, when conducting strikes or othe:r combat 

missions. Moreover, Farm Gate received instructions t.o undertake only those combat operations beyond the ability of the 

South Vietnamese Air Force with its C-47~ and T-28s supplied 

by the U.S. Air Force or Douglas AD6 attack bombers (later redesignated A-1Hs) obtained from the Navy. Separate organizations directed Farm Gate’s two missions. The Air Force section 

of the Military Assistance Advisory Group, Vietnam, supervised 

the training function, while the 2d Advance Echelon, organizationally an element of the headquarters of the Thirteenth Air 

Force, controlled combat operations. In November 1961, Brig. 

Gen. Rollen H. Anthis, vice commander of the Thirteenth Air 

Force, became the first head of the 2d Advance Echelon. 

6 
Following the creation during February 1962 of an American 

unified command, the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, under Gen. Paul D. Harkins of the Army, Anthis became 

the air commander in Vietnam as well as the representative of 

the Pacific Air Forces for all Air Force matters throughout 

Southeast Asia. Despite the increased responsibilities given Anthis, the strong Army orientation of the staff of the new assistance command upset Air Force leaders at every level and 

presaged difficulties for the Air Force in its future efforts to organize air power in Southeast Asia in the way that it considered most efficient. 

Shortly after these organizational changes in South Vietnam, 

the major powers concerned with the fate of Laos the United 

States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China 

agreed at Geneva in July 1962 to respect the neutra1it.y of the 

kingdom, damping the violence there. In the future, however, 

warfare would erupt in northern Laos, where neither the 

United States nor the Democratic Republic of Vietnam chose to 

invest the resources necessary for a clear-cut victory, and in the 

southern part of the country, where the Ho Chi Minh Trail 

came under sustained attack as an extension of the figlhting in 

South Vietnam. 

LeMay Ignored 

Despite the neutralization of Laos and encouraging reports 

from South Vietnam, the new Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. 

Curtis E. LeMay, grew skeptical of existing policy, questioning 

the effectiveness of the existing partnership in a war being 

fought excliisively against the Viet Cong. He believed that the 

limited scope of the fighting and the emphasis on economic and 

political reform represented a quick fix, which merely postponed the day of reckoning. In contrast to Taylor, who proposed 

sending grolund forces into South Vietnam, the Air Force officer 

argued that; the war in the South could be won and the tensions 

in Laos resolved only through prompt and firm military action 

directed against North Vietnam. Reversing the frequently 

heard argument that political and economic reform in the Republic of Vietnam would provide the foundation for a military 

victory there, LeMay maintained that only the removal of the 

7 
threat from the North could produce the conditions that would 

result in stability, prosperity, and assured independence. 

During January 1962, as LeMay offered this approach to the 

war, a detachment of a dozen Fairchild C-123 transports arrived in South Vietnam to deliver supplies to distant outposts, 

like those established by the Army Special Forces allong the 

border with Laos, and to drop South Vietnamese parachute 

troops in operations against the Viet Cong. Called Mule Train, 

the unit operated ten C-123s from Tan Son Nhut Air EIase and 

two from lla Nang. In March, however, control of the detachment s aircraft passed to the recently formed assistance command, and a combination of factors altered the original mission. 

The head of the assistance command, General Harkins, preferred the Army’s newer but slightly smaller de Havilland 

CV-2 Caribou transports for supplying distant outposts, taking 

one of Mule Train’s jobs. The other mission, droppirig paratroops, was important at first but faded as the helicopter replaced the parachute as the preferred method of airborne 

attack. For a time, five of Mule Train’s C-l23s, six C-4’7~ flown 

by Americans, and 500 South Vietnamese paratroops fiormed a 

task force for immediate employment by an air operatilons tenter of the tactical air control system, but this fire brigade had 

disbanded by the time the detachment made its first drops in 

December 1.962 and January 1963. Meanwhile, Viet Cong ambushes disrupted travel by highway, so the C-123s inherited 

the vital task of carrying passengers and cargo throughout the 

country. By June 1962, when a second detachment of Air Force 

transports arrived at Tan Son Nhut, the number of imonthly 

sorties had risen to more than 1,100 from the 296 of January, 

almost a fourfold increase since Mule Train first went into action. 

Three C- 123s equipped for defoliation missions using herbicides believed to be harmless to people and animals had accompanied the original Mule Train detachment. In Januai-y 1962, 

the aircraft tried unsuccessfully to destroy the foliage along a 

highway near Bien Hoa Air Base that might conceal Viet Cong 

ambush pai-ties. During the following month, one of thlese aircraft crashed while on a training mission, causing the first Air 

Force fatalities of the war Capt. Fergus C. Groves 11, Capt. 

Robert D. Larson, and SSgt. Milo B. Coghill. In the meantime, 

investigations determined that the Bien Hoa mission hald failed 

8 
because the herbicide was effective only during the growing 

season. The schedule for spraying was revised accordingly, and 

a second tent, conducted during September and October in the 

Ca Mau peninsula, killed ninety percent of the vegetation along 

a waterway. President Kennedy thereupon approved aerial 

spraying of herbicides to deprive the enemy of concealment, but 

he prohibited the aircraft from attacking the Viet Cong's food 

crops, which were believed also to feed peasants whose loyalty 

might yet be gained by the government at Saigon. Before the 

defoliation missions ended in 1971, crops, too, were sprayed in 

both Laos and South Vietnam, and a bitter controversy had begun concerning the effects of the most widely used defoliant, 

agent orange, on human beings. 

With the proliferation of aircraft during 1962, the Air Force 

attempted to bring them all under its tactical air control system. From the viewpoint of the Air Force, the most efficient use 

of aircraft, conventional and helicopters, was with a single operations center that shifted them around to keep pace with a 

changing situation; the least efficient was assigning them permanently to a unit or geographic area. In January of that year, 

the 2d Advance Echelon (which became the 2d Air Division in 

October) opened an air operations center at Tan Son "hut and 

ancillary air support operations centers at Da Nang and Pleiku. 

Theoretically, the Vietnamese, with American assistance, were 

to learn to run the centers, which were capable of scheduling, 

directing, and monitoring all flights in the country, but attempts to encourage Vietnamese participation encountered obstacles. President Diem, who had thwarted a military coup in 

1960 and siurvived a 1962 bombing attack on the presidential 

palace by dissident members of his air force, insisted on a decentralized military structure with loyal officers in key positions to prevent a coordinated uprising by the military. He 

parceled out control of South Vietnamese aircraft among the 

four corps commanders, who grew used to having their own air 

support and resisted centralization. With the corps commanders inserted into the control mechanism, the comparatively junior officers of the South Vietnamese Air Force dared not alter 

the system. As a result, the Americans simply took over the 

control centers, imposing on their own initiative the slight degree of centralized control, mainly over air traffic rather than 

air strikes, that did exist. The actual direction of air strikes was 

9 
, the job of South Vietnamese forward air controllers, but they, 

too, were junior officers hesitant to give advice to the more senior ground commanders. Moreover, the communications network that held the tactical air control system together was at 

first inadequate; not until late 1962 did the Americans install 

truly reliahle radio and teletype links. 

The U.S. Military Assistance Command opposed placing the 

Army s helicopters and other aircraft under a control system 

operated by the Air Force. Basically, General Harkins rejected 

centralized control for the same reason that General Arithis recommended it to promote efficiency and effectiveness. Air Force 

officers tended to think of these qualities in terms of the ability 

to manipulate scarce resources to meet changing needs, but for 

an Army officer, placing the necessary tools, including helicopters, in the hands of the troop commander who would use them 

increased efficiency and effectiveness. Acting consistently with 

his service s doctrine, Harkins assigned his helicopteirs to the 

senior Army officer in each corps area. 

Throughout 1962 the Air Force supported the South Vietnamese by attacking Viet cong training areas, troop colncentrations, supply depots, and sampans; by bombing and strafing in 

support of ground operations; and by improving aerial reconnaissance. The Department of State vetoed plans to provide 

South Vietnam with a few jet reconnaissance craft, viewing the 

move as a violation of a prohibition in the Geneva Accords of 

1954 against South Vietnam s acquiring jet aircraft. In retrospect, given the buildup that later occurred, this concern seems 

trivial, but in 1962, the United States was moving slciwly into 

the unknwwn, gradually strengthening its commitment, and 

seeking to justify its every act. Opposition from the diplomats 

prevailed, and the South Vietnamese air force began to activate 

a reconnaissance squadron of modified C-47~ at Tan Son Nhut. 

During the two years that passed before the converted transports becarne fully operational, the US. Air Force filled1 the gap 

with its own RF-101s. 

When 1962 ended, more than 11,000 Americans served in 

South Vietnam, a third of them members of the Air Force, and 

during the first seven months of 1963, several additional Air 

Force units entered the country. In April, for instance, a third 

Mule Train unit of C-123s began flying out of Da Nang, and in 

July, a new tactical air support squadron at Bien Hcia began 

10 
training South Vietnamese forward air controllers in Cessna 

0-1 observakion craft. At midyear, roughly 5,000 Air Force personnel were in South Vietnam, about a third of the total American military strength in the country, the same ratio as in 

December of the previous year. In May, however, as the total 

number of Americans approached 15,000, Secretary of Defense 

Robert S. McNamara announced that some advisers would 

leave South Vietnam by the end of that year. 

As plans proceeded for at least token reductions, the Air 

Force contingent reorganized. Initially, most Air Force units 

sent to South Vietnam were ad hoc detachments like Farm 

Gate or Mule Train, borrowed from regularly constitutedl outfits 

in the United States or elsewhere. As commander of the 2d Air 

Division, General Anthis dealt with over a dozen separate major units. To remedy this, the detachments were converted in 

July 1963 into squadrons and assigned to a small nuinber of 

groups. Farm Gate became the 1st Air Commando squa,dron, a 

component of the Pacific Air Forces. The three Mule Train units 

at Tan Son nut and Da Nang became troop carrier squadrons 

assigned to a troop carrier group newly established at Tan Son 

Nhut. The 33d Tactical Group at Tan Son Nhut and the 34th at 

Bien Hoa performed administrative and maintenance tasks and 

set up detachments at smaller, outlying airfields, the 33d assuming responsibility for Can Tho and Nha "rang and the 34th 

for SOC Traiig and Pleiku. The 23d Air Base Group pei*formed 

the same duties at Da Nang, reported directly to the 2d Air Division, and placed a detachment at Qui Nhon. 

The 1963 National Campaign Plan, drafted by the inilitary 

assistance command and approved by Diem, called for operations that would provide a wedge for breaking the Viet Cong resistance in ,subsequent years. In general, the document all but 

ignored aviation and emphasized rooting out the Viet Cong 

through many small, locally controlled ground operations. Although the plan called for closer cooperation between the military assistance command and the South Vietnamese Joint 

General Staff, it did not place the 2d Air Division in charge of 

all aerial operations in the country. In July 1963, disregarding 

requests from the headquarters of the Pacific Air Forces in Hawaii to 

created 

Marine 

bring Army aviation under Air Force control, Harkins 

his own air operations section to supervise Army and 

Corps aviation, mainly helicopters. Two sepa:rate air 

11 
control systems now existed, one for the Army and Marine 

Corps and the other for the Air Force. Even though the South 

Vietnamese air arm was theoretically subject to the Air Force 

system, the Vietnamese corps commanders frustrated efforts to 

exert centralized control. For example, the Air Force generally 

could not employ South Vietnamese aircraft for interdiction 

strikes against base areas because these missions tended to 

clash with the individual interests of the largely independent 

corps commanders. 

By the summer of 1963, the Kennedy administration had discovered that Diem possessed an almost limitless capacity to disappoint. Instead of demanding a vigorous campaign against the 

Viet Cong, he rewarded commanders whose units suffered the 

fewest casualties, a move designed to maintain his popularity 

by shielding the populace from one of the effects of the war. 

Yet, even as he courted popularity in this fashion, he deepened 

General Curtis E. LeMay got President Kennedy’s attention for 

an air power demonstration at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, 

but the Air Force Chief of Staff had little influence on Kennedy’s 

thinking about Southeast Asia. 

12 
the divisions within the country by using the armed forces to 

suppress the Buddhists. Worse, he pushed stubbornly ahead 

with a program of involuntary resettlement that failed utterly 

to provide land ownership or security for the peasants uprooted 

from their villages and collected in supposedly more deFensible 

hamlets. In November of that year, a group of army officers, 

with the tacit approval of the American government, overthrew 

Diem. President Kennedy, who had hoped, perhaps believed, 

that the coup would result in exile or possibly a formal trial for 

Diem and hiis brother, was shocked when the successful plotters 

killed the two men. 

Within the eight months following the murder of Dilem and 

Nhu on November 2, 1963, the entire South Vietnamese and 

American leadership changed. In the United States, President 

Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, and responsibility 

for American policy in Southeast Asia devolved on the former 

Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson. In January 1964, M,aj. Gen. 

Joseph H. Moore became the new commander of the 2d Air Division. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, advancing from the 

grade of lieutenant general and the post of deputy commander, 

took over the U.S. Military Assistance Command in June, and 

General Taylor stepped down as Chairman, Joint Clhiefs of 

Staff, replacing Henry Cabot Lodge as ambassador to the 

Saigon government. During February, Adm. U. S. Grant Sharp 

assumed command of the Pacific Command, the parent organization of VVestmoreland’s military assistance command. Although the United States continued to support South Vietnam 

throughout these changes, the prospects of achieving stability 

and security by means of a partnership faded as the junta that 

had toppled Diem collapsed and one government succeeded another in dismaying succession at Saigon. 

In March 1964, the Pathet Lao overran the Plain of Jars in 

the northerin part of Laos, shattering the calm that had settled 

on the country after the Geneva conference of 1962. In reaction, 

the Johnson administration transferred some T-28s to the 

Royal Laotian Air Force and established an Air Force detachment at Udorn in Thailand, some forty-five miles south of Vientiane, the administrative capital of Laos, to train Laotian pilots 

and maintain their aircraft. After Pathet Lao gunners downed 

an U.S. Navy reconnaissance jet in June, eight F-100s struck 

an antiaircraft position on the Plain of Jars, opening a second 

13 
Air Force war in Southeast Asia, although one thilt never 

achieved the importance of the fighting in South Vietnalm. 

Within South Vietnam, the early months of 1964 were a time 

of expansion, training, and comparative quiet. By midyear, the 

South Vietnamese Air Force had grown to thirteen squadrons 

four fighter, four observation, three helicopter, and two C-47 

transport. The South Vietnamese followed the practice of the 

U.S. Air Force, organizing the squadrons into wings, with one 

wing located in each of the four corps tactical zones at Can Tho, 

Tan Son Nhut, Pleiku, and Da Nang. In response to the desire 

of his American air advisers for centralized conticol, Col. 

Nguyen Ciao Ky, commander of the South Vietnamese Air 

Force, assigned the wings to geographical areas rather than to 

individual corps commanders, thereby retaining some measure 

of influence over their use without alienating the ground generals. The increase in the number of aircraft available to’ Ky was 

somewhat deceiving, however, for difficulty in trainin.g South 

Vietnamese pilots, the worn-out condition of the fighters, and 

the inefficiency of the air request net limited strikes to about 

half the number actually requested by the ground forces. The 

situation brightened somewhat after midyear, when A-1 

Skyraiders replaced the combat-weary T-28s and B-26s in both 

the US. and South Vietnamese Air Forces. Reaction times improved with the streamlining of the air request net to reduce 

the number of echelons that had to approve immedliate air 

strikes, those delivered to meet emergencies on the battlefield. 

While the South Vietnamese Air Force modernized and increased in size, the unsuccessful National Campaign Plan of 

1963 gave way to the following year’s National Pacification 

Plan, designed to extend security by working outward li-om the 

areas held by the government. General LeMay, impatient with 

yet another slow and limited strategy, still preferred immediate 

interdiction strikes in South Vietnam, air attacks on tlhe guerrillas in Laos, and the bombing of North Vietnam and the mining of its harbors. As the latest scheme for pacification lost 

momentum and the South Vietnamese encountered stronger resistance, the administration gave ideas like LeMay’s more consideration. 

In July 1964, planners from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the 

Hawaiian headquarters of the Pacific Command prepared a 

three-phase contingency plan for aerial attacks on North Viet14 
nam. Although the United States continued to emphasize operations on the ground, the plan for air action was ready if 

needed. Under the plan, the Commander in Chief, Pacific, 

would direct the air war against the North from Hawaii rather 

than the Commander, U.S. Military Assistance Comm.and, Vietnam. That contingency planning of this sort seemed necessary reflelcted a growing American conviction that the 

partnership with the armed forces of South Vietnam was not 

winning on the battlefield. 

During the months immediately following the murder of 

Diem, no strong leader emerged from among the various military men trying unsuccessfully to unite the populace and govern the country. As a consequence of the recurring political 

upheaval, the tempo of the war against the Viet Cong slowed, 

but the enemy could not take full advantage of the chaos, for 

the overthrow of Diem and the collapse of the resettlement program satisfied the grievances that had motivated many peasants to support the insurgency. Ho Chi Minh and his advisers 

became convinced that if South Vietnam were to be absorbed 

quickly into the North, regulars from the North Vietnamese 

Army would have to march south and reinforce the Viet Cong, 

interjecting discipline and improving effectiveness. At almost 

the same time that North Vietnam considered escalating the 

conflict, the Johnson administration lost patience with South 

Vietnamese progress and started to search for a means to shore 

up the government at Saigon or, failing that, for some unilateral means to confront Ho Chi Minh and make him blink, as 

Khrushchev had blinked at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. 

The summer of 1964, however, seemed a poor time to take independent action against North Vietnam. The President, who 

faced an election in November, had cast himself as advocate of 

peace in contrast to his probable Republican opponent, Senator 

Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona, who was both a major general 

in the Air Force Reserve and a vocal advocate of stronger military action in Southeast Asia. Like President Kennedy, who 

had wanted neither the blame for losing Vietnam nor a major 

war on his hands, Johnson sought to contain communism without becoming involved in a conflict that drained the treasury 

and crippled the social programs he intended as his legacy to 

the nation. Moreover, the exact scope of the struggle far South15 
east Asia defied prediction, especially since the administration 

was largely unaware of either the widening fissure in wlhat was 

still described as the Sino-Soviet bloc or the historic rivalry between China and Vietnam. Therefore, the President and his advisers, both military and diplomatic, remained wary lest China, 

if the survival of North Vietnam were threatened, intervene as 

it had in Korea in 1950. Johnson hoped for a national consensus about America’s role in Southeast Asia, a widely shared 

support for a manageable course of military action that would 

serve as a deterrent to Hanoi. Ironically, the navy of North Vietnam inadvertently helped shape public opinion much as 

Johnson desired. 

Attitudes among voters toward the nation’s involvement in 

Southeast Asia became more supportive after North Vietnam 

unexpectedly challenged the presence of American warships in 

waters off its coast. The North Vietnamese Navy reacted as an 

American destroyer, the USS Muddox, conducted a routine reconnaissance mission at the same time that South Vietnamese 

naval craft were harassing installations on the coast of North 

Vietnam. On the afternoon of August 2, 1964, three torpedo 

boats attacked the Muddox, scoring a hit with a single machinegun bullet, but missing with torpedoes. Gunfire from the 

destroyer arid attacks by aircraft from the aircraft carrier Ticonderogu sank one of the boats and badly damaged another. 

After this action, the Muddox joined another destroyer, the 

USS C. Turner Joy, and resumed the patrol, both to obtain intelligence arid to demonstrate American insistence on the right 

of free pase’age in international waters. At no time did any 

American reconnaissance ship steam closer than five miles to 

North Vietnamese territory, a distance significant because the 

French, when they ruled the area, had claimed territorial waters extendi:ng just three miles, and North Vietnam had not announced diflerent restrictions. On the night of August 4, as the 

two destroyers continued the patrol, torpedo boats again appeared, shadowed the American warships, then closed at high 

speed. 

In a conftised action that lasted beyond midnight, two of the 

attacking boats were believed sunk and one badly damaged, 

but both destroyers emerged unscathed. Besides ordering carrier aircraft to bomb the bases used by the torpedo boats, President Johnson, in the event of future attacks by North Viietnam, 

16 
obtained congressional authorization for appropriate retaliation 

in the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which passed the HOUSE! of Representatives unanimously and encountered only two dissenting 

votes in the Senate. He also ordered a force of Air Force jets 

into Southeast Asia in the event of a North Vietnamese or Chinese response to the carrier raids. The actions in the Gulf of 

Tonkin and their immediate political consequences dild not at 

once change the course of the war; indeed, events unfolded so 

slowly and logically that only in retrospect can the resolution be 

seen as a rnajor turning point, a grant of authority that made 

the President solely responsible for the conduct of American 

policy in Southeast Asia and enabled him, as long as the North 

persisted in trying to conquer the South, to use force as he saw 

fit. 

The aircraft dispatched by the Air Force as part of the American reaction to the fighting in the Gulf of Tonkin reached their 

new bases quickly. Within the space of days, twelve F-102s arrived in South Vietnam, their number divided between Tan Son 

Nhut and ;st Da Nang; eight F-100s joined the F-lO:!s at Da 

Nang, and two squadrons of B-57 bombers landed at Bien Hoa. 

More aircraft flew to other locations in Southeast Asia and the 

western Pacific: in Thailand, ten F-100s went to Takhli Air 

Base and eight F-105s to Korat; F-100s arrived in the Philippines; RF-101s deployed to Okinawa; forty-eight C-130 transports were apportioned between Okinawa and the Philippines; 

and the Stirategic Air Command flew forty-eight KC-135 tankers from Hawaii to Guam to refuel the jet fighters should they 

go into action. 

Despite the arrival of reinforcements in the Far East, combat 

operations remained restricted to South Vietnam, carried out 

by air commandos in propeller-driven aircraft well suited for 

fighting insurgents. The deployment of the jets served, therefore, as a demonstration of American resolve, not unlike the reinforcement of tactical aviation units in Europe at thc: time of 

the Berlin crisis. Of greater tactical importance was the arrival 

a squadron of twenty-five A-lHs, obtained by the Air Force 

from the Navy, which joined the original Farm Gate detachment at Bien Hoa, and the deployment of another squadron of 

sixteen C-:L23s to Tan Son Nhut. 

Whatever their immediate military value, the B--57s deployed to Blien Hoa afforded a tempting target. On November 1, 

17 
1964, Viet Cong guerrillas with mortars infiltrated the base 

during darkness, killed four American servicemen, wounded 

seventy-two, and destroyed five and damaged thirteen of the 

eighteen B8-57s located there. Ambassador Taylor called for 

prompt retaliation, though not necessarily for the kind of sustained bombing campaign outlined during July in Hawaii, for 

he worried that such an air offensive might well trigger a communist offensive on the ground that would overwhelm the feeble South Vietnamese government. Unlike an extended air 

campaign, a sharp retaliatory blow might serve as a warning to 

the North without undue risk to the South as well as EL prod to 

move the Saigon regime toward greater cohesiveness and efficiency. In short, the United States might attack the North to 

retaliate for the assault on Bien Hoa and then promise continued bombing in return for political, economic, and military reforms on the part of the leadership at Saigon. The Joint Chiefs 

of Staff, however, disagreed with Taylor and recommended a 

series of strong and immediate actions to increase American 

participation in the war. Their recommendations included air 

attacks against the infiltration route through southeirn Laos; 

strikes by carrier aircraft, Air Force fighter-bombers, and 

B-52s against airfields, the oil storage tanks at Hanoi and 

Haiphong, and then, in rapid succession, the remainder of a list 

of ninety-four North Vietnamese targets identified by American 

planners; and the immediate deployment of marines and soldiers to defend Da Nang, Tan Son Nhut, and Bien Hoa against 

future hit-and-run attacks. Since the Presidential election 

would take place on November 3, Johnson chose to do nothing. 

Although he had retaliated after the Tonkin Gulf incident, a response to the attack on Bien Hoa could have suggested1 further 

involvement, defaced his image as a man of peace, and reinforced Goldwater’s claims that the United States was already in 

a shooting war and should do whatever was necessary to win. 

Once reelected, Johnson initiated planning for a tougher program of gradually escalating military action to begin, if necessary, early in 1965. As was so often the case, the administration’ s proposed course of action represented a mean between 

two undesirable extremes. Just as Kennedy had chosen assistance to the South Vietnamese as a compromise betwelen sending American ground forces and losing the country to the Viet 

Cong, Johnson now tried to find a middle way between mobiliz18 
ing the United States and intervening with every conventional 

weapon available to the general purpose forces (a worst-case 

scenario far beyond what the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended) and withdrawing from South Vietnam, an alternative 

that no recent administration had seriously entertained. Moreover, the threat of escalation had worked during the Cuban 

missile crisis. Although the announcement and enforcement of 

a quarantine had been enough, a succession of other options remained, but Khrushchev blinked before it became necessary to 

bomb the missile sites, invade Cuba, or, if missiles actually 

were launched from the island, to retaliate with nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. 

When President Johnson at last approved action to discourage the increasing aggressiveness of the communist forces in 

the South, he authorized an aerial attack against the Ho Chi 

Minh Trail to signal Hanoi of America's determination to sustain South Vietnamese independence. On December 3.4, some 

six weeks after the attack at Bien Hoa, F-lOOs, RF-lOls, and 

F-105s based in Thailand hit the infiltration route in ii section 

of the Laotian panhandle nicknamed Barrel Roll, but the bridge 

that the fifteen aircrafk tried to destroy escaped damage. The 

Air Force hLad now embarked on its third air war in Southeast 

Asia; bombing in the southern panhandle of Laos, essentially 

an extension of the fighting in South Vietnam, joined the air 

wars in South Vietnam and northern Laos. 

Attacks against Americans in South Vietnam continued. On 

Christmas Eve 1964, the bombing of a residence for American 

officers at Saigon brought the United States again to tlhe brink 

of bombing the North. Taylor s deputy ambassador, LJ. Alexis 

Johnson, joined Westmoreland in urging retaliation despite the 

obvious weakness of the South Vietnamese governmient, but 

once more the President demurred. He agreed, however, that 

Air Force jets, either based in South Vietnam or rotating to airfields in Thailand, could carry out strikes within South Vietnam (heretofore they had attacked only in Laos), provided that 

Ambassador Taylor approved each mission and the South Vietnamese could not hit the particular target. 

19 
Fully Engaged 

The administration's reluctance to engage the North ended 

on February 7,1965, when the Viet Cong attacked an American 

detachment near Pleiku, killing eight and wounding 104 

American soldiers. Johnson removed all remaining restrictions 

on the use of jets in South Vietnam and ended the requirement, 

dating from the time of Farm Gate, that a South Vietnamese 

observer or trainee must be on board an aircraft during combat 

operations. More important, when Air Force and Navy aircraft 

bombed North Vietnamese military installations on the 7th and 

8th, the United States at last retaliated directly against North 

Vietnam for an attack in the south. On February 10, terrorists 

killed 23 Americans when they blew up a barracks at Qui 

Nhon, triggering a second wave of bombing against the North. 

Finally, on the 13th, President Johnson approved an operation 

called Rolling Thunder, a limited and carefully paced program 

of air strikes that more closely resembled the graduated response to the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba than the current recomimendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a vigorous 

and extensive bombardment. Despite the reliance on gradual 

escalation, the Johnson administration struck directly at the 

North in an attempt to save South Vietnam unilaterally, regardless of the weakness or incompetence of the government at 

Saigon, abandoning a policy of partnership with the South Vietnamese th st worked toward political stability and economic 

progress as conditions leading to a military victory in the 

South. The Air Force now had four distinct air wars on the 

mainland of Southeast Asia, as the offensive against North Vietnam took: its place alongside the attacks in South Vietnam 

and in northern and southern Laos. 

The air war inside South Vietnam, the oldest of the four, 

changed dramatically in the spring of 1965 when American 

ground troops began to enter the country. These troops would 

soon clash with the recently arrived North Vietnamese regulars 

of the people s army, who had gone into action in late December 

1964, defeating the South Vietnamese at Binh Gia. The government in Hanoi had not reacted to the initial bombing of military targets in the North as Johnson had expected, for instead 

of blinking Ho Chi Minh continued to infiltrate men and supplies into tbe South and exerted increasing pressure against 

20 
the Saigon regime. Nevertheless, the administration believed 

that South 'Vietnam could be saved in spite of its weakness; the 

means of salvation would be gradual intensification of the air 

war against, the North and introducing American soldiers and 

marines into the South. 

The first American troops to land were marines who came 

ashore in March; but this contingent was soon reinforced, and 

the first Army unit, an airborne brigade, arrived in May. By the 

end of June, the administration had approved a force of fortyfour combat battalions for service in South Vietnam. The 

troops, however, did not have a definite mission. Ambassador 

Taylor believed they should protect the airfields, which he considered to be prime targets for the Viet Cong now that Rolling 

Thunder had begun, and provide secure bases for use lby revitalized Soutb Vietnamese forces in operations against the enemy. He argued that by adopting his enclave strategy, the 

United Statles would remain the partner of the South Vietnamese, encouraging them with advice and material assistance to 

take an increasingly active, ultimately decisive role in preserving their independence. In contrast, Westmoreland, disturbed 

by a succession of South Vietnamese reverses, intended to take 

advantage of American mobility and firepower to eng,age the 

North Vietnamese and the conventional or main force units of 

the Viet Cong anywhere within the nation, creating a shield behind which the South Vietnamese could train and organize, 

provide for tbe security of airfields and other installations, and 

pacify the countryside, earning the loyalty of the peasants. 

Westmoreland's strategy, which came to be characterized as 

search and destroy, had the unfortunate effect of relegating the 

armed forces of the Republic of Vietnam to at most a nominal 

partnership in the defeat of the communists. The general proposed to break the insurgency with American forces, while 

training the South Vietnamese to finish off any remaining opposition and then provide for the security of their nation 

The establishment of enclaves may well have placed the 

American forces permanently on the defensive, depriving them 

of their mobility; but the most telling arguments against, such a 

strategy were practical and immediate. There simply was no 

time to invigorate the South Vietnamese. In mid-1965, the communist forces seemed on the verge of attacking from thle highlands on the Laotian border to the coast, cutting the republic in 

21 
half. To meet this danger, Westmoreland’s idea was adopted, 

but its execution required air support and large numbers of 

troops. As the size of the American ground forces rose steadily 

from 23,000 at the end of 1965 to 536,000 four years later, the 

mission of the Air Force shifted from advising and training, 

while caqing out those combat missions beyond the capability 

of the South Vietnamese, to full-scale combat in support of 

American and South Vietnamese ground troops in an open, if 

undeclared , war against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. 

The deepening of the American commitment in 1965 coincided with the appearance at Saigon of stable, though not necessarily incorruptible, leadership. One of the ruling generals, 

Nguyen Van Thieu, became chief of state in June, and another, 

Nguyen Cao Ky, commander of the South Vietnamese Air 

Force, took over as premier. The flamboyant Ky, with his pistols and self-designed uniforms, seemed the dominant figure, 

overshadowing Thieu, who occupied a basically ceremonial office. Appearance did not reflect reality, however, for Thieu 

eased Ky into the vice presidency in 1967 and became the only 

candidate for president. Four years later, he frustrated Ky’s bid 

for the presidency, remaining in office until 1975, when he fled 

as his nation collapsed. For almost a decade, Thieu clung to 

power and, according to his enemies, amassed a fortune in the 

process. 

As General Westmoreland moved ahead with his plans for 

search and destroy operations, he avoided creating a combined 

South Vietnamese and American military command. Such an 

idea did not appeal to the Saigon government, which refused to 

entrust its troops to foreigners, although at times American advisers took over even large units, in fact if not officially, and 

Westmoreland and his generals saw few, if any, South Vietnamese competent enough to assume responsibility for American lives. [n arguing against a combined American and South 

Vietnamese command arrangement, Westmoreland warned 

that it would give credence to communist claims that the South 

Vietnamese were puppets of the United States, stifle South Vietnam’s ability to develop military leaders of its own, and impede the aggressiveness of American commanders. Consequently, the South Vietnamese retained their own military 

structure in which their air force was responsive mainly to 

their army. 

22 
The United States Air Force was not fully equipped, suitably 

trained, nor doctrinally prepared for the situation in Southeast 

Asia. The transition from massive retaliation to flexible response and the shift from nuclear to conventional weapons remained incomplete. As a result, the Air Force dropped highexplosive bolmbs from aircraft like the F-105 that had heen designed for nuclear war and had to create and transport to 

Southeast Asia the stocks of conventional munitions needed for 

the conflict. The first tasks facing the service, however, were to 

set up a workable organizational structure in the regon, improve the area’s inadequate air bases, create an efficient airlift 

system, and develop equipment and techniques to support the 

ground battle. 

Starting with the buildup in mid-1965, the Air Force, while 

continuing to conduct the four air wars, adjusted its structure 

in Southeast Asia to absorb incoming units. Temporarily deployed squadrons became permanent in November; a wing 

structure replaced the groups; and in February 1966, the reconnaissance force in South Vietnam, which had grown to seventyfour aircrafl; of various types, was concentrated in a wing at 

Tan Son Nhut. In March, the 2d Air Division became the Seventh Air Force, its commander, Gen. William W. Momyer, serving as Westrnoreland’s deputy commander for air operations. 

Commissioned in 1939 after training as an aviation cadet, 

General Moinyer had served as a fighter pilot in World War 11, 

downing eiglht of the enemy in combat over North Africa, Sicily, 

and Italy. After commanding a fighter wing and later an air division in Korea, he went on to a series of staff and command assignments that culminated in his appointment during 1.964 as 

head of the Air Training Command. He had the reputation of 

being able to1 present his ideas forcefully and clearly, certainly a 

desirable trait in a headquarters where the Air Force felt its 

views were ‘being slighted. As commander of the Seventh Air 

Force, he directed operations originating in Thailand through a 

deputy stationed at Udorn Royal Thai Air Base. The agency 

through which General Momyer and his successors controlled 

operations from Thailand came to be called the Headquarters, 

Seventh/Thirteenth Air Force, for Momyer’s Seventh Air Force 

exercised operational control, but administrative suppcirt was 

entrusted to the Thirteenth Air Force at Clark Air Base in the 

Philippines. The division of authority satisfied the pride of the 

23 
Thai government, which wanted to avoid the appearance that 

the American squadrons based in the country were subordinate 

to an organization in South Vietnam. 

As jet aircraft took over the larger bases, Nha Trang became 

the home of the helicopters and the conventionally powered 

types like psychological warfare craft and gunships. Tests during the adcisory years had shown that the venerable C-47, converted into a gunship by installing in the left side of the 

fuselage a multibarrel machinegun (or Gatling gun) that was 

fired by the pilot, could be a deadly weapon against ground 

troops, especially at night when the modified transport could 

attack by the light of its own flares. Four squadrons of 0-1 

Bird Dog observation craft, three of which had just arrived, and 

the four squadrons of C-123 transports were positioned 

throughout; the country. 

The poor condition of the air bases in South Vietnam delayed 

the deployment of the jet fighter squadrons scheduled for 1965. 

Only Tan Son Nhut, Bien Hoa, and Da Nang had runways that 

could accommodate the jets; improvements on these airfields 

and construction of three new ones along the coast at Cam 

Ranh Bay, Phan Rang, and Qui Nhon began in 1965. The U.S. 

Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, controlled all construction within the country, and the acquisition of workers 

and material for airfields had to vie with other construction 

projects. By the end of 1965, four Air Force squadrons of F-4 

Phantoms were using a temporary airstrip at Cam Ranh Bay. 

Progress at the other two sites was slower, however, largely because the assistance command was concentrating on the ground 

war and giving a comparatively low priority to Air Force facilities, although a contributing factor may have been the desire of 

Admiral Sharp, the Commander in Chief, Pacific, to make 

greater use of carrier-based rather than land-based aircraft. A 

squadron of Air Force Phantoms began flying from Phan Rang 

in March 1966, but heavy rains damaged the field, postponing 

until October the arrival of additional jets. Qui Nhon proved 

unsuitable as a location for the remaining base, and in February 1966 the site was changed to Phu Cat, 15 miles to the 

north. A temporary strip was opened there by the end of the 

year, but the 10,000-foot runway was not finished until March 

1967. 

24 
i 

I Fi 1 

In the summer of 1966, General William W. Momyer (far right) took 

command of Seventh Air Force with headquarters at Tan Son Nhut 

Air Base on the edge of Saigon. Here he talks with (left to right) General William C. Westmoreland (the Army commander in Vietnam), 

General John P. McConnell (Air Force Chief of Staff), and Henry 

Cabot Lodge, Jr. (U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam). 

The problems encountered in building these three bases led 

the new Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. John P. McConnell, to secure approval for the Air Force to build a fourth base. For the 

first time, the Air Force, rather than the Army’s Corps of Engineers, contracted for and supervised the construction of an air 

base, the installation at Tuy Hoa along the South Vietnamese 

coast. In June 1966, the firm of Kidde and Company began 

work at the site, and in the middle of November, forty-five days 

ahead of schedule, the first of three F-100 squadrons occupied 

the field. 

The increased demand for aerial transport engendered by 

these deployments overwhelmed the four C-123 squadrons in 

South Vietnam. Since materiel and equipment jammed the aerial ports, the Pacific Air Forces in April temporarily assigned 

four C-130 Hercules transports from Japan and Okinawa to 

help eliminate the backlog. Once in the country, however, the 

newly arrived transports found plenty to do, and, as the pace of 

airlift operations increased, their number grew first to thirteen 

25 
and later to thirty. Since scheduling and maintenance for the 

C-130s war; still being performed outside South Vietnam, the 

Seventh Air Force found it difficult to mesh their activities with 

those of its own C-123s. General Momyer tried to integrate the 

C-130s intlo the existing airlift system, but the Pacific Air 

Forces retained control, arguing successfully that these longrange aircraft had to serve the entire Pacific theater. On the 

other hand, an agreement between the Chiefs of Staff of the 

Army and the Air Force in April 1966 enabled Momyer to take 

over the Amy’s Caribou transports, which continued to have 

supplying iriolated outposts as their principal mission. Air Force 

crews and rnechanics moved onto the Army airfields and gradually installed their own maintenance, supply, reporting, and operating procedures. By the beginning of 1967, eighty C-7s, as 

the Caribou transports were redesignated, belonged to the Air 

Force, forming a new wing with squadrons stationed at Cam 

Ranh Bay, Phu Cat, and Vung Tau. 

Instead of the headquarters of the assistance command, the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff established priorities for fighter sorties in 

South Vietnam. Friendly forces actually fighting the North Vietnamese or Viet Cong had first call on these aircraft for close 

air support. Missions to suppress enemy defenses covering 

landing zones selected for helicopters had second priority and 

escorting friendly truck convoys, helicopters, and aerial transport came third. Finally, if resources permitted, the fighterbombers conducted interdiction strikes against enemy supply 

depots, base areas, and troop movements. Unlike the Army, the 

Air Force valued interdiction more highly than close air support, but the military assistance command, reflecting the 

Army’s emphasis on aiding troops in contact with the enemy, 

adopted an accounting system that lumped both battlefield and 

long-range interdiction with close air support in the category of 

combat support. The Air Force was thus frustrated in its attempts at gathering statistics to support its arguments that interdiction should receive a higher priority. In fact, the official 

priorities meant little because there was no shortage of aerial 

firepower, and almost every mission flown in South Vietnam, 

except for training and purely administrative flights, somehow 

helped the war on the ground. 

Since the end of the Korean War, the Air Force had given little thought to close air support and had dismantled the tactical 

26 
air control system that successfully directed strikes on the battlefields of World War I1 and Korea. Rebuilt for Vietnam, the 

system included operations centers at the appropriate levels of 

command, liaison parties assigned to ground commanders, and 

forward air controllers directing strikes from light obstmation 

craft. Early in 1966, the Air Force, accepting the inevitable, 

agreed that Army helicopters would be outside the system, and 

they remained so for the rest of the war, as did the Navy’s carrier aircraft. Attempts to train South Vietnamese forward air 

controllers failed, and the Seventh Air Force in 1965 apportioned its four squadrons of 0-ls, making one squadron of 

thirty aircraft available in the tactical zone of each corps. The 

number of regional air operations centers, renamed Direct Air 

Support Centers, was increased to four, one for each corps 

headquarters. 

The war m Southeast Asia was fought according to rules of 

engagement that were designed to ensure that firepower was 

used only to advance American policy, whether battering the 

enemy in Laos and South Vietnam, where precautions had to 

be taken to protect friendly forces and spare the local populace 

whose support and security were at issue, or attacking in the 

North, where selective and gradually escalating violence was 

intended to prod Ho Chi Minh into calling off his plans to conquer the South. The rules of engagement for South Vietnam 

dictated at first that fighters could attack only when directed 

by forward air controllers, a measure adopted to prevent accidental killings and maimings, whether of friendly troops or of 

the very noncombatants whose loyalty the Saigon government 

was trying to gain. The only exceptions to the requirement for a 

forward air controller were certain free-fire zones occupied by 

the enemy and from which noncombatants were believed to 

have fled. Recruited from the ranks of fighter pilots, the forward air controllers had to adjust skills honed for supersonic 

flight to the far different demands of the slow-flying Bird Dog 

used to conduct visual reconnaissance and control air ,strikes. 

They learned to mark targets with rockets, to navigate by reading maps, and to orchestrate several flights of fighters simultaneously approaching a target. To conduct successful visual 

reconnaissance, the forward air controllers had to become intimately familiar with their assigned geographic areas, ob,serving 

the eating, sleeping, working, and traveling routines of the local 

27 
inhabitants and learning when crops were planted, harvested, 

processed, distributed, and stored. These pilots came to recognize clues that pointed to the enemy’s presence, even though 

his forces could not be seen the sudden disappearance of the 

men of a village that could signal a muster of part-time Viet 

Cong guerrillas, indications that roads or trails had been used 

during the night, footprints along a shoreline, shadows that revealed a camouflaged man-made structure, and tell-tale marks 

of human presence like camp fires or flocks of birds suddenly 

taking flight. 

Although most strikes handled by the forward air controllers 

were preplanned at least 24 hours in advance, a third were 

mmediates flown in response to emergency calls for help. The 

Air Force errperimented with different techniques to reduce the 

time it took. for jets to respond with immediate strikes, keeping 

some aircralft on alert at air bases and, whenever necessary, diverting others from preplanned missions. Responsiveness 

steadily improved, and by 1966, Air Force fighters normally 

were on the scene within 30 minutes of the time they were summoned. From the standpoint of the efficient use of resources, 

the Air Foimce preferred preplanned sorties to immediates and 

encouraged the Army and the South Vietnamese to call for 

emergency strikes only when absolutely necessary. Not only did 

the strike planned in advance usually take less time from takeoff to the dropping of bombs, the diversion of a fighter-bomber 

to meet an emergency upset the orderly and economical use of 

air power by opening a gap or reducing the effort somewhere in 

that day’s schedule of strikes. Moreover, aircraft diverted from 

one target to another frequently arrived with less than ideal 

types of bombs. Fighter-bombers or attack aircraft carried varying combin ations of 250-, 500-, and 750-pound high-explosive 

bombs, napalm canisters, antipersonnel bombs, rockets, and 

20-mm ammunition, and emergency calls normally left no time 

to change munitions. Finally, a pilot diverted to a new and unfamiliar target might require a fairly detailed orientation from 

a forward air controller or from someone on the ground before 

he could attack. 

When the air war in South Vietnam began to intensify in 

1965, the Air Force used standard ordnance from its limited inventory of conventional weapons. Unfortunately, the high-explosive general purpose bombs tended to detonate among the 

28 
treetops in the triple-canopy jungle that often concealed the enemy and had too compact a bursting radius to efficiently kill 

widely dispersed troops. Researchers at the Air Force Systems 

Command therefore developed new types of munitions, introducing 11 jn 1965, 24 during the following year, and seven in 

1967. The fGr Force also developed new fuzes that allowed general purpose bombs to penetrate jungle canopy and explode 

only on contact with the ground. Cluster bombs, which dispensed hundreds of small fragmenting bomblets, became the 

principal weapon against enemy personnel. One type of cluster 

bomb released a nonlethal gas over a 600-yard area, temporarily incapacitating those in its path. This type, the CBU-19, 

proved par1;icularly effective in air rescue operations, since it 

hindered enemy troops closing in on a downed flyer without increasing the risk to his life. By 1968, the Air Force had developed an arsenal of guided bombs, the so-called smart weapons. 

One type, for example, sought out targets spotlighted by a laser 

beam, whereas another relied on the contrast between the target and its background to home on the desired object. 

Despite tbe improvements in munitions, fighting at night 

and in bad weather remained a major problem for Air Force pilots. Flares dropped by gunships and observation aircraft illuminated the battlefield to some extent, but flares often failed to 

ignite, and the parachutes from which they hung frequently 

drifted away from the scene of the fighting. Consequently, it 

was difficult for forward air controllers to achieve coordination 

among the flareships, the fighters, and the troops on the 

ground. A great advance in accuracy resulted from the introduction in 1966 of a ground-based radar bombing system, Combat Skyspot, which guided the pilot to the target and told him 

when to drop his bombs. By early the following year five such 

sites were directing pilots to unseen targets. So accurate was 

the radar that the rules of engagement were relaxed to allow 

pilots to USE! either this system or a forward air controller, and 

Combat Skyspot directed about one-quarter of the total strike 

missions flown during the war. 

In June :1965, B-52s of the Strategic Air Command joined 

tactical aircraft in supporting the battle on the ground, greatly 

increasing the aerial firepower available for the war. Thirty of 

the big bom bers, specially fitted with external bomb racks, had 

been standing by at Guam since the attacks on the Muddox and 

29 
C. Turner Joy in the event the air campaign proposed by the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff was carried out and the aircraft had to deliver conventional attacks in North Vietnam. When the air war 

against the North began, Air Force fighter-bombers and the 

Navy’s carrier aircraft conducted the strikes, and the B-52s remained idle. General Westmoreland, looking for more efficient 

means of large-scale bombing, asked that these bombers hit the 

enemy in South Vietnam. During the remainder of the year, the 

B-52s flew more than 1,500 sorties in the South, raining vast 

tonnages of high explosives on area targets like troop concentrations, bases, and supply dumps. These Arc Light strikes began with 30-plane missions, but the number of aircraft in each 

formation declined as the frequency of operations increased. 

The first sorties against targets in southern Laos did not take 

place until December 1965, and the following April the B-52s 

dropped their first bombs on North Vietnam. The B-52s began 

to use the Combat Skyspot system in July 1966; by the end of 

the year, it was the huge bombers’ primary aiming method. The 

number of sorties in the South increased to 4,290 in 1966 and 

to 6,611 and 15,505, respectively, in the following two years. 

Throughout this period, 75 percent of the Arc Light missions 

struck South Vietnam, another 20 percent hit southern Laos, 

and five percent bombed logistic targets in North Vietnam like 

the mountain passes that funneled men and cargo into southern Laos en route to South Vietnam. 

Although Westmoreland had a high opinion of Arc Light, not 

all Air Force commanders shared his enthusiasm. To some, using B-52s for essentially tactical purposes diverted them from 

their principal mission of strategic deterrence. Others, notably 

General Momyer, believed that the bombers were being employed indiscriminately and inefficiently. Since intelligence of 

the enemy’s formations and logistic depots in South Vietnam 

was not always reliable, many missions seemed to be wasted. 

To preveni; this wastefulness, Momyer maintained that B-52 

strikes should be restricted to clearly identified targets. He also 

thought his Seventh Air Force should control the bombers 

rather tha.n the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Strategic Air Command thrclugh the military assistance command. Momyer felt 

that, without actual control of the bombers, he was responsible 

for coordinating his tactical aircraft with the B-52s even 

though he did not have sufficient authority or information to do 

30 
so. Since the B-52s were flying tactical missions, usually longrange interdiction but occasionally the support of outplosts under attack, the existing command structure weakened the 

single management of tactical aviation, a principle that he 

strongly supported, and resulted, as he saw it, in a less than efficient oper' li t' ion. 

Westmoreland's zeal for Arc Light strikes remained undiminished, despite Air Force objections and a paucity of meaisurable 

results. Because of the nature of the targets, many oiily suspected rathEr than verified concentrations of men or supplies, 

he could not, calculate the effect on the enemy to determine that 

a certain level of effort met his needs. As the number of known 

and suspected targets proliferated, he requested more and more 

B-52 missicins. The authorized monthly sortie rate rose to 450 

by March 1966, to 650 in November, and to 800 by Febivary of 

the following year. When he asked for a further increase to 

1,200 in eai-ly 1967, the Strategic Air Command becaine concerned with, the impact on its worldwide nuclear forces. To 

avoid sending more bombers to the theater, some of those already in the western Pacific moved to U-Tapao, Thailand, 

closer to the battleground than Andersen Air Force Base on 

Guam, reducing the distance to the Arc Light targets and enabling the saime number of B-52s to fly a greater number of sorties. By the middle of 1968, 56 bombers were flying from Guam 

and 28 from Guam, supported by KC-135 tankers operating 

from U-Tapao and Andersen, as well as from bases on Okinawa and Taiwan. Despite the greater utilization of the Thailand-based bombers, the Strategic Air Command worried about 

the consequences of rotating B-52s between the United States 

and the distant Pacific. With more bombers dropping conventional bomb,s in Southeast Asia, fewer were available to carry 

out the single integrated operational plan. To overcome this deficiency, planners sometimes had to increase the number of nuclear targets assigned to an individual aircraft. 

A myriad of types of aircraft other than heavy bombers and 

fighter-bombers supported the ground war, among them transports equipped for spraying, psychological warfare craft that 

dropped leafets or broadcasted from loudspeakers, trainsports 

converted into gunships, and helicopters. A squadron of fourteen gunships, designated AC-47s7 was activated late in 1965; 

and early in the following year the aircraft were flying out of 

31 
Tan Son Nhut, Bien Hoa, Nha Trang, Da Nang, Binh Thuy, 

and Pleiku. For three years the AC-47s participated in all 

types of combat support missions, defending fortified villages 

and outposts against ground assaults, attacking enemy soldiers 

locked in combat with friendly troops, escorting road convoys, 

dropping flares for attacking fighters, flying armed reconnaissance, interdicting the movement of enemy forces and supplies, 

and even directing air strikes. By the end of 1968, however, 

these earliest gunships were giving way to more heavily armed 

types like the AC-119, primarily used in South Vietnam, and 

the AC-130, principally for interdiction in southern Laos. 

Although the Army flew the vast majority of the helicopters 

in South Vietnam, the Air Force used a few helicopters for 

search and rescue missions and for special operations. Before 

1965, the Air Force had sent several Kaman HH-43s to South 

Vietnam and Thailand, but their relatively short range restricted them mostly to local base rescue. In a typical operation 

of that era, T-28s escorted the helicopters and a Grumman 

HU-16 amphibian served as an airborne command post and supervised the rescue. The intensification of the air war in 1965 

brought a dramatic increase in the number of downed airmen; 

indeed, Aiir Force helicopters made 93 rescues in the second 

half of the year compared to 29 during the first six months. A 

permanent search and rescue center was formed at Tan Son 

Nhut, and newer, longer range helicopters Sikorsky HH-~s, 

nicknamed Jolly Green Giants began flying from that base and 

from Bien Hoa, Da Nang, Pleiku, and Binh Thuy, as well from 

four airfields in Thailand. Transport aircraft, initially C-54s, 

but later C-l3Os, took over on-the-scene control from the 

HU-16s. A.s A-1s replaced the T-28s, they assumed the role of 

escorting the rescue helicopters. By 1967 the Air Force had 50 

aircraft dedicated to rescue operations in Southeast Asia. Efficiency improved as the numbers increased; for example, successful experiments with aerial refueling from specially 

equipped (2-130s extended the range of the HH-~s, enabling 

them to make sustained searches and to reach downed airmen 

who otherwise would have been dependent on their own survival skills. Late in 1967, larger and more powerful helicopters, 

Sikorsky 11H-53s, began replacing the older Jolly Green Giants. By the end of 1968, over 1,500 persons, 45 percent of them 

downed airmen, had been rescued from the jungle or the sea. 

32 
South Vietnam, 1965-68 

Following their deployment in 1965, Air Force units first 

helped hold the enemy at bay as other American forces entered 

the country, by the early months of 1968, the Air Foirce had 

participated in 75 large-scale ground operations and hundreds 

of smaller b,sttles. The first major clash between American soldiers and North Vietnamese regulars occurred in mid-INovember 1965, when the newly arrived 1st Cavalry Ilivision 

(Airmobile) located an enemy formation as it swept through the 

Ia Drang VaJley. During the battle, American soldiers inflicted 

severe casualties and forced the survivors to retreat across the 

border into Cambodia. During the most savage of the fighting, 

the Air Force conducted 330 sorties to disrupt counterattacks 

and help dislodge the North Vietnamese; all told, tactileal aircraft flew 753 sorties during a month of searching out and attacking the enemy and B-52s almost a hundred. However, 

airlift by the Air Force proved as critical as aerial firepower, for 

the division could not resupply itself with its own aircrafi exclusively, unlesig it diverted helicopters to the task of hauling cargo 

from depots in the rear to the forward supply points. Air Force 

C-123s and C-130s allowed Army aviators to redeploy, reinforce, and supply the battalions fighting in the Ia Drang Valley 

by delivering fuel and ammunition to the division’s dumps, 

where the cmgo was transferred to helicopters for the flight 

into the valley. Had the Air Force transports been unable to 

maintain the level of supplies, the operation might well1 have 

ground to a halt; instead, the fighting continued until the North 

Vietnamese lled from the battleground. In its first real test, the 

strategy of search and destroy seemed to work. 

The struggle in the Ia Drang Valley taught different and 

sometimes conflicting lessons to the major participants. To the 

headquarters; of the military assistance command, a month of 

searching and a few days of fighting had produced a great victory; indeed, the disparity in casualties, an estimated ten North 

Vietnamese killed for every American, seemed to demonstrate 

that the U.S. Army could fight a successful war of attrition, 

making use of mobility and firepower to exhaust a comparatively primitive foe. Believers in airmobility hailed tht 3 campaign as a vindication of that concept, although they were 

concerned that the helicopter force, and the maintenance and 

33 
logistics base supporting it, needed strengthening to deal with a 

likely pro1 iferation of assaults by troops landed, supplied, given 

fire support, reinforced, and finally withdrawn by helicopter. 

The headquarters of the Seventh Air Force viewed the Ia Drang 

action as proof that airmobile forces, considering the number of 

helicopters available and their limitations in firepower and carrying capitcity, needed vigorous support from the command's 

transports and fighter-bombers and from B-52s7 as well. The 

leadership of North Vietnam, although taken aback by the 

speed and fury of the attack into the Ia Drang Valley, remained 

determined to fight on, if necessary for twenty years. Field commanders had reflected this determination by employing tactics 

designed to neutralize air strikes by hugging American positions so that strafing or bombing endangered friend as well as 

enemy. 

All of these views reflected some facet of the truth: the 

American troops, although some small units had barely escaped 

annihilation, had outfought the enemy; helicopters and the men 

to fly them would soon be in short supply; the helicopter was a 

remarkable weapon-in one instance vaulting American soldiers over an ambush the enemy had prepared on a road-but 

it lacked the striking power and capacity of an airplane; and finally the airmobile division, like every other Army formation, 

required support from the Air Force, and in subsequent operations there normally was close cooperation between Army and 

Air Force planners. Finally, the North Vietnamese realized that 

neither determination alone nor reactive tactics could bring 

swift victory on the field of battle; like the assistance command 

at Saigon. the communist leaders in Hanoi were beginning to 

think in terms of a war of attrition. Perhaps the major lesson 

taught by the battle in the Ia Drang Valley was that the war 

would be long and bitter. 

As 1965 drew to a close, three distinct tactical air control systems existed side-by-side in South Vietnam, one operated by 

the Air Force with nominal participation by the South Vietnamese, one by the Army for its helicopters and other aircraft, and 

the third by the Marine Corps. The system used by the marines, designed initially for amphibious operations in which air 

strikes coinplemented naval gunfire during the landing and the 

exploitation of the beachhead, ensured a prompt response by 

Marine Cl~rps airmen to requests from marines on the ground 

34 
(and, as recently as the Korean War, from Army ground troops 

as well). The Marine Corps mechanism of air control functioned 

smoothly, the result of training that produced a genuine airground team; the competence of Marine aviators to support marines on the ground was not in doubt. General Westmoreland, 

however, had reservations about the ability of the Marine 

Corps system to support rapidly unfolding search and dlestroy 

missions that might involve swift movement on the ground and 

require cooperation with the Air Force, with the Army rind its 

air arm, and with South Vietnamese forces. 

During Operation Harvest Moon in December 1965, Westmoreland became concerned when crowded air space and a 

breakdown of communication with controllers kept Marine 

Corps fighters circling helplessly, preventing a South Vietnamese unit from receiving the air support it had requested. Fortunately, the South Vietnamese managed to reach Air Force 

forward air controllers assigned to the same area. Even though 

these Air Force officers had not attended the briefings preceding the operation and were unfamiliar with call signs, radio frequencies, and the location of ground troops, they quickly 

became oriented and soon organized the necessary air strikes. 

During this operation, Air Force controllers working thl,' =ir assigned areas complained of intrusions by Marine Corps aircraft. 

The marines; believed that situations like these could be 

avoided simply by more thorough planning before an operation, 

but Westmoreland decided that the fault lay in the existence of 

separate Air Force and Marine Corps control mechanisms. He 

therefore told his air commander, General Momyer, to find a 

way to incorporate Marine Corps aviation in the Air Force tactical air contrcll system without arousing controversy. The quest 

took two years and produced just the kind of interservice argument that Westmoreland hoped to avoid. 

Having prevented an enemy takeover of South Vietnam in 

1965, the assistance command went on the offensive in 1966. 

Operating behind a thin screen of border outposts designed to 

monitor and to some extent impede infiltration, American 

units, assisted by South Vietnamese troops, used their mobility 

and firepower to destroy the enemy's bases, kill his soldiers, 

and shatter his military formations, although not to seize and 

hold territory. Search and destroy operations of this sort were 

intended to enable the South Vietnamese to operate more freely 

35 
against essentially guerrilla forces and extend government control into the countryside. American success depended on winning a war of attrition designed to wear down the organized 

North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces; success for the South 

Vietnamese would stem from providing security and services to 

an increasing segment of the populace. 

Beginning in January 1966, in the largest search and destroy 

operation of the war to that time, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), a South Vietnamese division, and a South Korean battalion spent six weeks dislodging the enemy from entrenched 

coastal positions between Qui Nhon and Quang Ngai in the I1 

Corps area 300 miles north of Saigon. Air Force C-130s flew 

cargo into a forward airfield with access to the several battlefields of the campaign. Over 600 sorties by fighter-bombers 

cleared the way for the American advance and helped extricate 

the ground forces from ambushes and other forms of counterattack. Several thousand of the enemy died while being driven 

from the rich rice-growing lowlands. 

Bad weather always posed problems for the fighter-bombers, 

and the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese took advantage of it. 

Early in March 1966 the enemy overran a special forces camp 

in the A Shau Valley of I Corps, two miles from the Laotian 

border, a part of the screen that detected and harried North ViA North American F-100 Super Sabre drops a 750-pound bomb on a 

target in the Mekong delta of South Vietnam, August 1965. 

36 
etnamese infiltration. Making use of cloud cover that imposed a 

ZOO-foot ceiling and largely frustrated Air Force attempts to 

provide close air support, the enemy seized the camp. This was 

a serious loss, for the valley became a logistics base with roads 

connecting it to the Ho Chi Minh Trail across the border. Despite occasional American or South Vietnamese forays in later 

years, the A Shau Valley remained an important conduit for reinforcements and supplies sent from the North. 

When the seasonal rains turned the Laotian trails to niud in 

June 1966, the communists shifted their infiltration effort to 

the demilitarized zone, where good weather had dried the 

roads. The enemy’s apparent strategy was to pour troops into 

the northern provinces of South Vietnam to draw American 

forces northward and clear the way for attacks farther to the 

south. Instead of rushing headlong toward the demilit,arized 

zone as the enemy seemed to expect, Westmoreland used his 

ground forces against the North Vietnamese units that had entered the country and unleashed air power against the routes of 

supply and infiltration. During the ground portion of the 1 campaign, called Operation Hastings and conducted between July 

15 and August 3, the Air Force supported the South Vietnamese Army, while Marine Corps airmen assisted marines on the 

ground, an arrangement that on this occasion worked rt, lasonably well because the ground forces were located within readily 

definable areas. Aside from the occasional emergency call from 

marines for Air Force strikes and a collision between a Marine 

Corps helicopter and an Air Force observation craft, then: were 

few problems of coordination between the two air arms. 

North of the area of Operation Hastings, directly above the 

militarized zone, the Air Force opened an interdiction campaign 

called Tally Ho on July 20. Westmoreland, to avoid the problems of coordinating both Air Force and Marine Corps aircraft 

in a small area, accepted Momyer’s recommendation that he 

turn down an offer by the marines to participate in this latest 

aerial effort. By early August, Marine Corps ground units had 

driven the enemy back into the demilitarized zone while tactical aircraft of the Air Force continued to strike lines of supply 

and communication. B-52s joined the interdiction campaign in 

mid-September, multiplying the firepower of the fighter-‘bombers, which kept harassing the North Vietnamese until November, when the return of the seasonal rains to this region caused 

37 
the enemy to shift his activity to the infiltration routes of 

southern Laos. The aerial action in Tally Ho demonstrated that 

the light 0-1 observation craft could not be used to direct 

strikes in the heavily defended coastal plain, and they were 

shifted to the western mountains where antiaircraft guns were 

less numerous. On the plain, Air Force fighter-bombers conducted armed reconnaissance, attacking the enem,y without 

benefit of’ forward air controllers until jet fighters were substituted for the 0-1s in Tally Ho and similarly defended areas. 

During the interdiction campaign, Marine artillery firing longrange missions sometimes interfered with forward air controllers conducting visual reconnaissance or directing strikes. For 

this reason, missions occasionally were canceled, as when an 

Air Force controller, bracketed by artillery shells above and below his aircraft, hastily departed from the region. Obviously, coordination between the Air Force and the Marine Corps 

gunners was less than perfect. 

The southward shift of the main action during November 

1966 triggered Operation Attleboro in an area north of Saigon. 

For several years the enemy had built up his forces! near the 

capital and had created two heavily fortified military complexes, War Zones C and D, some 40 miles north of the city. Despite repeated attacks, the North Vietnamese and ‘Viet Cong 

clung to these redoubts; not even a savage pounding by B-52s 

in 1965 could dislodge them. Several ground operatioins in 1966 

Silver City in March, Birmingham in April, and El Paso I1 in 

June penetrated the base areas and cleared at least portions of 

them, bui each time the enemy returned in strength to rebuild 

bunkers and reestablish the headquarters. On November 1, two 

American divisions entered the zones and, assisted by more 

than 1,700 tactical strikes and 225 Arc Light sorties, drove the 

communists back across the Cambodian border. In three weeks 

of vicious fighting, Air Force transports delivered more than 

11,000 troops and 9,000 tons of cargo. 

In these major battles and scores of smaller skirmishes during 1966, Air Force fighter-bombers flew over 74,000 sorties 

and B-52s flew 4,500. Airlift units conducted 13,600 sorties, reconnaissance 59,000, forward air controllers 27,5001, and Air 

Force helicopters flew 13,500 sorties carrying passengers and 

cargo, saling downed airmen, and evacuating the wounded. 

38 
The war in. South Vietnam during 1967 followed the pattern 

of the previous year’s fighting. The enemy returned from his 

sanctuary in Cambodia, regrouped, and by February was back 

to previous strength in War Zone C and an adjacent stronghold, 

the Iron Triangle. A sweep of the Iron Triangle by two American divisions, called Operation Cedar Falls, took place that 

month, accompanied by some 1,100 tactical air strikes arid 126 

sorties by B--52s. Although the operation destroyed the huge 

network of bases, tunnels, supply dumps, and training camps 

that constituted the Iron Triangle, the defenders retreated 

westward into War Zone C and the Americans pursued. 

Operation Junction City, essentially a follow-on to Cedar 

Falls, took place between February and May when the two divisions that had invaded the Iron Triangle pushed on into War 

Zone C, assisted by Air Force tactical fighters, B-5213, and 

transports. ‘me pursuit began with C-130s dropping 845 

American parachute troops at the rear of the enemy to seal off 

the escape rloutes to Cambodia. The advance continueti, first 

through the (central and western parts of the zone and then to 

the east, capturing supplies, destroying bunkers, and sealing 

caves. For the first time in the war, B-52s departed from their 

usual role of area bombing and flew planned missions in support of troops engaged with the enemy. In addition to the rain 

of bombs from these big aircraft, the defenders reeled under the 

effect of napalm, high explosives, rockets, and cluster bombs 

dropped during the 5,000-odd sorties flown by F-lOOs, B-57s, 

F-~s, and the recently introduced F-5s, which the Air Force 

flew extensively in 1965 and 1966 before turning them over to 

the South Vietnamese in 1967. More than 2,000 sorties by Air 

Force transports provided the assault troops with supplies and 

reinforcements throughout an operation that was believed to 

have destroyed a third of a North Vietnamese division and 

driven the survivors eastward into War Zone D. Since the objective of the oflensive was attrition rather than the capture of territory, the Americans withdrew, and a new enemy division soon 

reentered the area and began restoring the defenses. 

When the seasons changed in the spring, the fighting again 

shifted to the drier demilitarized zone where the Nortlh Vietnamese were resuming their infiltration. Marine Corps umits in 

I Corps moved northward toward the zone, and Army troops 

took their place. In April C-130s airlifted 3,500 men and 4,000 

39 
tons of equipment of the Army’s 196th Light Infantry Brigade 

from Tay Ninh to Chu Lai. At the same time, C--123s and 

C-130s flew food and ammunition into the northwestern outpost at Khe Sanh, where two Marine battalions battled the enemy in the surrounding hills. Defeated in the west at Khe 

Sanh, the North Vietnamese then struck to the east, harassing 

the Marine camp at Con Thien astride a main infiltration route 

just two miles south of the demilitarized zone. An 111-day Marine attack into the zone, Operation Hickory and its subsidiaries, again demonstrated, in the view of the Air Force, the need 

for stricter control over participating air units. Initial confusion 

whether the Air Force or the marines would control air strikes 

in the upper half of the demilitarized zone deprived the ground 

forces of interdiction support for three days, although the closein strikes delivered by Marine aviators were unaffected. 

Besides supporting Operation Hickory, the Air Force stepped 

up its interdiction of enemy movement in the Tally Ho area. In 

June 196‘7, forward air controllers successfully used jet fighters 

for the fiirst time. Because the fiercely defended coastal strip 

had become too dangerous for the vulnerable 0-ls, thLe controllers changed to two-seat F-100Fs carrying an observer and a 

pilot. In July and August, communist artillery battenes within 

the demilitarized zone intensified the bombardment of Marine 

outposts, especially on Con Thien, and in September a major 

air campaign, Operation Neutralize, was directed against these 

guns. While the marines attacked by air and ground to keep the 

enemy off‘ balance, Air Force fighter-bombers and B--52s went 

after the North Vietnamese artillery. Again, the coordination of 

two air organizations operating in a compact area proved difficult; some Air Force forward air controllers had to dodge Marine aircraft and counterbattery fire, and Marine artillerymen 

were compelled to withhold their fire, once for 24 hours, while 

the Air Force bombed targets inside the Neutralize area. The 

assignment of Air Force liaison officers to the control center operated by the Marine Corps resolved the problem, but this solution fell slhort of General Momyer’s goal of centralizing control 

over the tactical aircraft of the Air Force and the Marine Corps. 

Whatever its shortcomings, Operation Neutralize wa:s credited 

with destroying 146 enemy guns and damaging 183 others. The 

number of incoming rounds directed at Con Thien rind other 

nearby outposts decreased significantly from 7,400 in Septem40 
In early 1968, a Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport lands at Khe 

Sanh, a besieged Marine outpost near South Vietnam’s border 

with Laos and North Vietnam. 

ber to 3,600 the following month, when the assistance command announced that the enemy’s siege of Con Thien had 

ended. 

Although the threat from the demilitarized zone abated, the 

North Vietnamese kept up their pressure along the borders of 

I1 and I11 Corps to divert attention, as events would prove, from 

the population centers of South Vietnam. Attacks during the remainder of 1967 against border outposts at Song Be, LOC Ninh, 

Bo DUC, and Dak To were repulsed because of close cooperation 

between air and ground. Throughout the year Air Force fighterbombers flew more than 122,000 sorties and the B-52s a total 

of 6,600, increases of 48,000 and 2,100, respectively, over 1966’s 

figures. Reconnaissance aircraft flew roughly 94,000 missions, 

and 373,000 airlift sorties delivered men and supplies to the 

battle areas. Forward air controllers flew 43,600 sorties in directing fighter strikes, and other aircraft released flares, leaflets, and defoliants during more than 26,000 flights. Air Force 

helicopters performed 13,400 tasks, several of which might occur on a single sortie, while retrieving downed airmen, evacuating casualties, or carrying men and cargo. 

The most serious of the border threats surfaced early in 1968 

against the Marine outpos,t at Khe Sanh. Unlike the earlier 

41 
siege by artillery fire at Con Thien, the marines at Khe Sanh 

were encircled by North Vietnamese troops, and sufficient 

forces were not available to break through to the garrison. Consequently, General Westmoreland decided to use air power to 

disrupt an anticipated attack by the two enemy divisions that 

had massed around the outpost. Near the end of January, he 

launched 13 10-week air campaign, Operation Niagara, so called 

because the torrent of explosives dropping from the sky was intended to resemble in volume the waters of those celebrated 

falls. Before the siege of Khe Sanh was broken at the end of 

March, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy aircraft flew some 

24,000 tactical sorties against the forces surrounding the base. 

Flying 2,500 sorties by day and night, B-52s dropped almost 

60,000 toris of bombs on trenches and artillery positions. Air 

Force transports landed 4,300 tons of supplies and 2,700 troops 

at the Khe Sanh airstrip, despite hostile mortar and artillery 

fire, and parachuted some 8,000 tons of cargo to the defenders. 

As had happened previously when sorties by different services had to1 be coordinated in a compact area, the control mechanism broke down. Midway through the campaign, General 

Westmorelland designated General Momyer as the single manager of all tactical aircraft in South Vietnam, both Marine and 

Air Force, a decision that Admiral Sharp promptly approved. 

Despite the title of single manager, Momyer’s authority was not 

absolute, for the aircraft of the Army and those operating from 

the Navy’s carriers were excluded, and the marines could 

launch their own aircraft in response to emergencies that their 

ground units might encounter. This one concession to its needs 

did not satisfy the Marine Corps, which interpreted tlhe action 

as a dismemberment of its air-ground team and carried the resulting protest all the way to President Johnson, who refused to 

overrule his commander in Vietnam. Although this arrangement went into effect too late to have any impact on Operation 

Niagara, it seemed to represent a major step toward the centralization of air power under the control of the commander of 

the Seventh Air Force. Before the year ended, however, the single manager system was compromised by the release of a specific number of sorties to the marines, initially for missions like 

escorting hielicopters but ultimately to use as they saw fit. 

While the siege of Khe Sanh continued, other communist 

forces moved largely undetected into position and attacked five 

42 
major cities, thirty-six provincial capitals, twenty-three airfields, and many district capitals and hamlets. Taking advantage of the annual Tet holidays early in February, when most 

South Vietnamese soldiers were on leave to celebrate the lunar 

new year, the enemy struck a stunning blow. The purpcise may 

have been to provoke a popular uprising throughout the South, 

in which case the offensive failed. The purpose, however, may 

have been to embarrass the American political and rnilitary 

leadership and undermine public support in the United States 

for prosecuting an increasingly costly war, in which case the offensive succeeded. Only at Hue in northern South Vietnam did 

the attackers cling to their objectives for an extended period, 

and even there the city was retaken, but only after tweinty-five 

days of sava.ge fighting. Its recapture revealed the mass graves 

of local inhabitants murdered by the communist forces in acts 

of revenge or calculated terrorism that won no converts to their 

cause. At Hue and elsewhere, Air Force fighter-bombers 

launched carefully controlled strikes, but in crowded urban areas, collateral damage proved unavoidable, resulting in civilian 

casualties and perhaps 600,000 new refugees that strained the 

resources of the Saigon government. Outside the towns tand cities, the aircraft bombed the enemy’s storage dumps and troop 

concentrations and provided battlefield interdiction and close 

air support :for the units fighting the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese attaickers. Communist losses may have totaled 45,000, 

more than half of the regulars and guerrillas who participated 

in the offensive. 

Costly though it was to the communists, the Tet offensive 

marked the point where the tide of events clearly turned in 

their favor, for the unexpectedly savage attack caused the 

United States to reexamine its partnership with the South Vietnamese and the dominant role it had assumed in a war to 

preserve the independence of South Vietnam. Although repulsed on the battlefield, the attackers by their very boldness 

lent substaince to doubts that already had surfaced as the 

American pleople, who were beginning to feel the impact of a 

distant war, wondered whether the results were worth the sacrifices. The struggle, which cost almost $33 billion annually, 

had fueled inflation and bloated the national debt. The number 

of Americaris killed in action during the conflict appiroached 

20,000, with1 almost half those deaths in 1967. Opposition to the 

43 
draft, which had supplied many of the dead, was increasing. In 

October 1967, a week-long demonstration against the war singled out offices of the Selective Service System in various cities 

and culmiinated in large antiwar rallies at the Lincoln Memorial and the Pentagon. Although parades and mass meetings in 

support of the war and its objectives took place at Kew York 

City and elsewhere, numbers, determination, and mediia coverage seemed to favor the opposition. A segment of the populace, 

especially goung people subject to the draft, had lost confidence 

in the assurances by the nation's leaders that the war was being won anid that the continued independence of South Vietnam 

was a worthwhile objective. Particularly unfortunate, in view of 

the Tet offensive, were the optimistic statements made by General Westmoreland when he visited Washington in mid-November and reported publicly on the progress of the war. He 

described the situation in South Vietnam as very encouraging 

and declaried that the United States was winning the war of attrition, onlly to have his words challenged by the sudden and 

widespread attacks. 

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Earle G. 

Wheeler of the Army, saw the Tet offensive not as a blow to 

public confidence or to the morale of the Johnson administration but as an opportunity to restore the nation s strategic reserve of military manpower. He arranged for Westmoreland to 

call for an additional 206,000 troops, a request that relied for 

justification on the gloomiest possible interpretation of recent 

events. To provide such a force required a large-scale inobilization of the reserve components, which the President wanted to 

avoid. Such a major mobilization would have aroused the anger 

of those who opposed the war or questioned its importance, but 

would not have affected the military situation in South Vietnam, where conditions were by no means grave enough to require reinfiorcement on this scale. The bulk of the troops would 

have formed a reserve in the United States for possible emergencies outside Southeast Asia. News of the request reached 

the public, which assumed that all the additional mten were 

destined for South Vietnam, further eroding of confidence in 

the military and political leadership and in the importance and 

eventual outcome of the war. 

Instead of giving Westmoreland what he sought and mobilizing the reserve, President Johnson called on a group of trusted 

44 
advisers, h:is so-called Wise Men, to review the nation’s efforts 

in Southea,st Asia and make recommendations for the future. 

The distinguished panel concluded that pursuing the existing 

policy would reinforce failure. As a result, the Chief Executive 

approved EL final token increase in Westmoreland 5; forces, 

bowed to the growing public opposition to the war by declaring 

that he would not seek reelection, and approached the task of 

extricating the United States from a conflict that it had taken 

over not quite three years earlier. In mid-1968, American policy 

began to change. Although the ultimate objective remained an 

independent South Vietnam, the United States would 

strengthen the South Vietnamese, gradually disengage from 

combat, and in effect turn the war over to its ally. 

North Vietnam, 1965-68 

The second air war took place in the skies over North Vietnam. Between March 1965 and the end of October 1968, Air 

Force and Navy aircraft conducted Operation Rolling Thunder, 

a bombing campaign designed to force Ho Chi Minh to abandon 

his ambition to take over South Vietnam. Over the objections of 

many Air Force leaders, the operation began primarily ,as a diplomatic siginal to impress Hanoi with America’s determination, 

essentially a warning that the violence would escalate until Ho 

Chi Minh blinked, and secondarily as a means to bolster the 

sagging morale of the South Vietnamese. In the view of‘ the Air 

Force, the campaign had no clear-cut military objective nor its 

authors an:y real estimate of the cost in lives and aircraft. General LeMay and others argued that military targets, rather 

than the enemy’s resolve, should be attacked and that the 

blows should be rapid and sharp, with the impact felt immediately by thle North Vietnamese Army on the battlefield as well 

as by the political leadership at Hanoi. Secretary McNamara 

favored the measured application of force and was convinced 

that the war could be won in the South. He initially emphasized strikes against the extended battlefield, which consisted 

of South Vietnam and the areas immediately beyond its borders, instead of proceeding directly against the targets many 

deep within North Vietnam advocated by LeMay. When Rolling 

Thunder failed to weaken the enemy’s will after the first several weeks:, the purpose, though not the pace, of the campaign 

45 
began to change. By the end of 1965, the Johnson administration still used air power in an attempt to change North Vietnamese policy, but the bombing tended to be directed against 

the flow of men and supplies from the North, thus damaging 

the enemy militarily while warning him of the datnger of 

greater destruction if he maintained the present aggressive 

course. 

Although the bombing campaign was taking on more of a 

military coloration, forcing Ho Chi Minh to give up hiss goal of 

absorbing South Vietnam into a unified communist state remained the underlying purpose. The change in the conduct of 

the air war was not sufficient to satisfy LeMay and like-minded 

members of the military leadership, who believed that the 

United States could not end aggression with these strategies. 

The ill-conceived attempt to bomb Ho Chi Minh into being a 

good neighbor, in part the product of a cultural bias t:hat perceived a militarily backward North Vietnam as succumbing to 

the use (if not the mere threat) of American might, had failed. 

McNamara's persisting in such an effort, even in the form of 

aerial interdiction, served mainly to estrange LeMay and other 

uniformed leaders from the civilian officials of the Department 

of Defense. In essence, the senior officers argued that military 

considerations should determine the use of force, whereas the 

civilians, typified by Secretary McNamara, insisted that selective pressure, controlled by them and combined with diplomatic 

overtures, would prevail and compel North Vietnam to call off 

its aggression in the South. 

Within Congress, doubts about the McNamara policy 

mounted as the bombing dragged on without an appreciable effect on the leadership at Hanoi. At last in August 1967, after 

more than two years of Rolling Thunder, the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee begain to probe the conduct of the air war. Under the 

leadership of John C. Stennis, a Democrat from Mississippi, the 

subcommittee provided a sympathetic forum where the admirals and generals presented their case for stronger action. In 

the words olf Democratic Senator W. Stuart Symington of Missouri, a member of the subcommittee and the first Secretary of 

the Air Force, Rolling Thunder resembled an attack on an octopus; he, aloing with the other members of the subcommittee and 

the uniformed witnesses, believed in going for the head, which 

46 
would mean an escalation of the bombing in terms of targets 

and tonnage. In contrast, Secretary McNamara argued unsuccessfully that attacking the head of the octopus was not necessary if all the tentacles were pounded to a pulp, as he 

maintained the limited bombing was doing. The consensus of 

the subcommittee was that the policy represented by Secretary 

McNamara had failed and that purely military considerations 

should prevail in selecting and attacking targets. Nevertheless, 

the hearings resulted in little more than an expansion of the 

target list, for the President undertook no dramatic esc,alation. 

The secret sessions did, however, destroy what remained of 

McNamara ,s credibility with Congress, contributing to his disenchantment with the war and edging him toward resigning, 

which he did early in 1968. 

Besides opening divisions within the Department of Defense, 

the bombing: contributed in some measure to the increasing opposition to the war and to the way it was being fought. Those 

among the populace who believed that the United States was 

doing too little could point to Rolling Thunder as an example of 

how American servicemen were risking their lives in operations 

that could not bring victory. At the opposite pole were those 

who felt th#at Rolling Thunder was unworthy of the United 

States, a foirm of war that unleashed the latest technology of 

violence against the civilian populace of North Vietnam. As the 

then-secret testimony before the Stennis subcommittee made 

clear, the nation’s uniformed leaders did not advocate warfare 

against the population of the North, but attacks on undeniably 

military targets in crowded cities could not help but maim and 

kill noncombatants. Complicating any dispassionate judgment 

of the air war was the enduring myth that aerial bombardment 

was capable of unerring accuracy. Tracing its roots to the 

bombs-in-a-pickle-barrel legend of World War 11, this mlyth had 

been reinforced by recent references to the surgical precision of 

aerial attack and by President Johnson’s ill-advised remark 

that, whereas Viet Cong steel was plunged into flesh and blood, 

American bombs were directed only at steel and concrete. When 

an American reporter permitted to travel in North Vietnam 

sent back dispatches describing civilian casualties and the destruction of homes, the abiding belief of the American people in 

the precisioin of aerial bombing reinforced the enemy’s propaganda. 

47 
When R,olling Thunder began in March 1965, strikes were 

limited to specific targets south of 20 degrees North latitude, 

but the area of operations rapidly expanded and the nature of 

the attacks changed. Within a few weeks Air Force fighterbombers were flying armed reconnaissance in that same area, 

hitting targets of opportunity. The first target north of the 20th 

parallel w#as bombed in May, and by November a few strikes 

had been authorized north of Hanoi against the rail lines entering the country from China. Because it represented a use of 

military force for diplomatic purposes, Rolling Thunder was 

controlled directly from Washington. Targets were chosen in 

the White House, at times when the President was having 

lunch with a few key advisers. At first, squadrons in South Vietnam and Thailand carried out the strikes approved for the 

Air Force, but after the construction of new airfields in Thailand, all the raids against the North originated there. The fleet 

of aircraft the Air Force operated from Thailand grew from 83 

to 600. At first, the main burden of carrying the air war to 

North Vietnam fell to the F-105, but the F-4C joined it in mid1965 and the F-4D somewhat later; the F-111, the operational 

version of the TFX, served briefly in 1968. The first OF the few 

B-52 strikles directed against the North during this period took 

place in April 1966 and pounded the infiltration routes exiting 

into Laos; the Air Force Chief of Staff, General McConnell, did 

not want to send these bombers against the Hanoi-Haiphong 

region where the defenses were strongest. 

Until November 1965, Air Force and Navy aircraft alternated 

in attacking Rolling Thunder targets throughout the North, but 

beginning that month, six armed reconnaissance areas, called 

route packages, were created, with each the responsibility of 

one of the two services. During April 1966, when infiltration 

into the South increased through the demilitarized 'zone, responsibility for strikes in the route package abutting the zone 

was turned over to General Westmoreland as part of South Vietnam's extended battlefield. Meanwhile, attacks continued, 

with certain exclusions, in the rest of North Vietnam. At various times, aircraft could not strike the potential targets within 

a thirty-mile radius of Hanoi, those within ten miles of 

Haiphong or thirty miles of the Chinese border, the MiG bases, 

and, until they demonstrated that they were actual weapons 

48 
4 .y 

Air Force maintenance crews at Takhli Air Base, Thailand, prepare Republic F-105 Thunderchiefs to bomb targets in North Vietnam. 

and not mere tokens of Soviet support, the surface-to-air missile sites. 

The lists of authorized targets and excepted areas changed 

throughout the bombing campaign. In June 1966, for instance, 

fighter-bombers flew a series of powerful attacks against seven 

major petroleum storage areas, destroying some seventy percent of North Vietnam's tankage. The air war escalated further 

in February 1967 when aircraft hit powerplants, military airfields, and railway yards within the buffer zones around Hanoi 

and targets along the Chinese border. Nevertheless, Rolling 

Thunder was fought in flurries, with periods of escalation or intensified activity separated by pauses in the bombing designed 

to facilitate a North Vietnamese response through diplomatic 

channels. In actuality, the pauses allowed the enemy time to 

bind up his wounds. 

During Rolling Thunder, Air Force and Navy aircrafi frequently attacked the highway bridge at Thanh Hoa, but the 

raids proved futile. Workmen swarmed over the bridge by night 

or in weather too bad for follow-up bombing and repaired the 

damage, with traffic rerouted across a nearby underwater 

bridge whenever the steel structure could not be used. A cap49 
tured nava.1 aviator, whose aircraft was one of sixteen shot 

down during the attacks on the Thanh Hoa bridge was blindfolded and in the dark of night placed in the back of an open 

truck. After a short drive, the truck stopped, his captors removed the blindfold, and he found himself in the middle of the 

river at Thianh Hoa, the truck parked on the underwater bridge 

that American intelligence had not yet detected. The Paul 

Doumer bridge, which carried the railroad and a highway over 

the Red River at Hanoi, came under attack during the enlargement of the target list that resulted from the hearings of the 

Stennis subcommittee. Air Force fighter-bombers succeeded in 

dropping three of the spans, but North Vietnamese labo'rers immediately set to work on an underwater replacement bridge. 

Besides struggling successfully to repair bomb damage, 

whether to bridges or to powerplants, North Vietnam responded to Rolling Thunder by building a modern radar-controlled air defense system, perhaps the most formidable ever 

devised. Shortly afler the bombing began, the number of North 

Vietnamese! antiaircraft guns of all calibers doubled to 2,000. 

The pro1ife:ration of these weapons forced the fighter-bombers 

after the first few weeks to change their tactics from low-level, 

high-speed bomb runs to higher altitude penetrations. The defenders, however, acquired a weapon, the surface-to-air missile, 

that could engage higher flying aircraft. Reconnaissance craft 

detected Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missiles for the first 

time in March 1965 and had identified 56 sites by the end of 

the year. Clomplementing the guns and missiles, the North Vietnamese Air Force had about 100 MiG17s and MiG--2ls, as 

well as a few MiG-19s, a collection of interceptors that began, 

during the following year, to pose a threat to the American 

fighter-bombers. 

By the summer of 1966, the North Vietnamese were defending their territory with a radar-directed system of aerial defense that included interceptors, surface-to-air missiles, and 

antiaircraft guns. In general, the enemy used his interceptors 

to harry the approaching fighter-bombers, forcing them to drop 

their bombs earlier than planned to rid their aircraft of the 

drag that iimpeded them in dogfights against the MiGs. To 

avoid the surface-to-air missiles, which were deadly at high altitude but could not change direction readily, the F-105s and 

F-4s dived sharply, a maneuver that placed them in the killing 

50 
zone of the antiaircraft guns. The weakest link in the enemy’s 

defenses proved to be the radar that controlled the surface-toair missiles and the largest of the guns. The Air Force exploited 

this weakness with a Navy-developed missile, the Shrike, that 

destroyed the transmitter by homing on the radar signals. 

Later, an improved missile of this kind, the Standard Antiradiation Missile, replaced the Shrike as the normal means of 

forcing hostile radar to shut down. In addition, the Air Force 

used jammiing transmitters, mounted in orbiting aircraft or enclosed in pods hung from the fighter-bombers, to conceal the 

genuine radar returns and confuse the North Vietnarnese operators. Using antiradiation missiles and the electronic countermeasures, pilots neutralized the surface-to-air missiles, 

enabling thle attackers to remain beyond the reach of antiaircraft fire. 

Along with the formidable defenses, the restrictions on targets helped determine the tactics employed by American air 

power during Rolling Thunder, for the pilots had to avoid trespassing in Chinese air space or damaging non-North Vietnamese shipping at Haiphong or some other port as they carried out 

the contradictory mission of persuading Ho Chi Minh that 

North Vietnam could be destroyed, without actually destroying 

it. The Air Force at times compensated with unusual tactics or 

techniques for the defenses and the prohibition, but not for the 

basic contr,adiction. Since airfields in North Vietnam were at 

times exempt from attack and those in China always so, the attackers could not destroy the MiGs on the ground, and aerial 

combat was inevitable. To improve the odds, radar-equipped 

EC-121~~ military versions of the Lockheed Constellation 

transport, orbited over the Gulf of Tonkin and warned1 American pilots of the approach of hostile jets. A favorite maneuver of 

the North Vietnamese fighter pilots was to climb sharply, forcing the F-3.05s to jettison their bombs in expectation of a dogfight. Radar in the EC-121s detected these tactics, and a screen 

of F-~s, armed with heat-seeking missiles and flying at an altitude lower than the F-105~~ could intercept the approaching 

enemy. 

Perhaps the most spectacular tactical innovation occurred in 

January 1967, when fourteen flights of F-4s posed as bombladen F-105s by using the appropriate radio call signs, approach route, altitude, and speed. Anticipating easy kills, the 

51 
North Vietnamese attacked, and the Phantoms, primed for battle and unencumbered by bombs, destroyed seven of the MiGs 

in twelve minutes. Four days afterward, this time masquerading as weather reconnaissance craft, the F-4s again lured the 

MiGs into attacking and destroyed two more. Having learned 

the danger of overconfidence, the North Vietnamese began to 

rely on hit-and-run attacks, firing heat-seeking missiles from 

behind their intended victims, then bolting for safety. 

For air-to-air combat, the Air Force normally used the multibarrel 20-mm cannon and three kinds of air intercept missiles 

the AIM-9 Sidewinder, AIM-7 Sparrow, and AIM4 Falconall supersonic and accurate at ranges varying from two to ten 

miles. The Sidewinder, first used in combat by Chinese Nationalist pilots over the Taiwan Strait in 1958, was a heat-seeking 

missile developed by the Naval Ordnance Test Station at China 

Lake, California. The Sparrow, developed by the Raytheon 

Company for the Navy, relied on radar for guidance. The 

Hughes Aircraft Falcon came in several models, some with a radar in the nose to track the victim, whereas others homed on 

the heat generated by engines. To enhance the accuracy of the 

Sparrow and the radar-guided versions of the Falcon, McDonnell Douglas fitted a fire control radar in the F-4 to help highlight the target. Since the air intercept missiles were ill-suited 

for close-in fighting, some F-4Cs and all subsequent mlodels of 

the Phantoim carried a 20-mm gun either installed in a pod attached to the airframe or built into the aircraft. 

After the Wise Men recommended against further escalation 

of the war, President Johnson conceded that Rolling Thunder 

had failed to make Ho Chi Minh relent. Hoping that ii reduction of the bombing would succeed where intensification had 

failed and entice Hanoi into negotiating a settlement of the 

war, the President on April 1,1968, ended the bombing north of 

the 19th parallel and halted it altogether on November 1. Col. 

Ray Bower:;, who had studied the campaign while assigned to 

the Office of Air Force History, summed up the accomplishments of Rolling Thunder between the spring of 1965 and the 

fall of 1968 when he told an audience at the Air Force Academy, ‘‘Measured by its unsatisfactory outcome and by the . . . planes lost in North Vietnam, the controlled application of air 

power that was Rolling Thunder stands as a sad failure.” 

52 
During the air war against the North, Air Force tactical 

fighters flew 166,000 sorties and the Navy's carrier aircraft 

144,500. The B-52s7 which strictly speaking were not a part of 

Rolling Thunder, saw limited action, flying just 2,330 sorties. 

The enemy downed 526 Air Force aircraft; 54 fell victim to surface-to-air missiles, 42 were destroyed by MiGs, and the remainder succumbed to antiaircraft fire. Of the 745 Air Force 

crew mem.bers shot down on missions against the North, 145 

were rescued, 255 were known to have died, 222 were taken 

prisoner, and the fate of 123 others was unknown when the operation ended. 

Laos, 1965-68 

The air .war along the trails of southern Laos complemented 

Rolling Thunder and the air war in South Vietnam. The objective of this third air campaign was to impede the flow of men 

and equipment from North into South Vietnam; in 1965 this 

traffic was estimated at 4,500 men and 300 tons of cargo each 

month. The Air Force, the Navy, and the Marine Corps all participated in this air war; the Air Force with F-lOOs, F-~s, 

F-105~~ and B-57s from both South Vietnam and 'Ihailand. 

The weight of the aerial effort varied with the weather, which 

cleared over southern Laos during a dry season that normally 

lasted from November through April and facilitated both road 

traffic and air operations. Although the campaign in this region 

came to be conducted year-around, initially the activity all but 

stopped with the onset of the monsoon rains, as the focus of 

aerial inteirdiction shif'ted to the demilitarized zone where the 

tempo of infiltration increased with the beginning of dry 

weather. 

Like Rolling Thunder, the interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh 

Trail in southern Laos was subject to political constraints. The 

settlement negotiated between the communist and noncommunist factions in 1962 banned a military headquarters in Laos, 

and the Uinited States used its embassy at Vientiane for that 

purpose, with the ambassador functioning as the military 

authority in the kingdom and the military attaches as his staff. 

Decisions ais to the number of sorties, targets, and ordnance reflected the need to preserve the nominal neutrality of the Laotian prime minister, Souvanna Phouma, who did not object to 

53 
the air war as long as his loyal subjects were not endangered 

and his government not involved to the extent that might invite 

North Vietnamese retaliation. The Joint Chiefs of Staff approved each of the recurring interdiction campaigns, the Seventh Air Foirce provided the aircraft and nominated the targets, 

and the ambassador vetoed any target that in his judgment 

might jeopardize noncombatants, captured Americans, or the 

appearance of neutrality on the part of Souvanna’s government. 

The original Barrel Roll campaign, begun in December 1964, 

gave way during the following April to a more extensive interdiction program called Steel Tiger. As the rains abated, infiltration increa,sed and the number of air strikes multiplied, 

concentrating on the part of Steel Tiger closest to the South Vietnamese border, a region called Tiger Hound. Aircraft hit 

trucks, storage and bivouac areas, bridges, buildings, and antiaircraft sites. In December 1965 B-52s dropped their first 

bombs on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 

Although American aircraft had by the end of 1965 claimed 

the destruction of more than 1,000 trucks, along with structures of every sort, including bridges, few results could be verified and the number of the enemy killed could not be 

determined. Infiltration continued not only through Lms, but 

also by way of Cambodia and the demilitarized zone and by sea. 

As time pas,sed, the carefully camouflaged network of roads and 

trails, waterways and pipelines, depots and bivouac areas 

steadily expanded in southern Laos, and the enemy established 

a logistics complex in Cambodia. 

Because of the troops and cargo that traveled the infiltration 

and supply routes, the tempo of the fighting in South Vietnam 

continued to increase despite an enemy death toll that rose 

from an estimated 35,000 in 1965 to as many as 183,000 in 

1968. Realizing the importance of the Ho Chi Minh Trail 

through southern Laos in sustaining the war in South Vietnam, 

the United States early in 1966 intensified the air campaign 

against this route and experimented with a number of new interdiction techniques. Until the rains arrived in May, Air Force, 

Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft flew more than 6,000 sorties, 

cratering mads and destroying 1,000 trucks, along with buildings, antiaircraft sites, and boats. World War I1 vintage A-26s 

began hunting and attacking trucks; the Combat Skyspot radar, which had proved effective in South Vietnam, began direct54 
ing strikes in southern Laos at night and in bad weather; and 

AC-130 gunships equipped with special detection devices to locate and attack trucks moving by night saw their first action 

early in 1967. At times, South Vietnamese ground reconnaissance teams were flown by helicopter to the vicinity of the trail 

to locate targets and call for air strikes. 

Meanwhile, the B-52s began making a greater contribution 

to the interdiction effort, flying some 400 sorties against portions of the. trail opposite the five northernmost provinces of 

South Vietnam between April and June 1966. Westnioreland 

sought to expand still further the use of the bombers by inaugurating a systematic campaign against the mountain passes 

leading froim North Vietnam into Laos. The ambassador, however, vetoed the proposal, doubting both the effectiveness of the 

bombing and his ability to sell such a program to Souvanna 

Phouma. 

"he North Vietnamese reacted to the interdiction campaign 

by strengthening the antiaircraft defenses and by assigning 

troops and laborers to repair damage and build new routes, 

some of which would remain undetected for months, even years, 

under the ,jungle canopy. By mid-1966, Air Force reconnaissance craft had identified about 300 antiaircraft sites bristling 

with guns, mostly 37-mm types; the labor force by this time totaled an eatimated 38 North Vietnamese engineer baittalions 

and 16,000 civilian laborers, many recruited locally. A North 

Vietnamese transportation division controlled the entire operation, which included way stations, guides and food, and communications all along the roads and rivers. 

This transportation division, in attempting to make the Ho 

Chi Minh Trail secure, devised many techniques for avoiding 

detection from the air. As much as possible, trucks moved by 

night; in daylight they were camouflaged with green paint, tarpaulins, and tree branches. Whenever aircraft approached, 

moving trucks darted onto side roads and waited for at Least an 

hour after the intruders had disappeared before resuming the 

journey. Bicycles, oxcarts, boats, and human porters supplemented the trucks in carrying supplies. Troops destinedl for the 

battlefields of South Vietnam also used the Ho Chi Minh Trail, 

usually traveling on foot in small groups. The soldiers were 

warned not to discuss their travel, make any unnecessary noise 

while en route, or leave litter on the road in short, to avoid any 

55 
c 

I 

*- ‘4- a 

The Prince, Mangkhra 

Phouma, son of the 

Laotian prime minister poses with a very 

young, but successful 

bong (or “Meo”) soldier. As older Hmong 

soldiers were killed in 

battle, younger and 

younger brothers and 

sons took their place. 

Mangkhra is wearing 

an Air Force jacket 

with a Tactical Air 

Command patch. 

action that might reveal their schedule or betray their presence. If aircraft did appear, the individual infiltrators either 

froze in their tracks, threw themselves down, or moved off the 

trail into the rain forest. The jungle proved a valuable ally of 

the North Vietnamese, for by binding together the tops of trees, 

the enemy created an extensive trellis to hide his movements 

and his installations from searching aircraft. Trucks and infiltrating troops crossed rivers and streams without being detected on pontoon bridges, hidden by day, or on underwater 

spans made of sandbags. Telephone lines were strung along 

five-foot poles that were too short to cast the telltale shadows 

that might alert photo interpreters to the course of the trail. 

This sustained effort, requiring the full-time activity of tens of 

thousands of soldiers who might otherwise have been fighting 

in South Vietnam, seemed proof that the bombing of the Ho Chi 

Minh Trail had disrupted the North Vietnamese war effort. 

In the summer of 1966, when the seasons changed and the 

infiltration shifted northward to the demilitarized zone, the aircraft assigned to operations in Tiger Hound followed suit and 

began bombing in the Tally Ho area just north of the zone. 

Early in 1967, when the dry weather returned to southern 

Laos, the Air Force stepped up its bombing attacks, its efforts 

at night interdiction, and its support of ground probes of the Ho 

Chi Minh Trail. These operations, and the attempt to turn the 

56 
roads and trails to mud by seeding the clouds to cause rain, 

failed to significantly reduce enemy infiltration. The Air Force 

attributed this failure to the need to consult the ambassador at 

Vientiane, which made the bombing in southern Laos, like the 

air war against North Vietnam, a tentative, stop-and-go undertaking. 

In the meantime, Secretary McNamara, losing confidence in 

Rolling Thunder as a means of forcing the enemy to end the aggression in the South and negotiate an end to the war, began 

seeking a substitute for the bombing of North Vietnam less 

costly in lives and aircraft. He proposed, instead of intensified 

attacks on the heavily defended North, that air power join in a 

systematic effort to choke off the flow of men and equipment 

across the demilitarized zone and through southern Laos into 

South Vietnam. He ordered the establishment of what sometimes was described as McNamara’s Wall-a barrier of barbed 

wire and defensive strongpoints sealing the routes across the 

demilitarized zone and a field of electronic sensors detecting infiltration west of the zone through southern Laos. Work on the 

barrier along the demilitarized zone began during the second 

half of 196‘7 but was never completed; beset by shortages of 

transportation and materials and by poor roads, the project 

soon collapsed in the face of determined enemy resistance. 

Meanwhile, the electronic portion of the wall began to take 

shape. Under the guidance of the Air Force, Task Force Alpha 

came into being, its brain an electronic surveillance center built 

at Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, on the border with Laos. To 

monitor the movement of trucks and men along suspected segments of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, aircraft dropped acoustic and 

seismic sensors, along with thousands of tiny button boimbs to 

help activate them. Orbiting EC-121s relayed signals from activated sensoies to Nakhon Phanom, where computers matched 

the information with previously stored data, and controllers requested strilkes by elements of General Momyer’s Seventh Air 

Force. 

Aircraft especially equipped for the operations of Task Force 

Alpha began arriving at Nakhon Phanom late in 1967. The 

Navy contrihuted a squadron of Lockheed OP-2E patrol bombers, which joined Air Force CH-3C helicopters in plant ing the 

sensor fields. Besides the helicopters, the Air Force supplied a 

squadron of F-4s to drop sensors in areas too heavily defended 

57 
for the helicopters or the OP-2Es and eighteen A-1Es to dispense the tiny bombs that, when driven over or stepped on, 

emitted a noise that activated the sensors. A detachment of forward air controllers in 0-1s arrived to direct both the placement of the mines and sensors and the strikes launched in 

response to the electronic data. Despite successful tests of the 

system on tihe trail in December, the full-scale inauguration of 

the program had to be postponed when the assigned aircraft 

were diverted in January to the defense of Khe Sanh. The marines manning the base benefited, however, from the sensors in 

pinpointing hostile movements and acquiring targets for air 

strikes or artillery. 

Between December 1964 and the end of 1967, American aircraft flew 185,000 sorties of all kinds against the Ho Chi Minh 

Trail. Of this total, 80 percent were the work of the Air Force, 

which lost :LO7 of the 132 aircraft shot down over southern Laos 

during this period. As a result of the reduction and tben the 

termination of Rolling Thunder, resources became available to 

transform tbe air campaign in southern Laos from essentially a 

dry-weather attempt at interdiction into a succession of sensorassisted air campaigns, called Commando Hunt, that tried 

throughout the year to impede the infiltration of men and supplies. 

The air war fought over northern Laos had a lower priority 

than operations over South Vietnam, North Vietnam, or southern Laos. Neither the communist Pathet Lao nor theii- opposition could recruit the forces or obtain the outside aid that would 

bring victory. North Vietnam used the Pathet Lao to protect the 

western flank of the Ho Chi Minh Trail; the United States 

hoped to safeguard the radar sites in Laos that directed the 

bombing of North Vietnam and, at the same time, tie down 

North Vietnamese resources that might be used to greater effect in South Vietnam or in southern Laos. The main antagonists, therefore, were more interested in keeping their Laotian 

factions in the field and fighting than in winning. Victory, after 

all, might irequire the diversion of men and materiel needed for 

more important operations elsewhere. 

Disagreements arose over how air power could best sustain 

the forces loyal to the government and opposing the Pathet Lao. 

The American ambassador at Vientiane wanted to cointrol the 

air support needed by the government forces and the irregulars 

58 
recruited by General Vang Pao from the Meo tribe in the mountains of Laos. He tried repeatedly to persuade the Air Force to 

set aside aircraft for his exclusive use in providing close air 

support for the troops in northern Laos, but General ZIllomyer 

resisted attempts to assign fighter-bombers to the ambassador 

or to the Laotian generals. Momyer’s responsibilities extended 

from the Mekong delta to the demilitarized zone, including the 

roads and trails of southern Laos, and embraced every kind of 

air support from battlefield strikes to long-range interdiction. 

He was determined to retain the freedom to use his aircraft 

wherever and however he deemed best. Instead of continuing to 

maintain a few jet fighter-bombers on alert for operations in 

northern Laos, as his predecessor had done, Momyer preferred 

to allocate sorties from his overall force in response to requests 

from Vientiane. Although the Air Force increased the number 

of B-26s and A-1s assigned to Southeast Asia, types of aircraft 

well suited to the kind of war being fought in northern Laos, 

the ambassador did not become his own air commander. 

The fighting in northern Laos remained largely a war of 

proxies, with few Americans (or North Vietnamese, for that 

matter) serving there. The North Vietnamese provided supplies 

and a small core of disciplined soldiers for the Pathet L4ao. An 

even smaller contingent of American airmen acted as $orward 

air controllers for Vang Pao’s army or operated the scattered 

radar sites tlhat directed strikes in southern Laos and Nolrth Vietnam. Udorn in Thailand functioned as a pilot training center 

and maintenance depot for the fledgling Royal Laotian Air 

Force, and ai C-130 flying out of there served as an airborne 

command post for operations over northern Laos. 

American aerial activity in northern Laos varied in intensity 

over the years. As an immediate consequence of the peace accord of 1962, the United States shifted its attention to South 

Vietnam and limited its activity in northern Laos to providing 

military aid, conducting the occasional show of force, and carrying out clandestine operations. These circumstances contributed to the creation of a loosely structured operating 

organization for which the embassy, the Central Intelligence 

Agency, and the military shared responsibility. Two years later, 

when civil war erupted despite the settlement of 1962, the 

United States sided with the Royal Laotian government against 

the communist Pathet Lao. After 1964 the fighting intensified, 

59 
but by 1968 it had more or less settled into an annual pattern 

in which the Pathet Lao advanced onto the Plain of Jars in 

northern Llaos during the dry season (winter), expaaing its 

forces to air attacks that inflicted casualties and hacked away 

at the supply and communication lines extending from North 

Vietnam. Ely the coming of the summer rains, the drive had 

spent itself, and the initiative passed to the government troops 

as the cominunists fell back to restock and regroup. In this annual cycle of combat, the Laotian government came to rely 

more and more on air power, both American and its own, and 

on the guerrilla army of Vang Pao. 

Air Force pilots became proficient in the kind of close air support on which the Meo tribesmen depended. The first such 

strikes, delivered during a dry-season offensive by the Pathet 

Lao in 1965, demonstrated that Air Force units could work directly with the Laotian forces, whether regulars or Vang Pao’s 

guerrillas. Laotian reliance on American air power iincreased 

during 1966, after the commander of the Laotian air arm 

launched an unsuccessful coup that undermined the morale 

and effectiveness of his organization as well as the government’s confidence in its air force. The Americans had no choice 

but to supply the needed sorties until the Laotians could again 

fly them. 

The reduction and later the cessation of the bombing of 

North Vietnam in 1968 changed all four of the air wars in 

Southeast Asia. The greatest change was in the North, where 

for more than three years American aircraft were authorized to 

go only to fly reconnaissance missions or to retaliate for some 

action by the enemy, usually an attack on reconnaissance craft. 

In the South, air power became a shield for the American disengagement and withdrawal. In Laos, the purpose of air operations remained interdiction in the south, preventing the enemy 

from building up for a final onslaught as American strength in 

South Vietnam declined, and tying down resources in the north 

that the North Vietnamese might otherwise use to turn the 

American withdrawal into a rout. As a result, air power no 

longer used against North Vietnam found ready application in 

South Vietnam and in the two wars being fought in Laos. 

60 
Vietnamization 

By imposing a limit on American participation in the warthe effect of the decisions made following the Tet offensive of 

early 1968--the administration of President Lyndon B. 

Johnson beg,an modifjlng the partnership between the 'United 

States and South Vietnam. The ultimate objective remained a 

free and independent South Vietnam, but the United States no 

longer pursued that goal by means of a bombing campaign in 

the North and by a war of attrition in the South fought largely 

by American troops. Instead, the United States began to train 

and equip the South Vietnamese to take over the war, while at 

the same time engaging in negotiations with the enemy to end 

the fighting and acknowledge the right of South Vietnam to exist. North Vietnam proved willing enough to talk; in May 1968, 

after Rolling Thunder diminished in scale, the Hanoi government entered into preliminary discussions at Paris that involved the IJnited States, South Vietnam, and, after much 

haggling, the political leaders of the Viet Cong. Not until January 1969, after Rolling Thunder had ended and when Richard 

M. Nixon, a Republican, was about to take the oath of office as 

President, did the preliminaries end so that the negotiators 

could begin addressing issues of substance. The discussions 

soon revealed that North Vietnam, although willing to participate, would make no major concessions that might jeopardize 

the ultimate conquest of the South; fight and talk becarne the 

national policy, which persisted after the death of Ho Chi Minh 

in September 1969. 

The Nixori administration took over the basic strategy 

adopted by President Johnson and named it Vietnamization, a 

label proposed by Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird. The 

original choice, de-Americanization, had seemed not only less 

euphonious but also hurtful to South Vietnamese pride since its 

use acknowledged that the United States had indeed taken 

over the war. Ideally, as Vietnamization progressed, freshly 

equipped and newly trained South Vietnamese would in an orderly fashion assume full responsibility for fighting thc > war. 

The Americans in the ground forces, which contained the greatest share of draftees and suffered the most casualties, would be 

the first to depart as the South Vietnamese took over. In this 

way, the toll of Americans killed and wounded would decline 

61 
sharply; aind this benefit of Vietnamization would affect a large 

segment of the nation’s populace, the families of the draftees, 

thus encouraging widespread support, if not of the war itself, at 

least of thie manner in which it was being liquidated. However, 

the reduction of American casualties, and the resulting political 

effects, soon took precedence over the difficult job of fitting out 

and trainiing the armed forces of South Vietnam. Henry A. 

Kissinger, the national security adviser to President Nixon (and 

after August 1973 the Secretary of State), warned early in the 

process of Vietnamization that troop withdrawals would become “salted peanuts” for the American people, with each one 

whetting the public’s appetite for another. Kissinger was correct. He acknowledged years afterward that by late slimmer of 

1969, “We were clearly on the way out of Vietnam by negotiation if possible, by unilateral withdrawal if necessary.” 

The emphasis on bringing the men home represented an attempt to placate the antiwar movement in the United States, 

which since 1965 had mounted several large public demonstrations against American policy in Southeast Asia. The motives of 

the demonstrators varied from a sincere belief that the war was 

morally wrong to a fear of being drafted and possibly serving in 

South Vietnam. By embarking on a well-publicized course of 

disengagement and withdrawal (and later by easing the impact 

of the draft preparatory to abolishing it altogether), the Nixon 

administration bought time for negotiation but at the same 

time relaxed the pressure on North Vietnam to respond. The 

United States clearly was leaving South Vietnam, but North 

Vietnam had no intention of doing so. The American withdrawals thus represented a concession by the Nixon administration 

to the antiwar faction rather than a reaction to concessions by 

the communist side in the peace negotiations. Not even a series 

of secret discussions between Kissinger and representatives of 

North Vietnam could persuade the communists to accept a program of mutual troop withdrawals. 

Vietnamization in all its aspects-disengagement, withdrawal, a.nd the strengthening of South Vietnamese forcespermeated American efforts in Southeast Asia, affecting all 

four of the wars in which the Air Force was engaged: the fighting over North Vietnam, South Vietnam, northern Laos, and 

southern Laos (which came to include Cambodia). From late 

1968 until the spring of 1972, when a North Vietnarnese inva62 
sion of the South caused a reorientation of air operations, every 

undertaking by the Air Force overt or secret, authorized or unauthorized, inside South Vietnam or outside the country was 

designed to facilitate in some way the withdrawal of American 

combat forces, their replacement by South Vietnamese, and the 

negotiation of an end to the war. During 1965 air power had 

protected the build-up of American ground forces in South Vietnam; now it formed a shield for their withdrawal. 

In South ’Vietnam, throughout the years of Vietnamization 

and withdrawal, air power, ranging from strikes by fighterbombers to t;he battering delivered by B-52s7 helped defeat the 

enemy or hold him in check in a number of battles. The fighting 

often erupted at fire support bases or other outposts, but the 

most significant action of this period took place at Ap Bia 

mountain in the spring of 1969 during a raid on the supply depots within the A Shau Valley. An initial probe revealed that 

the mountain was an enemy stronghold; air power and additional troops had to be employed for its capture. The soldiers 

fighting there began calling the objective “Hamburger Hill,” as 

troops were fed into what seemed to them like the military 

equivalent of a meat grinder. The mountain was finally conquered at the cost of fifty-six Americans killed, with more than 

ten times th,at number of North Vietnamese dying in its defense, but the victors promptly withdrew. Lt. Gen. Phillip B. 

Davidson of the Army, at the time a staff officer with the military assistance command, declares in his book, Vietnam at War, 

that the battle “catapulted the doves into shrill flight,” but 

what troubled opponents of the war like Senator Edward M. 

Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts, was not so much 

that fifty-six soldiers had died capturing an important mountaintop as that the objective had been abandoned once it was 

overrun. In Kennedy’s opinion, this latest search and destroy 

operation had given away what Americans had sacrificed their 

lives to capture, an objective that might well have to be taken 

again at further cost. Apparently the Nixon administration 

shared the senator’s concern that lives were being squandered, 

for the Chief Executive in the aftermath of the Hamburger Hill 

fighting instructed Gen. Creighton W. Abrams, who had succeeded Gen. William C. Westmoreland as Commander, US. 

Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, to limit American 

casualties. 

63 
Davidson argues in his volume that the battle for Ap Bia 

mountain and the resulting Presidential decision to hold down 

casualties marked another turning point in the war, since it deprived the American forces of a sense of purpose by acknowledging that this was indeed a “no-win” conflict. Begnnning in 

1969 and accelerating in subsequent years, morale a.nd discipline did decline, in part because the war was being liquidated. 

Put as starkly as possible, no one wanted to be the last American killed in Southeast Asia. Other factors, however, affected 

the armed forces during the period of Vietnamization and withdrawal. Some, like racial strife and the abuse of alcohol and 

drugs, weire embedded in contemporary American society; others, like opposition to the war, had shallower roots. Although 

the opponents of the Vietnam conflict remained a small, if articulate, minority, the American public was undeniably becoming indifferent toward the war, and servicemen felt that their 

sacrifices were barely acknowledged, let alone appreciated. 

Conditions in Southeast Asia put a unique stamp on these behavioral problems and on the growing sense of alienation. For 

example, members of the different races, who had cooperated in 

combat to survive, might be at each other’s throats when not in 

danger from the common enemy; but racial animositjr was not 

the only problem to surface in the rear areas. Boredorn punctuated by fear of rocket or mortar attack, isolation from what was 

familiar and pressure from peers, and ready access to alcohol 

and drug13 created a subculture of dependency. Addiction to 

drugs represented a problem that the services had not encountered previously; when punishment did not work, treatment 

programs had to be established. 

During this turbulent time, the armed forces fell woefully 

short of their standards for disciplined behavior. Orders were 

disobeyed; and in the ground forces, unpopular officers and 

noncommissioned officers were attacked, even killed. At My Lai 

in 1968, scores of unarmed villagers believed to have aided the 

enemy were shot to death. Scandals erupted involving kickbacks and thefts at military clubs, and an Air Force transport 

assigned to the embassy at Saigon was used to smuggle drugs. 

Bad as th.ese times were, the armed forces survived as institutions, in part because the war ended with it the strains that 

had contributed to alienation and demoralization but also because of the positive effects from the efforts made to improve 

64 
race relations, treat drug addiction and 'alcoholism, and root out 

crime and punish the criminals. 

However much it may have contributed to the decline in morale and the breakdown of discipline, the struggle for Hamburger Hill clearly signaled the end of the massive American 

search and destroy operations that symbolized the war of attrition fought in South Vietnam. For the soldier or marine hacking through the undergrowth or the airman bombing North 

Vietnamese troops within yards of some embattled outpost, the 

result may well have seemed a distinction without a difference, 

but the fact remained that husbanding American lives now took 

precedence over killing the enemy. The statisticians continued 

their arcane work long aRer the resignation of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who had relied so heavily on statistics. They turned from the standard yardstick of attrition, the 

kill-ratio of Americans to enemy soldiers, to charts and graphs 

depicting progress in equipping and training the expanded 

armed forces of the Republic of Vietnam. The war in South ViI 

1 

I 

More 750-pound bombs arrive at Phan Rang Air Base, South Vietnam, 

February 1970. 

65 
etnam became a race against time, an effort to prepare the 

South Vietnamese to take over the war before the American 

withdrawal thrust it upon them. 

In terms of aircraft for the South Vietnamese Air Force, Vietnamizatiori began (and ended, for that matter) as a matter of 

quantity nnore than quality. The number of operating squadrons doubled by 1972 from twenty to forty, but the additional 

aircraft tended to be Northrop F-5s, which were not ,standard 

fighter-bornbers in the U.S. Air Force; A-37s, Cessna T-37 

trainers modified for use as attack aircraft; helicopters provided 

mainly by the Army; and old C-123 transports. Both the F-5 

and the A--37 were short-range aircraft suitable mainly for operations within South Vietnam. The only Air Force gunships 

made available to the South Vietnamese, derived from the slow 

and vulnerable C-47 and C-119 transports, were useful mainly 

for defending outposts against infantry attack, especially at 

night. The modernization and expansion programs that produced the forty squadrons excluded aerial tankers, the more 

modern of the gunships, F-~s, and B-52s. Even th.e C-130 

transport .was a late addition to the South Vietnamese inventory of aircraft. The usual justification for withholding aircraft 

was that tlhe particular model was either not needed for self-defense or too complicated for the South Vietnamese to fly and 

maintain. 

The American concern that South Vietnam’s air arm might 

be unable to absorb the most modern equipment was founded 

in fact, at least when Vietnamization began. Whether a more 

intensive program of training might have made a difference is 

arguable ak best, for instruction remained geared to the equipment the South Vietnamese were receiving and this effort encountered serious obstacles. When the Vietnamization of the air 

arm began in earnest in 1969, that service was an estimated 

two years behind the army, which had expanded in 1967. Even 

as their instructors tried to make up for lost time, South Vietnamese training to be pilots or mechanics rapidly had to master 

highly technical subjects, a truly discouraging task since few of 

the trainees had either the fluency in English or the technical 

background to absorb the instruction easily. Training posed the 

most difficult obstacle to expanding and equipping the South 

Vietnamese Air Force. 

66 
Whatever the problems that lay ahead, some 65,000 American troops, including slightly more than 2,500 airmen, left the 

country in 1969, as the actual American strength in South Vietnam declined from a peak of almost 550,000 early in the year to 

484,000 by the end of December. Tactically, the proportion between air and ground reflected the fact that air power had to 

compensate for the diminishing size of the ground force, but 

other considerations were involved. The Air Force not only suffered fewer casualties than the combat arms of the Ariny and 

Marine Corps but also relied on volunteers rather than draftees, although some of those who donned its uniform had no 

doubt been motivated by fear of the draft and possible combat 

service in the infantry. The death or wounding of a comparatively few volunteers-a proportion of them pilots, who were 

long-term or career officers-seemed likely to have less impact 

on the public than more numerous casualties among draftees. 

For the U.S. Air Force, Vietnamization got underway in 1969 

when the air arm of South Vietnam grew from 17,500 officers 

and airmen and 400 aircraft to a total strength of 36,000 with 

450 aircraft. The disparity in growth between manpower and 

aircraft resulted from the time needed to train men to service 

and operate the new airplanes. The process of learning took 

many forms. For example, the Air Force arranged for South Vietnamese arid American airmen to serve side by side in the air 

support centers of each corps preparatory to a transfer of responsibility for the entire tactical air control system. At the 

same time, South Vietnamese forward air controllers i3nd air 

liaison specialists assumed a greater role in directing air 

strikes, including those flown by American aircraft. The number of sorties by South Vietnamese forward air controllers increased during the year from 505 in January to 1,083 in 

December, expanding from 10 to 25 percent of the total flown. A 

similarly enlcouraging increase took place in the aggregate sorties flown by the South Vietnamese; from 55,000 in the first 

quarter of 1!369 the number rose to 74,000 during the last three 

months of the year, a tribute to improving maintenance as well 

as to flying skill. Meanwhile, the infrastructure oS bases 

changed to ,support South Vietnam’s increased share of aerial 

operations. :By October 1969 the U. S. Air Force had virtually 

turned over to the South Vietnamese the air base i3t Nha 

Trang, and by early the following year airmen of the two na67 
USAF pilots turn their A37 jets over to South Vietnamese pilots at 

Bien Hoa Air Base on October 1,1970. 

tions worked together at Da Nang, Pleiku, Bien Hoa, Binh Tuy, 

SOC Trang, and Tan Son nut. 

Growth continued throughout 1970. By year's end, the South 

Vietnamese Air Force had thirty squadrons organized into five 

air divisions, ten tactical wings, five maintenance wings, and 

seven air base wings. The greatest increase in aircraft had 

come in helicopters, with transfers from the U.S. Army raising 

the total from 112 to 310. More important than numbers of aircraft, the South Vietnamese flew half of all the strike sorties in 

their nation. The greater participation by South Vietnam's air 

arm was necessary because more was being demanded of air 

power and fewer U.S. Air Force units were available to respond; 

during 1970, 150,000 Americans departed, including more than 

10,000 airmen and 11 of the 20 fighter squadrons based in the 

South, reducing the total American strength in the country to 

334,000. 

The withdrawal of American forces continued into 1971, with 

an additional 50,000 leaving in the spring, en route to a yearend objective of only 184,000 Americans still serving in South 

Vietnam. Since the need of an aerial shield for the dwindling 

68 
ground force continued, so too did the expansion of the South 

Vietnamese Air Force. The air arm ended the year with 1,222 

aircraft, including 500 helicopters, a second squadron of 

AC-119 gunships, and three squadrons of C-123s added1 to the 

two on hand when the year began. Although the number of 

fighter squadrons remained at nine throughout the year, pilots 

gained experience as they flew 63 percent of all strike sorties in 

South Vietnam and 39 percent of those in Cambodia, where the 

fighting had spread in 1970. 

Despite the greater burden being assumed by South Vietnamese airnien, the United States persisted in its refiusal to 

equip them with the latest aircraft, particularly for air defense 

and interdiction. A surge in MiG activity over Laos during late 

1971 persuaded the Department of Defense to accelerate South 

Vietnam’s acquisition of fifty-seven F-5Es fitted out for air defense. The South Vietnamese had not received the mean,s to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail because of the tacit assu:mption 

that the Commando Hunt series of attacks in southerin Laos 

would continue, but Secretary of Defense Laird insisted in 1971 

that South ’Vietnam’s air arm be given an interdiction force 

that, although not the equal of the American operation centered at Nakhon Phanom, could to some extent disturb the flow 

of men and supplies from North Vietnam. The Americains proposed that ground patrols sow modest-sized sensor fields to find 

targets for a five-squadron fleet of single-engine mini-gunships. 

Testing began in Florida of a short-takeoff-and-landing airplane, the Fairchild Peacemaker, which was to serve as the 

gunship. Neither the Air Force, the Military Assistance Command, nor the Pacific Command displayed much enthusiasm 

for the project; the addition of a multibarrel machineguri made 

the aircraft overweight and dangerously unstable; and by the 

time the idea was ready for a combat test, the enemy hald overrun the area from which the gunships were to have operated. 

Consequently, South Vietnam never acquired the means for 

aerial interdiction. 

The South Vietnamese, besides lacking a satisfactory weapon 

for aerial interdiction, did not receive the training or equiipment 

necessary to conduct the kind of search and rescue opeirations 

that in the course of the war saved 3,883 persons from death or 

capture. Excluded from Vietnamization were the HH--3 and 

HH-53 helicopters and the HC-130P7 a combination airborne 

69 
command post and aerial tanker. Although all three served the 

Americans well, the Air Force did not transfer these aircraft to 

the South Vietnamese. Even so, Vietnamization interfered with 

the American rescue forces, which were displaced by an expanding South Vietnamese Air Force from their normal operating bases close to the likely scenes of aerial action. 

Although the South Vietnamese air arm could not interdict 

traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail or rescue downed airmen, it 

continued to progress in other fields. By early 1972, for instance, it had assumed virtually full responsibility for the tactical air con.tro1 system within the country. Officers and enlisted 

men trained by the Americans ran the control centers and also 

served as air liaison specialists with ground units. The Air 

Force fomard air controllers turned most of the countiy over to 

their South Vietnamese counterparts and continued to operate 

only in the vicinity of Bien Hoa and Da Nang. 

Laos and Cambodia, 1968-72 

Until thie spring of 1972, when North Vietnam invaded the 

South, the Commando Hunt series continued in dry season and 

wet, as the Air Force fought its war in southern Laos. Over the 

years, mairauding aircraft, often responding to sensoir signals, 

claimed to have damaged or destroyed a vast number of cargoladen trucks, as many as 25,000 in a single dry season, and to 

have touched off tens of thousands of secondary explosions, 

which sewed as proof of successful attacks on supp1,y caches. 

Yet, these claims and the impact on the enemy defied verification. Cameras and most other airborne sensors could inot penetrate the jungle canopy; and with the passage of time, stronger 

defenses on the ground made it increasingly difficult fix intelligence patrols to move into the maze of roads, trails, waterways, 

pipelines, supply storage areas, and troop bivouacs of the Ho 

Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos. Improved aerial sensors like 

infrared detectors, radar, and low-light-level television proved 

effective over the more exposed portions of the trail; and ever 

more devadating firepower that included laser-guided bombs, 

40-mm cainnon instead of 20-mm, and a 105-mm howitzer installed in isome gunships increased the likelihood of destructive 

hits. Despite the greater potential for detection and destruction, 

comparatively few truck carcasses were seen and the level of 

70 
enemy activity in South Vietnam remained essentially constant. In art attempt to determine the effectiveness of the Commando Hunt campaigns, analysts carefully studied the patterns 

of sensor activation, listed as destroyed only those trucks seen 

to explode or burn, subtracted only that number from the estimated North Vietnamese inventory, and assigned an arbitrary 

weight of cargo, depending largely on the direction of travel, to 

each truck that air power eliminated. Unfortunately, even this 

analysis proved a better measure of effort than of results. 

Since an aura of uncertainty surrounded the calcula.tions of 

trucks and cargo destroyed, officials in the Department of Defense proposed a new target, manpower, that was judged more 

likely to aflkct the resolve of the North Vietnamese and their 

leadership. However, American intelligence had to locate the 

bivouac areas that the People’s Army of North Vietna.m used 

during the march southward before the B-52s that normally attacked trudk parks and supply depots could be directed against 

infiltrating troops. American officials believed that the impact 

of aerial interdiction could be multiplied if these areas were located and the bombing proved accurate. Other conimunist 

states, these analysts reasoned, would replace trucks and their 

cargo, with no real cost to North Vietnam, but the killing and 

wounding of infiltrating soldiers would exact a direct ]penalty, 

forcing the North Vietnamese and their leaders to reconsider 

the wisdom of continued aggression. During the testing period 

for the new concept of targeting, the bivouac sites proved as 

hard to find as other components of the trail network; results 

were at best inconclusive when the aerial interdiction campaign 

ended. 

Whether paying in lives or materiel, the North Vietnamese 

did not shrink from the cost of keeping the Ho Chi Mirih Trail 

operating. ]?art of that price entailed the deployment of more 

and deadlier antiaircraft weapons, along with their crews, to 

protect the logistics complex. During the spring of 1972, the 

proliferation of antiaircraft guns, the appearance of surface-toair missiles within Laos, and the more aggressive use of MiGs 

changed the nature of the air war over southern Laos. Air Force 

fighters had to escort missions against the trail, not only to 

suppress antiaircraft fire but also to deter the North Vietnamese interceptors, and gunships had to be fitted with jamming 

equipment to blind the radar directing the surface-to-air mis71 
siles. Despite such measures, the enemy succeeded for i3 time in 

driving the gunships, certainly the deadliest of truck killers, 

away fiom portions of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 

The main purpose of the air war in southern Laos was to disrupt the enemy’s efforts to mass troops and stockpile supplies 

for an assault timed to catch the Americans as their withdrawal from South Vietnam neared its completion. The campaign of interdiction the Air Force conducted in southern Laos 

was extended secretly and on a lesser scale into Cambodia in 

the spring of 1969. The Cambodian ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, in the hope of appearing neutral and thus preserving 

the independence of his nation, attempted to accommodate both 

the United States and North Vietnam. Taking advantalge of Sihanouk’s ambivalence, the Hanoi government established a 

supply line extending inland from the port of Sihanoukville to a 

complex of military bases and storage areas on Cambodian soil 

along the horder with South Vietnam. When a North Vietnamese defector pinpointed the location of the headquarters in 

Cambodia that directed operations along the border arid inside 

South Vietnam, General Abrams requested permission for an 

air attack. President Nixon approved a secret strike by B-52s, 

delivered on March 18, which, judging from the violent reaction 

when a reconnaissance patrol arrived at the scene by helicopter, may well have hit the intended target. This raid served as 

the precedent for a series of secret bombing attacks against the 

six North Vietnamese bases within Cambodia, a campaign that 

lasted 14 months and totaled 3,875 sorties. 

In keepiing with his policy of appeasing both sides, Prince Sihanouk did not object to the bombing of a region dominated by 

the communists and no longer under the control of his government, but he raised to the status of an embassy the Viet Cong 

diplomatic mission to Phnom Penh, his capital city, and made 

no move against the North Vietnamese supply line passing 

through Cambodia. A group of dissident Cambodian generals, 

headed by Lon Nol, took advantage of Sihanouk’s absence from 

the countqr and tried to put an end to the policy of accommodation by expelling the North Vietnamese from their bases. On 

March 18, 1970, the anniversary of the first of the secret strikes 

by B-52s7 Lon No1 declared the absent leader deposed and 

moved against the enemy. Resources failed to match determination, however; not only was Lon Nol’s army unable to defeat 

72 
the North Vietnamese and their Cambodian communist allies, 

his aggressiveness seemed likely to prod them into a counterattack that might well overrun the entire country. Since the 

bases located along the South Vietnamese border, besides 

threatening the American policy of Vietnamization and withdrawal, sustained operations against Lon Nol, President Nixon 

approved an invasion of this part of Cambodia. The American 

incursion, as the President preferred to call it, began on May 1 

and lasted until the end of June; South Vietnamese troops then 

took over, but American air operations continued. 

The American attack into Cambodia had both immediate and 

long-term military effects. The operation resulted in the destruction of a huge quantity of food and munitions stockpiled 

mainly for operations in South Vietnam, including 7,000 tons of 

rice and weapons-enough to equip 74 battalions with rifles 

and 25 battalions with mortars and machineguns. Estimates of 

the short-term impact on the enemy varied, but Kissinger concluded that the loss of food, ammunition, and weapons represented a 15-month setback for North Vietnamese plans. The 

cost in American lives totaled 338, with 1,525 wounded. Yet, 

even as it reaped these benefits for the near future, the United 

States assumed an abiding responsibility for the survival of the 

Lon No1 regime. The fate of the Khmer Republic, which Lon No1 

proclaimed at Phnom Penh, depended in large measure on the 

success of the South Vietnamese in preventing the reestablishment of the (destroyed bases. Unfortunately the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, in spite of American air support, proved 

unequal to the task. Supplied by the North Vietnamese, local 

communist :forces advanced steadily, eventually isolating Lon 

No17s capital except for airlift and the convoys, escorted by aircraft and makeshift gunboats, that forced their way up the 

Mekong River. The Cambodian army, hurriedly expanded, 

armed, and trained, never outgrew its dependence on American 

air power to hold the enemy at bay, and the air war in Cambodia, undertaken to complement the campaign of aerial interdiction in sout'hern Laos, continued after the United States and 

the two Vietnams had agreed to a cease-fire. 

In the United States, the political impact of the invasion was 

sudden and violent, but also subtle and long lasting. Lulled by 

the American withdrawals just ten days before the attack, the 

President had promised that another 150,000 troops would 

73 
leave South Vietnam within 12 months the antiwar movement 

erupted in outrage at this extension of the war. Not only did 

demonstrations disrupt college campuses throughout the nation, a number of government officials, ordinarily expected to 

support thie administration, declared their opposition and resigned or, like Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hiclkel, were 

dismissed. During an antiwar demonstration at Kent State 

University, a contingent of the Ohio National Guard, which the 

governor had mobilized to maintain order, fired into a crowd, 

killing fouir and wounding nine. 

The inwasion of Cambodia and the shootings at Kent State 

further split an already deeply divided nation. An estimated 

500,000 opponents of the war assembled in Washington, and, 

on the sarne day, 150,000 marched in San Francisco. The administration denounced those who demonstrated against the 

war, especially the students; the President’s supporteirs rallied 

to his came and, in the case of construction workers in New 

York City, clashed with the antiwar faction. The period of comparative h<armony that followed the announcement of Vietnamization and the first troop withdrawals vanished, although 

temporarily. Further reductions in American forces assigned to 

South Vietnam and the first steps toward an all-volunteer army 

restored the calm, but the sudden outburst of opposition triggered by the invasion of Cambodia cast a long shadow. 

Throughout the remainder of the war, President Nixon remained concerned about a resurgence of antiwar sentiment and 

its possible effect on Congress. His worries, moreover, were 

grounded :in fact, for the political aftermath of the invasion of 

Cambodia included the repeal of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 

1964, at most a symbolic protest of the way in which the war 

had metastasized, and enactment of the Cooper-Church amendment and tihe War Powers Act. 

The Cooper-Church amendment began as an immediate response to the Cambodian incursion. Senators John ,Sherman 

Cooper, a Republican from Kentucky, and Frank Church, a 

Democrat representing Idaho, offered an amendment, to military assistance legislation prohibiting the further use of American forces in Cambodia without the express consent of 

Congress. The Senate adopted the rider, but the House of Representatives refused. By year’s end, after months of debate, a 

defense appropriations act emerged containing a revised ver74 
sion of the a.mendment that ignored Cambodia, from which the 

American troops had withdrawn, and in effect forbade the introduction of ground forces into Thailand or Laos. 

Unlike thle Cooper-Church amendment, the War Powers Act 

from its inception addressed basic political questions rather 

than a transitory crisis like the invasion of Cambodia. Concern 

over the involvement of the nation in the Vietnam War and the 

expansion of that conflict, largely by executive action, caused 

Congress to assert greater control over the military aspects of 

the nation’s foreign policy. In October 1973, both the Senate 

and the House of Representatives passed legislation that required the ]?resident to report within forty-eight hours if he 

should commit American troops overseas or if he substantially 

enlarged an existing commitment. The military involvement 

would have to be terminated after sixty days, plus an additional thirty days for withdrawing the force, unless Congress 

decided otherwise. After warning that such a law would impose 

unconstitutional and dangerous restrictions on Presidential 

authority and seriously undermine this nation’s ability to act 

decisively aind convincingly in times of international crisis, 

President Njxon vetoed the legislation. Congress voted to override, however, and the War Powers Act became law. 

Less than a year after the invasion of Cambodia, South Vietnamese forces, with the encouragement of General Abrams, attacked Laos. From Khe Sanh, which American forces had 

reoccupied tlo serve as a supply base, the assault troclps advanced towaird the site of Tchepone, a village astride the Ho Chi 

Minh Trail that had long ago been abandoned and bombed to 

rubble. After reaching Tchepone and destroying the materiel 

stockpiled in the vicinity, the South Vietnamese planned to 

withdraw by way of the A Shau Valley, rooting out supply 

caches and disrupting the passage of men and cargo through 

that conduit for infiltration. The Cooper-Church amendment 

limited the degree of assistance that American forces could provide to air support and, as a result, the South Vietnamese divisions had to attack without their American advisers and air 

liaison parties. 

The attack, launched on February 8, 1971, was poorly 

planned and badly executed. Despite precautions designed to 

preserve secrecy, the North Vietnamese became aware, zit least 

in general terms, of the operation and redeployed their forces 

75 
accordingly. Moreover, planners at the headquarters of the 

Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, overestimated the 

ability of low-flying helicopters to survive on their own in the 

face of hostile antiaircraft fire, which proved far more intense 

than anticipated, and had to call for help from Air Force 

fighter-bombers and B-52s. The contribution of the Air Force 

varied from flak suppression so that helicopters could disembark their troops, to strikes against North Vietnamese infantry 

closing in on the outposts thus established, and ultimately to 

attacks on tanks bearing down on the retreating South Vietnamese. Bad weather hampered close air support by the 

fighter-bornbers, which on one occasion broke off their support 

of a beleaguered South Vietnamese strongpoint to participate 

in the attempted rescue of the crew of a downed F-4. Throughout the invasion, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam sought to avoid the kind of casualties that might 

undermine his nation’s support of the war, behaving much as 

his American counterpart had in the aftermath of Halmburger 

Hill. When the South Vietnamese leader judged that the losses 

were becoming unacceptable, he called a halt to the operation, a 

decision that left the invasion force scattered and vulnerable to 

the devastating North Vietnamese counterattack. Although a 

raiding party did land by helicopter near Tchepone to create an 

illusion of victory, the withdrawal became a rout as the enemy 

attacked, driving the South Vietnamese back across the border 

in headlong flight. The operation had attracted a North Vietnamese force of perhaps 40,000, with as many as 20,0100 killed 

or wounded, mostly victims of air attacks, thus easing the pressure on the Americans who had not yet left South Vietnam. 

However, the number of South Vietnamese killed and wounded 

equaled from a third to a half of the North Vietnamlese total, 

and the action only disrupted traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail 

temporarilly. According to the reckoning of General Ilavidson, 

an intelligence officer for Generals Westmoreland and Abrams, 

after no more than a few weeks the enemy again channeled 

men and cargo through the area around Tchepone. This latest 

operation in the campaign against the enemy’s suppky lines in 

southern Laos had proved inconclusive at best. 

The air war the Air Force waged in northern Laos resembled 

the fighting in Cambodia, as a hard-pressed ally came to rely 

more and more on American air power. The combat in northern 

76 
Laos flared sporadically on two fronts-the Plain of Jars and 

along the €10 Chi Minh Trail. On the Plain of Jars, the Meo 

tribesmen commanded by Vang Pao depended on aerial bombing to stop the annual dry season offensive launched by the 

communist forces, which over the years included an 1 ncreasingly larger proportion of North Vietnamese. Once this attack 

had lost momentum, Vang Pao advanced, trying to take advantage of the mobility of his irregulars to isolate the strongpoints 

opposing him and force a withdrawal by an enemy shaken by 

bombing and, because of air strikes against his supply lines, 

desperately short of food and ammunition. To the south, nearer 

the border with South Vietnam, other troops loyal to the government of Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma mounted an occasional threat to the western fringes of the Ho Chi Minh Trail 

but were unable to interfere with the traffic it carried. 

The fortuines of war fluctuated with the season. At the onset 

of dry weather, usually in November or December, the Pathet 

Lao, spearheaded by North Vietnamese soldiers, pushed boldly 

onto the Plain of Jars. The government at Hanoi, unwilling bo 

ignore the real prize, South Vietnam, did not divert enough 

men and material to crush the Meo; and by the time the rains 

began falling in May or June, the communists were bloodied, 

exhausted, and eager to fall back to their supply bases nearer 

North Vietnam. Vang Pao’s irregulars materialized around the 

enemy’s outposts at the beginning of the rainy season when the 

annual retreat was about to begin. The subsequent pursuit produced varying results in 1970: the Meo reoccupied almost the 

entire Plain of Jars and continued until Vang Pao’s tribesmen 

were utterly spent, the communists had replenished themselves, the skies had cleared, and the cycle was about to begin 

again. Over the years this process worked against the Mleo general; since he obtained his soldiers exclusively from among his 

mountain people, the recruiting base was limited and suhject to 

steady attrition, forcing him to turn increasingly to boys and 

old men. Reinforcements might come from elsewhere in Laos, 

but the royal army had thus far shown little aggressiveiness in 

its forays toward the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 

The situation seemed so bleak early in the dry season of 

1968-1969 that Souvanna in June 1969 decided to make public 

both the presence of North Vietnamese troops in his country 

and the American bombing along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and in 

77 
northern Laos. The Laotian premier was careful, however, to 

point out that American air power was the only weapon that 

could hold the North Vietnamese in check. In commenting on 

Souvanna’s statement, which aroused no public contrcwersy in 

the Unitedl States where the Nixon administration ‘had just 

taken office, the Department of State drew a distinction between the two air wars being fought in Laos: operations against 

the trail were an extension of the war in South Vietnam and 

would continue as long as there was fighting in that country; 

those in tbe northern part of the kingdom were directed against 

the North ’Vietnamese intruders and might end in the unlikely 

event the Hanoi government withdrew its forces. Souvanna 

failed in his attempt to dramatize his nation’s plight and gain 

international support, but the immediate military crisis abated 

and the annual pattern of warfare reasserted itself. 

Because air power was an effective means of checking the 

North Vietnamese and economical in terms of the loss of American life, thle Air Force undertook various measures to improve 

its own operations and those of the Laotians. During 1,969, the 

Royal Laotian Air Force, recovered from the effects of the mutiny of three years earlier, received new equipment like the 

AC-47 gunship and underwent a housecleaning as the American air attach6 at Vientiane tried to suppress smugglling. The 

misuse of aircraft for this purpose could not be ended, but it 

was made more difficult by circulating a schedule of all1 administrative flights among the senior officers in the hope that those 

who were lhonest would take action against the obviou,S abuses, 

such as apparently purposeless flights to areas dealing in gold 

or drugs, .while those who were not honest would join in demanding greater control because the profits were not being divided equailly. In addition, Air Force instructors began training 

Meos to fly T-28s in support of Vang Pao’s troops, and these pilots demonstrated a willingness to run almost any risk to help 

their fellovv tribesmen on the ground. 

In general, the weapons and tactical refinements employed 

by the Air Force reflected the gravity of the military situation 

and the dependence of the ground forces on air power. The use 

of laser-guided bombs increased and would increase even more 

as the years passed. The number of forward air controllers flying in Laos grew, and some began using jets instead of 0-1s. To 

facilitate the diversion of fighter-bombers to meet emergencies 

78 
in northern Laos, the Seventhll'hirteenth Air Force distributed 

lists of standby targets with enough information on each so 

that a pilot arriving on the scene would have a clear idea of the 

target and its defenses. In February 1970, with a communist 

dry-season offensive gathering momentum, B-52s flew their 

first bombing mission in northern Laos, a disappointing strike 

that produced 130 secondary explosions but, according to a reconnaissance team that examined the target, only 20 enemy 

dead. In May of that year, F-4s again began standing alert at 

Udorn in Thailand, the revival of a practice abandoned by Gen. 

William W. Momyer, when he commanded the Seventh Air 

Force. Other aircraft that saw action in northern Laos included 

the AC-119K and AC-130 gunships; the OV-10, a twin-turboprop aircraft designed by North American Rockwell for observation and armed reconnaissance in counterinsurgency operations; and for a time in 1972, the F-111. 

Neither the arsenal of aerial weapons nor the use of Combat 

Skyspot and other bombing aids to improve accuracy could do 

AC-130 Spectre gunships destroyed more trucks on the Ho Chi 

Minh Trail road network in Laos than did any other weapon system. 

79 
more than buy time, and even this delaying action became more 

difficult. As the American withdrawals from South Vietnam 

continued, fewer sorties were available for attacks in northern 

Laos. The North Vietnamese, moreover, began sendiing MiGs 

against American aircraft operating in the region. The first intervention of this kind, on December 17, 1971, resulted in the 

downing of three F-4s, victims of surprise and the inexperience 

of their crews. Afterward, when the Soviet-built interceptors 

approached, propeller-driven aircraft like the gunships or 

OV-10s retreated westward and F-4s jettisoned their bombs to 

engage the enemy. During February and March of the following 

year, Air Force fighter pilots shot down three MiGs. 

By the time the MiGs appeared, American air power had 

once again halted the annual communist advance, but the invasion of South Vietnam absorbed the sorties that would otherwise have supported Vang Pao’s advance and harried the North 

Vietnamese retreat. By the spring of 1972, air support had become even more important to the Meo general, whose army was 

on the verge of collapse after years of unceasing attrition. Vang 

Pao tried to rally his exhausted force and inspire it to further 

action, but the physical and emotional price exacted from the 

Meo over the years proved too great. The subsequent battles 

had to be fought mainly by an improved royal army, which performed well against the Pathet Lao and, when sufficient aircraft could be spared from higher priority operations in South 

Vietnam and North Vietnam, could hold its own even against 

the North Vietnamese. Victory remained elusive, however; like 

the fighting across the border in the two Vietnams, the struggle 

in northern Laos ended in a cease-fire. 

North Vietnam, 1968-72 

Throughout the period of Vietnamization and withdrawal, 

the air Wi2r continued over North Vietnam, though on a lesser 

scale than the Rolling Thunder campaign, which ended in 1968. 

Easily the most daring operation of this period was the Son Tay 

raid of November 1970, designed to liberate some of the Americans who were prisoners of the North Vietnamese. The treatment andl ultimate freedom of these captives, mostly airmen 

shot down over the North, had become the object of public and 

governmental concern within the United States. Like the North 

80 
Koreans before them, the North Vietnamese sought to use their 

prisoners for purposes of propaganda, in the case of the Hanoi 

government both to reinforce the national sense of purpose and 

to gain symp4athy throughout the world. They paraded ca;ptured 

pilots through the streets of recently bombed towns to demonstrate that the Americans, in fact, paid a price for the damage 

they inflicted and to channel popular emotion that might otherwise have been directed against the communist authorities, 

who demanded a seemingly endless sacrifice of time, weal.th, labor, and life itself. Again as in Korea, torture and mistreatment 

produced filmed “confessions” of war crimes, usually delivered 

with expressions or gestures which made it clear that the statement had been made under duress. 

As the number of prisoners increased, they began to communicate secretly. One of the methods of secret communication 

was suggested by Capt. Carlyle “Smitty” Harris, who rt, amembered a lesson he had been taught in Air Force survival school. 

An instructoir there had told him that by tapping on walls 

Americans imprisoned during the Korean War had been able to 

exchange information. Harris introduced to the prisons of 

North Vietnam this tap code, which was based on the image of 

a square grid containing twenty-five letters of the alphabet (K 

was excluded), beginning at the upper left corner. A series of 

taps directed the listener down the grid to a particulair row; 

then came a pause and other taps that led to the right and a 

specific letter. In this way, and through improvised sign language and carefully passed notes, the American captives overcame isolation and organized themselves, searching out the 

highest ranking officer in each compound so that he could take 

command. Anyone who did assume command could expect to be 

severely tortured if the prison authorities discovered his role, as 

they did from time to time, and those caught communicating 

might also be punished. Despite the risks, the constant efTort to 

communicate and organize helped the prisoners maintain their 

sanity through years of captivity in what proved to be America’s longest war. 

At the end of that conflict, the number of captured and missing Americans totaled 3,000; of these, 23 members of the Air 

Force were known to have died while in confinement. Capt. 

Lance P. Sijain was one of those who perished. Shot down over 

North Vietnam on November 9,1967, he avoided capture for six 

81 
weeks. After falling into the enemy’s hands, the emaciated and 

injured pilot escaped into the jungle while being taken to 

prison, only to be recaptured in a matter of hours andl tortured. 

He endured weeks of mistreatment before dying in Hanoi’s Hoa 

Lo prison, which the Americans held there called tlne “Hanoi 

Hilton.” Sijan was the first graduate of the Air Force Academy 

to be awarded the Medal of Honor. 

Other <attempts to escape from captivity in North Vietnam 

were no more successful than Sijan’s. It was possible to break 

out of coiifinement, but, as had been true during the Korean 

War, a towering American simply could not lose himself among 

much smaller Orientals and vanish into an essentially hostile 

society. Only an American rescue team from outside North Vietnam seemed to have a chance of freeing the prisoners, and 

during the summer of 1970 a joint task group was formed in 

the United States to attempt just such a rescue. The likeliest 

prospects for liberation were the 55 Americans held at Son Tay, 

some 25 miles from Hanoi, for their prison compound nestled 

beside a lbend in a river that facilitated identification from the 

air and interfered with access by the troops garrisoned nearby. 

In command of the rescue effort was Brig. Gen. Leroy J. Manor, 

an Air Force veteran of some 275 fighter missions in Southeast 

Asia who trained air commandos at Eglin Air Force I3ase, Florida; Col. Arthur “Bull” Simons, an Army officer experienced in 

special operations, led the actual assault. 

Aerial photographs of Son Tay enabled the force to construct 

not only a detailed tabletop model of the objective, but also a 

full-scale reproduction made of wood and canvas thak was disassembled whenever an orbiting Soviet intelligence satellite 

came within range. Using an airfield where the Doolittle raiders had prepared for their 1942 attack on Japan, a force of volunteers trained to penetrate deep into North Vietnam, land one 

helicopter in the prison yard and two others outside the walls, 

free the prisoners, and fly them to safety in Thailand. On the 

night of November 20, when the assault force arrived at Son 

Tay, one helicopter deposited its troops at the wrong building 

and triggered a firefight with the troops quartered there. One 

of the other helicopters crash-landed in the compound and the 

other set, down safely outside the walls; both disgorged their 

troops, who breached the wall, but found no prisoners. The assault force regrouped and withdrew in the two undamaged heli82 
copters, returning to Thailand with one man slightly wounded 

and another hobbled by a broken ankle. One of the F-105s protecting the raiders from surface-to-air missiles was shot down 

by that very type of weapon, but the two-man crew survived 

and was rescued. There were no losses among the one hundred 

or more carrier aircraft that staged a demonstration off the 

coast, dropping flares and feinting toward shore to divert attention from the aircraft approaching Son Tay from an inland direction. 

The compound at Son Tay had been empty since Juby, when 

the North Vietnamese transferred the captives as flood waters 

lapped at the base of the prison’s walls. Enemy fire and mechanical failures had frustrated low-altitude aerial reconnaissance during the intervening four months, but two important 

and contradictory pieces of information had surfaced. High-altitude photographs revealed signs that the prison might he occupied, but a list of prisoner-of-war compounds smuggled out of 

Hanoi had not included Son Tay. Unfortunately, there was no 

time for further low-altitude photography from drones ; while 

visiting Hanoi, an American citizen opposed to the war had received a list of five captives who had died recently, prompting 

concern that the health of all the prisoners was deteriorating, 

making prompt action seem all the more important. The raid 

therefore went ahead to take advantage of a combination of 

good flying weather and a suitable phase of the moon: conditions that would not occur again for at least a month. Doubts 

about the presence of the prisoners at Ton Say remained within 

the organizaition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; when Manor dispatched Sim.ons and the raiding party, everyone on the operation was certain that fifty-five Americans lay confined in the 

darkness at the bend in the river. 

American reaction to the raid ranged from tributes to the obvious heroism of the assault force and expressions of concern 

for the prisoners to condemnations of American intelligence for 

not realizing that the compound had been abandoned. Even the 

administration seemed divided. Whereas President Nixon saluted the participants as heroes and hailed the operation as a 

success because it reached the objective and returned without 

loss of life, Inis vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, complained of 

the faulty intelligence that had allowed the raid to go ahead. 

Dr. Kissinger, who later would characterize the operation as 

83 
an egregious failure of intelligence, suggested sarcastically that 

the force should have brought back something, perhaps a baby 

water buffalo. The person to whom he spoke apparently missed 

the edge to these words, assumed that an animal of this kind 

had been brought back, and launched a futile investigation to 

locate it. 

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese reacted to the raid by consolidating in larger prisons the captives from isolated sites like 

Son Tay, lbut this worked to the long-term advantage of the 

prisoners by strengthening the organizational structure among 

them and making it easier to communicate with and tlo sustain 

one another. Among the more encouraging items of news circulating from cell to cell was the story of the small group that had 

penetratedl the heavily defended heartland of North Vietnam 

and attacked the compound at Son Tay. 

After Rolling Thunder ended, American officials expected 

that unopposed aerial reconnaissance, rather than daring raids 

like the descent on Son Tay, would be the usual purpose of missions over the North. Unfortunately, aerial reconnaissance 

proved far from routine. In November and December 3.968, two 

Air Force RF-4Cs and an escorting F-4 were shot down over 

the North, along with two Navy aircraft. The missile batteries 

afterward fell silent, lending substance to the Nixon administration’s belief that North Vietnamese negotiators at l?aris had 

at least tacitly guaranteed the safe passage of unarmed reconnaissance craft over their country. The government at Hanoi 

not only denied that any such agreement existed but reinforced 

the denial by again firing at the American jets, shooting down 

one in 1969 and another early the following year. In February 

1970, after the second downing, the President directed that 

fighter-bombers escort the reconnaissance flights, as had been 

done during the last two months of 1968, with the accompanying F-4s authorized to retaliate instantly against any gun battery or missile site that opened fire. A duel ensued between the 

escorts, whose work of retaliation came to be reinforced by 

strikes launched especially for the purpose, and the hostile gunners, as Air Force and Navy aircraft carried out sixty so-called 

protective reaction attacks during the balance of 1970, twice 

that number in 1971, and ninety during the first three months 

of 1972. Usually the protective reaction strikes hit gun or missile batteries that had tried to down reconnaissance craft over 

84 
the North, but beginning in 1971 they also were directed 

against those that fired on American aircraft attacking targets 

on the Ho Chi Minh Trail within range of weapons on North Vietnamese soil. 

As 1971 drew to an end, aerial reconnaissance produced 

mounting evidence that North Vietnam was preparing for a 

major offensive. President Nixon applied the principle of protective reaction to this situation by authorizing a series of attacks 

on a variety of targets in southern North Vietnam. Beginning 

on the day after Christmas, American aircraft launched five 

days of strikes, totaling more than 1,000 sorties, against airfields, oil storage areas, surface-to-air missile sites, supply 

dumps, and truck parks associated with the buildup. Again in 

February, when North Vietnamese artillery began firing at 

South Vietnamese outposts across the demilitarized zone, 

Nixon invoked protective reaction and approved two clays of 

strikes against those batteries. 

Despite the changing definition of protective reaction, Gen. 

John D. Lavelle, commander of the Seventh Air Force, went too 

far in applying the concept. Confident that he was carrying out 

the implied, if not openly expressed, wishes of his superiors, 

Lavelle interpreted the policy of protective reaction to include 

attacks on potential threats to American aircraft like the airfields that MiGs might use, the radars that might control their 

interceptions, and not only surface-to-air missile sites but also 

the dumps where missiles were stored and the trucks that carried them to the launch sites. Lavelle believed not only that the 

North Vietnamese air defenses formed a unified threat, but 

also that the radar which transmitted or the guns which fired 

during one rnission remained a danger for all subsequent sorties, even though the hostile site might remain silent on a particular day. Consequently, he directed his pilots to assume, in 

effect, that the radar-controlled defenses were always functioning and never to report an absence of enemy activity. Some of 

Lavelle’s suhordinates pushed this reasoning to the limit and 

falsely reported enemy opposition to justify the need to retaliate. Instances of false reporting caught the conscience of a 

young sergeant in the Air Force, Lonnie D. Franks, who 

thought that falsification of the record was wrong, whatever the 

circumstances, and wrote a letter to Senator Harold Hughes, a 

Democrat from Iowa, describing what was going on. Hughes 

85 
turned the information over to the Air Force, the Inspector 

General investigated, and Gen. John D. Ryan, at the time the 

Air Force Chief of Staff, accepted Lavelle’s immediate retirement for personal and health reasons. Ironically, Lavelle’s successor, Gen. John W. Vogt, received a pep talk from President 

Nixon, who urged him to be more aggressive than the officer he 

was replacing. 

In the autumn of 1972, the Armed Services Committees of 

the House and Senate conducted separate inquiries into the unauthorized bombing. The Senate committee found, in effect, 

that the punishment the Air Force meted out to Lavelle-retirement in the grade of lieutenant general rather than as a 

four-star general-was insufficient. As a result, he assumed the 

retired rank of major general, but this demotion did not affect 

his retirement pay, which was based on the highest grade that 

he had achieved while on active duty, that of general. In contrast, the House committee decided that the bombing missions 

dispatched by Lavelle had been not only proper but essential. 

Lavelle’s involvement in the unauthorized air strikes became 

public at a time when the prestige of the American military was 

declining. The My Lai massacre, in which Americah soldiers 

had mistreated and murdered unarmed South Vietnamese vilGen. John D. Lavelle was relieved of command of Seventh 

Air Force in March 1972, after 

an Air Force sergeant in Thailand wrote his senator about 

false reporting to disguise illegitimate raids in North Vietnam. 

86 
Gen. John W. Vogt, Jr., 

reached Saigon in April 1972 

to replace General Lavelle as 

commander of Seventh Air 

Force; by then North Vietnam 

had already launched a massive invasion of South Vietnam. 

lagers, had been revealed and the atrocity, as well as attempts 

to conceal it, had been investigated. The so-called Pentagon Pupers, g collection of official documents relating to American involvement in the conflict and a narrative of decision-making by 

the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, had appeared and 

cast doubt on the wisdom and motives of civilian officials and 

military leaders. New reports of racial strife, drug abuse, and 

fraud within the services came to light with sickening frequency. Yet another blow would fall in July 1973, when a former oflicer in the Strategic Air Command, Hal M. Knight, 

revealed the secret bombing of Cambodia, begun in 1969 on order from the White House, and the system of false reporting 

that had thus far concealed fourteen months of B-52 strikes. 

No wonder that the American public lost enthusiasm for a war 

that aeemed to corrupt even those who fought it. 

Invasion Blocked 

The succession of protective reaction strikes that began in 

December 1971, including the unauthorized attacks for which 

General Lavelle was blamed, appeared to have served their 

purpose. As the winter of 1971-1972 gave way to spring, the 

Nixon administration was confident that its use of air power 

had forestalled a North Vietnamese offensive. Such was not the 

case, however, for on March 30, 1972, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, 

the victor at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and North Vietnam’s most 

prominent military leader, sent almost his entire army-in87 
itially 125,000 troops supported by tanks and artillery-knifing 

into South. Vietnam. After striking first in northernmost South 

Vietnam and advancing toward Quang Tri City and Hue, the 

enemy att4acked from the triborder region, where the tlerritories 

of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia converged, toward the 

town of Kontum and from the bases he had reestablished in 

Cambodia toward An LOC and ultimately Saigon. 

Seen from Hanoi, the situation was never more promising; 

supplies were in place, Giap’s soldiers were ready, the remaining American ground forces were largely support and advisory 

units, and the South Vietnamese had given way to panic in the 

last stages of their retreat from Laos a year earlier. Moreover, 

the United States would hold a Presidential election in November 1972, and a communist victory in the spring might have the 

same effect as the Tet offensive of 1968 and drive the Chief Executive from office. Indeed, the antiwar demonstrations ignited 

by the invasion of Cambodia in 1970 may have made Nixon appear even more vulnerable than Johnson had been. Whether 

the offensive represented an attempt to crush South Vietnam 

or merely to advance a good distance along the road to ultimate 

victory (arid the actual objective has for years remained the 

subject of debate among Americans), the prospects for success 

seemed excellent. 

The leaders at Hanoi had a distorted view, however. Although Nixon continued to worry about the antiwar movement 

and its possible impact on Congress, he had survived the agitation that fbllowed the invasion of Cambodia and the shootings 

at Kent State University and seemed increasingly likely to win 

reelection. Similarly, Thieu remained in control in South Vietnam despite the manifestations of discontent that had surfaced 

as a consequence of the previous year’s severe casualties in 

Laos. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam had suffered a defeat there, but it remained intact, was absorbing morle American equiprnent and learning to use it, and when fighting on 

South Vietnamese soil would benefit from the presence of the 

American advisers on whom so many of the commanders had 

come to depend. Moreover, Giap turned his back on the very 

tactics that had enabled the Tet offensive of 1968 to demoralize 

the American people and the Johnson administration. By 

launching ia series of conventional attacks tied to roads and dependent on artillery support, the North Vietnamese general ig88 
nored the fact that his People’s Army and the Viet Cong, who 

played almost no role in this latest offensive, were most mobile 

before the battle and least so after the fighting began. Giap’s 

forces had an uncanny ability to mass men and supplics for a 

surprise attack, but once the battle was joined, they lacked the 

communications to shift forces and take advantage of unexpected changes in the tactical situation. Indeed, if the North Vietnamese could not overwhelm a stoutly defended position at 

the outset, they tended to attack again and again rather than 

probe for weaknesses elsewhere in order to bypass and neutralize the bastion. This habit immobilized them and made them 

especially vulnerable to air strikes. 

When North Vietnam invaded, the United States tried to 

support the defenders with the aerial strength already in the 

theater, including about 300 Air Force aircraft of all types, 

some deploying across the Pacific in response to the enemy 

buildup that, triggered the recent protective reaction strikes. As 

the Army of‘the Republic of Vietnam struggled to contain the 

offensive and the South Vietnamese Air Force quickly demonstrated that it could not cope with the emergency, Air Force 

flight and ground crews intensified their efforts and succeeded 

in launching more than 500 combat sorties per day. 

For a time in early April, the defense of the northern provinces was subordinated to the attempted rescue of an Air Force 

officer, Lt. Col. Iceal E. Hambleton, the sole survivor of the sixman crew of an EB-66 electronic warfare aircraft shot down 

over the battlefield. Disregarding the perilous situation of the 

South Vietnamese forces, Seventh Air Force headquarters arranged to suspend artillery fire into the region where he had 

parachuted and diverted to the task of finding and retrieving 

him aircraft, that otherwise would have been attacking in support of the hard-pressed South Vietnamese. Surviving on whatever berries and vegetables he was able to find (on one foraging 

expedition, he stabbed to death a North Vietnamese who attacked him), Hambleton followed the instructions he received 

on the hand-held radio that was a part of his survival equipment, avoidLed capture, and made his way down a stream to 

meet a patrol of South Vietnamese marines who brought him to 

safety. 

The eleven-day rescue effort cost the lives of nine Americans 

whose aircraft were shot down while searching for Haimbleton 

89 
or trying to pick him up and deprived a desperate South Vietnamese division of air and artillery support at a critical time. 

The American adviser attached to this unit warned that the division’s officers resented the obvious fact that the Seventh Air 

Force would risk the lives of thousands of South Vietnamese 

soldiers to rescue one of its own officers. Nevertheless, the division survived the immediate threat, if only to collapse soon afterward, and however demoralizing the rescue may have been 

for the South Vietnamese, the concern the Air Force showed for 

members of its aircrews helped sustain their morale. 

When the combined efforts of the American squadrons in 

Southeast Asia and the air and ground forces of the Republic of 

Vietnam could not stop the three-pronged offensive, President 

Nixon approved the increase of American aerial strength in 

Southeast Asia without reinserting ground forces. From the beginning of ithe invasion until the end of June, the total number 

of Air Force aircraft in the region increased from 1,153 to 1,426 

as the equivalent of 15 squadrons deployed there, including the 

B-52 force that expanded from 83 aircraft to 202 andl, by the 

time the war ended, flew almost 3,000 sorties in a single 

month. To sustain the B-52s and the tactical fighters: the Air 

Force during the spring of 1972 deployed another 110 KC-135 

aerial tankers, raising the total number to 187. The Navy dispatched four additional aircraft carriers to the Gulf of Tonkin, 

bringing the number there to six, the largest concentration 

since the Vietnam War began. The Marine Corps, which had 

withdrawn all its air and ground forces except for a sm,all number of advisers, sent a total of four squadrons from airfields in 

Japan to Dla Nang and Bien Hoa. Concerned over the need to 

coordinate his operations with the ambassador in Laos, Vogt 

had earlier sought exclusive control over air operations, not 

only over the two Vietnams, but throughout Southeast Asia. 

President Mixon seemed agreeable but never sent the necessary 

instructions, and the old system prevailed. Since no marines 

were fighting on the ground in 1972, the newly arrived Marine 

Corps squadrons encountered no conflicting priorities in carrying out the assignments that the Air Force general gave them. 

As the fighting on the ground intensified, all the American 

aerial might be focused on saving South Vietnam. The air war 

in southern Laos ended and operations in Cambodia and northern Laos received only the surplus sorties from the systematic 

90 
By the spring of 1968, when this photo of a laser-guided bomb (under 

the wing of an F-4) was taken at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, tests 

indicated that the new weapon was ready for use in Southeast Asia. 

During the next four years, F-4 aircrews gained considerable experience with the weapon in Laos, but only when bombing resumed in 

North Vietnam in 1972 could laser-guided bombs attack major 

bridges. 

campaign that extended from battlefields like An LOC, Kontum 

City, and Quang Tri City to the railroads, ports, and bridges of 

North Vietnam. The general strategy was to bomb the offensive 

to a standstill by killing as many as possible of the advancing 

enemy soldiers, while at the same time disrupting the forward 

movement of the supplies and reinforcements needed to sustain 

the operation. 

Unlike President Johnson, who preferred close personal control over individual targets, President Nixon tended, with some 

exceptions, to authorize strikes against areas or classes of targets and leave the details to his military commanders. Blows 

against targets in Hanoi and Haiphong required clearance from 

the White House, as they had during Rolling Thunder, and the 

network of irrigation dikes in North Vietnam remained exempt 

91 
from attack, although the occasional stray bomb that missed an 

antiaircraft site or other target and exploded near a dike emboldened North Vietnamese propagandists to level charges that 

the United States was waging war on the civilian populace by 

trying to drain the rice paddies. Nixon approved not only attacks on the rail line leading from China but also the mining of 

North Vietnamese harbors, an action that he felt he could take 

with little or no risk of a Soviet or Chinese reaction. EIecause of 

the rivalry between the two communist states, which had resulted in border clashes as recently as 1969, each was wary of 

openly aiding North Vietnam or anything else that might encourage t'he United States to improve its relations with the 

other, even though inaction might delay what both saw as the 

inevitable triumph of communism in Southeast Asia. 

"he aerial interdiction campaign against North Vietnam began April 6 with attacks in the southern part of the country 

and rapidly expanded. On April 16, B-52s, escorted b,y fighters 

and aircraft specializing in electronic countermeasures and 

suppression of surface-to-air missiles, bombed the fuel storage 

tanks at Haiphong, setting fires that, reflected from cloud and 

smoke, were visible from the bridge of an aircraft carrier 110 

miles away. Shortly afterward, carrier aircraft joined Air Force 

fighter-boimbers in battering a tank farm and a warehouse complex on the outskirts of Hanoi. When these attacks failed to 

slow the offensive, naval aircraft began mining the h#arbors on 

May 8, and two days later the administration extended the aerial interdiction campaign, formerly Freedom Train but now designated Linebacker, throughout all of North Vietnam. 

The President approved this double-edged escalation even 

though he intended to visit the Soviet Union, North Vietnam's 

principal supplier, later in May for a major conference, assuming correctly that General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev would 

not cancel the meeting at a time immediately following Nixon's 

visit to Peiping, when the United States and China were drawing closer. President Nixon chose to lay mines and intensify the 

bombing tlo deprive the Soviet Union of any propaganda advantage that might accrue if South Vietnam collapsed during his 

trip to Moscow. This did not happen, for he also correctly 

judged that air power could save the day, for the mining and 

other forms of interdiction, combined with aerial intervention 

92 
on the battlefields of South Vietnam, brought the North Vietnamese offensive to a halt. 

In terms of tactics employed and results obtained, Linebacker was a vast improvement over Rolling Thunder. During 

Linebacker, American aircraft attacked targets like airfields, 

powerplants, and radio stations that did not fall into th,e category of interdiction, but the main objective remained the disruption of the flow of supplies and reinforcements to the units 

fighting in t’he South. Laser-guided bombs proved effective, especially against bridges, severing the bridge at Thanh Hoa, 

which had siirvived Rolling Thunder, and the highway and railroad bridges over the Red River at Hanoi, dropped in the earlier aerial ca.mpaign, but repaired. At both places, however, the 

enemy agaiin made use of alternate means of crossing the 

streams, usually traveling at night on ferries or movable pontoon bridges. Electronic jamming and clouds of reflecting chaff, 

as in Rolling Thunder, confused the radars controlling the surface-to-air missiles and the antiaircraft guns. North Vietnamese MiGs, as they had during Rolling Thunder, gave battle 

throughout :Linebacker but failed to gain control of the sky, in 

part because American radar, whether airborne, at sea, or in 

Thailand, detected the interceptors rising from the runways, 

enabling controllers to direct Air Force F- 4s and Navy fighters 

against them. During the war in Southeast Asia, both the pilot 

and the weapon systems officer received full credit for each aerial victory. Because of changes in these pairings, two backseaters, Capts. Charles B. DeBellevue and Jeffrey s. Feinstein, but 

only one pil.ot, Capt. Richard S. “Steve” Ritchie, became Air 

Force aces; all three of these officers made their fifth kill during 

Linebacker, which lasted until October 1972, when the President, encouraged by progress in the truce negotiations, restricted the bombing to southern North Vietnam. 

Despite the damage inflicted in North Vietnam by Linebacker air ciperations, interdiction tended to be more effective 

closer to the battlefield. Within North Vietnam, the road net 

was more extensive, labor more readily available for repair and 

construction , and alternate routes were already well established. Nearer the advancing troops, supply lines narrowed, as 

though entering a funnel that ended at the front-line unit, alternate routes had to be built from scratch, and few civilians 

were at hand to supplement the work of the military engineers. 

93 
The defenses remained dangerous, however, especially when 

the SA-7 heat-seeking missile, a weapon carried anti fired by 

an individual soldier, joined crew-served guns and missiles in 

protecting the invasion forces. 

The other purpose of the air war-inflicting casualties on the 

advancing enemy-was pursued on all three fronts. The deadliest aerial weapons were B-52s7 gunships, and fighter-bombers 

using laser-guided weapons, the last especially effective against 

artillery iin the northern provinces of South Vietnam. On that 

front, the invaders drove the South Vietnamese from Quang Tri 

City on M:ay 1; its capture the high-water mark for the North 

Vietnamese. The attacking North Vietnamese trapped several 

American advisers and senior South Vietnamese officers in the 

city, but four Air Force HH-53 helicopters and their escort of 

A-1s succeeded in snatching them from the very hands of the 

enemy. Despite heavy losses in the area between Quang Tri 

City and Hue, where the North Vietnamese had concentrated 

their antiaircraft defenses, Air Force fighter-bombers used laser-guided bombs to attack bridges and artillery positions, 

slowing the enemy’s advance and reducing the severity of his 

artillery barrages, so that the South Vietnamese could regroup. 

On May 18, when amphibious tanks and infantry crossed the 

last river barrier before Hue and moved against the city, 

fighter-bombers destroyed 18 of the vehicles with laser-guided 

bombs anld killed some 300 soldiers. The North Vietnamese 

drive bogged down, only to be renewed five days later, but air 

power again intervened, enabling the defenders to force the enemy back i~cross the river. 

Success in defending Hue inspired a counterattack, launched 

on June 28, to recapture Quang Tri City. Although B-52s and 

fighter-bombers cleared the way for the advancing South Vietnamese, P’resident Thieu tried to avoid using aircraft against 

the North Vietnamese entrenched in the city itself, hoping to 

minimize the damage to the houses there so that displaced 

families could return to their own dwellings instead of becoming dependent on the government for shelter. Unfortunately, an 

infantry attack floundered in the streets of the town, and B-52s 

had to join in the sort of destructive pounding that South Vietnam’s president had hoped to avoid. By mid-September, the ruins of Quang Tri City were under South Vietnamese control, 

and the threat to the northern provinces had ended. 

94 
In the meantime, B-52s helped blunt the other two attacks. 

At Kontum City in the highlands, John Paul Vann, am officer 

retired from the U.S. Army and now a civilian adviser to the 

South Vietnamese, informally assumed command of the defenses, manipulating air strikes and pulling back from indefensible ground to shorten the lines and make the most efficient 

use of the troops available to him. As the North Vietnamese advanced on Kontum City, they encountered strong resistance at 

Polei Kleng and attacked by night but came under attack when 

an Air Force AC-130 gunship responded to the call for help. 

The aircraft mounted a 105-mm howitzer, which went into action after tlhe sensor operators located the sources of thLe heaviest North Vietnamese fire. The deadly aerial barrage broke up 

the attack, and saved Polei Kleng, if only temporarily. At Kontum City, EL52s did what the gunship had done at Polei Kleng, 

although fighter-bombers and South Vietnamese A-35's added 

their firepower and American and South Vietnamese transports delivered supplies to the troops on the ground. Early in 

the battle for the town, a gamble paid off when the defenders 

fell back so that a carefully timed deluge of high explosives 

from B-52s, invisible in the substratosphere, could c<atch the 

enemy as hie moved forward. The North Vietnamese succeeded, 

however, iin cutting the roads leading into Kontum City. As 

long as the airfield could be used, South Vietnamese C-123s 

landed cargo, but when the attackers began raking the runway 

with direct fire, American C-130s had to supply the defenders 

by parachute. When the battle approached a climax, South Vietnamese ,4-37s joined Air Force fighter-bombers arid Army 

helicopter gunships in destroying Soviet-built tanks, but the 

battering by the B-52s weakened the enemy, so that South Vietnamese forces could check his advance and by the end of May 

begin expelling him from the captured portions of the town. 

The defense of An LOC, considered the gateway to Saigon, 

closely resembled the battle for Kontum City. At both places 

the People's Army tried stubbornly to seize a stronghold that 

could easily have been neutralized and bypassed, while Americans orchestrated the defenses-Vann at Kontum City and 

Army Maj. Gen. James F. Hollingsworth, the senior adviser to 

the local corps commander, at An LOC. Hollingsworth realized, 

as did Vann, that he had devastating aerial firepower at his 

disposal, provided the South Vietnamese could hold on long 

95 
enough to force the enemy to mass and present worthwhile targets. ‘You hold, and I’ll do the killing,” the general reportedly 

told the South Vietnamese, and largely because of the B-52s, 

air power killed North Vietnamese on a scale that disheartened 

them and disrupted their plans. Airlift proved critical in enabling the defenders to cling to the ruins of An LOC, since they 

could be supplied only by parachute. The available drop zones 

were small, however, and the antiaircraft weapons were dangerous, none more so than the SA-7 heat-seeking missiles. Until radar became available in May to direct the parachute 

deliveries, as much as two-thirds of the cargo dropped from Air 

Force C-130s came down in enemy territory. At the tirne when 

the danger to An LOC was greatest, aircraft swarmed in the 

skies overhead; unexpected fighter-bombers arrived, causing 

controllers to reschedule strikes, but every bomb helped. Despite confusion and savage antiaircraft defenses, air power prevailed. By late May the enemy offensive had stalled, and within 

two weeks the North Vietnamese were pulling back, ending the 

threat to Saigon. 

Nixon’s use of air power to disrupt supply lines and kill the 

enemy on the battlefield stopped the offensive, helped drive the 

enemy back; a short distance, and did so without the reintroduction of the ground forces he had withdrawn from South Vietnam. In fact, the last combat troops of the U.S. Army departed 

in August 1972 while the South Vietnamese were counterattacking, leaving behind only 43,000 American airmen and support persoinnel. Yet, the very success of American aerial 

activities might have caused misgivings at Saigon, where the 

dependence of his armed forces on the Americans troubled 

President ‘I’hieu. When his commanders had failed during the 

recent offensive, the advisers took over, bringing to bear a volume of firepower that South Vietnamese forces couldl not by 

themselves generate. Thieu realized that the American’s unilateral departure would leave South Vietnam at the mercy of the 

North Vietnamese forces still in the country. Since the Americans would certainly leave, his only hope lay in the mutual 

withdrawal of all foreign troops. The South Vietnamese chief 

executive therefore opposed any settlement that left elements of 

the People’s Army in place within South Vietnam. 

In contrast, the United States was now willing to accept a 

cease-fire that gave the North Vietnamese the fruits of their re96 
cent offensive, during which they had captured or consolidated 

their control over large areas south of the old demilitarized 

zone, in the western highlands, and along the Cambodian border. After such a settlement, the enemy would occupy a position 

from which he could, at least detach the northern third of the 

nation, if not cut South Vietnam in half-as had been feared 

when the American ground forces intervened in 1965. ‘I’o offset 

the geographic advantage thus conferred, the United States 

continued to supply the Republic of Vietnam with military 

equipment, speeding deliveries in anticipation of a triuce that 

would impose restrictions on future military aid. Consequently, 

the South Vietnamese Air Force expanded to an actual strength 

of 65 squadrons, with more than 61,000 officers and men. Except for the A-37s and C-l23s, few of the 2,000-odd aircraft of 

25 different types had proved effective during the offensive that 

just ended. Moreover, the tactical inventory still did not, include 

heavy bombers, howitzer-equipped gunships, and high-performance fighter-bombers with the laser-guided weapons that had 

done so well at An LOC and elsewhere; nor were there any aircraft for long-range interdiction, rescue, or electronic countermeasures against, for example, radar-controlled surface-to-air 

missile complexes. Impressive as the influx of materiel was in 

numerical terms-South Vietnam was credited with having the 

fourth largest air force in the world-Thieu feared that his 

country could not defend itself against an established enemy 

and Continued to insist that the North Vietnamese be forced to 

pull back from the territory of South Vietnam. 

Endgame 

By the end of October 1972, with the Presidential election 

fast approaching in the United States, Kissinger declared that 

peace was at hand and a settlement in sight. His optimism 

proved unfounded. Not only was Thieu rebelling at what had 

come to be called a cease-fire in place, but the North Vietnamese also seemed disinterested in even so favorable a settlement. 

Once his hand had been strengthened by an overwhelming victory over his Democratic opponent, George McGovern, President Nixon sought to remove first one and then the other of the 

obstacles to peace. He obtained Thieu’s reluctant assent to an 

in-place arrangement by offering “absolute assurance” that he 

97 
intended to take “swift and severe retaliatory action” if North 

Vietnam should violate the terms of the agreement. Put simply, 

the President gave his personal pledge that he would respond 

to any future invasion as he had to the offensive of 1972, an assurance that implicitly bound the government of the United 

States to that course of action. He then sought to remove the 

other roadbllock, the stubborn attitude of the government in 

Hanoi, by ordering a resumption of the bombing of the heartland of North Vietnam. 

“This is your chance to win this war,” the President told 

Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff. “And if you don’t, I’ll consider you responsible.” ‘The opportunity presented to the admiral in this melodramatic fashion represeinted a consensus on the part of three men-the 

President; his adviser on national security, Dr. Kissinger; and 

Army Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Kissinger’s principal 

military assistant-that B-52s should hit targets at Hanoi and 

Haiphong and thus force North Vietnam to accept a settlement. 

President Nixon thus unleashed an air campaign, called Linebacker 11, that began on December 18 and ended on the 29th, 

with a thirty-six-hour pause for the Christmas holiday. The 

B-52s again flew from Guam and Thailand, refueling as necessary from KC-135 tankers. Air Force and Navy fighter-bombers 

and attack aircraft struck by day, often using radar or other 

bombing aids because of cloud cover, and the B-52s arid their 

escorts by night. The heavy bombers followed F-llls, which 

used their speed and their ability to hug the ground tat attack 

from treetop height the airfields used by MiGs and, later in the 

operation, the most dangerous of the surface-to-air missile 

sites. Fighter-bombers patrolled in the event MiGs should challenge the B-52s; they carried radar-homing missiles to suppress surface-to-air missile batteries and scattered chaff to 

confuse hostile radar. Air Force EB-66s and Grumman EA-6s 

of the Navy and Marine Corps orbited nearby, broadcasting 

jamming signals to reinforce the effects of the chaff. Plans initially called. for the B-52s to rely more on chaff than on their 

own jamming transmitters in penetrating the radar-controlled 

defenses of Hanoi and Haiphong. Approaching in a single 

stream of three-aircraft cells to reduce the likelihood of midair 

collisions, thle B- 52s followed a corridor of chaff to the target, 

dropped their bombs, turned sharply, and headed back toward 

98 
their bases. For a number of reasons, what looked good on paper did not mcceed in practice. The initial corridor alerted the 

defenders to the direction of the attack and enabled them to 

launch their missiles in salvos without radar guidance, relying 

on proximity fuzes set for the altitude reported by MiGs shadowing the column of B-52s. In addition, the chaff tended to 

drift during the approach of the bomber stream, some seventy 

miles in length, and leave gaps in the coverage despite periodic 

replenishment from F-4s. Finally, the sharp turn after they released the bombs caused the jamming signal radiating from beneath the bomber to point outward, more nearly parallel to the 

ground, instead of downward, increasing the vulnerability of 

the B-52s to radar-guided missiles. Taking advantage of these 

weaknesses, the surface-to-air missile crews downed eleven of 

the high-flying B-52s by the time operations were suspended 

for Christmas, six on the night of December 20-21. 

The losses, which to the aircrews seemed to result from rigid 

adherence to1 flawed tactics, dealt a numbing, though not crippling, blow to morale, but a change in plans restored spirits 

when the attacks resumed. Besides employing only B-52s with 

modernized jamming equipment against the most heavily defended targets, tactics, beginning with the mission on the night 

of December 26, called for clouds rather than corridors of chaff, 

for more conipact bomber streams approaching from different 

directions, and for the avoidance of sharp turns that neutralized jamming signals. During the final three days of the bombing, surface-to-air missiles claimed only four B-52s. The new 

tactics helped reduce the losses, as did attacks on the missile 

sites by F-4n in daylight and F-111s at night and the decreasing number of missiles fired. The North Vietnamese had fired 

almost all of their surface-to-air missiles; and because of the 

mining of the harbors, damage to the rail system, and the unwillingness of either China or the Soviet Union to risk upsetting the delicate diplomatic balance with the United States, 

they could not easily replenish their stocks. At this point, after 

more than 700 nighttime sorties by B-52s and some 660 daylight strikes by fighter-bombers and attack aircraft, the Hanoi 

government (agreed to enter into purposeful negotiations. 

For the Americans held prisoner at Hanoi, the B-52 raids 

seemed a sign that freedom was near. Morale soared as the 

guards stopped taunting their captives or threatening retali99 
ation and scrambled for cover whenever the bombers drew 

near. Most of the other prisoners would surely have agreed 

with Air Force Col. Jon A. Reynolds that the B-52s hi3d forced 

the enemy to negotiate, even though neither Nixon nor Kissinger, perhaps to avoid antagonizing the North Vietnamese so 

near the resumption of talks, claimed at the time that they had 

bombed the enemy to the conference table. In addition, the 

Linebacker I1 campaign served to reinforce the pledge given 

Thieu that in case of a future invasion American air power 

would come to his aid. The battering of North Vietnam also 

gave the South a respite in which to absorb recently arrive 

American military equipment and recover from the effects of 

the past year’s invasion, but neither Linebacker I1 nor the talks 

that followed forced Hanoi to agree to withdraw its troops from 

South Vietnam. 

The United States paid a price for the accomplishments of 

Linebacker 11. Besides the fifteen B-52s that fell victim to surface-to-air missiles, ten other aircraft, four from the Air Force 

and the others from the Navy or Marine Corps, were shot down 

over the Nlorth or so badly damaged that the crews either crash 

landed or took to their parachutes. Of the one hundred Air 

Force crewmen shot down, thirty-five were killed; twenty-six 

were rescued; and thirty-nine parachuted, were captured, and 

were later released. The air war was not one-sided, however. 

Air Force fighters destroyed four MiGs, and tail gunners in 

B-52s shot, down two others. 

Despite headlines in American newspapers decrying the carpet bombing of a densely populated city, an interpretation 

based principally on the reports of a French journalist at Hanoi, 

later investigations revealed that, except for the destruction of 

part of the Bach Mai hospital by bombs intended for the airport 

nearby, thle damage was limited almost exclusively to targets 

that were military in nature, like air bases and storage areas 

for oil and other supplies, or related to the war effort, like 

railyards and powerplants. Indeed, the Hanoi government 

stated that, exactly 1,624 civilians had been killed at Hanoi and 

Haiphong during the entire Linebacker I1 campaign, a far cry 

from the tens of thousands killed during World War I1 at places 

like Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo. Several factors 110 doubt 

contributed to the comparatively modest death toll: the B-52 

strikes had been carefully planned to minimize the bombs fall100 
ing into residential areas, fighter-bombers used laser-guided 

weapons where accuracy was essential, and the North Vietnamese had built shelters and possibly evacuated a large number of noncombatants. In the United States, the wildly 

exaggerated stories of saturation bombing triggered no great 

outcry of opposition. The news may well have been believed, 

but the bombing, however savage, seemed to mark the end of a 

long and burdensome involvement in Southeast Asia. Moreover, 

the college campuses, which had nurtured opposition to the 

war, were closed for the holidays. 

Occasional flights over North Vietnam, including patrols to 

prevent MiGs from interfering with American air operations in 

northern Lalos, continued after Linebacker I1 had ended. On 

January 8,1973, the crew of an F-4D-Capt. Paul D. Howman, 

the pilot, arid 1st Lt. Lawrence W. Kullman, the weapon systems officer-shot down a MiG southwest of Hanoi with a radar-guided AIM-7 missile. This was the last aerial victory 

before the signing of the cease-fire, which went into effect on 

January 29. The agreement froze the current battle lines in 

South Vietnam, reestablished a coalition government of communists and anticommunists in Laos, permitted the withdrawal of the last American combat forces, and resulted in the 

release of the 591 Americans held prisoner in North Vietnam. 

After the cease-fire became operative, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, became the much smaller Defense 

Attach6 Ofice, which dispensed military advice to the armed 

forces of the republic and supervised the work of the civilians 

hired to perform maintenance and conduct technical training. 

To enforce the truce with air power, as President Nixon had 

promised, tlhe Air Force established at Nakhon Phainom in 

Thailand a new headquarters, the United States Support Activities Grouip/Seventh Air Force, under General Vogt, who had 

come there from his headquarters in South Vietnam. The new 

command exercised operational control over the 18 Air Force 

fighter-bomber squadrons and one reconnaissance squadron in 

Thailand anid over a detachment of Marine Corps attack aircraft based there. General Vogt and his staff also maintained 

coordination with the Navy’s carrier task force in waters 

nearby and with the Strategic Air Command, which had 200- 

odd B-52s alt hand in the western Pacific to resume the bombing of North Vietnam. Various factors, such as cuts in 

101 
congressional funding now that the war had ended and the 

need on the part of the Air Force to redistribute resources that 

had been tied down in Southeast Asia, contributed to a decline 

in American strength as the months passed. When 1'374 drew 

to a close, only 25 B-52s and 12 tactical fighter squadrons in 

Thailand remained to provide an immediate striking force if 

North Vietnam should violate the cease-fire. 

Americam airmen continued to fight over Cambodia, where 

the cease-fire in Laos and the two Vietnams had no effect on 

the struggle between the communist Khmer Rouge anti the government. President Nixon sought to use air power to hold the 

enemy at bay in Cambodia, but congressional and public acceptance of such a course of action was at best unenthusiastic after 

more than a decade of involvement in the recently concluded 

Vietnam War. Moreover, the past was overtaking the Chief Executive and further eroding support of the policies he advocated 

for Southeast Asia. In 1969, when the secret bombing of Cambodia begain, a reporter had written a story that mentioned the 

closely held operation. Although the account passed unnoticed 

by other journalists and the general public, the President became obsessed with stopping leaks of classified information, 

and the administration illegally began tapping the telephone 

lines of a number of citizens, including reporters and government officials. The fear of disclosures intensified after Daniel 

Ellsberg, a former marine and at various times an analyst for 

the Rand corporation and a special assistant to the Assistant 

Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), became 

disillusioned with the war and turned over to the New York 

Times the classified collection of documents and explanatory 

text that was published as The Pentagon Papers. To obtain evidence against Ellsberg, who was accused of theft and espionage, operatives acting on behalf of the administration broke 

into the office of the psychiatrist he had consulted, an illegal 

act that ultimately resulted in the dropping of the charges 

against him. During the election campaign of 1972 another 

team of burglars with ties to the White House entered the 

headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate ofke and apartment complex in Washington, D.C., in 

search of information that would further diminish the party's 

already slim chance of gaining the Presidency. Even as President Nixon and Dr. Kissinger were seeking funds from Con102 
gress to pursue the bombing in Cambodia, suspicion was 

mounting that the administration, perhaps the Chief Executive 

himself, had been involved in two burglaries, an attempt to conceal them, and the illegal surveillance. 

In a climate of war weariness and growing mistrust of the 

President, a number of senators and representatives believed 

he had overstepped his constitutional authority. Congress asserted the power of the legislative branch and authorized continuation of the bombing only until July 15, 1973. At 11:30 local 

time on that day an A-7D of the 354th Tactical Reconnaissance 

Wing landed at its base in Thailand after flying the last combat 

mission of the war over Southeast Asia. All told, the Air Force 

had flown 5.25 million sorties over South Vietnam, North Vietnam, northern and southern Laos, and Cambodia, losing 2,251 

aircraft, 1,737 because of hostile action and 514 for operational 

reasons. A ratio of roughly 0.4 losses per 1,000 sorties compared 

favorably with a 2.0 rate in Korea and the 9.7 figure during 

The flight line at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, was crowded with 

B-62s for the Linebacker II raids against rail yards and other targets 

near Hanoi in December 1972. 

103 
World War 11. Beginning with the deaths of Capt. Fergus C. 

Groves, 11, Capt. Robert D. Larson, and SSgt. Milo B. Coghill in 

1962, 1,7318 officers and enlisted men of the Air Force were 

killed in action in Southeast Asia and another 766 dield in accidents or fitom illness. 

Legend has it that at the time the bombing ended in Cambodia, someone played over the radio channel used by strike aircraft a tape recording of a toilet flushing, a crude symbol of the 

fate many predicted for Southeast Asia. By the end of 1975, 

communist governments controlled South Vietnam, Cambodia, 

and Laos, but when this came to pass, the Nixon adiministration, swepit into office by a huge margin in 1972, no longer existed. The secret bombing of Cambodia and the falsification of 

official records that preserved its secrecy surfaced in the summer of 19'73, further undercutting the President. A select committee of the Senate developed evidence that linked the 

President to the concealment of illegal activities by members of 

his staff, and the House Judiciary Committee found even 

stronger proof while drafting articles of impeachment. (One of 

the articles considered but rejected by the House committee accused the Chief Executive of abusing his constitutional powers 

by secretly bombing Cambodia.) Rather than face the near certainty of impeachment by the House of Representatives and a 

trial in the Senate, the President resigned on August 8, 1974. 

His successor, Gerald R. Ford, a long-time Republican congressman from Michigan and minority leader of the House of Representatives, had replaced Agnew when the former Vice 

President, caught in a web of corruption stretching back to his 

days as a county official in Maryland, had resigned after pleading nolo contendere to a single charge of income tax evasion, 

thus accepting a conviction without formally acknowledging 

guilt. 

Even as the power and prestige of the executive branch of 

government declined, the American public experienced an 

abrupt increase in the cost of living. At the root of the economic 

woes were restrictions by Arab oil producers on the export of 

petroleum to the United States and the other nations that supported Israel, the victor in yet another war in the Middle East. 

The resulting scarcity drove up prices and made it difficult for 

South Vietnam to fuel the war machine that the United States 

had given it. Meanwhile, long lines and escalating prices at 

104 
gasoline stations diverted the attention of the American public 

from Southeast Asia and diminished the likelihood that, President Ford, in the event of another North Vietnamese invasion, 

could muster support to intervene ewn with air power. 

Despite the oil shortage and the collapse of the Nixon administration, South Vietnam seemed for a while to be holding 

its own. Sometimes Thieu’s army actually lashed out to improve the tactical position imposed on it by the cease-fire, but at 

other times the North Vietnamese were able to carve out gains 

of their own. Despite the apparent stalemate, portents for 

South Vietnam’s future grew increasingly ominous. Stocks of 

fuel and amrnunition could not sustain the air strikes and artillery barrages to which the South Vietnamese had become accustomed, vast amounts of equipment lay unused for :lack of 

maintenance specialists, and the air arm, even if all its officers 

and men were fully proficient and all its airplanes functioned 

perfectly, could not survive against the kind of antiaircraft defenses the enemy had used during the 1972 offensive. Further, 

North Vietnam lost no time moving that defense into the territory overrun in 1972 and converting the Ho Chi Minh Trail into 

an expressway for supplies and reinforcements. 

In Camboclia the situation was much worse. After the bombing stopped in the summer of 1973, the United States continued 

to deliver weapons, perhaps in greater quantities than the government could absorb, but North Vietnam could supply the 

communist insurgents more easily, and the Khmer Rouge 

tended to ma.ke better use of what they received. Kissinger, by 

this time Secretary of State, hoped to negotiate an end to the 

fighting, but the communists saw no need to talk when they 

were closing :in on the capital, undeterred by an occasional local 

setback. On April 12, 1975, nine days after an Air Force IIH-53 

had flown a Marine Corps command element to the embassy at 

Phnom Penh, Marine helicopters landed and, while a crowd of 

Cambodians watched passively, flew the ambassador and his 

staff to safety. Two Air Force helicopters then landed to pick up 

the marines in the command and security detachments, completing the evacuation. 

Even as the Khmer Rouge tightened the vise gripping Phnom 

Penh, the North Vietnamese on March 10 launched an offensive that rapidly gathered momentum and overwhelmed South 

Vietnamese resistance. Within the Ford administration, cliscus105 
sion focused on military aid at a time when only armed intervention could have made a difference, although even massive 

bombing might have failed to ensure the survival of South Vietnam, so desperate were the circumstances. Evacuation rather 

than intervention became the watchword, as Air Force transports and others chartered from private firms attempted to fly 

out as many people as possible. The early evacuees included 

hundreds of infants being cared for at orphanages iin Saigon. 

During this “Baby Lift,” tragedy struck when the rear cargo 

door of a (XA burst open in an explosive decompression of the 

cabin, and the transport crashed as the crew tried to Iland, killing 172, mostly infants, of the 300 persons on boardl. Despite 

this disaster, more than 50,000 Americans, South Vietnamese, 

and citizens of other nations escaped by land or sea before the 

advancing enemy reached the outskirts of Saigon. 

As at Phnom Penh earlier, helicopters offered the final 

means of escape, but the evacuation from Saigon wa.s complicated by hlordes of panic-stricken South Vietnamese fighting for 

a place on the rescue craft. Amid confusion and open hostility 

from local residents, the last American fled from Saigon on 

April 29. Air Force and Navy fighter-bombers and Marine 

Corps helicopter gunships provided escort, along with AC-130s 

by night, as Air Force and Marine helicopters rescued more 

than 6,000 persons from the Defense Attach6 Office and from 

the American Embassy. Radar at air defense sites tracked the 

rescue hellicopters, but only once did the escort have to act; an 

Air Force F-4 silenced a radar with an antiradiation missile, 

and an accompanying fighter bombed the 57-mm battery the 

radar directed. The final evacuation from Saigon was successful, though only in a narrow sense, for it signified hopes destroyed and dreams betrayed. As George C. Herring writes in 

America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950- 

1975, “The spectacle of U.S. Marines using rifle butts to keep 

desperate Vietnamese from blocking escape routes and of angry 

ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam] soldiers firing on the 

departing Americans provided a tragic epitaph for twenty-five 

years of American involvement in Vietnam.” 

The military involvement in Southeast Asia had not quite 

ended, however. On May 12, 1975, Cambodian naval forces 

seized the American containership Mayaguez, although it was 

in internakional waters, and President Ford decided to use force 

106 
to recover the vessel and its crew of thirty-nine. While aircraft 

maintained surveillance of the ship, Pacific Air Forces ordered 

sixteen CH-3 and HH-53 helicopters to gather in Thailand for 

the operation. En route, one of the HH-53s crashed, killing all 

twenty-three airmen on board. On the 13th, the surveillance 

aircraft observed a small fishing boat moving away from the island where the Muyuguez rode at anchor. Air Force A-7s 

promptly fired across the bow and dropped tear gas canisters in 

the hope of disabling the guards so that the Americans, if they 

were on board, could seize the craft and escape. The Americans 

were indeed on board, but the chemical agent affected both captives and captors; a Cambodian retained control by holding his 

gun against the skipper of the vessel, while the unarmed sailors 

from the Muyuguez, blinded by the gas, could not rush the 

guards. 

Intelligence indicated that the fishing boat had talken the 

prisoners to Koh Tang, an island midway between the one 

where the captured ship was anchored and the mainland. To 

prevent the Cambodians from interfering as a boarding party 

seized the ibfuyuguez, the rescue force attacked patrol bolats and 

shore installations along the Cambodian coast while solme 230 

marines landed from Air Force helicopters to capture Koh Tang 

and free the ship's crew. The Muyuguez was abandoned, but infantry armed with a variety of automatic weapons defended 

Koh Tang. On the morning of May 15, eight of the helicopters 

landed their troops, and the defenders opened fire, damaging 

two of the craft and shooting down three others. Meanwhile, a 

fishing boat carried the crew of the Muyuguez, released by their 

captors, to an American destroyer. Since no Americans were 

held on Koh Tang, fighter-bombers, attack aircraft, arid gunships battered the island's defenders. Aerial firepower, however, could not save the 100 or more marines clinging to a part 

of the objective; reinforcements had to land and help hold off 

the enemy to permit an orderly withdrawal. By the time another 100 marines entered the fight, all but one of the nine helicopters that brought in troops during the day had been shot 

down or damaged. 

By early afternoon, even though the marines had bt 'en unable to form a unified defensive perimeter, the withdrawal began, and it continued into evening. In a daring nighttime 

rescue, Capt. Donald R. Backlund could hear bullets tearing 

107 
into his machine as he held it a few feet above the beach while 

an isolated group of marines, under cover of fire from the multibarrel gun in the helicopter, made their way up its lowered 

ramp. A C-130 transport appeared overhead and dropped a 

15,000-pouind bomb of the type used to clear landing zones for 

helicopters during the fighting in South Vietnam. The resulting 

blast, plus sensor-directed barrages from AC-130s and strafing 

by OV-lOs, suppressed the hostile fire to such an extent that 

the three helicopters still capable of flight could carry away the 

last of the marines. American casualties totaled 41 hilled, including the 23 members of an Air Force security detachment 

who died in the earlier helicopter crash, and 49 wounded. The 

casualties idso included a copilot and a flight mechanic killed 

on helicopters shot down during the morning attack and six 

wounded helicopter crewmen. Of the 15 helicopters exposed to 

hostile fire, four were brought down and nine damaged. 

Hailed as a demonstration that American resolve had not 

been undermined by the communist victories in Cambodia and 

South Vietnam, the rescue operation had nevertheless been 

marred by hurried planning and based on faulty intelligence 

that sent a1 hastily assembled force against a far stronger enemy. True, the Muyuguez was safely in the hands of its crew, 

but that falct had no impact on the course of subsequent events 

in Southeast Asia. During December 1975, the communist faction took over in Laos, and the following year saw a revolution 

in Thailand and the emergence of a government, as anticommunist as its predecessor, that nonetheless sought to distance itself from the United States and set a deadline for the 

withdrawal of the American forces based there. After the North 

Vietnamese conquest of the South, the communist triumph in 

Laos, the emergence of a hostile regime in Cambodia (which became the People's Republic of Kampuchea), and the shift of policy in Thailand, the United States could no longer maintain a 

military presence in Southeast Asia. The American perimeter 

in the western Pacific now extended from South Korea and Japan to the Philippines. 

Within Southeast Asia, one of the announced purposes of the 

American involvement had come to pass, even though the main 

goal, the siurvival of a noncommunist South Vietnam, had not. 

China did not come to dominate the region, but this outcome, 

however temporary it might be, resulted from the interplay of 

108 
rivalries between China and the Soviet Union, betweent China 

and Soviet-supported Vietnam, and between Vietnam and the 

Chinese-aided Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. While these tensions 

persisted among the communist states, the independence of 

western-oriented nations like Thailand and Malaysia ;seemed 

reasonably secure. 

109 
Suggested Readings 

Ballard, Jaclk S. Development and Employment of Fixed-Wing Gunships, 1962-1972. [The United States Air Force in Southeast 

Asia] Washington: Air Force History, 1982. 

Bowers, Ray L. The United States Air Force in Southeast Aaia: Tactical Airlift. Washington: Air Force History, 1983. 

Broughton, Jack. Thud Ridge. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 196!3. 

Buckingham, William A., Jr. Operation Ranch Hand: The Air Force 

and Herbicides in Southeast Asia, 1961-1971. Washington: Air 

Force History, 1982. 

Clodfelter, Mark. The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of 

North Vietnam. New York: Free Press, 1989. 

Eschmann, llarl J. Linebacker. New York: Ivy, 1989. 

Ethell, Jeffrey and Alfred Price. One Day in a Long War. New York: 

Random House, 1989. 

Fox, Roger 1’. Air Base Defense in the Republic of Vietnam, 15161-1973. 

Washington: Air Force History, 1979. 

Futrell, Robert F. The United States Air Force in Southeast ,4sia: The 

Adviso,y Years to 1965. Washington: Air Force History, 1981. 

McCarthy, *James R. and George B. Allison. Linebacker 11: A View 

from the Rock. Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University, 1979. 

Momyer, William W. Air Power in Three Wars. Washington: GPO, 

1978. 

Mrozek, Donald J. Air Power and the Ground War in Vietnam. Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University, 1988. 

Schlight, John. The War in South Vietnam, The Years of the (Offensive, 

1965-1968. [The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia] 

Washington: Air Force History, 1988. 

Tilford, Earl H., Jr. Search and Rescue in Southeast Asia, 1961-1975. 

Washington: Air Force History, 1980. 

Tilford, Earl H., Jr. Setup: What the Air Force Did in Vietnam and 

Why. Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University, 1991. 

Van Staaveren, Jacob. Interdiction in Southern Laos, 1960-1 968. [The 

Unitedl States Air Force in Southeast Asial Washington: Air 

Force ]History, 1993. 

110