For the Common Defense

by Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski

  When the operation ended in late May 1970, the big bombers had flown 3,875 sorties. As was true of most B-52 strikes inside South Vietnam, the damage inside Cambodia was difficult to assess, but the bombing had clearly not eliminated COSVN or the sanctuaries. Consequently Nixon sanctioned a ground invasion to finish the job and to reinforce his madman image. In March 1970 the pro-American Cambodian prime minister, General Lon Nol, deposed his country’s head of state, Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Favoring vigorous action against the VC/NVA, Nol ordered the Cambodian army to attack them in three border provinces and closed Sihanoukville. This port city had been a major Communist supply point from which food and equipment moved along the Sihanoukville Trail to positions adjacent to IV and III CTZs. Ostensibly with General Nol’s consent, in late March the South Vietnamese raided Communist bases in Cambodia’s Parrot’s Beak region. Responding to these threats, as well as to the MENU bombing, the VC/NVA, and an indigenous Communist Khmer Rouge movement headed by Pol Pot, counterattacked and soon threatened Cambodia’s capital of Phnom Penh. Despite opposition from Laird and Rogers, Nixon ordered 50,000 ARVN into the Parrot’s Beak and 30,000 U.S. forces into an area called the Fishhook, hoping to relieve pressure on Cambodia’s army, destroy the sanctuaries, and capture COSVN.

  Crossing the border on April 29–30, the raiders did not find COSVN and in most cases the VC/NVA fled rather than fight, though pitched battles occurred at a base area nicknamed “The City” and at the towns of Krek, Mimot, and Snoul. Despite perennial problems with timid leadership, ineffective artillery fire, and faulty communications, in a few places ARVN fought aggressively, which seemed promising for Vietnamization. The U.S. and South Vietnamese captured an impressive array of food and equipment, though some of the weapons were obsolete. The CIA estimated the Communists could replace their losses in three months. Other agencies believed the losses crippled enemy capabilities for as much as a year. In one sense the sheer size of the supply caches was dismaying: A year of MENU bombing and COMMANDO HUNT operations against the Ho Chi Minh Trail had not prevented the depots from being stuffed to overflowing.

  The incursion had three negative effects. First, it converted the Vietnam War into an Indochinese War by engulfing Cambodia in the ground war, ultimately resulting in a holocaust that killed up to 2 million Cambodians after the demonic Pol Pot assumed power. Second, North Vietnam did not capitulate to Nixon’s madman gambit by offering concessions but instead hardened its negotiating stance in large part because of the third negative consequence: The operation reenergized antiwar opposition in the U.S., which had become quiescent when it appeared Nixon was liquidating the war through troop withdrawals, Vietnamization, and pacification. As frustration mounted that the president was now widening rather than ending the war, renewed demonstrations erupted, and not just in the streets. Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor explained to MACV that “there were great delegations of people, some of them very substantial people, coming down to call on their congressmen to do something about getting out [of Vietnam] faster.”

  To MACV’s dismay, antiwar sentiment compelled Nixon to limit the U.S. penetration to thirty kilometers and to announce a June 30 deadline for withdrawing U.S. ground forces from Cambodia. Congress went further, passing a bill in late 1970 containing the Cooper-Church Amendment, which prohibited all future U.S. ground (but not air) activity in Cambodia and Laos. In addition, the Senate repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, though the president continued the war by relying on his authority as commander in chief. Thieu did not feel bound by the limitations imposed on U.S. forces. Although ARVN suffered from poor leadership and insufficient battlefield aggressiveness, it penetrated twice as far as the Americans and operated in Cambodia for the next several years, supported by U.S. artillery, B-52 strikes, and tactical air support.

  The Cambodian incursion, claimed the president, was “the most decisive action in terms of damaging the enemy’s ability to wage effective warfare that has occurred in this war to date.” This was an exaggeration. Abrams thought the operation, at best, caused the enemy “some temporary inconvenience.” Another general considered it a disaster that fatally wounded South Vietnam because of the widespread unrest it generated on the American home front. The enemy agreed. As a high-level Communist leader put it, “Nixon paid dearly for our temporary discomfiture by sustaining major political losses.”

  Closing Sihanoukville and disrupting the VC/NVA’s Cambodian sanctuaries reflected Abrams’s emphasis on attacking enemy logistics to disrupt Hanoi’s plans, to buy time for Vietnamization and pacification, and to prevent a debacle among the dwindling number of U.S. forces remaining in South Vietnam. With Sihanoukville no longer available and MARKET TIME frustrating seaborne supply efforts, the Communists began urgent measures to improve and defend the Ho Chi Minh Trail. More and more trucks provided by Beijing and Moscow moved on a steadily improving road network. Repair facilities proliferated, bomb damage was quickly repaired, a newly constructed pipeline transported fuel, and antiaircraft and SAM batteries shifted southward to protect the indispensable Trail and pipeline.

  At the heart of the interdiction effort was COMMANDO HUNT, which began in November 1968 and ended in April 1972. Operation FREEDOM DEAL, a new name for the Cambodian bombing that was now conducted openly, complemented COMMANDO HUNT by attacking the Trail in northeastern Cambodia. Arc light strikes, fighter-bombers, and night-flying AC-130 Spectre gunships struck at reinforcements, trucks, supply caches, and enemy defenses. Converted cargo planes armed with rockets and 20-mm automatic cannons and equipped with a vehicle ignition detector codenamed BLACK CROW, the AC-130s initially killed many truck drivers in their cabs and caused others to abandon their vehicles as soon as they heard them overhead. But a U.S. aeronautics magazine inadvertently alerted the Communists to BLACK CROW, and soon truck drivers were wrapping their ignition systems in aluminum foil to suppress emissions.

  In the midst of COMMANDO HUNT Nixon sanctioned another effort to disrupt the Trail and remind Hanoi that he did not play by Johnson’s self-imposed rules. While ARVN was still engaged in Cambodia, it invaded Laos on February 8, 1971, in Operation LAM SON 719. The goal was Base Area 604 centered on Tchepone, a key logistics node. Intelligence indicated NVA infantry, armor, artillery, and air defenses were concentrated there, that the jungle-covered area was ill-suited for helicopter warfare, and that Hanoi knew about the invasion weeks in advance. Equally problematic, because of the Cooper-Church Amendment, for the first time no American troops or advisers would accompany ARVN, though it would receive support from U.S. helicopters, planes, and artillery—and from hard fighting on the Vietnamese side of the border in I Corps. In essence, U.S. forces kicked open the door for ARVN’s invasion, resulting in 215 Americans KIA and another 1,100 WIA during the first four months of 1971.

  Despite the potential pitfalls, Nixon let the operation continue, thus widening the war a second time by invading a country that had been off limits during the Johnson administration. President Thieu committed 20,000 men to LAM SON 719. Some of his best units participated, including the ARVN 1st Division, the 1st Armored Brigade, three ranger battalions, and most of the elite airborne and marine units from the strategic reserve. At a dreadful cost in men, ordnance, and supplies, the NVA attacked day and night, keeping continuous pressure on ARVN that sent it reeling in retreat. American intelligence estimated the Communists committed approximately 110 tanks to the battle and lost seventy-five of them. Sixteen of the thirty-three NVA maneuver battalions involved in the fighting were complete losses. The South Vietnamese had thus fought tenaciously at times, but not often enough. Pictures showed panic-stricken ARVN soldiers fleeing by hanging on to helicopter skids, and even some of the South’s elite units collapsed. The last ARVN troops crossed back into South Vietnam on March 24. They left behind thirty-seven of their sixty-two tanks, ninety-eight of their 162 armored personnel carriers, and many of their dead. “They knew they’d been whipped,” observed a Marine general, “and they acted like they had been wh
ipped.”

  Only American air power and artillery saved ARVN from catastrophe. Though rain and fog often grounded them and enemy defenses were deadly, tactical fighters still dropped 20,000 tons of napalm and bombs, B-52s added 32,000 tons, Hercules transports dropped twenty-five 15,000-pound air-fuel bombs, Air Force gunships patrolled the night skies, and U.S. helicopters flew 160,000 sorties. Tucked along the border were eighteen U.S. Army 155-mm howitzers, sixteen 175-mm guns, and eight 8-inch howitzers. As ARVN’s situation in Laos deteriorated, it also suffered defeats at Dambe, Snoul, and Krek in Cambodia, despite U.S. air and artillery support. Although the debacles in Cambodia involved more forces on both sides than LAM SON 719, they received less publicity.

  In what one general considered “an Orwellian untruth of boggling proportions,” the president did what he had done after the less than successful Cambodian incursion: Proclaimed LAM SON 719 a victory, asserting that it proved “Vietnamization has succeeded.” From the start Nixon sought to portray events in Laos in a positive light, telling Kissinger, “I can’t emphasize this too strongly; I don’t care what happened there, it’s a win.” In fact, after two years of Vietnamization, ARVN had suffered another setback. This did not necessarily mean the program would ultimately fail, but it created profound doubts about its progress and in doing so weakened the U.S. negotiating position. The president understood this, for privately he complained about ARVN’s poor performance. LAM SON 719 had two other negative consequences. First, it caused no lasting damage to the enemy’s Laotian transportation network. According to a MACV briefing, by early April the NVA were “right back in there again, balls out.” Finally, the operation also sparked renewed antiwar demonstrations, sowing concern among Republicans about the president’s reelection. On the positive side, it may have delayed an NVA offensive in I Corps, thus buying time for both South Vietnam and the orderly redeployment of American forces.

  Despite the Cambodian incursion, COMMANDO HUNT and FREEDOM DEAL, and LAM SON 719, the North met its supply and reinforcement goals. NVA Colonel Bui Tin explained how: “We put so much in at the top of the Trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came out at the bottom.” This was a callous approach, costly in men and material. But it worked, as the Easter Offensive revealed.

  Beginning on March 30, 1972, North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive was a three-pronged campaign, one prong coming across the DMZ aimed at Quang Tri City, another directed from Kontum toward the coast in II Corps, and a third surging across the Cambodian border toward An Loc in III Corps. The assaults revealed Hanoi’s decision to reverse the protracted-war, economy-of-force strategy it had followed for the previous few years and to escalate directly to military dau tranh’s conventional warfare phase. In a remarkably short time the NVA had transformed itself from a light-infantry force into a Soviet-style mechanized army. In the Easter Offensive it employed 1,200 Soviet-made tanks and a huge artillery array in support of fourteen of its fifteen divisions, most of which had previously remained outside South Vietnam. The rebuilt VC supported the major thrusts with hundreds of small attacks in urban areas and the Mekong Delta. Within a week after the offensive began, Abrams realized the enemy had “committed every goddamn thing he owns!”

  The offensive’s primary architects were the minister of defense, General Vo Nguyen Giap, one of the Viet Minh’s founders, who remained the North’s foremost strategist for most of the war; and his chief of staff, General Van Tien Dung. They hoped for a knockout punch to defeat Vietnamization, gain a decisive victory in 1972, and force the U.S. to negotiate from a weakened position. Since fewer than 70,000 Americans remained in Vietnam, the NVA concentrated against ARVN, its elite units weakened by LAM SON 719. A crushing success seemed likely. However, enemy strategists realized they might have to settle for less, such as merely improving their position by creating enclaves inside the South and by weakening pacification.

  Because MACV intelligence misjudged the offensive’s timing, size, and location, the offensive caught ARVN and the Nixon administration by surprise. After all, it seemed foolhardy for the North to attack in 1972, when all the Americans would soon be gone. ARVN quickly neared collapse. Fearing he could not win reelection if South Vietnam fell and that a humiliating defeat might hamper relations with China and the Soviet Union, Nixon responded aggressively. Domestic antiwar sentiment made reintroducing ground troops impossible, so he assembled an aerial armada. The previous summer he had shouted that he did not intend to “go out whimpering”—that he was going to “bomb the livin’ bejesus out of ’em” and that he wanted to “level the goddamn country!” Now he had an opportunity to do just that, to infuse life into the madman strategy and DUCK HOOK. The number of B-52s on Guam rose from 47 to 210, the number of F-4s reached 374, and the carriers on Yankee Station tripled from two to six. Unleashing this formidable force, Nixon believed, would shatter the invasion, save Vietnamization and pacification, and compel Hanoi to negotiate a favorable settlement. When B-52s struck Haiphong for the first time during the war on April 16, the administration hoped it sent “a warning that things might get out of hand if the offensive did not stop.”

  The North did not cave in to the threats. But this time an iron fist lay clenched behind them. Even as air power hammered the NVA in the South, on May 8 the president announced the mining of Haiphong (other major ports and inland waterways were also soon mined), a naval blockade, and Operation LINEBACKER I, which was a sustained bombing campaign against the North. Urging his military advisers to “recommend action which is very strong, threatening, and effective,” he intended “to stop at nothing to bring the enemy to his knees.” By the time LINEBACKER I ended on October 23, 155,548 tons of bombs had fallen on North Vietnam. Yet in his May 8 speech Nixon also issued an “ultimatum” that really spelled out terms for America’s withdrawal. All the U.S. wanted was the return of its prisoners of war and an internationally supervised ceasefire. Once North Vietnam met these conditions, the U.S. would “stop all acts of force throughout Indochina, and at that time we will proceed with a complete withdrawal of all American forces from Vietnam within four months.”

  In some ways LINEBACKER I resembled the original ROLLING THUNDER. The new air campaign retained the Route Packages and lacked an overall commander; hit targets in the Chinese buffer zone and inside restrictive zones around Hanoi and Haiphong only with JCS approval; confronted a substantial array of enemy defenses; and experienced disruptions caused by bad weather. LINEBACKER I also differed from ROLLING THUNDER in significant ways that made it comparatively more successful. Nixon’s détente with the Soviets and Chinese reduced the chances of igniting World War III, thus allowing him to employ air power in ways Johnson never dared to try—for example, sending B-52s against the enemy heartland. By launching conventional assaults the Communists developed huge logistical requirements; however, the mining, blockade, and bombing damaged their essential resupply efforts by sea and railroads. New weapons enhanced the bombing, especially “smart bombs,” which were laser-guided and electro-optically guided munitions that struck targets with unparalleled accuracy. A few planes now achieved greater results than ROLLING THUNDER’s large strike forces.

  Most important, LINEBACKER I supported a more limited policy objective than ROLLING THUNDER. As often happened in warfare, the losing side reduced its war aims. Johnson sought an independent, non-Communist South Vietnam; Nixon’s objective was an independent South Vietnam that did not collapse immediately after America’s withdrawal. Kissinger told the Soviet ambassador that if renewed war broke out after the U.S. withdrawal, “that conflict will no longer be an American affair; it will be an affair of the Vietnamese themselves, because the Americans will have left Vietnam.” He relayed a similar message to China, saying all the U.S. wanted was for the South to survive for a “decent interval,” which he defined as five years. Nixon contemplated using air power to insure the South’s existence until at least 1977, when his second term would end, thus removing any imputation that he lost the war.


  With the enemy’s conventional forces more vulnerable to aerial destruction than their guerrilla operations had been, and with the NVA experiencing untold difficulty in waging combined-arms warfare for the first time in its history, the Easter Offensive soon sputtered. The NVA, said Abrams, were “losing tanks like he didn’t care about having any more, and people, and artillery, and equipment.” After suffering such a disaster, the NVA would not soon launch another offensive. Moreover, despite fearsome losses of men and equipment, ARVN survived under a protective airpower umbrella, and LINEBACKER I pummeled the North. Although Nixon’s ferocious response shocked Communist leaders and the offensive failed to deliver a knockout punch, the VC/NVA nonetheless attained advantages that pointed toward ultimate success. Counterbalancing the destruction LINEBACKER I did to the North was the destruction in South Vietnam, where combat reduced cities to rubble and created more than a million new refugees. The NVA established control over a belt of strategic terrain running from the DMZ along the Laotian and Cambodian borders to the northern Delta, thus strengthening its grip on the Central Highlands, improving the security of its sanctuaries and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and gaining essential territory for launching subsequent military actions.

  ARVN had barely escaped defeat, as Hanoi, MACV, and many South Vietnamese understood. To the Communists the offensive signaled Vietnamization’s failure because the South still could not stand on its own. While praising a few ARVN units that fought well, Abrams and other high-ranking Americans admitted Vietnamization’s prospects were precarious, and that only a torrent of bombs averted a catastrophe by compensating for ARVN’s feeble fighting spirit. “Equipment is not what you need,” Abrams emphasized to General Cao Van Vien, chief of the Joint General Staff. “You need men that will fight. And you need officers that will fight and lead the men.” Neither the men nor the officers seemed in the offing anytime soon. As for the South Vietnamese, a soldier recalled the sense of impending doom: “We all believed we had fought heroically in Quang Tri, but that our best was not good enough.”