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Includes 60 photos and 7 maps and charts The 1968 fight for Khe Sanh pitted some 6,000 U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese Rangers against an enemy force roughly three times as large. For more than 70 days North Vietnamese troops maintained pressure on Khe Sanh’s defenders, who had dug in around the base’s airstrip. The original purpose for deploying the Marines and South Vietnamese into the northwest corner of South Vietnam was to block Communist troop movements along Highway 9 toward Quang Tri City and the heavily populated coastal areas. When U.S. intelligence detected large enemy forces assembling near Khe Sanh, the senior American commander in Vietnam, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, ordered the Marines to hold the base. During the siege that followed, U.S. strike aircraft rained nearly 100,000 tons of munitions down upon the North Vietnamese while other planes—primarily U.S. Air Force transports—flew in essential supplies of food, ammunition, and other necessities to Khe Sanh’s defenders. The Leathernecks also used their own aircraft to provision Marine outposts which denied the enemy the high ground overlooking the base. Other military elements participating in the battle included U.S. Army artillerymen dug in east of Khe Sanh, who fired deadly concentrations against the besieging forces. Marine howitzers and mortars added to the heavy U.S. fire, while Army engineers joined Navy Seabees in helping prepare airstrips which supported the allied defense effort. Finally, the relief of Khe Sanh—though spearheaded by Army troops—also involved American Marines and soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.
Includes 7 maps, 3 tables, and more than 80 photo illustrations. In the 77 days from 20 Jan. to 18 March of 1968, two divisions of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) surrounded a regiment of U.S. Marines on a mountain plateau in the northwest corner of South Vietnam known as Khe Sanh. The episode was no accident; it was in fact a carefully orchestrated meeting in which both sides got what they wanted. The North Vietnamese succeeded in surrounding the Marines in a situation in many ways similar to Dien Bien Phu, and may have been seeking similar tactical, operational, and strategic results. General William C. Westmoreland, the commander of the joint U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (COMUSMACV), meanwhile, sought to lure the NVA into the unpopulated terrain around the 26th Marines in order to wage a battle of annihilation with air power. In this respect Khe Sanh has been lauded as a great victory of air power, a military instrument of dubious suitability to much of the Vietnam conflict. The facts support the assessment that air power was the decisive element at Khe Sanh, delivering more than 96 percent of the ordnance used against the NVA. Most histories of the battle, however, do not delve much deeper than this. Comprehensive histories like John Prados and Ray Stubbe’s Valley of Decision, Robert Pisor’s End of the Line, and Eric Hammel’s Siege in the Clouds provide excellent accounts of the battle, supported by detailed analyses of its strategic and operational background but tend to focus on the ground battle and treat the application of air power in general terms. They do not, however, make significant distinction between the contributions of the two primary air combat elements in this air-land battle: the 7th Air Force and the 1st Marine Air Wing. An analysis of their respective contributions to the campaign reveals that they each made very different contributions that reflected very different approaches to the application of air power.
[Includes over 130 illustrations and maps] This insightful work documents the thoughts and perspectives of a general with 35 years of history with the U.S. Air Force – General William W. Momyer. The manuscript discusses his years as a senior commander of the Air Force – strategy, command and control counter air operations, interdiction, and close air support. His perspectives cover World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
Includes more than 10 maps and 20 Illustrations “The Marines’ heroic defense of the Khe Sanh area against numerically superior North Vietnamese forces stands out among the many battles fought to defend the Republic of Vietnam against Communist aggression. “The enemy’s primary objective of his 1968 TET Offensive was to seize power in South Vietnam by creating a general uprising and causing the defection of major elements of the ARVN. In conjunction with this, the enemy apparently expected to seize by military action large portions of the northern two provinces lying just south of the Demilitarized Zone and there to set up a “liberation government.” The virtually unpopulated Khe Sanh Plateau, which lay astride the enemy’s principal avenue of approach from his large base areas in Laos, was obviously an initial objective of the North Vietnamese Army.... “This report provides a detailed and graphic account of events as they unfolded. It centers about the 26th Marine Regiment, the main defenders of the Khe Sanh area, who tenaciously and magnificently held off the enemy during the two-and-one-half-month siege. Yet the battle of Khe Sanh was an inter-Service and international operation. Consequently, appropriate coverage is given to the contributions of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, and to South Vietnamese regular and irregular military units, all of whom contributed to the defense of the area and to the destruction of the enemy. As Marine artillery from within the fortified positions pounded the enemy, Army artillery located to the east provided heavy, long-range fire support. Fighter aircraft from the Marines, Air Force, and Navy provided continuous close air support, while B-52 bombers of the Strategic Air Command dealt decisive blows around-the-clock to enemy forces within striking distance of our positions and against enemy supply areas....”-General Westmoreland
Offers a vivid narrative of the seventy-seven-day struggle to control the remote Khe Sanh base in Vietnam, during which a severely outnumbered and isolated group of Marines held off an enemy onslaught, in a multimedia history that features firsthand remin
Includes 3 maps and 40 photographs No experience etched itself more deeply into Air Force thinking than the air campaigns over North Vietnam. Two decades later in the deserts of Southwest Asia, American airmen were able to avoid the gradualism that cost so many lives and planes in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Readers should come away from this book with a sympathetic understanding of the men who bombed North Vietnam. Those airmen handled tough problems in ways that ultimately reshaped the Air Force into the effective instrument on display in the Gulf War. This book is a sequel to Jacob Van Staaveren’s Gradual Failure: The Air War over North Vietnam, 1965-1966, which we have also declassified and are publishing. Wayne Thompson tells how the Air Force used that failure to build a more capable service-a service which got a better opportunity to demonstrate the potential of air power in 1972. Dr. Thompson began to learn about his subject when he was an Army draftee assigned to an Air Force intelligence station in Taiwan during the Vietnam War. He took time out from writing To Hanoi and Back to serve in the Checkmate group that helped plan the Operation Desert Storm air campaign against Iraq. Later he visited Air Force pilots and commanders in Italy immediately after the Operation Deliberate Force air strikes in Bosnia. During Operation Allied Force over Serbia and its Kosovo province, he returned to Checkmate. Consequently, he is keenly aware of how much the Air Force has changed in some respects-how little in others. Although he pays ample attention to context, his book is about the Air Force. He has written a well-informed account that is both lively and thoughtful.
Dr. Donald J. Mrozeks research sheds considerable light on how the use of air power evolved in the Vietnam War. Much more than simply retelling events, Mrozek analyzes how history, politics, technology, and the complexity of the war drove the application of air power in a long and divisive struggle. Mrozek delves into a wealth of original documentation, and his scholarship is impeccable. His analysis is thorough and balanced. His conclusions are well reasoned but will trouble those who have never seriously considered how the application of air power is influenced by factors far beyond the battlefield. Wether or not the reader agrees with Mrozek, the quality of his research and analysis makes his conclusions impossible to ignore. John C. Fryer, Jr. Brigadier General, United States Air Force Commander, Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education
Tracing the use of air power in World War II and the Korean War, Mark Clodfelter explains how U. S. Air Force doctrine evolved through the American experience in these conventional wars only to be thwarted in the context of a limited guerrilla struggle in Vietnam. Although a faith in bombing's sheer destructive power led air commanders to believe that extensive air assaults could win the war at any time, the Vietnam experience instead showed how even intense aerial attacks may not achieve military or political objectives in a limited war. Based on findings from previously classified documents in presidential libraries and air force archives as well as on interviews with civilian and military decision makers, The Limits of Air Power argues that reliance on air campaigns as a primary instrument of warfare could not have produced lasting victory in Vietnam. This Bison Books edition includes a new chapter that provides a framework for evaluating air power effectiveness in future conflicts.