Correcting Widespread Misconceptions about the Vietnam War

Part 3 of 3—1969 to 1975 and Beyond

In 1946, following Japanese occupation of Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) during World War II, Vietnamese Communists ( the Viet Minh) began their revolutionary struggle to deny the French rule of their former colony. The French suffered an embarrassing defeat by the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954.  President Eisenhower supported rescuing the French situation at Dien Bien Phu by using CIA transport aircraft, manned by former Army Air Corp pilots, to drop supplies and Foreign Legion paratroopers to assist French forces. The 1954 Geneva Accords split Norh and South Vietnam at the 17^th Parallel. The French Parliament having abandoned Indochina on July 20, 1954, the Geneva Accords shifted primary responsibility for keeping South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos free of North Vietnamese Communist aggression to the United States. By 1959, Moscow was directly involved in plans for North Vietnamese “liberation” of South Vietnam and ultimately Cambodia and Laos. They had already infiltrated about 10,000 armed insurgents into South Vietnam by 1962. Following a misguided JFK directed regime change removing South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem on November 1-2, 1963, resulting in Ngo’s assassination by a junta faction, the South Vietnamese Government and Army were in chaos for two years. Taking advantage of this, more than 240,000 North Vietnamese troops had invaded South Vietnam by 1967. The VC tripled from 10,000 to 30,000 plus.

Note that there were already about 24,000, soon to be 60,000, North Vietnamese invaders in South Vietnam when Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 5, 1964. This was President Johnson’s real urgency for expanded war powers and increased budget. The questionable skirmish of the US destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy with North Vietnamese  torpedo boats on August 2 and 4 was an irrelevant incident raised to emotional war propaganda to move Congress to action. The expanding North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam should have been truth enough, but it involved admission and discussion of the disastrous regime change pushed by JFK in early November 1963.

Lyndon Johnson Vietnam Summary 1963-1968

Following JFK’s assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963, President Johnson reacted by building up US troop strength to 150,000 by the end of 1965 and peaking at 547,000 in 1968.

However, he used an ineffective, gradualist strategy that allowed huge enemy sanctuaries and severely restricted USAF and Navy firepower. He wasted 2,000  US fixed-wing combat aircraft on what Pacific Area Commander, Admiral Grant Sharp, called “powder puff air warfare.”  During  Johnson’s Operation Rolling Thunder from 1965 to 1968,  air strikes were limited to secondary, non-strategic targets. Ridiculous initial rules of engagement prohibited attacking a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun unless it fired at you first. Concentrations of antiaircraft missiles on trains or trucks could not be hit. Only those that that had been distributed and ready for combat could be hit.

An aside note not related to Operation Rolling Thunder: The US lost more than 5,600 of 12,000 helicopters used in ground warfare and air rescue during the war.

Seventh Air Force Commander General William Momeyer summarized the frustration of USAF and Navy aircrews flying over North Vietnam and Laos perfectly:

“To wait until he [the enemy] has disseminated his supplies among thousands of trucks, sampans, rafts, and bicycles and then send our multimillion dollar aircraft after these individual vehicles—this is how to maximize our costs, not his.”

Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara allowed North Vietnam to build their antiaircraft defenses from nominal in 1965 to the greatest concentration of antiaircraft defenses since German air defenses in World War II by 1967.  Admiral Sharp and the JCS had 6 major confrontations with McNamara over his refusal to allow strategic bombing and common sense rules of engagement.

Operation Rolling Thunder wasted a large part of our fighter-bomber force in highly restricted and restrained attacks on heavily defended secondary targets.

Moreover, Johnson refused to listen to experienced military advice, seldom exposed himself to military advice, picked bombing targets himself, and tried to micromanage the war.

The North Vietnamese Tet offensive in February 1968 was the greatest North Vietnamese defeat in the war, with the North Vietnamese suffering massive losses, but Johnson allowed the media to make it the greatest Communist propaganda victory in the war. Johnson’s objective was not to drive the North Vietnamese out of South Vietnam; it was to negotiate a peace with North Vietnam—with 16 bombing halts to the advantage of the NVA—on rather anxious and compromised terms.

Admiral Sharp was able to bring McNamara’s dysfunctional rules of engagement to the attention of key Senate leaders, who were already being informed by disturbed constituent families,  resulting in McNamara’s resignation in the midst of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive on February 29, 1968. He was replaced by ultra-liberal, anti-military Clark Clifford

On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced he would not run for re-election and halted all bombing of North Vietnam.

Nixon Takes Command 1969—Peace with Honor Objectives

President Nixon’s 1968 campaign promises included a plan for “Vietnamization” of the war. This was to gradually replace US armed forces with South Vietnamese armed forces. Nixon believed that abrupt withdrawal from Vietnam would be dishonorable. US forces would continue to provide air support, logistical aid, and training, but ground combat roles would be gradually reduced.

Nixon initially showed some of the  utopian belief in negotiation that characterized Lyndon Johnson. But Nixon was willing to listen to experienced military commanders and advisers and open to a new understandings of the war. During his first days in office, Nixon ordered a comprehensive top-to-bottom study of every factor needed to understand the situation in Vietnam and more broadly, Southeast Asia. All the inputs confirmed that the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) had destroyed all but a nuisance remnant of the VC, and the NVA was now unable to threaten areas protected by allied forces. Moreover, the ARVN had proved itself highly capable of defeating NVA opposition. Furthermore, the South Vietnamese people had proved themselves strongly anti-Communist.

The  Vietnamization policy had two main components: first, building up the South Vietnamese armed forces in terms of numbers, equipment, leadership, and combat skills; and second, extending pacification programs to stabilize rural areas and strengthen the South Vietnamese government

Nixon was also determined and able to use both military action and diplomacy to achieve long-range American objectives.

 Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, made Vietnamization a primary priority. American troop levels fell from 536,000 to 475,000 in 1969. They were down to 156,000 by 1971 and 24,000 by the end of 1972, and down to 50 in 1973.  South Vietnamese forces increased from 820,000 in 1968 to over 1.1 million in 1973.  US killed in action fell from a high of almost 17,000 in 1968 to 759 in 1972. South Vietnamese killed in action were almost 40,000 in 1972. Total US military deaths in the Vietnam War were 57,000.

Nixon quickly learned that NVA sanctuaries in Cambodia were a serious threat to US forces, South Vietnam, and the success of Vietnamization. In March 1970, Cambodian Prime Minister Lon Nol demanded that North Vietnamese troops and VC leave Cambodia. On April 13, Lon Nol asked Washington for help. Nixon quickly obliged. On April 30, 10,000 US Air Cavalry and armored tank troops, and 5,000 ARVN armored and airborne troops attacked NVA troop concentrations. The allied forces were supported by B-52 bombers. This was unpopular with liberal Democrats in Congress and sparked widespread antiwar demonstrations on college campuses. By June, fourteen NVA  bases were cleared out and massive stores of weapons, ammunition, and supplies were destroyed. Attacks on South Vietnam from Cambodia  were substantially reduced for the rest of 1970, but Congress would soon act to limit US incursions and bombing in Cambodia.

The Pentagon Papers was a classified history and documentation of US involvement in Indochina from Truman’s actions in 1945 through May 1968. It was originally ordered by Secretary of Defense McNamara  in 1967. Excerpts from the compilation and interpretations by Daniel Ellsberg were first published by the New York Times in June 1971, near the peak of antiwar protests. There are valuable documents in the Pentagon Papers, but you have to believe Communism is a harmless, non-violent, and non-aggressive ideology to discredit the basic objective of the Vietnam war—stopping North Vietnam from invading and occupying South Vietnam. Neither is it valid to believe the defense of South Vietnam was essentially based on lies. Part 2 of this series covered the enormous influence of Soviet GRU and KGB intelligence propaganda on the US antiwar movement.  

In February 1971, a similar incursion into Ho Chi Minh Trail strongholds in Laos by 15,000 ARVN troops was called Lam Son 719. Lam Son 19 was supported by US bombing and helicopter support and turned out to be one of bloodiest battles of the war. The ARVN suffered more than 2,000 KIA or MIA and 5,500 wounded, but most of them were back in South Vietnam by late March. Enough damage was done to NVA facilities and supplies to set back any major NVA operations for a year.

On March 30, 1972, North Vietnam would launch a 200,000 strong NVA blitzkrieg, including 500 tanks, across the DMZ in four locations.  However, the ARVN, with mostly US Navy and USAF air support, including B-52s, was able to smash and halt the NVA advance. US ground forces, which were down to 69,000 with only 15,000 of them combat troops at that time, did not participate directly.  ARVN forces did receive help from 15,000 tough-minded South Korean troops. The “Easter” Blitzkrieg would finally end on June 18 with NVA battle deaths accumulating to over 100,000.  ARVN battle deaths were approximately 25,000.

Vietnamization was a substantial Nixon success, but it needed US Congressional budget support to sustain it against NVA forces armed and financed by substantial Soviet and Chinese aid.

The NVA Spring offensive was not only defeated; it convinced Nixon that ongoing peace negotiations with North Vietnam were futile. Marxists only negotiate to gain time for rebuilding forces and munitions, to open a new front, or consolidate a victory. Nixon decided to take the advice the JCS and Pacific commanders had urged at least 5 times since 1965. This was strategic bombing and mining of North Vietnamese ports.

Operation Linebacker 1

On April 10, 1972,  12 USAF B-52s accompanied by USAF and Navy tactical aircraft bombed key logistical targets in North Vietnam. On May 8, US Navy aircraft dropped 36 one-thousand-pound mines into Haiphong Harbor, North Vietnam’s largest port. Three days later, 11,000 smaller mines were dropped in secondary waters. US Navy mining blocked approximately 85% of North Vietnamese imports. The Strategic Air Command relocated 124 B-52s from the US to Guam, bringing the total number between Thailand and Guam to 209. USAF fighter and attack bombers available came to over 400. Eight Navy aircraft carriers were stationed off North Vietnam’s coast. Over 200 NVAF MiG interceptors  contested Navy and USAF fighters. The Navy racked up a 6:1 kill ratio over the MiGs. The USAF ratio started even but was up to 4;1 by June. US aircraft dropped 250,000 tons of bombs on strategic North Vietnam targets and NVA military positions. Linebacker 1 ended when Nixon halted all bombing on October 23, because  Hanoi’s leaders indicated that negotiations were preferable to further devastation of North Vietnam. The US lost 134 aircraft but no B-52s. South Vietnam lost 10 aircraft. North Vietnam lost 63 MiGs. More strategic damage was done by 6 months of Linebacker 1 than by 3.5 years of Operation Rolling Thunder, with much fewer losses.

By late November, it became apparent that the North Vietnamese were stalling the negotiation process in the hope that their position would be stronger when a new Democrat controlled Congress was seated January 3, 1973. Meanwhile, while the North Vietnamese were negotiating, US aerial reconnaissance showed they were frantically rebuilding and preparing for war and further invasions of South Vietnam.  On December 14, Nixon gave the North Vietnamese a 72 hour warning to negotiate in earnest. They did not reply.

Operation Linebacker II—Decisive Victory

Linebacker II used its 207 B-52s much more intensely than Linebacker I.  In Linebacker I, typically about 66 B-52s in groups of 3 saw action in a day. On December 18, 129 B-52s from Guam and Thailand hit North Vietnamese railroads, power plants, fuel storage, communications centers, MiG airfields, and anti-aircraft concentrations, including SAMS (surface to air missiles sites). This was coordinated in three waves coming from different directions. They were accompanied by a small armada of 102 USAF and Navy fighter-bombers and electronic warfare (EW) aircraft. The B-52 missions were 12 hours round trip, so KC-135 refuelers intercepted them coming home. The next few of 11 total Linebacker II missions launched 99 B-52s and about 75 fighter-bombers and EW aircraft. On December 26, North Vietnam was hit 120 B-52s  in 4 waves from different directions. With fewer targets left, the last missions consisted of only about 30 B-52s and accompanying aircraft. The last mission was on December 29.

Abandoning Military Victory

With North Vietnam near total economic and military devastation, North Vietnamese leaders signaled they would renew negotiations and seek peace. The NVA had 190,000 killed in 1972 alone. The United States had essentially won the war militarily, but Democrats in Congress, influenced by antiwar propaganda, continued to be uncooperative.  

Nevertheless, a ceasefire occurred on January 15, and Peace Accords were signed in Paris on January 27, 1973.  North Vietnam pledged to end its invasion of South Vietnam and return our prisoners of war.  It was not a perfect agreement in the eyes of Nixon and South Vietnam President Thieu, but it would have worked if Congress had been willing to enforce its terms. This unwillingness left 200,000 NVA troops in South Vietnam—a major flaw. US troops in Vietnam had been less than 24,000 in December 1972 and were now only 50.

How the 1974 Congress Abandoned Vietnam to Communist Rule

Under Article 7 of the Paris Peace Accords, the United States was pledged to sustain the South Vietnamese armed forces at the annual level existing in January 1973. This was $2.27 billion (Inflated 2026 dollars are 7.35 times that!). However, Congress cut it to $1.03 billion in 1974, and only $700 million in 1975, a virtual guarantee of South Vietnamese inability to resist future North Vietnamese aggression and actually inviting North Vietnamese aggression. Meanwhile the Soviet Union and China increased their support for North Vietnam by 50% over 1972 levels and 10% over peak 1971 levels to prepare for a future Communist invasion of South Vietnam that would be essentially unopposed by the United States.

On December 13, 1974, the NVA launched a 185,000-man assault on South Vietnam. It was the first of a more massive assaults on South Vietnam. More intense assaults began on March 10. By mid-March, South Vietnam was in a desperate situation and running low on ammunition and material support. On April 10, President Ford asked Congress to approve emergency military funds of $722 million and $250 million in humanitarian aid. The anti-war mentality of the majority was such that it never came up for a vote on the House floor. In the end, South Vietnam and Cambodia were running out of ammunition, fuel, spare parts, and arms. Cambodia fell on April 17, and Saigon fell on April 30, 1975, ending the war and South Vietnam.  The fall of Laos to the ruthless Communist Pathet Lao, aided by the NVA, did not occur until December 2, 1975.

The Shameful Consequences of Abandoning Vietnam and Cambodia to Communist Rule

In the new Communist governments of Vietnam and Cambodia, 100,000 Cambodians and 100,000 South Vietnamese  were promptly executed as potential political enemies. That was only the beginning. More than 400,000 other South Vietnamese died of brutality, malnutrition, and disease in political prisons and work camps by 1978.  More than 600,000 were drowned at sea trying to escape. South Vietnamese deaths under Communist rule easily totaled in excess of 1.1 million. The brutal ravages and cruelties Pot Pol’s Cambodian Communist Khmer Rouge government took in excess of 2.4 million lives, 25% of the population, by executions, starvation, disease, exhaustion, and brutal abuse by 1978. Britanica estimates as many as 3.0 million died.

The total civilian deaths under Communist rule in South Vietnam and Cambodia accumulated to 3.5 million by the end of 1978.  Records for the barbarous Pathet Lao regime in Laos are incomplete or missing.

Genocide and democide researcher and scholar R. J. Rummel’s midpoint- estimate of total  military and civilian deaths for all sides from 1954 to 1975 is 2.45 million. This gives credibility to Max Friedman’s 1992 study, “The Human Costs of Communism in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos” that civilian deaths from 1975 to 1985 exceeded all war related deaths from 1954 to 1975. This is also cited on page 362 of Stephen Sherman’s 2025 multi-author compilation, A Factual History of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath. This book by 32 American, Vietnamese, and Cambodian authors is a treasure of essential facts and statistics necessary to understand the war.

Vietnam veterans Bill Laurie and R .J. Del Vecchio list and convincingly refute 16 propaganda myths about the Vietnam War in their brief 54 page book, Whitewash/Blackwash; Myths of the Vietnam War.  President Nixon’s 1985 book, No More Vietnams, also devotes substantial attention to Vietnam myths. One of the most prevalent is Laurie and Del Vecchio’s Myth 12, that the war was unwinnable. Some of the best refutations of this are: On Strategy, US Army Col. Harry G. Summers, Jr;  Summons of the Trumpet, Army Lt. Gen. Dave Richard Palmer; and Strategy for Defeat, Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp.

According to Army General Palmer, Admiral Sharp, Summers, and many others there were many points when we could have won the war—to drive NVA troops out of South Vietnam: In 1965, using strategic air and naval power when North Vietnam’ s air defenses were nominal; in late 1967 when enemy logistics and manpower was being destroyed faster than it could be replaced; and following the disastrous NVA and VC losses from the Tet offensive in early 1968. We had essentially won in December 1972 following Linebacker II, but Congress gave it away.  

Finally, I will recommend again the 47-minute Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association (AVVBA) video Truths and Myths on the Vietnam War.

https://vimeo.com/897032209/a60982cc7b?share=copy

I will close with this advice from a Marine Gunnery Sergeant:

“Hit ‘em as hard as you can, when they ain’t looking. Giving the enemy plenty of time has few experienced survivors.”