Vietnam

by Nigel Cawthorne

  At the same time, Operation Ranch Hand was reaching its height. This was America's attempt to deny the Vietcong and NVA the protection of the forests. Several methods of jungle clearance had been used, including dropping napalm in an attempt to set the forest on fire. But in dense jungle, the canisters got caught in the canopy and burnt down just one tree, rather than beginning a self-sustaining fire. Roman Plows, huge Caterpillar tractors fitted with a 2.5-ton plough blade and fourteen tons of armour plating, bulldozed 750,000 acres of forest. But this method could not be used on hilly terrain. Besides, it fertilised the ground very effectively and in the monsoon conditions of Vietnam dense undergrowth soon grew back. The US forces began using chemical herbicides, Agent White and Agent Purple, named for the colour of the can they came in. But none was as effective as Agent Orange.

  Agent Orange was a growth hormone that made the trees shed their leaves prematurely. Converted C-123 transports sprayed a thousand cans at 280 gallons a minute from two hundred feet over the jungle and in three-and-a-half minutes another 350 acres of jungle had been destroyed. The programme began in 1961, when American airmen dressed as civilians began spraying VC strongholds at the request of President Diem. The Ranch Hand fliers adopted the motto, 'Only you can prevent forest'. In the nine years of Operation Ranch Hand, over eighteen million gallons of herbicide were used, laying waste 5.5 million acres: the area of Wales or Vermont. That was one-seventh of the area of the country, including 36 per cent of the coastal mangrove swamp, wiping out shellfish, cutting the production of the local fisheries, and driving several species into extinction.

  In areas where it was sprayed, leaflets were dropped, warning local people. This gave the VC a chance to organise a hot reception committee and F-4 Phantoms had to rocket and strafe target areas before the spray planes went in. The VC distributed their own leaflets, telling local people to bury their food six feet below ground. To counter VC propaganda, South Vietnamese psychological warfare teams would eat bread soaked in Agent Orange and wash their faces in it. This failed to convince. Rumours that the Americans were trying to poison them spread among the peasants, who could not get used to evil-smelling fluid falling on them. Agent Blue was also used to destroy crops grown by the VC and crops that would be taken as 'taxes' by the Communists. This technique had been used effectively by the British against Communist insurgents in Malaya. But peasants hated seeing the crops that they had planted and trees they had tended for years killed overnight by a spray plane.

  The use of herbicides helped drive the peasants off the land, into refugee camps, leaving free-fire zones where US forces could use their massive firepower with impunity. However, it was also a massive propaganda failure. It was a great recruiting sergeant for the Vietcong and also exposed the US to charges of using chemical warfare, causing protest at home in the United States and abroad. In 1969, the UN General Assembly found the use of herbicides illegal under the 1925 Geneva Protocol that outlawed the use of the poison gases used in World War I and 'all analogous liquids, materials, or devices'. The US protested. Herbicides were used in the US, USSR and other countries to eliminate unwanted vegetation. During 1961, forty million acres of agricultural land in the US, along with thousands of acres alongside freeways and railroads, were treated with the same herbicides and ten million acres, a quarter of the area of South Vietnam, was sprayed from the air. However, in 1969, the National Cancer Institute discovered that dioxin, an impurity created in the manufacture of Agent Orange, caused cancer and birth defects in laboratory animals. Over 32,000 disability claims have been filed by US servicemen exposed to Agent Orange (the Vietnamese had no legal redress) and in 1975 President Gerald Ford signed Executive Order 11850, renouncing the first use of herbicides in war.

  Agent Orange was sprayed not only in Vietnam, but also in Laos and Cambodia to strip the Ho Chi Minh trail of its forest cover. Again this was ineffective as the trail was more network of tracks than a two-lane blacktop and the supply lines could easily revert to a different route. One solution tried out was Operation Popeye, a weather-modification programme designed to intensify the monsoon and wash out the jungle trails. Their motto was 'make mud, not war'. It proved ineffective. In 1976, the UN banned weather modification as a weapon of war.

  But still, for MACV, it was vital to know what was going on along the Ho Chi Minh trail. If they could monitor the amount of men and matériel heading down it, they would have a good idea of what the Communists were planning in the South. Special Forces trained the local primitive Meo tribesmen, but they proved unreliable, and the NVA soon became adept at tracking down the Green Berets' A-Teams. The answer in 1966 – the year that saw the first broadcast of Star Trek – was more technology. The Spocks of the shadowy Institute of Defense Analysis came up with sensors that would detect movement along the trail. Manufactured by the Pentagon's little-known Defense Communications Planning Group, they were submarine passive sonar devices, modified for land use. Some were dropped by planes by parachute so they hung in the trees. Others were dropped free-fall so that its pointed body would bury itself in the ground, leaving only the antenna, often disguised as a jungle plant, above ground. These battery powered devices picked up the sound and seismic vibrations of passing trucks or columns of troops, or the electrical inference given off by a truck's ignition system. Data from the sensors was collected by a Lockheed EC121R Warning Star circling overhead and relayed back to the Infiltration Surveillance Center at Nakhon Phanom – NKP or Naked Fanny – in Thailand, also known as Dutch Mill after its windmill-shaped antenna.

  The problem was that the aircraft dropping the sensors had to fly low and slow, otherwise the sensor would be smashed to bits when it hit the ground. Modified USN OP-2E Neptunes, usually used for tracking submarines, were used. They presented NVA anti-aircraft teams with an easy target, as did the circling Warning Stars. Later the QU-22B Pave Eagle II, a pilotless version of the Model 36 Beech Bonanza light aircraft, was used to relay data to the Warning Stars that stood off out of range. The trail surveillance programme, which was called Operation Igloo White, cost $725 million. As a result, as one air force officer put it, 'every fourth bush in the Ho Chi Minh trail had an antenna in it'.

  The ISC in Nakhon Phanom had two IBM 360–65 computers – state of the art at that time – to process the data. In theory, they could pinpoint the position of any convoys and call in an air strike. But for all its sophisticated electronic equipment, the US could not stop men and supplies trundling down the Ho Chi Minh trail.

  Another expensive failure was the 'people sniffer'. Originally designated the XM-2 airborne personnel detector, it was an electrochemical device made by GE that could detect tiny particles of human sweat or bodily wastes, both liquid and solid, in the air. In the pollution-free air of Vietnam, it was deployed to detect the VC. Mounted on a Huey helicopter, people-sniffer patrols would roam the countryside, searching for the enemy. Unfortunately, the people sniffer could not tell the difference between the sweat of troops or that of old men, women, and children going about their business, and the flood of urine discharged by a water buffalo or jungle animals sent it off the scale. However, a modified version known as the E-63 which clipped onto the barrel of an M16, was used in Vietnam to limited effect.

  By October 1966, the US was flying over 25,000 bombing missions a month over Vietnam. B-52s were pounding the NVA's supply and staging areas in the DMZ, in the belief that the 324B Division was building up to launch a major attack, and the bombing crept closer and closer to Hanoi. A Department of Defense report revealed that attacks on oil facilities in the North had done nothing to slow the infiltration of arms and supplies into South Vietnam. The Pentagon response was to intensify the raids, although three days before the November congressional elections, Secretary McNamara said that there had been no 'sharp increase' in the number of air strikes. On 2 December fuel depots were bombed once again and US Navy jets hit targets just five miles outside Hanoi. Eight US planes were lost that day. The Vietcong retaliated by attacking US ai
rcraft inside Tan Son Nhut air base. By 14 December, US planes were bombing a truck depot two miles south of Hanoi. A French journalist reported that the village of Caudat, outside Hanoi, had been 'completely destroyed by bombs and fire'. The raid brought international condemnation.

  General Westmoreland denied that US bombers had attacked nonmilitary targets in Hanoi but, on 25 December The New York Times published a report describing the wholesale damage done to various North Vietnamese cities by the bombing. The following day, the Pentagon was forced to admit that North Vietnamese civilians may have been killed accidentally in bombing raids against military targets. The year ended with US planes dropping hundreds of tons of high explosives and napalm on the Mekong Delta. Six thousand ARVN troops then moved in on the Vietcong bases in the U Minh forest, claiming a body count of 104 VC killed and eighteen captured.

  In over eighteen months, Operation Rolling Thunder had not succeeded in stemming the flow of men and matériel from North Vietnam into the South, so it was decided to step up the bombing of the North once again. But first they had to take out the North Vietnamese Air Force and its Soviet-made MiGs in Operation Bolo. This began on 2 January 1967, when a force of eighty-four F-4Cs of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing ('the Wolfpack') took off from Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base. They were equipped with new electronic jamming pods that could simulate the characteristics of other aircraft. The 8th TFW disguised themselves electronically as a pack of F-105 Thunderchiefs and refuelling tankers on a Rolling Thunder mission. They used the same approach routes, altitudes, and Thunderchief call signs. From the east, more F-4s from the 366th TFW approached. They were to cover two of the NVAF's airfields and cut off the MiGs' escape route to the north.

  Rising to the bait, the MiGs took off to attack what they thought were a wing of bombers as they crossed into North Vietnamese air space. Instead the found themselves up against Phantoms. Despite the new MiG Fishbed's superior manoeuvrability and its Atoll air-to-air missiles, the Phantoms shot seven of them down – half of the NVAF's operational inventory – without loss. The score would have been higher if the weather had not stopped more of the fourteen flights of Phantoms engaging them.

  US Phantom jets prowl the skies during Operation Rolling Thunder.

  'We outflew, outshot, and outfought them,' flight leader Colonel Robin Olds told news correspondents afterward.

  While the American people were getting disillusioned with the war on the ground, fighter pilots such as Olds and the US Navy's Randy Cunningham became national heroes. Their pictures appeared on the covers of news magazines and they were fêted like movie stars. While grunts on the ground were pictured zippoing hootches [hootch: Vietnamese hut], these men were portrayed as all-American heroes who took the enemy on one-on-one. Cunningham is now a congressman.

  On 6 January the Phantoms attacked again, this time disguised as an unarmed reconnaissance mission. This effectively cleared the skies of enemy fighters and Operation Rolling Thunder went into Phase V. Attacks were authorised on the air base at Phuc Yen and the air fields at Hoa Loc, Kien An and Kep, along with the military facilities in Hanoi and along the Chinese border all of which had previously been off-limits. The US was escalating the war once more.

  During these raids, fifty-two NVAF aircraft were shot down, though the USAF also suffered heavy losses. Nine F-4s and eleven F-105s were shot down by MiGs, and three F-4s and seventeen F-105s hit by surfaceto-air (SAM) missiles. In all, in 1967, 294 USAF aircraft were lost to enemy action, along with 87 operational losses. The F-105 Thunderchiefs sustained the worst losses: 113 were downed. But they made 22 of the 59 MiG kills claimed by the USAF.

  At the end of May, the new F-4D Phantom was introduced. On 24 August, the AGM-62A Walleye TV-guided missile made its debut and the AIM-4 Falcon air-to-air missile made its first kill on 26 October. Again the stakes were being raised relentlessly. But it did little good. The Soviets simply replaced the planes lost and upped the pilot training programme. The intensification of the bombing did little to impair the North's ability or willingness to fight.

  While the US airmen were heroes at home, to the North Vietnamese they were air pirates. Downed pilots were attacked by angry mobs and had to be protected by the militia. Their capture was often re-enacted for the cameras. Once in captivity, they were held in solitary confinement for years and badly mistreated. Kept in vermin-infested cells, they were fed thin pumpkin or cabbage soup with maybe a little pig fat in it. The Hanoi government insisted that, as war had not been declared, the Geneva Convention did not apply, a misleading statement, as the Geneva Convention applies not only to declared wars, but to any armed conflict between parties to the Convention. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam – North Vietnam – had ratified the Convention in 1957. Nevertheless, the Hanoi government refused to provide the required lists of those men they held captive and allowed neither the International Red Cross nor the representatives of any neutral nation to inspect their prisoners. The American authorities had to trawl through North Vietnamese newspapers, propaganda movies, and the publications of their Communist allies to built up their own list of captives. Fortunately, the Communists liked to show off their prisoners. One of the most frequently shown images of the war on the Communist side was a tall American with his head bowed being marched through the jungle by a small Vietnamese woman in black pyjamas carrying a rifle.

  It had to be said that there was little regard for the Geneva Convention on either side. There were instances of Americans using coercion and torture on captured Communists, often 'interrogating' VC suspects with the aid of electric shocks generated by a field telephone in what was flippantly known as 'the Bell Telephone hour'. Geneva Convention III not only covered members of conventional armed forces but also militias, volunteer corps, and organised resistance groups, such as the Vietcong. Prisoners were regularly handed over to the ARVN – again in violation of the Convention – who had no scruples when it came to the maltreatment and summary execution of their fellow countrymen. Those kept alive were held in 'tiger cages' which were too small for them to stand up or lie down in. The South Vietnamese were accused of shooting Vietcong prisoners and throwing them out of helicopters. The Vietcong openly admitted executing US prisoners without trial in reprisal. When the US protested that the North Vietnamese had made numerous violations of the Convention in 1966, North Vietnam declared its intention of trying all American prisoners as war criminals. World opinion turned against this and the North Vietnamese dropped it, but continued to parade downed pilots through the streets of Hanoi where they were jeered at by angry crowds who had suffered American bombing.

  American prisoners captured in the South were often held in the combat zone, a violation of Article 19 of the Geneva Convention. They were denied medicine and food – in breach of Article 33 – subjected to 'reeducation', and often held in inhuman conditions, frequently confined to tiny bamboo cages, in breach of Article 13. Few survived.

  Airmen downed over the North were stripped of their clothing and possessions in breach of Article 18. They were regularly paraded through streets full of jeering crowds and threatened with 'war crime trials'. Many were kept shackled for long periods, alone, in the dark, left to wallow in their own excrement, and denied medical treatment. Those who refused to divulge more than their name, rank, and serial number were brutally tortured in breach of Article 17, though rarely to extract any useful information. The idea was to break them and force them to make some propaganda statement. Eighty per cent of them did. Since the Vietnam War, the US code of conduct has been changed so that prisoners of war are allowed to provide more than the name, rank, date of birth, and serial number required by Article 17 of the Geneva Conventions if they face inhuman treatment. Once the Vietnamese had extracted statements or 'confessions' from the airmen, they were paraded in front of the world's TV cameras – the final humiliation for a courageous fighting man.

  Most downed airmen ended up in Hoa Lo, the old French colonial prison in Hanoi, which inmates dubbed the 'Hanoi Hilton
'. It was made up of a series of compounds. Each got a nickname. When prisoners first arrived, they went to 'New Guy Village', then to 'Las Vegas' and 'Heartbreak Hotel' where they were tortured. 'Camp Unity' was the compound where prisoners were allowed to meet after December 1970: until then, they would have been held in solitary confinement.

  From 1965 to 1967, some US prisoners were held a in compound called the 'Briarpatch', some thirty miles to the northwest of Hanoi. After 1967, they were moved to the 'Zoo' at Cu Loc. There were other compounds outside Hanoi such as 'Camp Faith', 'Skid Row' and Son Tay. There were other smaller compounds in Hanoi, including one in the old movie studio. After 1967, 'Alcatraz' housed the prisoners who had given their captors particular problems. A 'model' prison was also constructed for the cooperative prisoners in the grounds of the mayor's house, where they could be inspected by visiting dignitaries.

  The most famous prisoner of war was John McCain, who went on to become a US Senator and ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2000 election. During the Vietnam War, McCain was a Navy flier. His father, an admiral, was commander of all US forces in the Pacific. McCain was shot down over Hanoi in 1967 and badly injured. When the Vietnamese realised that their prisoner was the son of a high-ranking officer, they offered to return him. But McCain refused early release, fearing it would be used to embarrass the US government. He insisted that standard military procedures be followed and prisoners of war be returned in the order of their date of capture. As a result, McCain was held in solitary confinement and tortured frequently. He was returned in 1973 with the other prisoners after five and a half years in captivity. In 1982, he was elected to Congress as a Republican and in 1986 he became a US Senator for Arizona. Time magazine named him one of its 'Top 25 Most Influential People in America' in 1997.