Although the Phantom equipped numerous air force squadrons, the plane was designed and manufactured for the United States Navy, which deployed the F-4 aboard its aircraft carriers (no doubt air force generals winced when ordering a plane its sister service had developed). America’s naval air arm played an important part in Rolling Thunder. The navy placed three and sometimes four carriers off the coast of North Vietnam (“Yankee Station”) as well as ships farther south (“Dixie Station”). These latter vessels provided air support to friendly troops on the ground in South Vietnam. The aircraft carriers to the north would spend three or four days conducting air strikes, then withdraw to replenish at sea, having depleted onboard supplies of food, ammunition, and the hundred or so odd things necessary to keep a large ship operating.
Both the navy and the air force pilots flying over North Vietnam during Rolling Thunder operated under strict rules of engagement. These specified what could and could not be attacked. Targets in and around Hanoi and Haiphong were off-limits. At first so were enemy airfields. When antiaircraft missile sites were being constructed north of the DMZ, the Thunderchiefs and Phantoms were not allowed to hit them, for fear of killing Russian technicians who were advising the North Vietnamese on how to operate the weapon. Further, the American planes were not to fly inside a twenty-five-mile buffer zone extending from Vietnam’s border with China.
Needless to say such restrictions made Rolling Thunder less effective than it might have been. Pilots, in particular, objected to the rules. One F-105 pilot called them “extensive, unbelievable and decidedly illogical.” Author Stephen Coonts said they ensured that the United States would not win the war.
Why were the Rules of Engagement put in place? The answer is that Lyndon Baines Johnson, not trusting America’s senior military leaders, wanted to make sure that the conflict would not escalate, which it might if the North Vietnamese were to be hit extremely hard. He also wanted to minimize civilian casualties which, were they to occur in large numbers, would pose political problems for the president both at home and abroad.
U.S. generals and admirals chafed at the restrictions. Intent on winning the war, they wanted to bomb Hanoi (a city that, because of the rules air force historian Wayne Thompson described as “one of the safest places in Vietnam”), mine the harbor of Haiphong, cut North Vietnam in half by an amphibious invasion, and generally conduct the war in a manner guaranteed to bring the north, if not to its knees, at least to the bargaining table. If young Americans were to die in Vietnam, these commanders reasoned, did their country not owe them the goal of victory?
But President Johnson was so determined to keep control that he and his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, instituted a targeting procedure unlike any that had ever been seen. Targets for warplanes striking North Vietnam had to be approved by the White House. Air force and navy leaders would submit proposed targets to the defense secretary, who would massage the list and forward his recommendations to the president. Johnson and a few civilian advisors then would choose what could be struck and what could not. Sometimes, they even decided what size of bomb could be used and what routes the aircraft would take going in and out of Vietnam.
Many targets made military sense. Bridges, rail junctions, and truck convoys were all permitted to be hit. But often, too often to the men who had to do the bombing, the targets seemed hardly worth the effort, or the risk. One F-105 pilot, Ed Rasimus, in a fine book recounting his experiences flying in Vietnam, wrote the following:
The target itself was described as “approximately fifty barrels of suspected [petroleum].” The pilots had all agreed in the planning room that we must have indeed been winning the war if we were sending sixteen bombers, five SAM-suppression aircraft, eight MiG-CAP, two stand-off jammers, and eight tankers for fifty barrels of something buried at a jungle intersection. The briefing officer seemed a bit embarrassed by the target. . . . It wasn’t his fault, so we didn’t harass him. Credit for targeting rightly belonged in Washington.
To say this targeting procedure was unusual would be an understatement. To say it made no sense would be more to the point. Surely, the president of the United States had more important tasks than selecting targets for Rolling Thunder. Lyndon Johnson didn’t think so. He wanted to be sure control did not pass to the military. His purpose was to limit the war in Vietnam, and he thought target selection was one way to do so.
Johnson’s strategy for Rolling Thunder was to increase gradually the aerial violence. He believed that such an approach would induce the North Vietnamese, who, realizing that even further destruction would be forthcoming, to come to their senses and agree to a negotiated settlement. Johnson believed he was acting rationally and responsibly. He was avoiding overkill and, by ordering a number of bombing pauses, was giving the regime in Hanoi an opportunity to act in a similar manner. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advised the president that this approach would not work. The agency pointed out that the North Vietnamese Communists were interested only in victory, which for them meant the removal of the regime in Saigon, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, and the unification of the two Vietnams under one rule, theirs. Lyndon Johnson, a master of political compromise, thought differently. He believed the North Vietnamese would act as he might act. They would see what he saw and realize their interests would be served by agreeing to a settlement, thus avoiding further destruction from American warplanes. But Lyndon Johnson was wrong, his strategy flawed. The North Vietnamese had no intention of agreeing to any settlement that deprived them of victory.
Ed Rasimus survived his tour flying F-105s, completing one hundred missions over North Vietnam. Other pilots were less fortunate. They were shot down, and either killed or taken captive. In 1966 and 1967 alone 776 U.S. airmen lost their lives. In total, the United States saw 992 aircraft destroyed during Rolling Thunder. There were wrecks of Thunderchiefs and Phantoms all over North Vietnam.
One of those F-4s went down on July 24, 1965, early in Rolling Thunder. What makes the event noteworthy was the cause of the plane’s destruction. The Phantom was hit by a Russian-built SA-2 surface-to-air missile (SAM).
Deployed in great numbers throughout North Vietnam, the SA-2 was a modern air defense missile supplied in large numbers by the Soviet Union. With a warhead containing 420 pounds of explosives, the missile could bring down an aircraft at altitudes up to eighty thousand feet. However, the missile was susceptible to electronic jamming, a tool at which the Americans became extremely proficient. Both the U.S. Air Force and Navy produced specialized aircraft and tactics to jam the missile’s guidance system. The air force called these planes “Wild Weasles.” They were all two-seater warplanes that locked onto SA-2 transmissions and then fired a missile of their own at the launch site. While not always successful, the Wild Weasles put a major dent in the north’s missile defense system.
During the war, according to SA-2 historian Steven Zaloga, a total of 5,804 missiles were fired at American aircraft. In the eight years of conflict, SAMs destroyed 205 U.S. planes. However, the impact of the missile was greater than this tally might indicate. That’s because the SA-2s caused many of the attacking aircraft to jettison their bombs before reaching their target. Moreover, they forced American planes to dive to lower altitudes, bringing them within range of antiaircraft guns the North Vietnamese had placed all across their country.
The antiaircraft guns and the SA-2s were parts of a triad that together constituted a formidable air defense system. The third element of North Vietnam’s air defenses was the MiGs. These were Russian-built jet fighters, and they constituted the core of the small but determined Vietnamese People’s Air Force.
While the two air forces met in combat over North Vietnam, aerial battles were not frequent. Nevertheless, the Americans did shoot down 196 MiGs during the war. However, the primary objective of U.S. airpower was not the downing of MiGs. The principal goal was putting bombs on target.
Despite the extensive bombing campaign against North Vietnam, Rolli
ng Thunder was not a success. Why? Because the campaign, though military in character, was essentially an exercise in international politics. The purpose of Rolling Thunder was to convince the regime in Hanoi that the price it would have to pay to overthrow the government in Saigon was too high and that it should stop the infiltration of men and matériel into South Vietnam (these flowed south through Laos and Cambodia, along a series of trails nicknamed the Ho Chi Minh Trail). Notwithstanding the pounding by American aircraft, neither of these objectives was achieved.
However, Rolling Thunder did accomplish one secondary goal Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara had set for the campaign. The goal was to boost morale in the south and buy time for the government there to improve its effectiveness. Rolling Thunder sent a message to leaders in Saigon that, in the fight against the Communists, they were not alone.
***
More visible evidence of the American commitment was the increasing number of U.S. troops on the ground in Vietnam. After the initial landings at Da Nang in March of 1965, the number of soldiers steadily increased. By the end of that year, the army had 184,000 men “in country.” Twelve months later the number stood at 385,000. By April of 1969 there were 543,400 American soldiers stationed in Vietnam. This represented the peak of the army’s troop deployment. Afterward, that number declined. By December 1971, only 156,800 soldiers were in Vietnam. By the end of 1972, the number had been reduced to 24,200.
Other nations, allies of the United States, contributed troops as well. Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea all sent soldiers to Vietnam. And their numbers were not inconsequential. Australia dispatched some 7,600 troops, South Korea approximately 50,000. In its battle against the VC and NVA, the United States did not stand alone.
The buildup of troops that began in 1965 was intended to save the regime in Saigon from collapse, which it did. It also had the effect of turning the war into an American effort. Not everyone thought that was a good idea. CIA director John McCone told Lyndon Johnson that such increases meant the United States would get bogged down in a war it could not win. But Johnson, concerned by the political ramifications of defeat, approved the increases.
However, the president did not announce the troop deployments with any fanfare. Indeed, he downplayed them. Worried about the fate of his legislative initiatives, Johnson made every effort to conceal from the American public the expanding scope of the war. This, combined with the optimistic assessments of the conflict regularly issued by the army, would bring trouble in the future for both the president and his generals.
One of those generals was William C. Westmoreland. At one time the services’ youngest major general, Westmoreland had attended Harvard Business School and, from 1960 to 1963, was superintendent of the United States Military Academy. More relevant to our narrative, from 1964 to 1968, Westmoreland was the senior American officer in Vietnam. He was the general in charge of the war.
Westmoreland’s strategy was to aggressively go after the Viet Cong and the NVA. Despite requesting and receiving more and more troops, Westmoreland did not have the number that would enable him to occupy most of the battlefield (which comprised essentially all of South Vietnam). So he did the next best thing. He pursued the enemy, seeking them out, hoping to crush them via superior American firepower. This strategy came to be known as “search and destroy.” Essentially, Westmoreland’s plan was to wear down the enemy, to kill so many of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars that they would either give up or fade away. It was a strategy of attrition. For Westmoreland and his soldiers it was a sensible way to fight. Unfortunately for the general and his troops, it would not have the results he desired. This despite the fact that in combat with the enemy, the U.S. Army in Vietnam never lost a battle.
One of the first battles in which the U.S. Army encountered the NVA gave Westmoreland hope his strategy would prevail. In October 1965, in the Ia Drang Valley, the north had assembled a large number of troops with the intent of splitting South Vietnam in half. U.S. intelligence officers got wind of the plan, whereupon Westmoreland sent the 1st Air Cavalry Division into action. Transported by helicopter, the troops engaged the enemy and, after fierce fighting, emerged victorious. In the battle, the first in which a large unit of the American army participated, at least 600 North Vietnamese were killed. Many, many more were wounded. American dead numbered 305. The outcome helped convince the Americans they would win the war.
One reason for the U.S. Army’s success in the Ia Drang Valley was the extensive use of helicopters. Roads in Vietnam were limited in number and size, thus making difficult the rapid movement of men and supplies. Employing helicopters therefore made great sense. These machines gave the Americans an advantage in mobility, which, when combined with the army’s firepower, provided Uncle Sam’s troops a formula for success.
Helicopters were used in Vietnam to locate the enemy, to carry troops into battle, to resupply them when necessary, to airlift the wounded back to hospital, and to withdraw troops once the battle had concluded. At times equipped with extra machine guns and rockets, helicopters also were employed as attack aircraft spewing forth death and destruction. Helicopters flew every day of the war. Such were their employment that, for Americans both in Vietnam and at home, they became the iconic image of the war. One type of helicopter was ever present. This was the Bell UH-1. Formally christened the Iroquois (as the U.S. Army named its helicopters after Native American tribes), the machine was universally known as “the Huey.” Illustrative of the scale of the conflict in Vietnam, approximately 2,500 Hueys were destroyed during the war. Many of their pilots were among the 2,139 helicopter airmen killed in action. Another 1,395 men were lost from non-battle-related helicopter crashes.
During 1966 and 1967 the tempo of the ground war picked up as General Westmoreland moved aggressively to engage the Viet Cong and the NVA. That first year his troops conducted eighteen major operations. In 1967 two of his efforts received much attention. They were called Operation Cedar Falls and Operation Junction City. The first took place in January. Westmoreland sent thirty thousand U.S. and ARVN troops into what was known as the Iron Triangle. Comprising some 125 square miles, this was an area twenty miles northwest of Saigon, heavily infested with the enemy. A month later, the general launched Junction City. This too involved a large number of troops. It occurred in War Zone C, an area of 180 square miles close to the Cambodian border. In each operation, Westmoreland’s soldiers did well, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. U.S. casualties were light. In Operation Cedar Falls they numbered 428, in Junction City a little less.
In both endeavors Westmoreland’s men won the day. The problem was that, while the general and his troops defeated the enemy, they did not destroy them. During both battles, and in a pattern that was repeated throughout the war, the VC and NVA would fight, disengage, and then escape into Laos or Cambodia (both countries theoretically were neutral, but in fact served as sanctuaries for those Vietnamese fighting the Americans). In other words the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese regulars would live to fight another day.
Because the war in Vietnam did not involve traditional lines of separation between the two sides—no front lines existed, ahead of which lay the enemy—measuring success was not easy. Westmoreland could not point to a map and say his army had seized from the VC or NVA this amount of territory or that amount of land. How then to measure progress? The general had an answer. As his strategy was one of attrition, success would be measured by the number of enemy killed. Kill large numbers of VC and NVA, and success or failure could be determined. Or so the general argued.
Thus came into being one of the hallmarks of the Vietnam War. This was the body count. After each engagement, commanders reported the number of the enemy who lay dead on the field of battle. This number was reported up the chain of command, eventually reaching the secretary of defense, a man who relished statistics. Because an army officer’s performance evaluation was influenced heavily by the number of enemy his unit had k
illed, the numbers often got inflated. This resulted in a focus on body counts as well as a distortion of the progress being made. That army officers in the field could not always distinguish between civilian dead and enemy killed made the metric even more unreliable.
This emphasis on statistics (some would call it an obsession) extended to the air force as well. Secretary McNamara wanted numbers, so what mattered to the generals in blue were sorties flown and bombs dropped. That the latter more than occasionally missed their target mattered little, and certainly less and less the closer to the secretary the general was. As noted above, Robert McNamara wanted statistics, and because he denigrated those who believed war was as much about morale and tactics, it was statistics he got. Then and now, many would agree that the man went to his grave not understanding the nature of warfare. He thought it was an exercise in accounting.
By the end of 1967, a year in which much fighting had taken place, both sides of the conflict had reason to worry. For the United States, casualties were mounting. Rolling Thunder was not working, and the ARVN still was not the fighting machine U.S. advisors had hoped to create. At home opposition to the war was growing.
In part, this opposition was stoked by the images of violence seen by Americans on their television sets. Vietnam was the first televised war. On nightly newscasts the people of the United States saw for the first time the ugly aspects of war. Often the images were shocking. The result was a conviction on the part of some that war in general was wrong and that this war, in particular, was immoral.
Among those protesting the war were religious leaders who spoke out against U.S. participation in what they deemed a civil war among the Vietnamese. Liberals too opposed the war, often not peacefully. Students, many of them eligible for the draft, took to the streets instead of the classroom. Making matters worse were the racial tensions endemic to an America that overtly discriminated against its citizens whose skin was black (and who, in large numbers, served in the army that was fighting in Vietnam). In 1967 and early in 1968, especially in April of the latter year, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, racial tensions exploded. People were angry, and civil discourse often gave way to violence. Yet, despite the dissent, Lyndon Johnson persevered. So did General Westmoreland, who continued to issue optimistic assessments of the progress being made.
America At War - Concise Histories Of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexington To Afghanistan Page 29