This incident was widely reported in the international press, but it was seen as an amusing curiosity rather than a matter of deep moment. The wider NVA assault, which would be known to history as the Tet Offensive, generally caused little more of a stir in the USA, although of course it was a very different matter for the ARVN troops who had to oppose it on the ground. Some serious battles were fought and heavy sacrifices were accepted, but the ultimate result was a great boost to South Vietnamese confidence. It seemed that the ARVN had successfully resisted the very worst that the North could throw against it, even though the fighting did not finally die down for some six months. But throughout this crisis the US pacification of the Vietnamese villages continued to progress more or less as planned, and despite some noted setbacks, most of the news seemed to be pretty good. For example the press, especially the European press, gave great play to the positive Italian construction effort in Vinh Binh province, where the Bersaglieri celebrated the completion of each of their building programs by a march past at the gymnastic pace, all complete with feathers in their hats and promiscuous bugle-blowing. The American press found the perfect “mom and apple pie” stories in the Army’s Civil Affairs community where down-to-earth reservists, still half-civilians, were more interested in building schools and sewage systems than in closing with the enemy. The Peace Corps’ selfless, almost monastic style appealed to the American audience as well. Where the Civil Affairs troops did see combat it was in more than a few heroic attempts to defend “their villagers” from VC assaults.
President Johnson was re-elected in November with an increased majority. His Great Society programs for domestic reform had been a success at home, at least in the short term, and had helped to dampen down racial tensions. His first term had certainly not been blown off course by entangling foreign adventures.
The Saigon Embassy: April 30, 1975
In the aftermath of Tet there were annual NVA Christmas season assaults into the largely uninhabited frontier regions, although they encountered an increasingly self-confident and resilient ARVN defence, backed by US expertise and logistics. In the densely populated coastal strip the village pacification program was gradually picking up pace and depth, until in 1974 the 432 insurgent hamlets of Long An and Dinh Tuong provinces could finally be tackled—the ultimate bastions of VC control. South Vietnam was gradually becoming the proud and self-reliant independent state that it had so obviously failed to be under the Diem regime of a decade earlier.
Meanwhile in the USA President Johnson came to the end of his second term in 1972, and his chosen successor was the bubbly and positive Hubert H. Humphrey, formerly LBJ’s vice president. The Republican candidate was Richard M. Nixon, already a failed runner for the White House, who now committed political suicide by burglarizing the Democratic offices in the Watergate hotel, which caused a considerable national scandal. Humphrey sailed through with a massive majority. The impact of all this was wholly positive for South Vietnam, in that it consolidated the essential continuity of US policy over a 13-year period, and guaranteed the long term future of the programs and aid that had already been working so well. Sir Robert Thompson felt he could at last retire to enjoy his favourite chilled highballs in a peaceful environment.14
On April 30, 1975, a helicopter landed on the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon, in order to escape the enthusiastic crowds blocking the streets below. Out of it stepped President Humphrey with a message of congratulation to his new ambassador and to President Ky of South Vietnam. It had just been announced that the hamlet pacification program had now successfully been completed to cover the whole country, and that the VC had all but totally withered away. The NVA had been defeated in the field and had effectively abandoned its campaign of aggression. Ho Chi Minh was dead and his successors in the Hanoi government were talking seriously about a lasting peace. There was much to celebrate in Saigon. When the presidential helicopter finally took off to visit an aircraft carrier waiting for it in the bay, it was immediately seized by Navy deck hands to be put into mothballs as a museum exhibit, symbolic of the final victory. One of them joked “We should throw this over the side to save us the trouble”—but that advice was not followed.
During the remainder of the 1970s and 1980s the heightened military posture of South Vietnam could gradually be stood down, and most of the allied contingents returned home, well satisfied with a job well done. Booming prosperity replaced warfare, although a residual US garrison was left in place, very similar to that in South Korea. Meanwhile the collapse of international communism was brewing in the background, until in 1990 the Berlin Wall was torn down and the Soviet Union dissolved. At that point a welcome message was received from North Vietnam that Hanoi was prepared to negotiate reunification with the South on fraternal terms that the South might care to suggest. The offer was accepted with alacrity, and so it was that in 1992 the unified nation state of Vietnam joined the tiger economies of Southeast Asia as a leading player.
The Reality
There was indeed a “window of opportunity” for South Vietnam in the weeks following the deaths of Diem and Kennedy in November 1963. However the moment was lost, and Nguyen Khanh’s second military coup on January 30, 1964, plunged the country into escalating instability which was ably exploited by the VC. By the following year the Americans had recognized that their COIN preparations had been too disorganized and too fragile, and the only remaining alternative to retreat was a major deployment of mainforce conventional troops, which rapidly grew to over half a million men, many of them draftees, which in turn caused notorious social strains within the USA. On the North Vietnamese side there was an immediate attempt to match the American escalation with their own regular forces, and General Giap failed to persuade his comrades that the war should be left to the VC. As a result an entire NVA division was sent into the Ia Drang battle, to be defeated by the 1st Airmobile Cavalry Division. Meanwhile the action at Ap Bau Bang was a triumph for US armored forces. After that, many further mainforce battles were fought, among which a good proportion were arguably avoidable, since they were initiated by optimistic US helicopter-borne offensives into unpopulated areas where the NVA was certainly lurking, but from whence it could probably have done no more than beat its head fruitlessly against secure freeworld fortresses.
Although US tactics and weaponry could generally overwhelm the enemy in the mainforce war, the strategy was badly flawed because it concentrated maximum efforts and firepower on the border areas, while leaving the village war to a corrupt ARVN establishment, which it did not try to reform. The present chapter is predicated on the assumption that these priorities had been diametrically reversed, and that the vital chain of command had indeed been unified, as apparently Ambassador Maxwell Taylor had signally failed to do among the heady crises of 1966.
Lieutenant General Curtis LeMay, commander of US Air Forces in Europe during the Berlin Blockade. (National Archives)
C-54 and C-47 transport aircraft at Rhein-Main Air Force Base in July 1948 as the Berlin airlift got under way. Two C-54s from the base’s 61st Troop Carrier Wing were destroyed in the worst incidents of the crisis in October. (National Archives)
After a USAF attack, a disabled T-34/85 perches atop a wrecked bridge south of Suwon, South Korea. Despite such successes US air power could not halt the victorious North Korean advance.
Black soldiers of the 24th Infantry move toward the front line, Korea July 1950.
An Australian Centurion tank and a group of infantrymen at Xa Long Tan, scene in 1966 of a rare setback for the freeworld forces in their successful pacification of South Vietnam. (Paul Handel)
A common memory of Vietnam—a Civil Affairs soldier standing guard in one of the countless strategic hamlets that so successfully deprived the communists of access to the population. (US Army)
Soviet MiG-23 Flogger-B fighters escorted the Tu-16 bomber squadron that struck the America carrier battle group on June 21, 1967.
Damage aboard the USS America after the Sov
iet missile strike.
An A-4 Skyhawk ready to take off from the USS Saratoga for the attack on the Soviet anchorage at Kithira, June 21, 1967.
A signal station aboard the Soviet all-gun cruiser Kirov, sunk at the Kithira anchorage in the Sixth Fleet counterattack following the strike on the America battle group.
A Lynx patrol, from 2 Troop, B Squadron, 8th Canadian Hussars, participates in an anti-FLQ clear and secure operation north of Ottawa.
Kiowa helicopters from the hastily-formed 444 Squadron prepare to support coalition operations near Montreal in the wake of the disastrous urban operation in the downtown core.
FROG tactical nuclear surface-to-surface missiles. These weapons delivered the first nuclear strikes since the end of World War II as the Soviets lashed out to break the growing stalemate of the war in China.
Motorized infantry dismounting for the assault deep in Manchuria during the crushing attacks of the initial stages of the Soviet invasion of China.
At 0636, October 25, USS Aubrey launched two SM-1 SAMs at a circling Soviet Tu-95 Bear, inadvertently initiating the Confrontation of 1973. (US Navy)
Dzerzhinski, sister ship of the ill-fated Admiral Ushakov, reinforces the Fifth Eskadra on October 26, 1973. Note that an aft turret has been replaced by an M-2 Volkhov SAM launcher, testimony to the Soviet respect for American naval air power. (US Navy)
A formation of Soviet Mi-24 Hind-D helicopters covers a mechanized column in action in Afghanistan. Such operations would not have been so straightforward had the US administration decided to allow Stinger SAMs to be sent to the Afghan resistance. (Jamiat-e-lslami Afghanistan)
Soviet airborne troops patrol a road on the outskirts of Kabul shortly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began.
A US Army rocket launcher firing the secret KICAS-AM munition.
Men of the Rogachev Motorized Rifle Division surprised by the mass of strange little orange parachutes floating down upon them, May 20, 1989.
As for specific events, Operation Sin Loi was actually a US offensive known as Cedar Falls, and it did indeed begin on January 8, 1967, as a considerably more ambitious—but scarcely more triumphant—US enterprise than the ARVN battle outlined here. Operation Toan Thang was not mounted in 1967 but in May 1970, and under a far greater diplomatic cloud than assumed here. Then again the Australian battle of Xa Long Tan in 1966 was a freeworld victory, whereas the Tet invasion of the Saigon embassy in 1968 was a serious media defeat. Overall the total of American dead by the end of 1968 numbered something not far from the 18,000 dismissed in this text as a perfectly avoidable and excessive total.
Bibliography
Blaufarb, Douglas S., The Counter-insurgency Era, The Free Press, New York, 1977.
Donovan, D., Once a Warrior King, New York, 1985.
Frizzell, D.D., and Thompson, WS., The Lessons of Vietnam, New York, 1977.
Galloway, Joseph L., and Moore, Harold G., We were Soldiers Once… and Young, Harper Collins, New York, 1992.
Griffith, Paddy, Forward Into Battle, Crowood Press, Swindon, Wilts., 1990.
Halberstam, David, The Making of a Quagmire, Bodley Head, London, 1965.
Race, Jeffrey, War comes to Long An, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1972.
Starry, Donn A., Mounted Combat in Vietnam, Department of the Army, Washington DC, 1978.
Valentine, Douglas, The Phoenix Program, Avon, New York, 1990.
Notes
1. Thompson was head of the British advisory mission in Saigon 1961–65, after which he continued to give advice and write shrewd commentaries on the evolving situation.
2. Diem died in the coup of November 1, 1963, which was engineered by Generals Duong Van Minh (“Big Minh”), Tran Van Don and Le Van Kim. Kennedy died in Dallas on November 22, to be succeeded by Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson.
3. For the amazing double-dealing that led up to the coup of November 1, see Halberstam, The Making of a Quagmire.
4. Blaufarb, The Counter-insurgency Era.
5. “Today in Washington he is considered to have been the best ambassador we ever had there,” Halberstam, The Making of a Quagmire, p. 248.
*6. If this target had not been specified at an early date, it is only too likely that the actual expenditure would have been a shockingly inefficient 90 percent spent in military aid and only 10 percent in civilian—as was amusingly speculated in Thompson and Frizzell’s 1977 alternative history The Lessons of Vietnam, pp. 200–17.
*7. In late 1967 Minh was succeeded by the smart, charismatic and aggressive Nguyen Cao Ky, the chief of the Air Force.
8. A concept originally outlined by French colonial officers around 1900, such as Galliéni and Lyautey, and subsequently embraced as a central tenet of counter-insurgency theory.
*9. For example Joan Baez made a speciality of updated folk versions of Civil War songs, while Bob Dylan concentrated on rapid-fire lyrics about race issues. The two never met. Country Joe Macdonald and the Fish attended the President’s reception to celebrate his re-election in 1968, where they performed their very popular football songs.
10. For the tactical superiority of tanks over helicopters in Vietnamese terrain, see Starry, Mounted Combat in Vietnam. For an analysis of the weaknesses of heliborne assault tactics, see the present author’s Forward Into Battle, pp. 136–62.
*11. ARVN casualties in the Sin Loi operation mounted to some 12,500 killed and wounded, although they claimed NVA casualties were twice as high. The disparity is explained by the ARVN tactic of holding small but heavily armed defensive posts, upon which the cream of the northern army sacrificed itself in attacks that were usually—but not always—futile. Conversely there could be little ARVN progress against the NVA fortified zones and tunnels.
*12. For details of the epic “Papa Six Five” SAS patrol behind enemy lines, see the book of that name by Jockey O’Hara (London, 1971).
*13. The Khe Sanh firebase was overrun and not subsequently re-occupied, since it was too far from support. Equally the Lang Vei special forces base was overrun but all nine of the attacking PT-76 tanks were knocked out in the battle. The A Shau became an NVA enclave, but the key coastal area around Hue and Quang Tri remained firm—as did Pleiku and Darlac. Some 30,000 ARVN killed and wounded were reported.
14. The author was once castigated by Thompson for failing to chill the glass that he offered to him.
4
TO THE BRINK
The Middle East, June 1967
John D. Burtt
“Danger, and it is grave danger, lies in misadventure and miscalculation. There is risk that those in authority in area may misapprehend or misinterpret intentions and actions of others.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk, May 22, 1967
The Eastern Mediterranen
The Task Force escorts, five destroyers and the guided missile cruiser Little Rock, spread themselves out around the giant carrier while the USS America itself buzzed with the usual activity of preparing and launching aircraft. The activity took on an intensity that all members of the Task Force felt. Ashore, about a hundred miles away, Israeli and Arab armies clashed from Jerusalem to the Sinai. Of more immediate concern was the Soviet force of destroyers and a cruiser lurking just over the horizon. Their intentions were unknown, but the current level of Soviet rhetoric against Israel and the West made the reinforced naval presence ominous. That uncertainty had the battle group at a Condition Three state of readiness, with most weapons ready for immediate use. The focus of much of the uncertainty, the Soviet Kashin Class guided missile destroyer, 381, covered their every move and was even now steaming directly into America’s path.
Captain Donald Engen, the carrier’s captain, swore under his breath and ordered his helmsman to alter course slightly away from the Soviet vessel. Behind him, Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis, Commander TF 60, picked up a phone. “Signal the Lawe to move that Red ship out of the way,” he barked.
Engen looked at him with raised and questioning eyebrows. The situation was te
nse enough with Israeli and Arab forces locked in battle and their sponsors arguing it out in the United Nations and court of world opinion. Additional risk of a US-Soviet confrontation was not needed. Geis nodded to his senior captain. “Sixth Fleet orders,” he explained.
The order went out to the USS William C. Lawe, a Gearing Class destroyer, which nimbly moved to place itself between the carrier and 381. Almost immediately the airwaves filled with Soviet protests and American counter-protests. The two ships approached and swerved, nearly colliding on several occasions. The USS Thomas began moving in to help its sister ship, when the two destroyer captains miscalculated. Lawe and 381 ground their sides together, throwing sailors on both ships off their feet.
The exact sequence of events following the collision will always be in doubt as neither captain survived, and US and Soviet sources reported conflicting stories. The Soviets stated that the American ship deliberately caused the collision and opened fire, to which 381 responded. The US insisted that the Soviet ship opened fire without true provocation.
Cold War Hot: Alternate Decisions of the Cold War Page 11