Vietnam Winter 2023

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LINEBACKER II

The U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marines attacked North Vietnam almost daily over an 11-night period in December 1972.

After an American bomb drop on Dec. 27, 1972, Hanoi’s Kham Thien Street lies in ruins.

CHUCK SPRINGSTON EDITOR

ZITA BALLINGER FLETCHER SENIOR EDITOR

JERRY MORELOCK SENIOR EDITOR

JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR

DAVID T. ZABECKI EDITOR EMERITUS

HARRY SUMMERS JR. FOUNDING EDITOR

BRIAN WALKER GROUP DESIGN DIRECTOR

MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JON C. BOCK ART DIRECTOR GUY ACETO PHOTO EDITOR

DANA B. SHOAF MANAGING EDITOR, PRINT MICHAEL Y. PARK MANAGING EDITOR, DIGITAL CLAIRE BARRETT NEWS AND SOCIAL EDITOR

ROBERT H. LARSON, BARRY M c CAFFREY, CARL O. SCHUSTER, EARL H. TILFORD JR., SPENCER C. TUCKER, ERIK VILLARD, JAMES H. WILLBANKS

KELLY

MATT

ROB WILKINS

JAMIE

Tuned in to Outer Space

In the Autumn 2022 issue’s “What’s Your Favorite Song?” (Homefront, with a photo of soldiers gathered around a radio), you characterize troops as listening to tunes. In actuality, this is Team 11 of E Company, 75th Ranger Regiment, on the chopper pad waiting to be inserted on a long-range reconnaissance patrol/Ranger mission. The photo was taken by AP combat photographer Oliver Noonan. The team was listening to Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon [July 20, 1969]. It was a staged photo by Noonan to highlight the contrast between missions. I was the leader of Team 11 and am in the picture wearing the PRC-25 [field communications radio] on my back. This pic was in the center section of Stars and Stripes beside Armstrong on the moon. It also appeared in many newspapers in the U.S.

Important Work

Regarding the article “Vital Support” (April 2022), a photo package show casing support units crucial to the success of combat operations: I was as signed to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 10th Combat Avia tion Battalion, Dong Ba Thin, South Vietnam,1966-67. My assignment was personnel, officers section, processing officers inbound and outbound, mostly aviators, both helicopters and fixed wing. Like them I was serving in a war zone. My job was equally important. I went to sleep at night with the knowledge that I was a member of the U.S. Army in a foreign country sub ject to hostilities. Inside or outside a tent, we worked together to accom plish our missions.

Paul J. Gomez Rancho Cucamonga, California

On the Medical Front

Regarding “A Healing Force,” by Tom Edwards (Autumn 2022): Mr. Edwards’ excellent article on military nurses serving in Vietnam made no men tion of Lynda Van Devanter, an Army nurse sta tioned at the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku 1969-70. Lynda wrote a best-selling memoir, Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam, published in 1983. It is a harrowing account of her year in-country as well as her struggle with PTSD and inspired the popular ABC television series China Beach. Lynda died at age 55 of systemic vascular disease exacerbated by her exposure to Agent Orange while in Vietnam.

The article on nurses in the Autumn 2022 issue of Vietnam was both interesting and well written. There is a minor error: The Repose [hospital ship], not the Sanctuary, was stationed off Hue/ Phu Bai in 1966. I was a medical officer aboard the Sanctuary

Don R. Goffinet Stanford, California

Base Renaming Debate

Regarding “New Base Names Honor Vietnam Service Members” (Intel, Autumn 2022): Each of the men named in the article deserve the honor of having their name attached to significant military history, but not at the expense of eliminating the names those bases are currently named after.

I complained for years about naming forts after Confederates whose claim to fame was slaughter ing American soldiers. Do Germans name their forts for Nazi or East German generals? So it is wonderful to see forts renamed. It was also deeply inspiring to learn about the great Americans the forts will be named for. One problem: When bor ing others with stories of my very modest military career, do I still refer to old Fort Polk, new Fort Johnson [after William Henry Johnson, a Black Medal of Honor recipient in World War I] or just use the Beetle Bailey term “Camp Swampy”?

Raymond Paul Opeka Grand Rapids, Michigan

Email your feedback on Vietnam magazine to Vietnam@historynet.com, subject line: Feedback. Please include city and state of residence.

EVERY NAME ON THE WALL HAS A FACE

There is now a face for every name inscribed on the Vietnam Veter ans Memorial in Washington, D.C., thanks to volunteer researchers.

The Wall of Faces gallery, a webpage that profiles members of the military who died as a result of their service in Vietnam or remain missing, is complete after more than two decades of research, according to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the organization that built The Wall.

Working on the project since 2001, researchers have collected at least one photograph for each of the 58,281 service members whose names are in scribed on The Wall.

The quest for photos was intended “to ensure that visitors to The Wall understand that behind each name is a face—a person with a story of a family and friends who were forever changed by their loss,” Jim Knotts, president and CEO of the memorial organization said in a news release.

Researcher Janna Hoehn, interviewed by Vietnam magazine in March 2022, spearheaded an effort to collect the last 18 names needed for the Wall of Faces.“I am thrilled beyond words that the project is completed,” she said in the news release. “I am grateful for each and every volunteer, each news paper that agreed to do a story for a little lady from Hawaii. I am proud of my work with this project and will never forget this time in my life.”

Other volunteers who played a key role include Andrew Johnson, a Wis consin newspaper publisher; David Hine, who learned of the project through the memorial organization’s newsletter; and Herb Reckinger, who began searching for Minnesotans on the Wall in 2014 and expanded to other states.

The Wall of Faces was initiated under the premise that even a simple image of a human face not only preserves the memory of the dead but touches the lives of people today.

While at an event that displayed “The Wall That Heals,” a smaller replica of the D.C. Wall that trav els to communities across the country, Reckinger was approached by a local veteran who wanted help finding a friend’s name on The Wall. “I asked if he wanted to see his picture,” Reckinger re counted in the news release. “After looking at his friend on the Wall of Faces, he had one sentence for me: ‘I forgot what he looked like.’”

Thanks to Hoehn’s research, James Vaughn of Quincy, Massachusetts, was able to obtain a post er-size photo of his friend Robert “Bobby” Phil lips to display at a public memorial ceremony. Phillips has been missing since June 1970 and is officially listed as “Unaccounted For” by the U.S. government. “People were going up after the cer emony taking their pictures with Bob [next to the poster],” Vaughn said in an interview with Viet nam magazine. “That made me feel good—that he was so well-remembered in town.”

Although the Wall of Faces now has a photo for each name, the memorial organization wants better images for slideshows. Banners at the bot tom of existing photos on the Wall of Faces indi cate whether higher-quality pictures are needed.

No. This myth appears to have originated from a blog written by prolific conspiracy theorist Wayne Madsen more than 40 years after the incident. The blog post claimed that McCain, then a U.S. Navy A-4E Skyhawk pilot aboard aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, was responsible for causing the devastating fire that killed 134 sailors and wounded 161 others. Madsen’s the ory falls apart under scrutiny. It is contradicted by dozens of eyewitnesses and the Navy’s of ficial investigation report.

Shortly before 11 a.m. on July 29, 1967, the Forrestal was cruising in the South China Sea as its crew prepared for an other bombing mission over North Vietnam. Forty strike air craft crowded the flight deck, attended by several hundred sailors making last-minute checks before the airplanes launched. Suddenly, a Mark-32 Zuni rocket mounted on an F-4B Phantom II roared across the deck and struck the exter nal fuel tank of an A-4E Skyhawk some 100 feet away on the rear end of the flight deck. Hundreds of gallons of burning jet fuel spread beneath the neighboring aircraft, one of which in cluded McCain’s Skyhawk. The future senator made it to safe ty. His wingman did not.

lessly claimed that the resulting plume of flame from the rear of McCain’s Skyhawk reached across the deck and ignited the Zuni rocket. That assertion is patently false.

Was McCain Responsible for a Carrier Fire?

The Navy’s investigation, completed on Sept. 26, 1967, found that the accidental firing of the Zuni rocket was caused by an electrical power surge on the Phantom aircraft that car ried it. All the documentary evidence and eyewitness ac counts agree that McCain’s plane was parked with its tail pointed outward, toward the ocean and not down the flight deck toward other aircraft.

After Madsen published his blog post in May 2008, some of McCain’s political opponents used the story to discredit the senator, who was running for president. Since then, Madsen’s claim has been resurrected at times to smear McCain. However, historical facts prove that McCain was blameless in the fire that devastated the Forrestal in 1967.

Dr. Erik Villard is a Vietnam War specialist at the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort McNair in Washington D.C.

Firefighters had just begun to battle the inferno when a bomb ex ploded. Seven more 1,000-pound bombs detonated in the next five minutes, ripping deep into the hull and showering the foredeck with bodies and debris. The Forrestal’s crew made a heroic effort to save the ship, finally extinguishing the last part of the fire at 4 a.m. the next morning. Besides the sailors killed and wounded, 21 of the Forrestal’s 73 aircraft were destroyed and an ad ditional 40 damaged. The carrier re turned home for repairs, arriving at Norfolk, Virginia, on Sept. 14, 1967.

Madsen alleged that McCain had caused the conflagration by making a “wet start” in his Skyhawk, deliber ately flooding his engine’s combus tion chamber with extra fuel before hitting the ignition switch. He base

Marine Lance Cpl. Ralph McWilliams, 3rd Military Police Battalion, 1st Marine Division, and his scout dog Major scan the horizon in November 1967. Major “saved my life several times,” McWilliams, of Cresco, Pennsylvania, said in a newspaper interview during the war. Accompanying a reconnaissance patrol one day, the corporal and Major came under fire. Major was wounded by shrapnel in the right foreleg. The limping dog was slowing the patrol. A decision was made to destroy him. “I just couldn’t destroy him,” McWilliams said in the article. He picked up the wounded 90-pound dog and carried him 2 miles to a helicopter pickup. “I figured I owed him a chance to live.”

WORDS FROM THE WAR

“I have been among the officers who have said that a large land war in Asia is the last thing we should undertake. Most of us, when we use that term, are thinking about getting into a land war against Red China. That’s the only power in Asia which would require us to use forces in very large numbers.

I was slow in joining with those who recommended the introduction of ground forces in South Vietnam. But it became perfectly clear that because of the rate of infiltration from North Vietnam to South Vietnam something had to be done.”

—Retired Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor (chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff 1962-64, ambassador to South Vietnam 1964-65), interview, “Top Authority Looks at Vietnam War and Its Future,” U.S. News & World Report, Feb. 21, 1966

Tim Page, a photojournalist acclaimed for his work during the Vietnam War, died Aug. 24, 2022, at age 78 in New South Wales, Australia. Page, born in Turnbridge Wells, England, on May 25, 1944, left the United Kingdom in 1962 and traveled through Europe, the Middle East and Asia, where he be came a freelance photographer during a 1965 coup attempt in Laos. Page then moved to Saigon and began covering the Vietnam War, accompanying U.S. troops on missions, often in dangerous loca tions. He worked on assignment for major media organizations, including AP, UPI and Paris Match magazine. Known for his flamboyant personality, Page embraced the counterculture and drug use of the 1960s and 1970s. He was wounded four times in Vietnam. In 1966, Page was badly injured in a grenade explosion. After an exploding land mine sent a fragment into his brain in 1969, he was pro nounced dead but revived and eventually recov ered. After the war, he covered rock music and the drug culture. Page also photographed the 1967 Arab-Israeli “Six Day War,” sandwiched between his Vietnam trips, and the wars in Bosnia and Af ghanistan. He later became an adjunct professor of photojournalism in Brisbane, Australia.

Ronald Glasser, author of the acclaimed Vietnam War memoir 365 Days, died at age 83 in a Minneapolis veterans hospital on Aug. 26, 2022. Glasser, a Chicago native born May 31, 1939, earned a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1965 and specialized in pediatric medicine. Glasser was drafted in August 1968, commissioned as a captain and sent to a military hospital in Zama, Japan, where he initially worked as a pediatrician for military families. Glasser soon was also treating servicemen suffering from severe wounds and trauma. After he returned home, Glasser drew upon his experiences with the wounded for 365 Days, the title a reference to the number of days Army troops had to serve in Vietnam before they could go home. The book, published in 1971, documents the emotions and experiences of young soldiers dealing with terrible injuries. It was a finalist for the National Book Award. After his military service, Glasser continued his career as a pediatrician and wrote other medical-related books.

Fidel V. Ramos, president of the Philippines 1992-98, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and the leader of a Philippine contingent in Vietnam, died July 31, 2022, in Manila at age 94. Ramos, born March 18, 1928, graduated from West Point in 1950 and was deployed to Korea, where he served with the Philippine Expeditionary Force. In the Vietnam War, Ramos was a major commanding the Philippine Civic Action Group of military engineers and medical troops assisting the South Vietnamese. Back in the Philippines, Ramos served as commander of the Philippine Constabulary, a military force with policing functions, under President Ferdinand Marcos, who declared martial law in 1972. Ramos joined in a 1986 peaceful rebellion that ousted Marcos and elected Corazon Aquino president, who made Ramos a four-star general. He succeeded her in the presidency.

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HAMBURGER HILL LEADERSHIP LESSON

WHAT A NEW SERGEANT LEARNED FROM A CAN OF PEACHES

REFLECTIONS

In the spring of 1969, I arrived in Vietnam as a sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) after completing a small unit leadership training pro gram at Fort Benning, Georgia. Even though I was an untested infantry squad leader, I was put in charge of a dozen men who had been in-country four, five or six months.

Since my men had previous combat experience and I had none, the pressure I faced when taking control was enormous.

I did not have to wait long for the opportunity to prove myself because my company had just been ordered to take part in the famous battle for Hamburger Hill, May 10-20 in the A Shau Valley of northern South Viet nam. Upon entering the assault staging area, we were instructed to leave all nonessential gear behind and to only take weapons, ammunition and a sin gle canteen of water. However, I decided to bring along a small C-ration can of sliced peaches in case I got hungry along the way.

As we slowly moved into our assault position, the formidable jungle terrain and thick vegetation caused significant delays. Other U.S. military units ran into the same problem, causing the assault to be postponed until the next day. That meant we had to spend the night at the base of the contested mountain.

When morning arrived, everyone was hungry. It had been nearly 24 hours since we last

Troops from the 101st Airborne Division run a wounded soldier to medical help on May 18,1969, during the Battle of Hamburger Hill, where Sgt. Arthur Wiknik Jr., inset, went from selfish to selfless.

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ate. Assuming my fellow soldiers had also brought food, I casually opened my can of peaches and started eating. Immediately, some of the guys began staring at me. They all wanted peaches. Since the tiny can could not realis tically feed a dozen men, I decided to get it over with and quickly ate the rest of the fruit.

No one said anything, but their cold stares confirmed that I had made a mistake. Instead of acting like a leader, I had disappointed them by only thinking of myself.

A short time later, we were given the order to assault the mountain. The moment we moved into the battle area we immediately came under heavy fire. As enemy bullets pinned down our skirmish line, I looked for a way to escape. To my left was a small ridge that had enough vegetation to provide cover.

I immediately leapt to my feet and ran to the ridge yelling to my squad: “Follow me! We’re going up this way!” I charged up that ridge like a madman, push ing branches aside, jumping over abandoned enemy positions and ignoring bullets nipping at my feet. When I reached the crest of the hill, I realized it was the perfect location to set up a defensive position.

But when I turned around to inform my squad, I was alone! They had let me run up the hill by myself.

ers, maybe we would be able to get more free items. I secretly sifted through discarded con tainers from other soldiers’ care packages for ad ditional supplier addresses and began sending requests at two-week intervals.

It did not take long for the goodies to start roll ing in. In the coming months I received large quantities of peanuts, pretzels, fruit nectar, canned berries, sardines, steak sauce and more. As a joke, I even asked a tobacco distributor for cigar prices, and I was sent a free box. My letter writing campaign was working so well that I had to maintain a chart to keep from contacting a company a second time.

My squad members began calling me “Opera tor” because I reminded them of the “Sgt. J.J. Sef ton” character portrayed by William Holden (who won a best actor Oscar for the role) in the 1953 movie Stalag 17

Before an assault up Hamburger Hill, Wiknik ate a can of peaches while the sergeant’s men looked at him disappointedly.

About 30 minutes later the fighting subsided. My guys finally made their way to my position. As they gathered, I scolded them: “Why the hell didn’t you guys follow me?! That ridge had plenty of cover! If we all came up together, we might’ve made a differ ence!”

No one answered. The men sheepishly looked at each other, knowing full well that they should never have let a fellow soldier charge the enemy alone. Then one of the men broke the silence. “We didn’t follow you because you didn’t share your peaches.”

Everyone burst out laughing, including me.

I learned an important lesson that day. In a dangerous place like a com bat zone, refusing to share something as simple as peaches can get a guy killed. To prevent that from happening again, I needed to find a way to atone for my selfishness.

Before long, I found the solution. One of the most welcome diversions from the Vietnam War came in “care packages” from home filled with cookies, fruitcakes, seasonings, powdered juices and a variety of canned goods. One package from my mother contained a 7-ounce can of apple juice from a New Hampshire cannery. It was the first real thirst quencher I had in over two months. It was so refreshing that I wrote a thank-you letter to the company.

In the letter, I briefly described how miserable infantry life in Vietnam was, explaining how the juice was such a welcome change from drinking water out of rice paddies and rubber bladders. I also wrote that I wanted to purchase a case of the apple juice to share with my squad.

About two weeks later, I received a complimentary carton of 20 4-ounce cans with a letter from the cannery stating that the gift was its way of show ing support for the troops. What a fantastic surprise!

Infantrymen often feel unappreciated in wartime, so something as sim ple as a free can of apple juice was a real treat. It not only revitalized our taste buds but also restored our long-lost faith in the folks back home.

Then I got an idea. If I write the same kind of letter to other food suppli

However, unlike Sefton, who as a prisoner of war was somehow able to live comfortably while his POW comrades suffered, I shared everything that came my way to help make the situation a little more bearable for all of us.

Naturally, my squad was curious about how I obtained cases of hard-to-get provisions. I simply told them I had an uncle who worked in a food distribution warehouse. I was afraid that if the guys knew the truth they might try the same thing and the suppliers would catch on and stop sending the freebies!

Later, I wondered if I had taken advantage of some very generous people, but I quickly dis missed such thoughts. The combat infantryman suffered under so many unforgiving conditions that we were basically at the bottom of the food chain. One of a soldier’s biggest fears is to be for gotten. I should not have had to go to such trou ble to remind so many people that there was a war going on. However, in doing so, the free food was a huge benefit because it not only lifted our spirits but also taught me a valuable lesson in sharing. V

Arthur Wiknik Jr. is the author of Nam Sense: Surviving Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division. Wiknik has appeared on the History Channel show Vietnam in HD and was a featured guest on the Military Channel (now American Heroes Channel) show An Officer and a Movie He lives in Higganum, Connecticut.

Do you have reflections on the war you would like to share?

Email your idea or article to Vietnam@historynet.com, subject line: Reflections

Surrounding the enemy

The locations of the antennas enabled the EB-66 to provide all-around coverage of North Vietnamese radars.

Radar blinder

The EB-66 replaced the rear gun mount of the B-66 bomber with powerful radar jammers.

Lots of ears

The EB-66B had 36 VHF/UHF fiberglass antennas. The later EB-66E also had 36 antennas, but they were more refined.

Staying power

The B-66 Destroyer, originally powered with two Allison J71-A-11 engines, was upgraded with more reliable J71-A-13 turbojets.

THE EB-66 DESTROYER

At 8:05 a.m. on July 24, 1965, four F-4C Phantom II aircraft from the Air Force’s 47th Tactical Fighter Squadron were patrolling for MiGs that could threaten U.S. bombers southwest of Hanoi when two EB-66C Destroyer electronic warfare reconnaissance planes warned the F-4s about a surface-to-air missile launch. Seconds later three SAMs downed one of the Phantom IIs and damaged the others. That attack finally awakened the Pentagon to the SAM threat and the need for tactical aircraft with electronic countermeasures.

ARSENAL

The Air Force EB-66, installed with those electronics, derived from the Navy’s A-3D-1 Skywarrior, designed in 1949 to carry a 5-ton nuclear weapon out to 2,300 miles. The Air Force wanted to purchase the Navy planes to replace its B-26 Invader bomber and RB-26 reconnaissance aircraft, but the required modifications delayed production until 1957. The new bomber became the B-66 Destroyer. The reconnaissance version was the RB-66.

Equipped with electronic sensors and photographic equipment, the first RB-66s arrived in South Vietnam on April 9, 1965. The aircraft was designated the EB-66 in 1966. Its variants—the EB-66B and EB-66C—worked in tandem. The EB-66C detected and identified enemy radars for the EB-66B to jam.

The EB-66 aircraft often worked in concert with Marine EF-10B Skyknight and Navy EKA-3B Skywarrior planes that accompanied attack aircraft to blind enemy defenders along the route. They also guided “Wild Weasel” fighter-bombers hauling missiles targeting SAM sites. The EB-66E with specialized communications intercept and jamming equipment joined the war in 1967.

North Vietnam’s air defenders quickly understood the EB-66 planes’ importance and tried to en gage them with SAMs and MiGs, often employing radar emission tactics to draw the EB-66 within engagement range.

By 1972, the Air Force’s EB-66B, C and E’s capabilities and less restrictive rules of engagement en abled them and their Navy electronic partners to all but paralyze Hanoi’s air defenses during the Linebacker II bombing campaign Dec. 18-29, 1972. The Air Force retired the last EB-66 in 1974.

The EB-66—the Air Force’s only electronic intelligence aircraft in Southeast Asia—ensured the survival of hundreds of American air crews as it mapped and jammed Hanoi’s SAM radars. V

Crew: Three EB-66B; six to seven EB-66C and E

Engine: Two Allison J71 turbojets, with 10,000 lbs. thrust

Wingspan: 72 ft., 6 in.

Length: 75 ft., 2 in.

Max takeoff weight: 83,000 lbs.

Max speed: 630 mph

Cruising speed: 528 mph

Max. range: 2,529 miles

Mission endurance: Three hours Service ceiling: 39,400 ft.

Electronics: AN/ APR-25/26 radar homing and warning system; EB-66B and E: C-I band jammers; EB-66C: A-J band receivers; EB-66E: AN/QRC-128 communications jammer

Centuries

ago, Persians, Tibetans and Mayans considered turquoise a gemstone of the heavens, believing the striking blue stones were sacred pieces of sky. Today, the rarest and most valuable turquoise is found in the American Southwest–– but the future of the blue beauty is unclear.

On a recent trip to Tucson, we spoke with fourth generation turquoise traders who explained that less than five percent of turquoise mined worldwide can be set into jewelry and only about twenty mines in the Southwest supply gem-quality turquoise. Once a thriving industry, many Southwest mines have run dry and are now closed.

We found a limited supply of turquoise from Arizona and purchased it for our Sedona Turquoise Collection . Inspired by the work of those ancient craftsmen and designed to showcase the

stabilized

blue stone,

cabochon

Bali metalwork.

SUPER TEAMS

THE CHAMPIONS OF PRO FOOTBALL

1965 SEASON

AFL championship, Dec. 26, 1965, San Diego

The Buffalo Bills trounced the San Diego Chargers 23-0. The MVP was Bills quarterback Jack Kemp, who threw for 155 yards and one touchdown.

NFL championship, Jan. 2, 1966, Green Bay

The Green Bay Packers beat defending champs Cleveland Browns 23-12 in the last NFL championship before the Super Bowl era. The MVP was Pack ers’ fullback Jim Taylor, who rushed for 96 yards.

1966 SEASON

Jan. 15, 1967, Los Angeles

In the first battle between the AFL’s best team and the NFL’s best team at the AFLNFL World Championship Game (unofficially called the Super Bowl by the media and

others), the Green Bay Packers downed the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10. The MVP was Packers’ quarterback Bart Starr, who completed 16 passes for 250 yards and two touchdowns.

1967 SEASON Jan. 14, 1968, Miami

The NFL’s Green Bay Packers defeated the Oakland Raiders of the AFL 33-14 in the World Championship Game (later dubbed Super Bowl II). Quar terback Starr was again the MVP, with 13 passes for 202 yards and one touchdown.

1968 SEASON

Jan. 12, 1969, Miami

Quarterback Joe Namath and his underdog New York Jets of the AFL beat the NFL’s Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III, the first official use of “Super Bowl.” Three days earlier, Namath had boasted, “We’re going to win the game. I guarantee it.” He was the MVP,

with 17 passes for 206 yards.

1969 SEASON

Jan. 11, 1970, New Orleans

The AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs beat the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings 23-7 in Super Bowl IV.

The MVP was Chiefs quarter back Len Dawson, who threw 12 passes for 142 yards and one touchdown. This was the last Super Bowl battle between the AFL and NFL. A merger announced in June 1966 and effective with the 1970 season combined the two leagues under the NFL name and established two conferences within the NFL.

1970 SEASON

Jan. 17, 1971, Miami

The Baltimore Colts of the NFL’s American Football Con ference edged out the National Football Conference’s Dallas Cowboys 16-13 in Super Bowl V. The MVP was Dallas

linebacker Chuck Howley, who nabbed two interceptions and became the only member of a losing team to win the award.

1971 SEASON Jan. 16, 1972, New Orleans

In Super Bowl VI, the NFC Dallas Cowboys crushed the AFC Miami Dolphins 24-3. Dallas quarterback Roger Staubach, a Naval Academy graduate and Vietnam veteran, was MVP. He completed 12 passes, two for touchdowns.

1972 SEASON Jan. 14, 1973, Los Angeles

The Miami Dolphins beat the Washington Redskins 14-7 in Super Bowl VII. The MVP was Miami safety Jake Scott, who made two interceptions, including a crucial one in the fourth quarter. With this victory, the Dolphins became the only NFL team with an undefeated season, 17-0.

RINGS: ZUMA PRESS INC ALAMY; 1965: CHARLES AQUA VIVA/GETTY IMAGES; 1966: AP PHOTO/VERNON BIEVER; 1968: AP PHOTO/VERNON BIEVER; 1972: TONY TOMSIC VIA AP PHOTO; 1973: AP PHOTO/VERNON BIEVER; TICKET: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES; DAWSON: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES; NAMATH: AP PHOTO/VERNON BIEVER

LINEBACKER

LINEBACKER

At 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 18, 1972, Hanoi time, U.S. Air Force F-111 Aardvark attack aircraft initiated Operation Line backer II by striking six North Vietnamese airfields. One minute later, EB-66 Destroyer electronic warfare planes started to jam enemy radars, and F-4 Phantom II fighter-bombers began laying corridors of small metal strips of chaff to confuse enemy radar and protect the first wave of B-52 Stratofortress bombers approaching Hanoi and Haiphong.

Completely surprised and blinded, Hanoi’s Air Defense Command aimed its anti-aircraft artillery fire along the routes and altitudes used by B-52s during the Linebacker I bombings of May-October 1972, conducted in response to the North’s massive ground offensive started during Easter weekend. Surface-to-air missile sites launched Soviet SA-2 Guideline SAMs based on the Linebacker I pattern, only to come under attack from F-105G Thunderchief fighters-bombers code-named “Wild Weasels,” carrying mis siles that homed in on the SAM sites.

The North Vietnamese launched MiG fighters toward the points where they had intercepted Linebacker I planes. Meanwhile, U.S. Marine Corps aircraft protected Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling planes while the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 77 struck coastal targets. The Vietnam War’s final bombing campaign had begun. Unlike earlier bombing opera tions, Linebacker II, Dec. 18-29, was a maximum effort to cripple if not destroy North Vietnam’s capacity to continue the war in the South.

Hanoi’s intelligence services had known since Dec. 16 that a major air operation was imminent but assumed the targets would be south of the 20th parallel, sparing Hanoi and the surrounding area, includ ing the big port at Haiphong. After bombing the Hanoi area in Linebacker

I, the U.S. had shifted its bombing strikes to tar gets below the 20th Parallel and interdiction mis sions to disrupt supply movements.

If the big bombers should come farther north, Hanoi’s leaders believed they were prepared. A study of B-52 Stratofortress operations indicated that the bombers tended to abort their missions when they knew they had been detected by the Fan Song SAM fire-control radar that tracked and targeted enemy aircraft.

With that in mind, the defenders moved two SAM and two MiG fighter regiments to cover central and southern North Vietnam, although they retained their anti-aircraft artillery regi ments around the capital region in case the U.S. sent fighter-bombers and attack aircraft against Haiphong. They knew the effectiveness of those aircraft would be reduced by December’s heavy overcast and intense rains. Also, the Air Defense Command had spent the past two months rearm ing and repairing the air defense units depleted by Linebacker I.

The North Vietnamese did not expect Presi dent Richard Nixon to risk the political fallout of striking Hanoi. While Republican Nixon had won a landslide reelection over “peace candidate” Democrat George McGovern, the congressional elections had resulted in a majority determined

TOP: A bomb-laden B-52 gets its fuel topped off en route to North Vietnam. KC-135 tankers flew from bases in Japan and the Philippines to conduct aerial refueling missions. MIDDLE: An F-105G Thunderchief fighter-bomber of the 17th Tactical Fighter Squadron, armed with missiles that could destroy enemy radar, lands at Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base on Dec. 29, 1972, the last day of Linebacker II sorties. ABOVE: North Vietnamese haul a purported piece of a B-52, their “trophy,” to a surface-to-air missile battery.

Hanoi’s assurances that it would not reinforce its troops in South Vietnam.

Nixon’s Cabinet largely opposed a bombing campaign along the lines of Linebacker I. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and Secretary of State Wil liam Rogers argued against it. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Thomas H. Moorer only supported it if Hanoi violated a signed agreement. Kissing er was worried that it would increase the number of prisoners of war. Only one of the president’s key advisers, deputy national security adviser Alexan der Haig, supported sending the B-52s against Hanoi and Haiphong.

Nixon had met with Moorer and Laird several times in November as the peace talks foundered. He had continued the bombing south of the 20th parallel to maintain the pressure on Hanoi, but North Vietnam’s intransigence convinced him that wasn’t enough. On Dec. 6, Nixon ordered the Joint Chiefs to establish a working group to plan for strikes on Hanoi. He directed that “the plan should be so configured to produce a mass shock effect in a psychological context.”

Nixon envisioned that responsibility for the air war over North Vietnam would be given to Military Assistance Com mand, Vietnam, which controlled all land, water and air combat operations inside South Vietnam. The 7th Air Force was MACV’s air component commander and directed all land-based opera tions of fighter-bombers and attack aircraft.

The Joint Chiefs gave the Strategic Air Com mand the planning authority for the operation’s B-52 bomber missions, a decision that violated unity of command and turned mission planning over to a staff that considered the Linebacker campaign a distraction from SAC’s main mis sion: preparing for nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Nixon warned Moorer that he was giving military leaders everything they wanted and would hold the admiral “personally responsible” if the operation failed.

8th Air Force

Today’s 8th Air Force sprang from the Army Air Forces VIII Bomber Command, activated Jan. 28, 1942, in Savannah, Georgia, and sent to England the next month.

On Feb. 22, 1944, in a reorganization of air operations,the VIII Bomber Command was christened the 8th Air Force. In June 1946, it attached to the Strategic Air Command. In 1965, the 8th Air Force’s units in the States deployed to Guam, Okinawa and Thailand. SAC in April 1970 transferred the 8th to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam where it oversaw bombing operations in Southeast Asia. On Jan. 1, 1975, the 8th Air Force moved to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

The president wanted a 24/7 bombing campaign to deny the North’s de fenders rest and recovery time. Nixon also demanded the bombers press on to their targets despite enemy defenses so the North Vietnamese would “feel the heat until they saw the light.”

“If we renew the bombing,” he explained to Kissinger, “it will have to be something new, and that means that we will have to make the big decisions to hit Hanoi and Haiphong with B-52s. Anything less will only make the enemy contemptuous.”

On Dec. 14, Nixon ordered the plans finalized and one day later alerted all forces to be ready for three days or more of maximum effort. He approved the final plan on Dec. 15, with the attack to start on Dec. 18, one day after Congress recessed for Christmas break. That morning Navy aircraft from Task Force 77 seeded minefields in Haiphong Harbor’s approaches.

About 4:30 p.m. North Vietnamese intelligence reported that B-52s had taken off from Guam. They intercepted a radio call at approximately 7:30 p.m. from a Navy plane patrolling ahead of the B-52s and warning them to turn south. That convinced the Air Defense Command that the B-52s were

going to strike south of the capital region. The B-52 pilots, however, ignored the “warning” and stayed the course.

Naval aircraft struck North Vietnam’s coastal radar and SAM sites, fol lowed almost immediately by Air Force F-111 Aardvarks hitting six MiG airfields. The surviving radar stations were blinded by jamming and chaff clouds. By 10 p.m., the Air Defense Command realized that Hanoi was the target area, but it was too late. North Vietnam’s defenses were quickly over whelmed. Confused, the defenders launched fighters to intercept the flight paths the B-52s used in Linebacker I, and anti-aircraft artillery fired barrag es along those same flight routes. Unfortunately for Hanoi, the B-52s were flying different routes and at 32,000-34,000 feet, rather than the 14,000 feet used in Linebacker I.

Each B-52 wave was supported by eight F-105 Wild Weasel SAM sup pression planes, 20 F-4 Phantom II fighter-bombers and two chaff corri dors, about 60 miles long and 5 to 7 miles wide. The B-52s struck Radio Hanoi, two airfields, the Kinh No repair yards and the Yen Vien rail yard. The airfields and rail yards were nearly destroyed, and Radio Hanoi was heavily damaged.

Despite those successes, the results also revealed weaknesses. Aircraft targeting Hanoi’s air defense system, especially Wild Weasel SAM hunters, were spread too thin. The 7th Air Force asked SAC to reduce a four-hour separation between waves because the long interlude was forcing its aircraft to launch and sustain multiple chaff reseeding and radar jamming efforts.

Also the decision to have each wave fly the same pattern enabled the de fenders to simply fire missiles along the predicted route. Additionally, SAC required planes to use the same post-strike turn point that forced them to turn into the jet stream, decelerating an aircraft as it was about to be engaged.

A crowd gathers for funeral services at Bach Mai hospital, which was accidentally hit by bombs targeting a nearby Hanoi airfield on Dec. 22. The bomb strike killed 28 hospital staffers and an uncertain number of patients.

The 8th Air Force, which had tactical com mand of the B-52s on Guam, recommended that SAC change its tactics to keep the North’s defend ers off-balance. SAC planners rejected the rec ommendations, saying it was too late to change their plans.

Hanoi, however, had learned the Americans’ tactics and adjusted accordingly. The North’s Air Defense Command plotted the B-52 routes and repositioned its SAM sites to concentrate on turn points and the bombers’ target approach routes. Search radars fed target data to the air defense sites so the Fan Song fire control radars did not have to be activated until a few seconds before the missile launch. The defenders established SAM “engagement boxes” to fire missiles manu ally in concentrated barrages.

The 129 B-52s that flew the first night faced 174 SAMs, which shot down three bombers and damaged two. However, no B-52s were lost to MiG attacks—in fact, one B-52 tail gunner claimed a MiG-21. Anti-aircraft artillery downed an F-111. In the second day’s raid by 93 B-52s,

none were lost, convincing SAC planners their tactics were sound.

On Day Three, six B-52s were downed. Only the second of the three bomber waves returned home unscathed. Le Duan, his confidence in his air defenses restored, remained steadfast, still be lieving the Americans would fold first.

Nixon, pushing aside the poor results and criticism from the anti-war delegation in Hanoi, ordered three more days of bombings.

SAC and the Pacific Air Force Command re evaluated their tactics. B-52Gs were prohibited from flying over the North because of their less powerful electronic radar jamming equipment and smaller bomb loads. The Guam-based B-52Ds were also excluded because of the longer flight time. That resulted in smaller raids of 30 B-52Ds from U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield that were comparatively easier to protect.

Unfortunately for them, SAC did not change its flight tactics. Day Four’s raid struck three tar gets but lost two B-52Ds to SAMs. SAC shifted to Haiphong to avoid Hanoi’s denser defenses. No B-52s were lost on Day Five, Dec. 22. However, one stick of bombs overshot Hanoi’s Bach Mai Airfield and hit Bach Mai Hospital, killing 28 hospital personnel and a still-unconfirmed num ber of patients.

Meanwhile, the North’s focus on downing the B-52s benefited U.S. fighter-bomber operations. Although not thoroughly appreciated at the time, those Air Force, Navy and Marine aircraft faced lighter defenses during the day because Hanoi was resting its air defense teams to engage the B-52s. Fighter-bomber sorties exceeded 100 a day, and losses were much lower than in Rolling Thunder or Linebacker I. Bombing effectiveness also improved.

Nixon instituted a 36-hour bombing halt on Dec. 25, a pause that both sides used to reevalu ate all aspects of their operations. SAC trans ferred planning and operational authority to the 8th Air Force on Guam, tightening the opera tional structure and improving coordination.

Le Duan interpreted the pause as a victory, much like earlier bombing halts. But it was actu ally a pause for the flight crews. Nixon wanted a massive attack on Hanoi starting on the night of Dec. 26 with no letting up.

Incorporating lessons from Linebacker I and suggestions from B-52 crews, the 8th Air Force de cided there would be no more long lines of bomb ers following identical routes to their targets. The bombers would fly in four waves, each compact

and coming at Hanoi from a different axis and exiting via different routes.

The Thailand-based aircraft would recover in Guam and the Guambased aircraft in Thailand. As the four waves approached their targets, they split into seven serials of varied size to attack 10 targets. Seven targets were hit simultaneously. Each wave flew a separate route at a different altitude. The compressed waves enabled the Navy and Air Force fighters and jam mers to concentrate their attacks against radar and SAM sites. F-111s joined the attacks on SAM sites. Twelve of the North’s 32 SAM sites were put out of action.

The chaff corridors were denser, and instead of 60 to 90 minutes of exposure to enemy defenses, each wave was in and out in under 15 minutes. Although two B-52s were lost on Dec. 26, the vast majority of the bombers were able to remain within the chaff corridors, and the varied routes confused the defenders. The North Vietnamese fired their SAMs along the old routes and turn points. The MiGs got lost and had to search for their targets.

The fighting consumed more than 10 percent of the SAMs, and Hanoi was worried about re supply. About 800 missiles were in storage, but they needed assembly and delivery to the SAM battalions. The storage depots were also under attack. Two were destroyed on Dec. 26. Henceforth, SAM launches were rationed and their use limited to engagements with B-52s.

Le Duan realized that Nixon wasn’t going to ease up and more bombs were likely to drop. The effectiveness of North Vietnam’s air defenses was declining rapidly. Le Duan worried about his own support within the Politburo if future raids proved equally successful. On Dec. 27, he sent a message to Nixon saying he wanted to resume negotiations on Jan. 8, 1973. Nixon told Kissinger to propose Jan. 2.

The bombing continued for three more days. North Vietnam’s last air defense success came on Dec. 28 when a SAM downed a B-52. The Dec. 29 raids reported few SAM launches and suffered no losses. Linebacker II offi cially ended at 6:59 a.m., Hanoi time on Dec. 30. Le Duan had agreed to

resume the Paris talks on Jan. 2.

In total, 2,003 strike sorties into Vietnam delivered 20,237 tons of ord nance against 59 targets in North Vietnam. B-52 bombers delivered 75 per cent of the tonnage dropped (15,237 tons) in 729 sorties, while fighter-bomber and attack aircraft garnered 25 percent (5,000 tons) in 1,274 sorties—769 Air Force and 505 Navy/Marine fighter-bombers. Half of the Navy/Marine sorties (277) were flown at night.

North Vietnam fired between 289 and 487 SAM missiles against the bombers, downing 15, damaging four beyond repair and eight later re stored to service. The losses of fighter-bombers and attack aircraft were lighter, with the Navy and Air Force each losing five and the Marines two.

In aerial combat engagements, Air Force fighters downed two MiG-21s, the Navy one and B-52 gunners one confirmed, possibly another. North Vietnam’s rail yards received half of the bomb tonnage. All of the North’s industrial facilities, rail yards and hubs, 80 percent of its electrical generat ing capacity and every major military facility had been destroyed, as had two-thirds of the SAM storage and assembly inventory.

However, the campaign revealed several command and planning short falls beyond SAC’s rigid flight schedules, which simplified the planning process but also aided enemy defenders.

For one, there was the failure to consider the North Vietnamese air de fense’s Achilles’ heel—its SAM supplies. Linebacker II planners ignored Hanoi’s SAM storage and assembly units until the final three days. Destroy ing those facilities early on would have reduced the missile threat. The 8th Air Force’s planners, when they got more authority during the Christmas pause, addressed that oversight, proving what a professionally planned air campaign can achieve.

The Paris peace talks resumed on Jan. 8, and an agreement remarkably similar to the October draft was signed on Jan. 27. It differed only in modi fying the requirements for a National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord. The October version would have brought an unidentified third party into a Saigon government consisting of Thieu and the Viet Cong.

In the final agreement, the two South Vietnamese parties were required to establish a three “segment” reconciliation council to oversee implementa tion of the agreement and national elections. “Segment” was not defined. North Vietnamese forces retained the territory they had captured up to that point and permission to resupply them via the DMZ and other means.

In Hanoi’s sarcastuc view, the bombing drove the North to sign an agree ment that contained all of America’s concessions. Even though Le Duan was the one pleading for a resumption of the talks, Nixon was in no posi tion to ring any more concessions out of the communists. Both knew that Congress was ready to prohibit further U.S. military action in Vietnam. There would be no more bombing, and absent that leverage, Le Duan had no incentive to compromise.

The 591 POWs held by North Vietnam were released and brought home by April 4, 1973.The U.S. turned over millions of dollars of military equipment to South Vietnam, but that did not include the extensive logistic support and supplies required for the South to fight as its forces had been trained.

Neither Saigon nor Hanoi conformed to the agreement. Le Duan rebuilt and deployed his forces over the next two years. He launched an offensive in January 1975, pausing after the initial advances to measure the U.S. response. Seeing none and noting the reduction in funding to resupply South Viet nam, Le Duan ordered the final drive that conquered the South on April 30, 1975. The last South Vietnamese resistance ended three days later.

Linebacker II

AIRCRAFT

AIR FORCE

AIRCRAFT

AIRCRAFT

NAVY

MARINE CORPS

AIRCRAFT

Linebacker II demonstrated that a properly planned and employed strategic bombing cam paign can achieve military objectives to deliver political pressure. But it also showed that a welltrained and equipped integrated air defense force can inflict heavy losses on an inadequately pre pared or poorly employed air attacker.

The U.S. enjoyed air superiority over North Vietnam throughout the war, but at an unneces sary cost. Before Linebacker II, America’s leaders made no sustained attempt to crush North Viet nam’s air defenses. Le Duan’s memoirs show he interpreted Rolling Thunder’s bombing halts not as gestures requiring reciprocation from him but as opportunities to rebuild his forces and contin ue the war. Linebacker II changed his calcula tions. However, it came seven years too late to ensure South Vietnam’s survival as an indepen dent nation.

Carl O. Schuster is a retired Navy captain with 25 years of service. He finished his career as an intelligence officer. Schuster, who lives in Honolulu, is a teacher in Hawaii Pacific University’s Diplomacy and Military Science program.

THE ENEMY LISTENED IN

HOW THE NVA EAVESDROPPED ON U.S RADIO COMMUNICATIONS

O

f the many battles the U.S. fought in the Vietnam War none hurt more than the 1965 battle in the Ia Drang Valley and the 1968 Tet Offensive. The outcome of those clashes and hundreds of smaller ones were not the clearcut, decisive victories that senior American command ers expected. That’s because they didn’t think the “prim itive” enemy was shrewd enough and sophisticated enough to intercept radio communications, then use that information against U.S. troops. When it was conclusively proved that the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong had those capabilities, military intelligence agencies briefed Gen. Creighton Abrams, the head of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, in early 1970. He responded: “This is terrible. They are reading our mail, and it has to stop! Get the word out to every division and corps commander.”

The enemy radio intercepts shouldn’t have been a surprise. There had been warning signals for years. In the late 1950s the Army directed its Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, to develop a new “family” of single-channel tactical field radios to replace the obsolete in ventory of World War II and Korean War field radio equipment still in use. At the same time the Defense Department directed the National Security Agency to concurrently develop and field “communications security equipment,” to encrypt all tactical voice and data radio equipment devel oped by the services.

The result was a series of Army and joint ser vices security regulations and directives incorporated into the equipment specifica tions for new Army single-channel combat net work radios. The Army built a mostly transistor ized vehicular mounted 50-watt radio (VRC-46), a toughened 1.5-watt manpack radio (PRC-25) and some hand-held, low-power transmitters and receivers (PRT-4, PRR-9) intended to replace the old walkie-talkie at the squad level.

Simultaneously, the NSA developed “narrow band secure voice equipment,” or NESTOR, to secure radios produced by the Electronics Com mand. Unfortunately, there were problems in the design, integration and production of this securi ty equipment. Both technical and tactical adjust ments had to be made to meet the Army’s fielding schedule because military operations in Vietnam were ramping up.

The communications security requirements for the PRT-4/PRR-9 radios were removed since the NSA could not come up with a small enough de

sign for the hand-held and helmet-mounted radi os. The elimination of the security requirement was justified tactically. The hand-held radios were intended for squad and platoon communications, and thus the radio’s power level was very low and the communications distance was very short.

The Vietnam ramp-up was bad news for secu rity systems in the PRC-25. The basic radio met all of its specifications, but a PRC-25 manpack with NESTOR security equipment was far be hind the basic radio in development. With the fight in Vietnam intensifying, the Army decided to field the basic manpack radio without a com munications security capability and wait for the NESTOR security hardware to become available. The Army planned to withdraw the PRC-25 from service when the NSA completed its NESTOR development and deploy an upgraded radio, identified as the PRC-77, with the proper com munications security equipment.

Fortunately, the vehicle part of the family had very few issues and essentially met all technical, tactical and communications security require ments early in the troop buildup. Ditto for the aircraft version.

Unfortunately, the unsecured manpack radio would become the “workhorse” of combat com munications because the preponderance of the ground fighting was done by infantry troops, in cluding airborne and helicopter airmobile units.

The vehicle VRC-12/manpack PRC-25 family of combat network radios was a great step for ward in tactical radio communications. The sys tems were extremely easy to install, operate and maintain in combat units. All the operator had to do was pick a radio frequency, a transmitter pow er level and one of two selectable noise reduction modes, then hook up an antenna and a handset, and he was operational.

That turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. Since the radios were so simple the Signal Corps changed Army doctrine and had the equipment designated as “user owned operated and maintained.” That meant radio telephone op erators with fighting units in the field were no longer Signal Corps personnel but rather combat arms soldiers (infantry, artillery, armor).

With that change, officers and non commissioned officers were taught how to operate the radios during ba sic and advanced individual training at combat arms training centers. The training received by officers and NCOs was barely above that of the unit RTOs (who mostly learned on the job), even though higher-level commanders still held them

A helmet-mounted PRR-9 receiver worked in conjunction with a PRT-4 hand-held walkie-talkie transmitter. This system was used primarily at the squad and platoon level.

responsible for all combat communications. In a glaring deficiency, the training failed to impress upon the officers and NCOs the critical role of proper antenna selection and operating frequency in radio system perfor mance, which often resulted in unnecessary communications failures at critical moments on the battlefield.

Because the initial manpack radios had no communications security ca pability, the NSA substituted paper-based RTO procedures to assure broad cast security over combat radio networks. They included changing station call signs and network radio frequencies on a periodic paper-based sched ule and the use of one-time operational codes (a random letter group sub stituted for a common military phrase) and “authentication tables” (en abling operators to identify valid stations in their radio networks). The NSA delivered pallet loads of Signal Operating Instructions, operations codes and authentication tables to Vietnam and all other commands worldwide very frequently.

The NSA-generated paper procedures, however, were cumbersome, complicated and easily lost. Units, particularly at division level and below, invented their own code systems (often based on distances from easily identi fied landmarks on military maps), seldom changed radio frequencies or station call signs and never assigned new code words to places like firebases, landing zones, base camps, command centers, medical facili ties and other important locations. Key individuals, such as commanders, were given “sexy” code names that sounded super over the radio but were easily identified by enemy forces listening to radio transmissions.

Each division had an attached field company from the Army Security Agency that monitored radio communications and reported violations to unit commanders, but they were mostly ignored by commanders, and sig

Key individuals were given “sexy” code names that sounded super but were easily identified by enemy forces.

nal officers who grew up watching World War II movies on TV and thought their homemade commu nications security systems were great. Throughout the war, many key units never addressed their radio security problems until battlefield losses forced them to do so.

The attitude of commanders at all levels was ex pressed by Col. Sidney Berry, a brigade commander in the 1st Infantry Division, who stated: “It simplifies communications for units and individuals to keep the same radio frequency and particularly call signs. Fre quent changes of call signs confuses friendly forces more effectively then enemy actions.” Unfortunately, Berry was very wrong.

Despite numerous warnings from the NSA, ASA and other intelligence sources that their radio net works were being intercepted and exploited, both U.S. Army Vietnam, a logistics and support organization, and MACV refused to believe the warnings or take any action.

Maj. Gen. Harry Kinnard, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), received a report of 11,000 communications violations during pre-deployment training moni tored by the ASA prior to the division’s departure for Vietnam.

Kinnard dismissively said: “Even if the VC/NVA could intercept our radio communications and understand English well enough to know what a mes sage meant, our actions are so immediate, and our movements so rapid that they would never be able to exploit any information ‘gleaned’ from a radio intercept.” That comment was typical.

Denial of the enemy’s radio intercept capa bilities continued from the first large de ployments in 1965 until the morning of Dec. 20, 1969. A scout from the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, discovered a long wire antenna on the old Michelin rubber plantation northwest of Saigon. The antenna was connected to a con cealed underground bunker complex packed with radio equipment. The bunker was the operations center for an NVA/VC platoon later identified as Alpha-3, part of the NVA’s 47th Tactical Recon naissance Battalion. After a short fight, 12 Alpha-3 personnel were captured along with all their equipment, training material and, most import ant, their logbooks.

The logbooks were written in perfect English (the language our senior commanders doubted the enemy could understand). This proved be yond a doubt that the communist intercept and exploitation effort been underway since the arriv al of U.S. military advisers in the early 1960s.

Writings in the logbooks revealed that the radio intercept personnel understood the exact meaning of American voice conversations. The 47th Recon naissance Battalion personnel easily deciphered locally generated unit codes and took advantage of infrequent call sign changes and radio frequency adjustments.

Of particular interest, according to the train

There are several painful examples of the impact that intercepted radio signals had on U.S. operations, but perhaps the most notable occurred in the first major encounter between American forces and the North Vietnamese. In mid-November 1965, 500 troopers in UH-1 “Huey” helicopters of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped into a small landing zone in the Ia Drang Valley in South Vietnam’s Central Highlands. The landing zone had been named LZ X-Ray. It was common practice to give landing zones identifiers and call signs, most of which didn’t change.

X-Ray was only 15 miles from Plei Me, the base camp of Moore’s parent 3rd Brigade and his source of combat support, but Plei Me was still well outside the reach of the PRC-25-manpack radio (3-7 miles) that was the combat communications heart of the 1st Battalion.

The Unseen Enemy at

Another problem: X-Ray was near the Chu Pong massif (mountain) dominating the valley at an altitude that enabled U.S. communications during the fight to be easily monitored by both sides. The 1st Cavalry Division did not know that Chu Pong was occupied by a multibattalion North Vietnamese Army/Viet Cong force that included a radio-intercept reconnaissance organization.

Moore did not know that an Army Security Agency detachment at Ple Me would monitor more than 28,000 radio transmissions during the three-day battle that killed 234 Americans and wounded hundreds more in three 1st Cav battalions—Moore’s 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry; the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry; and the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment.

ing manuals, were communications involving forward air controllers (spotter planes that di rected airstrikes), artillery forward observers (ar tillerymen embedded in infantry units to adjust the fire of artillery batteries), command and con trol leaders, and the civilian press. The press was a great source of immediate operational informa tion throughout the war, which could have easily been prevented. Press reports were not censored in Vietnam, but there could have been a time de lay until the operation was completed.

The captured material confirmed the ASA/ NSA warnings to senior commanders. Alpha-3 logs showed that from the beginning of the war

North Vietnamese personnel were intercepting, analyzing and tactically reacting to news broad casts and information disclosed over military ra dios, such as artillery targets, artillery harassment and fire schedules, ambush site locations, casual ty reports, airstrike warnings, troop positions, radio call sign and frequency changes, unit status reports, and unit plans and operations. The logs also revealed that idle radio operator chatter was a lucrative source of operational information.

The documents also included transcripts of American conversations that were copied down verbatim even though the U.S. personnel trans mitting them assumed they would be incompre

LEFT: A radio repairman with the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) tests a PRC-77 radio transmitter in December 1968. The PRC-77 was an upgrade of the PRC-25 manpack and contained more secure communications equipment.

RIGHT: Officers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade check a map at Vung Tao, near Saigon, with radio equipment visible in their vehicle in July 1965. Unlike the manpacks, vehicles had radio security equipment early in the war.

The enemy monitoring effort revealed the location of LZ X-Ray and the fact that there were only enough helicopters available to lift one company of Moore’s battalion into the landing zone at a time. With that intelligence, the enemy force attacked the first troop lift immediately after landing, isolating platoon-size units and causing heavy casualties. As the rest of the battalion flew in piecemeal, each lift was attacked in turn, resulting in the U.S. force being surrounded and nearly wiped out.

Adding to the battalion’s troubles, the radio tele phone operators, poorly trained at combat arms schools, along with many officers and senior noncom missioned officers, were disclosing all sorts of opera tional information that the enemy intercepted. The offline, paper-based system of codes and authentica tion tables proved too time consuming to be useful and was abandoned.

The only thing that saved the 1st Battalion from destruction was artillery support from surrounding firebases, close-air support and the grit and determina tion of Moore’s troopers. Ironically, the artillery forward observers and the forward air controllers were using virtually the same radio equipment as the infantry, but they were better trained and used the

equipment well.

Thanks to the overwhelming ground and air support and reinforcements from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, and 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry, U.S. forces finally beat back the NVA/VC. They secured LZ X-Ray, though not much more than that. Moore and the battered 1st Battalion were lifted out from X-Ray, but the battle was not over.

The 1st Cavalry Division instructed the remaining battalions (over the intercepted nonsecure radio, of course) to withdraw in column to LZ Columbus a few miles away, where the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry, would be lifted out. The last battalion, the 2nd Battal ion of the 7th Cavalry, would then move a few more miles to LZ Albany, where it would be extracted. All instructions, such as unit order of march, landing zone names/locations, security plans, airlift plans, artillery plans, etc. were again broadcast in the clear and again intercepted by the enemy reconnaissance unit.

The NVA/VC allowed the lift at Columbus to proceed unmolested, thus cutting the U.S. force in half, and then hit the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, on the trail to LZ Albany so hard that it, along with the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, was out of combat for months to come.

AN/PRC-25 Radio

Frequency range: 30-75.95 MHz

Operating bands: Low, 30-52.95 MHz; High, 5375.95 MHz

Channels: 920 with 50 kHz separation

Signal power: 1.5 watts

Normal range: 3-7 miles Long-range antenna:12-31 miles

Range limitation: line of sight Battery life: two to 20 hours Weight: 23 lbs.

hensible to enemy listeners. Next to the text, ene my analysts wrote the transmission call sign, the unit, identity of the sender, and the position of senders and their locations, along with the analy sis of what the transmission meant.

There is evidence that the 47th Reconnaissance Battalion’s personnel were educated enough to understand the tone and content of intercepted radio traffic as well as the tactics and procedures, so that they could actually predict individual unit actions.

Typical entries would say (written in English): “This is a Company Commander (call sign) telling his Battalion Commander (call sign) that there is an ambush site at (coordinates) to be occupied tonight. This unit is proba bly part of (U.S. unit) known to be op erating in this area.” There were hun dreds of similar entries in the captured logbooks. Of course, after reading this type of a log entry one wonders who ambushed whom that night.

The 47th Reconnaissance Battal ion training materials went into great detail and plainly stated that American units didn’t change call signs or radio frequencies very often. And when they did, some elements of the old network structure were of ten retained so that confused operators who lost contact could transmit the new network infor mation over the air. Knowing this, the 47th could adapt to the new network structures even before they were fully implemented.

The communist training material also ex plained that radio operators who were battalionand brigade-level officers and senior NCOs were often prone to long transmissions that invariably led to disclosure of important operational infor mation. If this was not shocking enough, the training materials showed in detail how extracted information was used against specific U.S. units in their operational area.

The 47th Reconnaissance Battalion’s targets were the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the 1st Infantry Division, the 25th Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Other communist reconnaissance battalions no doubt were targeting American units in other opera tional areas.

The NVA and VC managed to profile U.S. units in their area to the degree that they knew not only the U.S. unit opposing them, but also the methods of navigation being used (particularly if it was a landmark-based code) and the weapons, equip ment and modes of transportation. They were im

pressed by the UH-1 “Huey” helicopter and the M113 armored personnel carrier, but not the V-100 armored car used by military police for base and road patrols. The M151 jeep also did not im press them.

Alpha-3’s actual radio intercept hardware wasn’t particularly sophisticated. It was certainly not the product of some super-secret Chinese or Soviet communications laboratory. It consisted mostly of PRC-25 radios captured from Ameri can units and their Vietnamese partners or pur chased through a third party that acquired them in a U.S. foreign military sales program. Obvious ly, those radios were able to receive U.S. radio traf fic since they were American radios. To supplement the captured U.S. ra dios, Alpha-3 had several Chinese R-139 radio receivers and Sony and Panasonic commercial radios modi fied in the field to operate in the U.S. tactical radio frequency band.

Alpha-3 must have had some very good radio engineers in its ranks, since they not only were able to mod ify the commercial equipment but also engineered a way around the critical shortage of BA-4386 radio batteries needed by U.S. forces. Al pha-3 engineers produced the 12 volts direct current required to operate the PRC25 receiver by soldering together common flash light batteries.

The enemy engineers also designed, fabricated and deployed radio antennas that were much more efficient than the standard antennas that came with the PRC-25. This allowed them to stand long distances away from U.S. units, where it was safer. Additionally, the antennas were much more concealable, a critical factor for clandestine intercept operations.

After the capture of Alpha-3 in 1969, the U.S. lack of electronic communications security could no longer be denied. Training levels increased, but never to the point where 100 percent of U.S. radio networks were secure. The NSA did manage to get manpack NESTOR equipment to combat units to secure communications. However, the unit RTO had to then carry the radio and the NESTOR, whose combined weight came to 54 pounds, plus his weapon and personal gear, plus in most units spare batteries and maybe also other communi cations equipment like flares and smoke gre nades. Quite a load for one soldier, so the NESTOR invariably got left behind and the secu

The communist training materials showed in detail how information was used against specific U.S. units.

rity situation did not change. This far-from-ideal situation lasted until 1973 when all U.S. forces were with drawn from Vietnam. Summing it all up, Lt. Gen. Charles Myer, former com mander of the 1st Signal Brigade, the largest Signal Corps unit in Vietnam, said: “All users were more or less aware [after 1969] of their vulnerabilities to enemy intercept, analysis, and decoding and the need for authentication and encoding. The gap between this knowledge and actual practice [in combat units] was im mense and in Vietnam it was an insurmountable problem.” V

David M. Fiedler is retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Signal Corps who served in Vietnam 1969-70. He graduated from the Pennsylvania Military College in 1968. Fiedler was employed for 37 years as senior Department of the Army civil ian engineer and technical manager. He was also a Reserve officer in the New Jer sey Army National Guard, serving in positions including battalion signal officer, assistant division signal officer and chief of the communications division, New Jer sey State Area Command.

Lessons Learned and Not Learned

1. Good communications security can save the lives of American troops, and bad communica tions security will cost lives. No one knows how many lives were lost in Vietnam due to poor communications security, but the number is not small and certainly far exceeds the much-talked-about losses due to “friendly fire” and noncom bat related deaths.

2. The U.S. learned the hard way that American forces needed a new family of combat network radios with integrated equip ment security, and in the 1980s and beyond they got them.

3. Unit commanders need better communications security training even today. In Iraq and Afghanistan there were many instances of command ers permitting the use of troop-purchased nonsecure commercial hand-held radios for combat operations.

4. The use of individual identify ing call signs is still with us and needs to be stamped out. Who among us cannot identify Maverick and Goose from Top Gun? Who doesn’t know what POTUS means? It has to stop.

5. Press conferences need to be carefully thought out even today. In Vietnam, the logbooks of the enemy’s Alpha-3 recon naissance unit make many references to information such as unit deployments, unit strengths and ongoing opera tions revealed by monitoring U.S. radio and television commercial broadcasts. President Lyndon B. Johnson himself disclosed on national TV that “today I have ordered the Air Mobile Division [1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)] to Vietnam.” —David M. Fiedler

Although the communist capture of Saigon on April 30, 1975, is the recognized end of the war, events on other days set in motion reactions that made defeat inevitable. One of those took place in November 1963, when South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown in a coup, shown here, and assassinated.

If asked, “When did America lose the Vietnam War?” most re spondents with some knowledge of the war would likely an swer, “April 30, 1975.” That day, North Vietnamese Army tanks crashed through the gates of the Republic of Vietnam’s Presi dential Palace in Saigon and celebrated a communist victory in the Second Indochina War (1955-1975). Certainly, that day was the end of the shooting war. But when exactly did the U.S. and its allies lose their ability to win the war? When did defeat become inevi table in America’s efforts to preserve a democratic South Vietnam in the face of North Vietnam’s relentless, ruthless aggression? The answer to that question is key—determining when America lost reveals how and why the decades-long effort failed.

The “Usual Suspects”

If asked to pinpoint the date when the U.S. irretrievably lost the war, some historians would suggest the following “usual suspects”:

NOV. 2, 1963 – Those recognizing the importance of political leaders’ influence might single out the day when South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was killed in a coup. President John F. Kennedy knew of prepa rations for the coup and his administration supported the overthrow of Diem, who was assassinated in the process. Diem’s murder removed the struggling democracy’s “last, best hope,” as some have called Diem, the

only leader whose charisma, popularity, willpow er and effectiveness rivaled that of North Viet namese communist leader Ho Chi Minh.

NOV. 22, 1963 – Some tout Kennedy’s assassi nation as the date the war was irretrievably lost because they believe he would have kept the U.S. out of Vietnam’s “quagmire” or have beaten the Viet Cong insurgency with U.S. Army Special Forces troops, the “Green Berets,” eschewing a massive buildup of conventional forces. However,

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those are conjectures rather than certainties. Democrat Kennedy politically could not afford to “lose Vietnam,” especially after another Demo cratic president, Harry S. Truman, was castigated as the one who “lost China” to Mao Zedong’s communists in 1949. Speculation that Kennedy would not have backed up South Vietnam with whatever U.S. military support was necessary to match Hanoi’s escalation ignores the reality of Cold War politics.

AUG. 1, 1964 – Many are convinced the U.S. lost due to a misguided military strategy that fo cused too much on overwhelming firepower in a futile conventional war to destroy the communist insurgency through attrition. They believe it would have been more effective to emphasize less brutal methods to win the “hearts and minds” of the South Vietnamese and weaken the Viet Cong’s influence in towns and villages. For people with that view, the fateful date might be the day that Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the leader most closely associated with the attrition strategy, as sumed leadership of Military Assistance Com mand, Vietnam, commanding all U.S. combat forces inside South Vietnam.

AUG. 2 AND 4, 1964 – In the Gulf of Tonkin incident, North Vietnamese gunboats attacked a U.S. destroyer that suffered just one bullet hole. Two days later, two destroyers fired in the direc tion of signals that appeared to be emanating from approaching North Vietnamese vessels, but were not. These alleged “attacks” prompted an Aug. 7 joint congressional resolution authorizing President Lyndon B. Johnson “to take all neces sary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent fur ther aggression.” This gave Johnson permission to escalate the smoldering insurgency into a fullblown and—many historians have claimed—ulti mately unwinnable war.

MARCH 8, 1965 – Those believing that the introduction of U.S. “boots on the ground” was the fatal mistake might champion the date when the 9th Marine Regiment, 9th Expeditionary Bri gade, 3rd Marine Division, came ashore at Da Nang as America’s first combat troops in Viet nam. From that point, the U.S. was “all in” and the quagmire became inevitable, some would argue.

The Long View

Historians placing Vietnam within the context of the global Cold War might take a longer view that pushes a presumed foreordained U.S. failure fur ther back in history. They might suggest these key historical mileposts:

JUNE 1924 – Nguyen Sinh Cung (Ho Chi

Minh’s birth name) was rebuffed in 1919 when he pleaded Vietnam’s case for independence from colonial ruler France at the Versailles peace conference after World War I. Shunned by Western powers, he became a committed communist. That month he attended the Fifth Congress of the Soviet-led Comintern (Communist International) in Moscow. Thereafter radicalized into much more than a “Vietnamese nationalist,” Ho Chi Minh cleverly ma nipulated Vietnamese popular support for independence to propel his sin gle-minded effort to establish a communist Vietnam.

SEPT. 22, 1940 – Imperial Japanese forces occupied Indochina, ruled then by the Nazi-backed Vichy France government. The Japanese invasion united competing Vietnamese factions of the resistance to French colonial rule into a solidified “nationalist” crusade. Japanese imperialism gave Ho Chi Minh the unifying spark he needed to build support for a prolonged resistance to defeat all foreign intervention.

FEB. 22, 1946 – The U.S. deputy chief of mission in Moscow, George F. Kennan, sent his “Long Telegram” to Washington explaining the roots and basis of Soviet expansionism, eventually prompting the April 7, 1950, Na tional Security Council policy paper 68, establishing “containment of com munism” as U.S. Cold War policy. This policy ensured that the U.S. would become involved in opposing the communist takeover of Vietnam.

MAY 7, 1954 – The humiliating defeat of French forces at Dien Bien Phu by Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh independence fighters led to an agreement, signed July 21 in Geneva, partitioning the former French colony into a

communist-controlled North and a democratic South. Inevitably, the Unit ed States—committed to NSC 68’s global containment policy, recently demonstrated in the Korean War at the cost of over 36,000 American dead—stepped forward to replace French imperialists and to create and defend a Southeast Asian democracy.

All of the dates listed above are important Vietnam War milestones, but they are not the most significant. To understand why, it’s necessary to first address the enduring but egregiously wrong “popular wisdom” about the war.

What Popular Wisdom Gets Wrong

Historians who claim the U.S. lost the Vietnam War due to a failed warfight ing strategy are correct. However, they are wrong if they claim Vietnam was lost because Westmoreland adopted a conventional war strategy rather than a revolutionary war/insurgency strategy.

The communists did not win through a classic revolutionary guerrilla war of national liberation in which South Viet nam’s government was toppled by a widespread popular insurgency of disaffected citizens over throwing a hated regime. Instead, the Vietnam War was a brutal war of conquest mounted by communist North Vietnam to overthrow South Vietnam’s democratic (and admittedly imper fect) government, initially by guerrilla warfare tactics, but ultimately by a conventional warfare invasion strategy.

From 1954 through 1968, North Vietnam pursued a military strategy incorporating guer rilla war tactics. That effort failed miserably. As early as 1966, Hanoi was forced to replenish its South Vietnamese Viet Cong cadres with northerners brought down via the Ho Chi Minh Trail running through Laos and Cambodia. The communists’ early-1968 Tet Of fensive, which relied heavily on Viet Cong forces, was a military failure with catastrophic VC losses. In many places the offensive’s losses virtually eradicated the VC “infrastructure,” eliminating local political and adminis trative “shadow government” personnel.

Committed to winning a decades-long war, Hanoi’s leaders simply changed their overall strat egy and turned to outright invasions using over powering NVA conventional forces (infantry, ar mor, artillery) to conquer the South. With U.S. combat forces still fighting in support of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, this new strategy also initially failed. During Easter weekend in 1972, the communists launched a widespread infan try-armor-artillery offensive that achieved early successes, but beleaguered ARVN forces, bol stered by overwhelming U.S. firepower, rallied to totally crush the invasion, inflicting 100,000 NVA casualties.

However, in 1975—after all American combat forces were withdrawn and the U.S. had dramati cally reduced financial support for South Viet nam’s military—a similar-sized NVA conven tional force executed essentially the same invasion strategy, but this time conquered South Vietnam that April.

For purely propaganda reasons, Hanoi cyni cally argued that its conquest was led by South Vietnamese VC insurgents—claiming its 1975 victory was the triumph of a “revolutionary war of national liberation,” even though depleted VC ranks between 1968 and 1975 were increasingly filled by North Vietnamese troops filtering south and operating from sanctuaries in officially “neu tral” Laos and Cambodia. Additionally, the Janu ary 1973 Peace Accords allowed thousands of communist troops to remain inside South Viet nam’s borders, pre-positioned to participate in the final assault.

Facing overwhelming U.S./ARVN firepower throughout the war, North Vietnamese forces necessarily employed guerrilla tactics (including ambushes, hit-and-run attacks, sabotage, assassi nations). To actually win the war, Hanoi aban

doned its guerrilla strategy of fomenting insurgency and instead was com pelled to turn to an invasion by conventional forces to overthrow the South Vietnamese government.

The North Vietnamese communist dictatorship was willing to pay any price in blood and treasure to ultimately conquer the Republic of South Vietnam. Significantly, Westmoreland, on the other hand, was never given the mission of winning the war, only of preventing the South Vietnamese from losing it—two profoundly different missions.

Contrary to popular wisdom, the war was lost due to a combination of failures in strategy, geographic ignorance and a lack of national will. Each of those three factors is associated with a date that marks a defining event inevitably leading to America’s defeat.

Strategy for Failure

OCT. 25, 1950 – America’s defeat in Vietnam was due to a fundamental error in judgment that has bedeviled military campaigns throughout histo ry: refighting the last war. Political and military warriors leading American efforts in Vietnam based U.S. strategy on their last conflict: the 1950-53 Ko rea War. America’s Vietnam War leaders were misled because of coinciden tal, superficial similarities. The Korean War was also fought in a divided Asian nation with a communist North, supported by China and the Soviet Union, attacking a democratic South backed by the U.S. Thus, American leaders assumed Vietnam was merely a rematch.

The date when the result of one president’s decision later compelled the U.S. to commit to a strategy doomed to fail in Vietnam was Oct. 25, 1950.

On that day, in response to Truman’s fateful order a few weeks earlier to his theater commander in Korea, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, to cross the 38th parallel dividing the two Koreas and invade North Korea, the first counterattacks against United Nations forces were launched by 300,000 Chinese troops.

Suddenly, due to Truman’s misjudgment, Americans were in a major war with Mao Zedong’s communist China. For the remainder of the three-yearlong Korean War, U.S./U.N. forces fought bloody, costly battles before the

fighting finally ended in a stalemate with a July 1953 armistice

A decade later U.S. leaders, profoundly influ enced by their woeful experience in Korea, were determined not to repeat that mistake in a new anti-communist Asian war. Fear of another Chi nese intervention set the parameters governing U.S. ground combat operations in Vietnam. Pri marily intended to give China no possible excuse to replicate its Korean War incursion, American ground combat was restricted to actions solely within South Vietnam. North Vietnam would be off-limits for ground forces—or even the threat of them—throughout the war.

Those restrictions did not apply to U.S. air op erations. North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia were bombed exten sively, although the Hanoi area and the key port at Haiphong were not targeted until late in the war when it was too late to be decisive.

Restricting the ground war to South Vietnam ese territory meant U.S. military commanders could never win the war outright. They could only keep South Vietnam from losing it, if possi ble. This was the defining strategic element in the U.S. defeat: American forces were confined to the strategic defensive. Although U.S. and ARVN forces did conduct offensive operations within South Vietnam, the U.S. permanently surren dered the strategic initiative to North Vietnam, which could totally control the tempo of combat by sending troops and war materiel southward whenever it wanted.

The result was a brutal, localized war of attri tion that dragged on as long as both sides pos sessed the will to continue. Hanoi had the “weap ons” it needed to continuing fight as long as it took to win: a ruthless disregard of heavy casual ties and a tightly controlled population without the freedom to protest.

The Geography of Defeat

JULY 23, 1962 – Some critics of America’s strat egy in Vietnam compare the failure there to suc cessful campaigns against communist-led insur gencies elsewhere in Asia, most notably the British counterinsurgency victory in Malaysia (1948-60) and the defeat of the Hukbalahap Re bellion in the Philippines (1945-54). But victory over those insurgencies owed as much to the countries’ unique geographies as to innovative counterinsurgency tactics and strategy.

Malaya (today’s Malaysia) is nearly surrounded

by water—the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca. Only a narrow 65-mile-wide neck of land connects Malaya with South east Asia. The Philippines, an island nation, is surrounded by water—the Pacific Ocean and South China Sea. Government control over the sea and narrow land approaches helped those countries strangle their insurgencies. Their much-vaunted counterinsurgency strategies were essentially irrelevant as the insurrections died on the vine.

The South Vietnamese government, however, had only the South China Sea on its eastern/southern border as a buffer. It shared a long, highly vulnerable land border with Laos and Cambodia all along its western side—the Achilles’ heel of U.S.South Vietnamese efforts to defeat the North Vietnamese in vaders. The Viet Minh fighting the French and later NVA-Viet Cong forces attacking South Vietnam occupied remote jungles in eastern Laos and Cambodia. They used them as marshalling bases and access routes for funneling troops, ammunition and equipment from North Vietnam into all regions of the South.

This intricate network of footpaths and dirt roads, called the Ho Chi Minh Trail system, was literally the communists’ “high way to victory.” If the Americans and South Vietnamese could stop the movement of troops and materiel down the trail, com munist military operations in South Vietnam would be doomed. With the trail open, however, Hanoi could prolong the war as long as it wished, control its tempo and eventually win.

On July 23, 1962, that geographical “win” for North Viet nam was assured when Kennedy administration negotiators signed the International Treaty on the Neutrality of Laos with 13 other nations pledging “to respect” the “sovereignty, inde pendence, neutrality, unity and territorial integrity” of Laos, which was in the midst of a communist insurrection. The other signatories included China, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

Years before the treaty was signed, the NVA had occupied areas of eastern Laos and Cambodia. After the document was signed, the North Vietnamese expanded their control and further developed the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

More than any other event, the Laos treaty all but guaranteed that the U.S. would eventually lose the Vietnam War. Efforts to overcome the treaty mistake through major U.S./ARVN incursions into Cambodia in 1970 and Laos in 1971 were too little and years too late.

The Death of U.S. Will

JULY 1, 1973 – Despite strategic and geographic failures, there remained as late as 1973 a slim chance that America’s national will—the inherent spirit to overcome adversity and eventually triumph —might win out and prevent a communist takeover of democratic South Vietnam. Failures in war-fighting strategy and missteps in redressing geographic disadvantages might have been overcome if Americans had retained faith in the mission to save South Vietnam from communist aggression.

The deterioration of the American public’s willingness to persevere and win in Vietnam, as reflected in the resolve of its elected leaders, was not precipitated by a single, specific event. It eroded over time.

Even so, one event, in particular, was a serious blow to public support for the war: The communists’ Tet Offensive, which began Jan. 30, 1968, struck military bases and cities throughout South Vietnam. Although the attackers suffered a military defeat with heavy losses, the extensiveness of the assaults

and high U.S. casualties came as a shock to many Americans.

There were also “doom and gloom” press reports and commen tary that had demoralizing effects on the public. Support for the war, already declining in Gallup opinion polls, dropped to 40 percent in the months after Tet, compared to 50 percent a year earlier, and never re covered.

The real dagger in the heart of the country’s national will was con gressional passage of the CaseChurch Amendment, signed into law on July 1, 1973. Named for principal sponsors Republican Sen. Clifford P. Chase of New Jer sey and Democratic Sen. Frank Church of Idaho, the amendment (attached to a bill funding the State Department) prohibited further U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia without specific prior approval by Congress. This was, in effect, a death sentence for the Republic of Vietnam.

Although defeated in 1972 when first pro posed, the Case-Church Amendment was rein troduced in January 1973 and passed in June. President Richard Nixon, politically hamstrung by the ongoing Watergate fiasco—springing from the June 17, 1972, break-in and burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building—was unable to pre vent its passage. The Case-Church Amendment was followed by the crippling November 1973 War Powers Resolution severely limiting the pres ident’s ability commit military forces to combat.

Arguably, Nixon still had the power to over come such congressional obstacles and possibly “snatch victory from the jaws of defeat” if he had still been president in 1975 when North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam. Nixon, technically, could have been legally and fully justified in em ploying overwhelming U.S. air and naval fire power to protect South Vietnam and enforce pro visions of the January 1973 Paris Peace Accords, egregiously violated by North Vietnam’s unpro voked invasion.

Nixon knew that the Paris Peace Accords were meaningless unless backed by American military power if necessary, according to his national se curity adviser and later secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. In his 1994 book Diplomacy, Kissinger explained: “We [he and Nixon] took it for grant ed that we had the right—indeed, the responsi bility—to defend an agreement in the pursuit of

which 50,000 Americans had died…Terms that will not be defended amount to surrender...Nixon and his key advisers announced their intention to defend the agreement on innumerable occasions [emphasis added].”

Without U.S. military power backing up the treaty, the Paris Peace Accords amounted to mere words on paper. Congress, controlled by politi cians committed to ending the war, focused its attention on Nixon’s presidency rather than on the struggling Republic of Vietnam facing obliteration by communist North Vietnam.

Weakened by the Watergate scandal and facing inevitable impeachment and Senate conviction, Nixon was forced to resign. After he left the White House on Aug. 9, 1974, his successor, Gerald R. Ford, politically crippled by being an appointed vice president after elected Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign in a corruption scandal, was neither inclined to nor had the political stand ing to order the U.S. military back to South Vietnam.

The final vestige of America’s national will to save the South—an effort that killed 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese—died on Aug. 9, 1974, when Nixon boarded the presidential helicopter for the final time.

Incompetent strategy, ignorance of geography and a lack of national will power combined to hand the communists running North Vietnam a victory in a war that was, at its beginning, America’s to lose. The next time you hear someone blathering about why or, in particular, when the U.S. “lost” the Vietnam War, ask them about Oct. 25, 1950; July 23, 1962; and July 1, 1973. After noting their blank stares, explain it to them. V

Jerry Morelock is senior editor of Vietnam magazine.

Support for the war, already declining, dropped to 40 percent in the months after Tet, compared to 50 percent a year earlier, and never recovered.

Barbara Annette Robbins checked her luggage at the United Airlines desk, passed through the doors and walked toward the airplane waiting on the tarmac at Denver’s Stapleton airport in August 1964. In film footage captured by her father, the young woman in a simple pastel suit turns and waves before boarding the silver aircraft. He kept filming as the plane took off. Three layovers later, Robbins touched down at Tan Son Nhut Air Base on the outskirts of Saigon and was eager to begin her job fighting communism. There would be no film of her happy return home. Less than a year later Robbins became the first American woman and first CIA officer to die in Vietnam and remains the youngest CIA employee killed on duty.

ROBBINS WAS BORN ON JULY 26, 1943, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Buford and Ruth Robbins. At the time, her father was sta tioned in World War II’s Pacific theater loading ordnance onto Con solidated PBY-FA amphibious flying boat bombers. She grew up in Denver, with younger brother Warren, in a three-bedroom ranch house in the West Colfax neighborhood. Her father was a butcher at King Sooper’s grocery store, and her mother worked in the com plaints department at a window factory.

At Thomas Jefferson High School in southeast Denver, Robbins demanded a lot from herself while also demanding she receive prop er credit for her work. “I remember she got a B+ in one class and thought she deserved an A, and she went to her teacher and made her case,” Warren said. “Her grade was changed.”

Robbins was determined to do well in high school because she had college in her sights, unlike many of her peers. Less than 40 percent of women graduated from col lege in the 1960s.

Robbins was “a terribly bright little girl” and “unconventional,” re calls older cousin Dolores Schneider. Although the girl had a taste for Dairy Queen vanilla ice cream cones, “she didn’t always like to eat the ice cream, but she liked the cones.” Robbins was always a little inde pendent, Schneider added. “She was like that as a girl, so naturally she grew up to be that way.”

After high school Robbins enrolled at Colorado State University in Fort Collins to study French and learn secretarial skills. While there, she was recruited by the CIA. The Robbins family wasn’t especially political, but it was patriotic. Fourth of July meant large extended family barbecues and parking alongside Interstate 25 to watch fire works burst in the night sky over Denver’s newly built McNichols Arena. This patriotism that had been imbued in Robbins inspired her to answer President John F. Kennedy’s call for Americans of all ages to ask themselves what they could do for their country.

A few semesters before completing her degree, Robbins told her family she was going to join the State Department and volunteered to serve in Vietnam. “I remember a conversation about how she wanted to fight communism,” Warren said. “That was her goal, and she was adamant about that.”

Addressing her father, Robbins even evoked the potential threat to the family’s home. “When they get to West Colfax, mister, you’ll wish

CIA’S FIRST FALLEN

you’d done something,” she said.

Robbins concealed the fact that the State De partment job was just a cover for her work with the CIA. She left college in 1963, without a de gree. Her parents “were nervous about her deci sion to volunteer,” Schneider said. “She wasn’t nervous at all.”

THE FAMILY’S NERVOUSNESS was under standable. In summer 1959, six Viet Cong guer rillas had attacked a compound that housed eight American advisers with Military Assistance Ad visory Group-Vietnam, in Bien Hoa, a few miles northeast of Saigon.

MAAG-V was formed on Nov. 1, 1955, to oversee a U.S. military contingent that had been growing since President Harry S. Truman sent the first advisers to Vietnam in 1950 to support colonial ruler France, which had been trying since the end of World War II to quell a commu nist takeover of Vietnam.

In May 1954, communist-led Viet Minh inde pendence fighters defeated French forces at Dien Bien Phu, a small village in northwestern Viet nam near the Laotian border, bringing nearly a century of French rule to an end. In July 1954, the Geneva Accords sliced Vietnam in half at the 17th parallel. Communists led by Ho Chi Minh

governed the North. The pro-Western government of the South was led by President Ngo Dinh Diem, but tressed by French and American support. Tensions be tween the two sides soon flared into violence.

The attack on the Bien Hoa MAAG-V compound oc curred on July 8, 1959. Six of the American advisers were in the mess hall watching The Tattered Dress, a 1957 crime drama starring Jeff Chandler and Jeanne Crain. Just as someone flipped on the lights to change the reel, Viet Cong attackers thrust their weapons through the open windows and sprayed the room with automatic fire. The VC killed two South Vietnamese guards and two Americans—Maj. Dale R. Buis, 37, and Master Sgt. Chester M. Ovnand, 44, the first U.S. troops killed by enemy fire during the American war in Vietnam.

The simmering conflict in Vietnam had not yet reso nated with most Americans or even found its way into U.S. military classrooms. The attention of the nation’s leading military educators and strategists seemed to lay elsewhere—namely on how best to repel the hordes of Soviet soldiers seemingly poised to troll through West Germany if the ongoing Cold War ever turned “hot.”

“There was zero attention paid to Vietnam,” said re tired Col. Alan Phillips, a Silver Star recipient who graduated from West Point in 1959 and did tours in 1963 and 1967. “We had half a million troops stationed in Germany then, and there was noth ing like counterinsurgency plans being developed or taught.”

DURING ROBBINS’ TIME at Colorado State, the situation in Vietnam remained on the periphery. The peace movement did not fully reach the campus until 1968 when students occupied the agricultural building. The Rocky Mountain Collegian, the student newspaper, focused on various club activities, guest speakers and sporting events.

After leaving the school, Robbins returned to her parents’ house and packed for Washington while listening to Pat Boone on the record play er she had bought with her saved allowance. While her parents believed she was working in a State Department building, Robbins spent 12 months as a trainee in the CIA’s Directorate of Plans, the forerunner of today’s National Clan destine Service.

In late spring 1964, after the last of Washing ton’s famed cherry blossoms had fluttered to the ground, an unexpected opportunity ar rived. The Saigon station had an opening. Rob bins immediately volunteered. If she was going to make a difference, she was going to do it where it most counted.

Before she left for Vietnam that summer, Robbins, her parents and brother piled into the car and drove to the Four Corners Monument in Monument Valley, Utah. A home movie shows the four skipping, dancing and smiling their way around the metal marker at the point where Colora do, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico touch.

A week later the family returned to their home. Robbins stood in her bedroom considering her clothes. She laid out airy linen shifts and pastel

The Saigon station had an opening. Robbins volunteered. If she was going to make a difference, she was going to do it where it most counted.

suits, low-heeled pumps and a few pairs of gloves. She packed pencils, pens and lightweight stationary. She was ready for her trip to Vietnam. On the drive to the airport with her parents and brother, bursts of quiet interrupted the chatter. Warren recalled it as “a nice day and just sort of exciting, too, to see Barbara off.” Buford parked, popped open the trunk and lifted out Rob bins’ suitcases. She headed for the United Airlines desk.

AFTER THE ARRIVAL AT TAN SON NHUT, Robbins, a leather purse in hand and sensible pumps on her feet, boarded a bus. Chicken wire cov ered the windows to protect against bomb blasts, and the seats reminded her of buses in elementary school. The bus took Robbins to the Astor Hotel in downtown Saigon. She stayed there for a week and then moved into a fully furnished apartment, complete with linens and maid service.

“There are many other Americans from the Embassy also living here so I feel very safe,” she wrote to her family. “Security-wise we do have to be careful–but you’d never feel that way right here in Saigon if it weren’t for the Vietnamese police all over the city.”

Over the next year Robbins sent 30 letters home. She never wrote about how she typed top-secret CIA reports during the day. Her letters described searching the black market for piasters (Vietnamese currency) and dollars, what women wore, training her new dog “Captain” and occasional week ends in Nha Trang, a coastal city about 200 miles north of Saigon with beaches and fine French dining.

Every now and then she nonchalantly mentioned Buddhist protests in the square near the Rex Hotel in Saigon, bombings at various cafes and fighting on the outskirts of the city.

“You probably see more of what’s happening on television than I’ll ever see here,” she wrote, adding that her family would read about curfews and Vietnamese students marching in protest as if the “country doesn’t have enough problems trying to win against the VC.”

Hoping to bolster South Vietnam’s prospects for victory, U.S. military personnel had jumped from 16,263 in 1963 to 23,310 in 1964, and by the end 1965 would reach 184,314.

Robbins took pains to contrast the war news presented in the States with reality on the ground, whether in the portrayal of Saigon politics or daily dangers American personnel faced.

LEFT: The Brinks Hotel Bombing on Christmas Eve 1964, which killed two Americans, was noted in one of Robbins’ letters to her family. RIGHT: Deputy U.S. Ambassador U. Alexis Johnson, spattered with blood, is taken from the embassy in the wake of the March 30, 1965, bombing that left Robbins dead.

“We in the embassy were in no danger whatso ever,” Robbins wrote after a bomb exploded Aug. 25, 1964, on the fifth floor of Saigon’s Caravelle Hotel. It didn’t kill anyone, but several were wounded. Reassuring her parents, she remarked that the hotel’s rooftop was still probably the safest place in the city for dinner. Robbins wrote about meeting military personnel who volunteered for service in Vietnam, the “very unusual group” of helicopter pilots “you’re always reading and hear ing about,” and the close-knit American commu nity that came together for dinners and dancing.

“Well, I was here during a coup—or at least an attempted one—it’s pretty busy in the embassy at a time like that,” she noted. Robbins mentioned a military parade on the anniversary of the suc cessful Nov. 2, 1963, coup that overthrew and as sassinated Diem. During “the night of our party it was a 2 a.m. curfew instead of 12 midnight and so we were all outside and could hear the gunfire at Bien Hoa.”

In December 1964 Robbins marked her nine months in-country with a renewed sense of pur pose. She meant to attend Christmas Eve Mass, but two men in a four-door sedan changed those plans. She explained: “I didn’t go to Xmas service because the Brink’s BOQ [bachelor officers’ quar ters housed in the Brinks Hotel] was just bombed at 6 p.m. and it was all but impossible to get to church from where I live. I heard the explosion

In 1974, the CIA dedicated a Memorial Wall at its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to honor fallen employees with a star carved into a marble wall. Originally proposed to recognize CIA officers killed in Vietnam and Laos, the concept was expanded to honor all who died in the line of duty. The initial stars represented 31 members killed since the agency’s founding in 1947. Today there are 139 stars. Displayed with the wall is a “Book of Honor,” containing the names of those memorialized with a star. Some stars don’t have corresponding names in the book because they remain classified even in death to protect intelligence sources and methods.

radio went off the air I knew it was an explosion and a large one. Not a very pleasant way to start the holiday.”

Two Viet Cong had driven a car with 200 pounds of explosives to the hotel, parked it and detonated the explosives. Two Americans—one military, one civilian—were killed, and dozens of Americans and South Vietnamese were injured.

With the arrival of the new year, Robbins pushed through a brief bout of homesickness and immersed herself in her work. She considered ex tending her stay in Vietnam.

ALL THE WHILE THE SITUATION in Saigon grew increasingly fraught. In February 1965, as conditions deteriorated, dependents of American diplomats and military personnel were evacuat ed. Robbins’ letters became more serious.

She wrote: “Many demonstrations are backed and infiltrated by the VC. It’s sort of like in the U.S. with the communists in some of the clubs, societies, etc. who are influencing and persuad ing in a sort of behind-the-scenes act. You don’t know who they all are, and so that makes it twice as difficult to fight them. Even then the American advisors are out in the field fighting with the Army of the Vietnam North—they don’t know who the enemy is. During the day he may be a simple farmer with his rice paddies and when the night comes he is the enemy.”

On the morning of March 30, 1965, Robbins sat at her metal desk on the second floor of the U.S. Embassy on Pasteur Street. Gunfire erupted outside. According to accounts of the incident, a car that sagged from being overloaded was parked too close to the embassy. A policeman or

dered the driver to leave, but the man re fused. The officer fired at the vehicle. Sud denly a man on a scooter pulled up alongside the car and shot at the police officer.

Hearing the commotion outside their office, Robbins and other CIA secretaries scurried to the window. As Robbins got close, 300 pounds of explosives in the car exploded. In the blast, a piece of iron grating covering the windows broke free, sailed through the air like a javelin and impaled the 21-year-old CIA employee, killing her as she looked out the window.

Outside, firemen sprinted toward the building, ambulances screeched to a stop, and more shots rang through the air. A young American woman, blood streaming from her ear, stumbled around dazed. On the sidewalk, shattered glass sparkled in rivulets of blood. A man on a stretcher held a cigarette between nicotine-stained fingers.

It was the most brazen attack against American interests in South Vietnam to date. The bomb killed 21 people—Robbins, Petty Officer 2nd Class Manolito Castillo, a Filipino serving in the U.S. Navy, and 19 South Vietnamese. Additional ly, 183 were wounded.

The South Vietnamese police arrested one of the men involved in the bombing, Nguyen Van Hai, and took him to a local hospital. Hai admit ted he was with the Viet Cong, and a military tri bunal sentenced him to death. In retaliation, the North Vietnamese announced they would exe cute Gustav Hertz, a 46-year-old American aid mission officer they had taken hostage. At the urging of the U.S. government, the South Viet namese did not execute Hai. Nor was Hertz exe cuted, although he died of malaria in 1967 while in captivity.

On May 25, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation appropriating $1 million to build a new embassy compound on a more se cure site. Johnson would not yet support military leaders’ push for retaliatory raids on North Viet nam but vowed that “the Saigon bombing fires our will to fight on.”

ROBBINS’ PARENTS TURNED on the eve ning news just as reports were being aired about a bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Buford phoned a contact at the State Department to

learn more. An hour later, Warren came home and realized by the look on his parents’ faces that something serious had happened.

Around midnight Warren closed his bedroom door and tried to sleep. Two hours later, Buford called the family’s pastor and asked him to keep them company while they waited for news. At 4 a.m. there was a knock on the door. Opening it, Buford and Ruth saw a State Department official standing on the stoop. They crumpled. Their daughter was dead.

In Saigon, on Thursday, April 1, a South Vietnamese and an American honor guard stood at attention during a short ceremony at the American chapel at Tan Son Nhut. Acting U.S. Ambassa dor U. Alexis Johnson, whose face had been cut in the blast, stared at the caskets holding Robbins and Castillo. Assistant Prime Minister of South Vietnam Tran Van Do pinned the Vietnamese medal of gallantry on the flag-draped coffins.

After the plane bearing Robbins’ body touched down at Stapleton, her parents and brother drove to the funeral home. A State De partment official escorting the 21-year-old’s re mains met the family there and gently explained that one of the handles on the coffin broke in transit. He asked Ruth if she wanted to see her daughter. She shook her head. Buford and War ren also declined.

After finalizing the funeral arrangements, the three drove home to discover local and national press camped across the street. For the next three days Buford and Ruth remained cloistered inside their home, leaving Warren, now 18, to run the occasional errand and bring in the mail. Among the many condolences were telegrams from Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

Three days later on April 4, 1965, the funeral procession wended its way to Chapel Hill Ceme tery on the outskirts of Denver. At the grave, Ruth, wearing sunglasses and a white hat, pressed her white-gloved hands to her mouth. Buford, in a black suit, bowed his head.

That Sunday, the University Hills Lutheran Church dedicated its service to Robbins. State Department co-workers, friends and family do nated an illuminated cross that was affixed to the wall behind the altar.

Weeks later, Buford, Ruth and Warren traveled to Washington. The family had learned only re cently that their daughter worked for the CIA,

not the State Department. Since Robbins was stationed inside the U.S. Em bassy, Rusk wanted to meet her family. He presented the parents with an engraved plaque: “Barbara A. Robbins (Posthumous) Who gave her life for her country at the American Embassy, Saigon, Viet-Nam, On March 30, 1965.” Rusk and the family then moved to the dining room for a meal of lamb chops and apple pie with cheddar cheese on top. “It wasn’t a depress ing thing,” Warren said. “It was nice for my parents.”

Thirty years later, on June 1, 1995, the Robbins family returned to the nation’s capital to attend a private service in honor of their daughter, who had a memorial star carved into the CIA’s Memorial Wall, which recognizes agency employees who died in service to their country. But Robbins’ name was not in the accompanying Book of Honor that lists fallen CIA officers.

Warren said a CIA official told the family that Robbins’ name was not listed for what the agency termed “cover considerations,” an indication that some related documents had not been declassified yet. Buford wished to see his daughter’s name inscribed, but he died in 1998. Robbins’ name wasn’t listed until 2011. By then, Warren’s mother had died. He was the only one alive for the ceremony, held in the agency’s hall on May 23, 2011.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said: “To this day, Barbara is the youngest of ficer memorialized on our Wall. She was the first American woman to die in Vietnam and the first woman in our Agency’s history to make the ulti mate sacrifice. Nine women since then have fallen in service to our mission. Today we remember them all, with great love and admiration.” V

Cathryn J. Prince, a freelance journalist and adjunct lecturer in journalism at Fordham University in New York,is the author of six nonfiction books in cluding Queen of the Mountaineers: The Trailblazing Life of Fanny Bull ock Workman; Death in the Baltic: The WWII Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, awarded the Military Writers Society of America 2013 Founders Award; and Shot from the Sky: American POWs in Switzerland.

ENEMY FIRE

WEAPONS OF THE NVA

Vietnam has fought numerous invasions over the past two millennia, usually against China or whoever happened to have conquered China, including the for midable, ruthless Mongols. Whenever they could not defeat the invaders, the Vietnamese armed forces eventually wore them down by sim ply refusing to quit.

When the United States involved itself in bolstering the

South Vietnamese government against the insurgent commu nist Viet Cong, it did so with the expectation of crushing a guerrilla movement.

In November 1965, however, the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) fought its first major battle against North Viet namese Army regulars, who had been infiltrating the South via the Ho Chi Minh Trail snaking along the Laotian and Cambodian borders since the early 1960s. The communists also made extensive use of South Vietnam’s rivers and, to a

lesser extent, the east coast, to smuggle supplies in.

The next decade would see both sides, the Americans/ South Vietnamese and NVA/VC changing and adapting their tactics against each other. Essentially the NVA was a light infantry force backed by whatever heavier support it could field, adding guerrilla tactics learned from the VC to their repertoire.

Initially the VC used whatever French, American or other weaponry they could get their hands on, but with each infu

sion of NVA troops came a steady flow of Soviet and Chinese arms that made their infantry the equal of their opponents. Although the North Vietnamese did not commit any air sup port to their ground forces—which in any event would not have had a chance against the Americans—the NVA added more artillery, tanks and anti-aircraft weaponry to its forces between 1968 and 1975. In the end, in spite of the horren dous price they paid on the battlefield, what they had proved to be enough. V

Enemy Fire

The North Vietnamese Army was essentially a light infantry force that also adopted guerrilla tactics from the Viet Cong.

It was a perfect late autumn day in the northern Rockies. Not a cloud in the sky, and just enough cool in the air to stir up nostalgic memories of my trip into the backwoods. is year, though, was di erent. I was going it solo. My two buddies, pleading work responsibilities, backed out at the last minute. So, armed with my trusty knife, I set out for adventure.

Well, what I found was a whole lot of trouble. As in 8 feet and 800-pounds of trouble in the form of a grizzly bear. Seems this grumpy fella was out looking for some adventure too. Mr. Grizzly saw me, stood up to his entire 8 feet of ferocity and let out a roar that made my blood turn to ice and my hair stand up. Unsnapping my leather sheath, I felt for my hefty, trusty knife and felt emboldened. I then showed the massive grizzly over 6 inches of 420 surgical grade stainless steel, raised my hands and yelled, “Whoa bear! Whoa bear!” I must have made my point, as he gave me an almost admiring grunt before turning tail and heading back into the woods.

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Extraordinary Valor: The Fight for Charlie Hill in Vietnam

1972 HEROISM ON ROCKET RIDGE LEADS TO 2022 MEDAL OF HONOR

On July 5, 2022, President Joe Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to retired Army Maj. John J. Duffy for conspicuous gallantry while serving as the sole American adviser with the 11th Air borne Battalion, Vietnamese Airborne Division. The U.S. military’s highest decoration was pre sented 50 years after Duffy’s heroic conduct on April 14-15, 1972.

Ridge,” the key high ground northeast of the pro vincial capital, Kontum.

The 11th Airborne Battalion, the brigade’s re serve, was inserted by helicopter at Firebase Charlie on Easter Sunday, April 2. Shown on topographic maps as Hill 1020 and Hill 960, the positions were critical to the overall defense of the ridge.

MEDIA

Duffy’s story and that of the acting South Viet namese battalion commander, Maj. Le Van Me, during the North Vietnamese Ar my’s Easter Offensive are described with riveting detail in retired Col. William “Bill” Reeder’s book, Ex traordinary Valor: The Fight for Charlie Hill in Vietnam. On March 31, 1972, the 2nd Brigade, Vietnamese Airborne Division, was deployed to the Central Highlands and ordered to occupy old U.S. firebases on terrain nicknamed “Rocket

The Easter Offensive, which began on March 30, 1972, was an all-out conventional campaign to defeat the South Vietnamese armed forces and humiliate the United States. In a three-pronged assault, the NVA struck across the Demilitarized Zone in the north, at An Loc, only 60 miles from Saigon, and in the Central Highlands near the tri-border area of Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam. The principal U.S. personnel directly involved in the fighting were aviators and a hand ful of advisers working with the Army of the Re

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“To

— J. Fitzgerald,

public of Vietnam. The battles were fought almost exclusively with ARVN ground troops.

In the Highlands, two reinforced NVA divi sions were poised to swarm across Rocket Ridge, capture Kontum and move south to attack Pleiku. Their goal was to then turn east, advance to the coast and sever South Vietnam at its midsection. First, they had to take the ridge. The NVA com mander planned to unhinge the Airborne’s 2nd Brigade defense by overwhelming Firebase Char lie with massed infantry assaults supported by intensive, continuous artillery fire.

The communist weapon of choice was the Rus sian 130 mm field gun, firing a 73-pound high explosive projectile. NVA forward observers were seeded throughout the area and directed devas tating fire on the defenders.

One of the early casualties was Lt. Col. Nguyen Dinh Bao, the 11th Battalion commander. When Bao was killed, Me, the battalion executive officer, took over.

Duffy, a Special Forces officer, was on his third Vietnam tour. The American and Me, who con trolled Vietnamese air force A-1 Skyraider attack planes, orchestrated multiple airplane and heli copter gunship strikes to thwart enemy attacks and hit the 130 mm guns pummeling Charlie. Author Reeder, flying an AH-1 Cobra attack heli copter, was one of the U.S. Army helicopter pilots who braved intense groundfire to keep Charlie from being overrun.

Five days of constant NVA onslaughts and heavy artillery fire finally forced remnants of the 11th Airborne Battalion off Firebase Charlie. Duffy sustained multiple shrapnel wounds, and Me had a serious chest wound. On April 14, the two officers led the small force off the hill. Carrying their wounded, they were all that remained of 471 paratroopers who landed at the firebase on Easter Sunday.

Using Duffy’s well-placed airstrikes, they fought through an NVA am bush and kept their pursuers at bay. The following day, 36 men were able to reach a landing zone and, under heavy fire, were extracted by U.S. helicop ters. Without Duffy and the brave aviators, they would not have survived.

For his actions over that two-day period, Duffy was recommended for the Medal of Honor, but the 1972 recommendation was downgraded to the Distinguished Service Cross. Several years ago, a review board reexamined the old recommendation and after a detailed evaluation forwarded the re quest for approval of the Medal of Honor to the White House.

Reeder’s excellent book, published in June 2022, had no bearing on the review board’s deliberations, but it certainly reinforces the wisdom of the outcome.

Some readers may take issue with the reconstruction of dialogue that took place five decades ago. However, the author conducted multiple inter views and listened to hours of tapes between Duffy, forward air controllers and pilots dropping ordnance near Firebase Charlie to re-create what was said during those trying days. For American soldiers who were on the ground in similar circumstances, those conversations have a ring of authen ticity unmatched in many Vietnam War books.

In the war’s aftermath, military analysts praised the role of U.S. airpower in blunting the Easter Offensive. Indeed, it was decisive, but would have been for naught if the South Vietnamese soldiers, particularly the 11th Air borne Battalion paratroopers, had not stood their ground and tenaciously fought the NVA. —John Howard

War History Puts Focus on 1965

Attrition,” and “The Secret CIA War in Laos,” among other topics that will likely be recognizable to readers conversant about the Vietnam War.

Year of the Hawk: America’s Descent into Vietnam, 1965

In Year of the Hawk: America’s Descent into Viet nam, 1965, author James A. Warren sets out to chronicle the Vietnam War with an emphasis on one particular year. The book contains three parts: background on the war, the various methods used to fight it, and reflections about the war overall.

Warren’s book is detailed, straightforward and easy to understand. Readers who already have a broad base of knowledge about the Vietnam War, or who experienced it, will likely find that the book covers familiar ground as the author pres ents a general overview of the conflict.

Year of the Hawk introduces readers to major themes of the war with sections including “Viet nam and the Vietnamese,” “The First Indochina War,” “[Gen. William]Westmoreland’s Strategy of

The book is a well-written but fairly general synopsis of the war and its outset. Warren does not advance any significant new theories about the conflict nor break new ground in terms of Vietnam War literature.

The standout chapter of the book, in this re viewer’s opinion, is “Marines at War,” which oc curs in Part II. Warren provides a close-up look at the approaches and combat actions of the U.S. Marine Corps in 1965. The Marine encounters are vividly described with details that may be fresh even to readers well-versed in the war. Warren has previously penned highly acclaimed books re garding the Marines and his talent in writing this chapter does not go unnoticed.

In the Marines chapter, the author weaves in poignant reflections from 1st Lt. Phil Caputo, who recalled years after the events: “It was a hap hazard, episodic sort of combat…we did not see heavy combat…[b]ut we saw enough to learn

those lessons that could not be taught in the training camps: what fear feels like and what death looks like, and the smell of death, the experience of killing, of enduring pain and inflict ing it, the loss of friends and the sight of wounds. We learned what war was all about, and a callus began to grow around our hearts, a kind of emotional flak jacket that blunted the blows and the stings of pity.” The inclusion of such firsthand reflec tions enriches Warren’s narrative.

Although Year of the Hawk doesn’t offer much in major new revelations, it must be praised for its educational potential. Well-organized and easy to absorb, the book is a good primer for readers who do not already know about the Vietnam era— for example younger generations who would benefit from learning more about the war and those who fought it. Warren’s book could also be useful for readers from other countries seeking more information about how the war unfolded from an American perspective.

Night Flights From Korea to Vietnam

Entering service in December 1950 as the first car rier-based jet night fighter for the Navy and Ma rine Corps, the Douglas F3D Skyknight began operations in Korea with Marine night fighter squadron VMF(N)-513, whose nickname, “Night mares,” could well be applied to the protracted training and delays that held up its use in combat until August 1952.

the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Redesignated EF-10Bs, Skyknights of compos ite reconnaissance squadron VMCJ-1 accompa nied bombing raids over North Vietnam and greatly reduced American aircraft losses by jam ming the enemy’s radar.

In the months that followed, however, the crews of the improved F3D-2s mastered their ra dar and learned how to deal with enemy threats as varied as MiG-15 jet fighters, low, slow and elusive Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes and Yakovlev Yak-18 trainers used by the North Koreans to ha rass United Nations positions at night.

By the end of the war, VMF(N)-513’s “Whales” were credited with downing six Soviet, Chinese and North Korean aircraft without a loss of their own. Those shoot downs had a big benefit: From February through July 1953 the Air Force did not lose a single Boeing B-29 night bomber to enemy aircraft.

With its straight wings, the F3D was obsolete by the end of the Korean War. Yet, upgraded with more sophisticated electronics, the Skyknight saw use during the Cuban Missile Crisis of Octo ber 1962.That was just the beginning, as Marine air expert Joe Copalman describes in intimate detail in his first contribution to Osprey’s “Com bat Aircraft” series, F3D/EF-10 Skyknight Units of

That technology was applied to a variety of sit uations, including deadly cat-and-mouse games with the radar that directed North Vietnamese anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles before the U.S. Air Force developed its specialized “Wild Weasels,” a code name for aircraft that could home in on SAM sites and destroy them with missiles.

After the first six of the vastly more up-to-date Grumman EA-6A Electric Intruders arrived at Da Nang on Oct. 28, 1966, those planes initially suffered maintenance and readiness problems. Therefore, during 1967-68 the obsolete but reli able Whales conducted operations alongside their intended successors.

Finally retired by the Marines in 1970, the Sky knight is, in the author’s opinion, the most un sung hero of its two major wars. A look through the many firsthand experiences that accompany the wealth of photographs and profiles should convince anyone interested in the air war that it was the most valuable warplane in proportion to the few that flew in both Korea and Vietnam.

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Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 98.3%. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 98.7%. I certify that 50% of all distributed copies (electronic and print) are paid above nominal price: Yes. Report circulation on PS Form 3526-X worksheet 17. Publication of statement of ownership will be printed in the Winter 2022 issue of the publication. 18. Signature and title of editor, publisher, business manager, or owner: Kelly Facer, SVP, Revenue Operations. I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanction and civil actions.

RICHARD E. CAVAZOS

DISTINGUISHED SERVICE IN KOREA, THEN VIETNAM

Richard Edward Cavazos, born Jan. 31, 1929, was a sixth-generation Texan of Mexican American descent related to Francita Alvarez, known as the “Angel of Goliad” for persuading a Mexican officer not to kill Texas prison ers of war in the Goliad Massacre of 1836 during the Texas Revolution. Cavazos was born in Kingsville and grew up on the King Ranch, where his father, a World War I veteran, was employed.

in a Distinguished Service Cross.

Cavazos returned to combat 14 years later as a lieutenant colonel commanding the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, in Vietnam. On Oct. 30, 1967, near Loc Ninh, north of Saigon about 12 miles from Cam bodia, one of his companies came under fire on a hillside during a reconnaissance mission.

The colonel led his other elements forward to aid the company under assault. While continu ously exposed to enemy fire and shrapnel from exploding grenades, Cavazos directed his troops in a counterattack. As enemy soldiers left their fortified positions, he called in airstrikes and artil lery fire to cut off their line of retreat before per sonally leading an assault on the enemy positions.

Cavazos was awarded a second Distinguished Service Cross. The citation states: “When the fighting reached such close quarters that sup porting fire could no longer be used, he com pletely disregarded his own safety and personally led a determined assault on the enemy positions. The assault was carried out with such force and aggressiveness that the Viet Cong were overrun and fled their trenches. Colonel Cavazos then di rected artillery fire on the hilltop, and the insur gents were destroyed as they ran.”

Before his tour in Vietnam ended, Cavazos re ceived another Silver Star. In addition to getting two Distinguished Service Crosses and two Silver Stars in two wars, Cavazos collected a Distin guished Flying Cross, five Bronze Stars, including at least one for valor, and the Purple Heart. He was also authorized a Combat Infantryman’s Badge with one star, which denoted service as an Army infantryman in two wars.

OF VALOR

Cavazos entered Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) and graduated in 1951, two years behind older brother Lauro, who became secretary of ed ucation under President Ronald Reagan and was the first person of Hispanic descent to serve in a president’s Cabinet.

Richard Cavazos went to college on a football scholarship, but his hopes for a football career ended when he broke a leg during his sophomore year. He enrolled in the Army ROTC and was commissioned as a distinguished graduate. After basic officer training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and jump school, he deployed to Korea in 1952 as a first lieutenant in Company E of the largely Puerto Rican 65th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division.

On Feb. 25, 1953, Cavazos saw a wounded enemy soldier near his posi tion and ran alone through a blanket of hostile fire to return with a valuable prisoner. For his actions he was awarded a Silver Star. Four months later, on June 14, 1953, Cavazos led his company through a heavy barrage in three different assaults on an enemy position, each time destroying vital person nel and equipment. When the company withdrew, he remained behind alone to locate and evacuate five wounded comrades. These heroics resulted

In 1976 Cavazos was appointed a brigadier general, becoming the first Hispanic American general in the U.S. Army. Six years later he re ceived his fourth star, again making history.

After more than 30 years of service, he retired in 1984. Throughout his military career, Cavazos claimed San Antonio as his home, the place where his wife lived and his four children grew up. He died on Oct. 29, 2017, and was buried at San An tonio’s Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.

In 2021, Congress created a commission to rec ommend new names for Army bases that honor Confederate leaders, including Fort Hood, a Texas base memorializing Gen. John Bell Hood. The recommendations, announced in May 2022, would rename that base to honor Cavazos. V

Doug Sterner, an Army veteran who served two tours in Vietnam, is curator of the Military Times Hall of Valor database of U.S. valor awards.

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