For over two months I have been reading and re-reading two volumes of the Pentagon Papers surrounding Operation Rolling Thunder that have really shed a light (for me) regarding the war in Vietnam. Battles in a long war are very difficult to read because so much pain and suffering surrounds our fallen countrymen. These pages teach hard lessons as today we live in a time of war.
The Pentagon Papers Volumes IV-C-7-a and IV-C-7-b focus solely on the bombing campaign in North Vietnam from 1961 to 1968. I found this heartbreaking to read since the level of analysis is simply beyond the air campaign known as Operation Rolling Thunder.
These two volumes — after several re-reads actually drove me to paste multiple segments of the reports into this post. I outlined this content across 38 pages in Microsoft Word and pasted more powerful segments below. These two volumes tell more of a complete story to the war than most of the volumes of the Pentagon Papers that I have read so far.
These two specific volumes, of the forty-eight total document clearly why America lost in Vietnam. Military and RAND analysts repeatedly presented, clear data that was simply ignored by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, White House senior policy advisors and President Johnson.
Today these two volumes rip apart any notion of a winning strategy. Operation Rolling Thunder accomplished none of the campaign’s objectives over a four-year period.
In the longer view what did Operation Rolling Thunder cost? Between March 1965 and November 1968 the joint Air Force, Navy & Marine Corps flew 306,183 attack sorties. By January 1968 the Department of Defense announced that over 864,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on North Vietnam. By contrast the entire Korean War saw a total of 653,000 tons dropped. During World War II 503,000 tons dropped in the entire Pacific theater.
At the same time CIA estimated the damage totaled $370 million in physical destruction, including $164 million worth of damage to capital assets (factories, bridges, and power plants). The agency also estimated approximately 1,000 casualties had been inflicted per week or approximately 90,000 for the 44-month period, 72,000 of who were civilians.
Due to combat and operational circumstances, 506 Air Force, 397 Navy, and 19 Marine Corps aircraft were lost over North Vietnam. The most damaging loss was 745 American crewmen shot down. The Air Force recorded 145 rescued, 255 killed, 222 captured (23 of whom died in captivity) and 123 missing. Navy and Marine Corps casualties were 454 Naval aviators were killed, captured, or missing during combined operations over North Vietnam and Laos.
The two volumes held surprises in the detailed reporting of US domestic political issues including details of the New Hampshire Primary, the impact of Eugene McCarthy, a revealing threat by Robert Kennedy to Johnson’s re-election, Dan Rather’s radio news reporting and ultimately Johnson’s famous speech indicating he would not run for re-election. The actions by Johnson as a cold politician and master manipulator are fairly ignored in American history. But one cannot help but wonder about how LBJ reacted upon Robert Kennedy’s run for the democratic nomination.
These volumes also bring to life the difficult issues surrounding triangular diplomacy faced by Johnson in regards to the Soviet Union and communist China. Maybe the most difficult is understanding how Congress, frustrated by Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave him unlimited power called for public testimony by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Guess Hanoi just had to read the newspapers to learn our strategy.
My rage in reading repeated failed attempts at ‘any’ peace forced more Americans to died in battle as Johnson tried to find a way out of Vietnam. In my humble opinion the following are key segments of the two volumes. 40 pages of the 439 total pages from both volumes. This is a very long read. For the very hard lessons to be learned every page must be understood.
Page 12:
The expected reaction of the Soviet Union and China to these escalatory options varied, but none was judged as unacceptable except in the case of mining the harbors. Here the Soviet Union would be faced with a difficult problem. The paper judged the likely Soviet reaction this way:
. . . .To the USSR, the mining of the ports would be particularly challenging. Last year they moved some 530,000 tons of goods to North Vietnam by sea. If the ports remained closed, almost all of their deliveries — military and civilian — ‘would be at the sufferance of Peiping, with whom they are having increasing difficulties. They would be severely embarrassed by their inability to prevent or counter the US move. It is an open question whether they would be willing to take the risks involved in committing their own ships and aircraft to an effort to reopen the ports.
In these circumstances, the Soviets would at least send a token number of “volunteers” to North Vietnam if Hanoi asked for them, and would provide Hanoi with new forms of military assistance — e.g., floating mines and probably cruise missiles (land-based or on Komar boats), which could appear as a direct response to the US mining and which would endanger our ships in the area.
The Soviets would be likely to strike back at the US in their bilateral relations, severely reducing what remains of normal contacts on other issues. They would focus their propaganda and diplomatic campaign to get US allies in Europe to repudiate the US action. They would probably also make other tension-promoting gestures, such as pressure in Berlin. The situation could of course become explosive if the mining operations resulted in serious damage to a Soviet ship.
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Page 25
Powerful and unexpected support for William Bundy’s general viewpoint came at about this time from his brother, the former Presidential adviser to Kennedy and Johnson, McGeorge Bundy. In an unsolicited letter to the President he outlined his current views as to further escalation of the air war (in the initiation of which he had had a large hand in 1965) and further troop increments for the ground war in the South:
Since the Communist turndown of Our latest offers in February, there has been an intensification of bombing in the North, and press reports suggest that there will be further pressure for more attacks on targets heretofore immune. There is also obvious pressure from the military for further reinforcements in the South, although General Westmoreland has been a model of discipline in his public pronouncements. One may guess, therefore, that the President will soon be confronted with requests for 100,000-200,000 more troops and for authority to close the harbor in Haiphong. Such recommendations are inevitable, in the framework of strictly military analysis. It is the thesis of this paper that in the main they should be rejected, and that as a matter of high national policy there should be a publicly stated ceiling to the level of American participation in Vietnam, as long as there is no further marked escalation on the enemy side.
‘There are two major reasons for this recommendation: the situation in Vietnam and the situation in the United States. As to Vietnam, it seems very doubtful that further intensifications of bombing in the North or major increases in U.S. troops in the South are really a good way of bringing the war to a satisfactory conclusion. As to the United States, it seems clear that uncertainty about the future size of the war is now having destructive effects on the national will.
Unlike the vocal critics of the Administration, Mac Bundy was not opposed to the bombing per se, merely to any further extension of it since he felt such action would be counter-productive. Because his views carry such weight, his arguments against extending the bombing are reproduced below in full:
On the ineffectiveness of the bombing as’ a means to end the war, I think the evidence is plain — though I would defer to expert estimators. Ho Chi Minh and his colleagues simply are not going to change their policy on the basis of losses from the air in North Vietnam. No intelligence estimate that I have seen in the last two years has ever claimed that the bombing would have this effect. The President never claimed that it would. The notion that this was its purpose has been limited to one school of thought and has never been the official Government position, whatever critics may assert.
I am very far indeed from suggesting that it would make sense now to stop the bombing of the North altogether. The argument for that course seems to me wholly unpersuasive at the present. To stop the bombing today would be to give the Communists something for nothing, and in a very short time all the doves in this country and around the world would be asking for some further unilateral concessions. (Doves and hawks are alike in their insatiable appetites; we can’t really keep the hawks happy by small increases in effort — they come right back for more.)
The real justification for the bombing, from the start, has been double — its value for Southern morale at a moment of great danger, and its relation to Northern infiltration. The first reason has disappeared but the second remains entirely legitimate. Tactical bombing of communications and of troop concentrations — and of airfields as necessary — seems to me sensible and practical. It is strategic bombing that seems both unproductive and unwise. It is true, of course, that all careful bombing does some damage to the enemy. But the net effect of this damage upon the military capability of a primitive country is almost sure to be slight. (The lights have not stayed off in Haiphong, and even if they had, electric lights are in no sense essential to the Communist war effort.) And against this distinctly marginal impact we have to weigh the fact that strategic bombing does tend to divide the U.S., to distract us all from the real struggle in the South, and to accentuate the unease and distemper which surround the war in Vietnam, both at home and abroad. It is true that careful polls show majority support for the bombing, but I believe this support rests upon an erroneous belief in its effectiveness as a means to end the war. Moreover, I think those against extension of the bombing are more passionate on balance than those who favor it. Finally, there is certainly a point at which such bombing does increase the risk of conflict with China or the Soviet Union, and I am sure there is no majority for that. In particular, I think it clear that the case against going after Haiphong Harbor is so strong that a majority would back the Government in rejecting that course.
So I think that with careful explanation there would be more approval than disapproval of an announced policy restricting the bombing closely to activities that support the war in the South. General Westmoreland’s speech to the Congress made this tie-in, but attacks on power plants really do not fit the picture very well. ‘life are attacking them, I fear, mainly because we have “run out” of other targets. Is it a very good reason? Can anyone demonstrate that such targets have been very ret,Tarding? Remembering the claims made for attacks on oil supplies, should we not be very skeptical of new promises?
In a similar fashion Bundy developed his arguments against a major increase in U.S. troop strength in the South and urged the President not to take any new diplomatic initiatives for the present. But the appeal of Bundy’s analysis for the President must surely have been its finale in which Bundy, acutely aware of the President’s political sensitivities, cast his arguments in the context of the forthcoming
1968 Presidential elections. Here is how he presented the case:
There is one further argument against major escalation in 1967 and 1968 which is worth stating separately, because on the surface it seems cynically political. It is that Hanoi is going to do everything it possibly can to keep its position intact until after our 1968 elections. Given their history, they are bound to hold out for a possible U.S. shift in 1969 — that’s what they did against the French, and they got most of what they wanted when Mendes took power. Having held on so long this time, and having nothing much left to lose — compared to the chance of victory — they are bound to keep on fighting. Since only atomic bombs could really knock them out (an invasion of North Vietnam would not do it in two years, and is of course ruled out on other grounds), they have it in their power to “prove” that military escalation does not bring peace — at least over the next two years. They will surely do just that. However much they may be hurting, they are not going to do us any favors before November 1968. (And since this was drafted, they have been publicly advised by Walter Lippmann to wait for the Republicans as if they needed the advice and as if it was his place to give it! )It follows that escalation will not bring visible victory over Hanoi before the election. Therefore the election will have to be fought by the Administration on other grounds. I think those other grounds are clear and important, and that they will be obscured if our policy is thought to be one of increasing — and ineffective — military pressure.
If we assume that the war will still be going on in November 1968, and that Hanoi will not give us the pleasure of consenting to negotiations sometime before then what we must plan to offer as a defense of Administration policy is not victory over Hanoi, but growing success — and self- reliance — in the South. This we can do, with luck, and on this side,)f the parallel the Vietnamese authorities should be prepared to help us out (though of course the VC will do their damnedest against us.) Large parts of Westy’s speech (if not quite all of it) were wholly consistent with this line of argument.
His summation must have been even more gratifying for the beleaguered President. It was both a paean to the President’s achievements in Vietnam and an appeal to the prejudices that ‘lad sustained his policy from the beginning:
… if we can avoid escalation-that-does-not-seem-to-work, we can focus attention on the great and central achievement of these last two years: on the defeat we have prevented. The fact that South Vietnam has not been lost and is not going to be lost is a fact of truly massive importance in the history of Asia, the Pacific, and the U.S. An articulate minority of Eastern intellectuals (like Bill Fulbright) may not believe in what they call the domino theory, but most Americans (along with nearly all Asians) know better. Under this Administration the United States has already saved the hope of freedom for hundreds of millions — in this sense, the largest part of the job is done. This critically important achievement is obscured by seeming to act as if “we have to do much more lest we fail.
Whatever his own reactions, the President was anxious to have the reactions of others to Bundy’s reasoning. He asked McNamara to pass the main portion of the memo to the Chiefs for their comment without identifying its author. Chairman Wheeler promptly replied. His memo to the President on May 5 rejected the Bundy analysis in a detailed listing of the military benefits of attacking the DRV power grid and in a criticism of Bundy’s list of bombing objectives for failing to include punitive pressure as a prime motive. With respect to Bundy’s recommendation against interdicting Haiphong Harbor, the General was terse and pointed:
As a matter of cold fact, the Haiphong port is the single most vulnerable and important point in the lines of communications system of North Vietnam. During the first quarter of 1967 general cargo deliveries through Haiphong have set new records. In March 142,700 metric tons of cargo passed through the port; during the month of April there was a slight decline to 132,000 metric tons. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that in April 31,900 metric tons of bulk foodstuffs passed through the port bringing the total of foodstuffs delivered in the first four months of 1967 to 100,680 metric tons as compared to 77,100 metric tons of food received during all of calendar 1966. These tonnages underscore the importance of the port of Haiphong to the war effort of North Vietnam and support my statement that
Haiphong is the most important point in the entire North Vietnamese lines of communications system. Unless and until we find some means of obstructing and reducing the flow of war supporting material through Haiphong, the North Vietnamese will continue to be able to support their war effort both in North Vietnam and in South Vietnam.