Thats a pretty harsh analysis from Volume IV-7-c (page 56) of the Pentagon Papers. This volume may not have been previously declassified. This Volume displays a detailed analysis and background to the lack of effectiveness of Operation Rolling Thunder.
This volume clearly shows critical errors in judgement by Curtis Lemay who in referring to our war in Vietnam famously stating: “we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.”
I have come to understand Rolling Thunder as an immense bombing campaign, dropping more bombs than on the entire pacific campaign during World War II. And we bombed the hell out of Germany and Japan.
The analysts who wrote this volume have determined the ongoing Rolling Thunder operation was truly a waste of money and resources. The most terrible cost was our American soliders who died executing this campaign.
While reading these pages I was somewhat surprised this report had not surfaced before last summer when the entire 47 volumes were released by the National Archives.
Clearly the North was a agrarian economy and US military intelligence could only identify a small number of valued bombing targets that were neither vast nor critical to the North Vietnamese.
Targets linked to their infrastructure was so limited that when the initial draft was presented to President Johnson, researchers had to go back and widen the scope.
The analysis determined that a majority of critical resources used by the North Vietnamese were supplied by China via rail.
In terms of specific target categories, the appraisals reported results like the following:
Power plants. 6 small plants struck, only 2 of them in the main power grid. Loss resulted in local power shortages and reduction in power available for irrigation but did not reduce the power supply for the Hanoi/Haiphong area:
POL storage. 4 installations destroyed, about 17 percent of NVN’ s total bulk storage capacity. Economic effect not significant since neither industry nor agriculture is large user and makeshift storage and distribution procedures will do.
Manufacturing. 2 facilities hit, 1 explosive plant and 1 textile plant, the latter by mistake. Loss of explosives plant of little consequence since China furnished virtually all the explosives required. Damage to textile plant not extensive .
Bridges. 30 highway and 6 railroad bridges on JCS list destroyed or damaged, plus several hundred lesser bridges hit on armed reconnaissance missions. NVN has generally not made a major reconstruction effort, usually putting fords, ferries, and pontoon bridges into service instead. Damage has neither stopped nor curtailed movement of military supplies.
Railroad yards. 3 hit, containing about 10 percent of NVN’s total railroad cargo-handling capacity. Has not significantly hampered the operations of the major portions of the rail network.
Ports. 2 small maritime ports hit, at Vinh and Thanh Hoa in the south, with only 5 percent of the country’s maritime cargo-handling capacity . Impact on economy minor .
Locks. Of 91 known locks and dams in NVN, only 8 targeted as significant to inland waterways, flood control, or irrigation. Only 1 hit, heavily damaged.
Transport equipment. Destroyed or damaged 12 locomotives, 819 freight cars, 805 trucks, 109 ferries, 750 barges, and 354 other water craft.
No evidence of serious problems due to shortages of equipment. What did all of this amount to? The direct losses, in the language of one of the monthly appraisals, still remain small compared to total economic activity, because the country is predominantly agricultural and the major industrial facilities have not been attacked.
Clearly the Pentagon Papers will be updating history. Wikipedia’s article on General Curtis LeMay includes a contribution that states:
Evidence of LeMay’s thinking is that in his 1965 autobiography, co-written with MacKinlay Kantor, LeMay is quoted as saying his response to North Vietnam would be to demand that “they’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age. And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power—not with ground forces.”
However Volume IV-7-a proves how wrong he was. Here are sections of this volume simply labeled: Air War in the North: 1965 – 1968:
It had to be recognized that NVN was an extremely poor target for air attack. The theory of either strategic or interdiction bombing assumed highly developed industrial nations producing large quantities of military goods to sustain mass armies engaged in intensive warfare. NVN, as U.S. intelligence agencies knew was an agricultural country with a rudimentary transportation system and little industry of any kind. Nearly all of the people were rice farmers who worked the land with water buffaloes and hand tools, and whose well-being at a subsistence level was almost entirely dependent on what they grew or made themselves. What intelligence agencies liked to call the “modern industrial sector” of the economy was tiny even by Asian standards,producing only about 12 percent of a GNP of $1.6 billion in 1965. There were only a handful of “major industrial facilities.” When NVN was first targeted the JCS found only 8 industrial installations worth listing on a par with airfields, military supply dumps, barracks complexes, port facilities, bridges, and oil tanks. Even by the end of 1965, after the JCS had lowered the standards and more than doubled the number of important targets, the list included only 24 industrial installations, 18 of them power plants which were as important for such humble uses as lighting streets and pumping water as for operating any real factories.
—
Supporting the war in the South was hardly a great strain on NVN’s economy. The NVA/VC forces there did not constitute a large army. They did not fight as conventional divisions or field armies, with tanks and airplanes and beavy artillery; they did not need to be supplied by huge convoys of trucks, trains, or ships. They fought and moved on foot, supplying themselves locally, in the main, and simply avoiding combat when supplies were low. What they received from NVN was undoubtedly critical to their military operations, but it amounted to only a few tons per day far the entire force — an amount that could be carried by a handful of trucks or sampans, or several hundred coolies. This small .amount did not have to be carried conspicuously over exposed routes, and it was extremely difficult to interdict, by bombing or any other means. In sum, then, NVN did not seem to be a very rewarding target for air attack. Its industry was limited, meaningful targets were few, and they did not appear critical to either the viability of the economy, the defense of the nation, or the prosecution of the war in the South. The idea that destroying, or threatening to destroy, NVN’s industry would pressure Hanoi into calling it quits seems, in retrospect, a colossal misjudgment.
—
Even if it found itself in such straits, however, the chances were close to 50-50 that NVN would bring in Chinese forces rather than quit:
If this point were reached….Prudence would seem to dictate that Hanoi … should choose … to reduce the effort in the South, perhaps negotiate, and salvage their resources for another day. He think that the chances are a little better than even that this is what they would do. But their ideological and emotional commitment, and the high political stakes involved, persuade us that there is an almost equal chance that they would do the opposite, that is, enlarge the war and bring in large numbers of Chinese forces.
The two CIA intelligence estimates of the probable consequences of the proposed escalatory measures were apparently closely held, but the available documentary evidence does not reveal how influ- ential they may have been. Secretary MCNamara’s response to the JCS was merely that he “ras considering their recommendations “carefully” in connection with “decisions that must be taken on other related aspects of the conflict in Vietnam. He was apparently not satisfied with the estimate of reactions to the POL strikes, however, which was largely confined to an estimate of political reactions, and asked CIA for another estimate, this time related to two options: (a) attack on the storage and handling facilities at Haiphong, and (b) attack on the facilities at Haiphong together with the other bulk storage sites.
The new estimate was submitted by Richard Helms, then Acting Director of CIA, on 28 December (with the comment that it had been drafted without reference to any pause in the bombing “such as is now” the subject of various speculative press articles.
The estimate spelled out with greater force than before what “strains” the POL strikes might create in the North and how they might “embarrass” NVA/VC military operations in the South, and its tone was much more favorable to carrying out the strikes.
The estimate made little distinction between the two options. Haiphong vras by far the mosi:; important and most sensitive of the targets and the closest to a major city; the attacks on the others were of secondary importance. Neither option was likely to bring about a change in NVN policy, either toward negotiations or toward sharply enlarging the war, but either option would substantially increase NVN’s economic difficulties in the North and logistics problems in the South.
—
Mining the ports, despite the dilemnla created for the Soviets, would probably succeed in blocking all deep-Hater shipping:
The difficulty of clearing such mine fields and the ease of resowing would virtually rule out efforts to reopen the ports. The Soviets would protest vigorously and might try for some kind of action in the UN. He do not believe, however, that the Soviets would risk their ships in mined Vietnamese harbors. Peking and Hanoi would try to compensate by keeping supplies moving in shallow-draft coastal shipping and overland.
—
The program had not been able to accomplish more because it had been handicapped by severe operational restrictions: Self-imposed restrictions have limited both the choice of targets and the areas to be bombed. Consequently, almost 80 percent of North Vietnam’s limited modern, industrial economy, 75 percent of the nation’s population and the most lucrative military supply and LOC targets have been effectively insulated from air attack. Moreover, the authorizations for each of the ROLLING THUNDER programs often have imposed additional restrictions, such as limiting the number of strikes against approved fixed targets. The policy decision to avoid suburban casualties to the extent possible has proved to be a major constraint.
The overall effect of those area and operational restrictions has been to grant a large measure of immunity to the military, political, and economic assets used in Hanoi’s support of the war in the South and to insure an ample flow of military supplies from North Vietnam’ s allies . Among North Vietnam’s target systems, not one has been attacked either intensively or extensively enough to provide a critical reduction in national capacity. No target system can be reduced to its critical point under existing rules.
Moreover, the bombing had been too light, fragmented, and slowly paced: The ROLLING THUNDER program has spread bomb tonnage over a great variety of military and economic targets systems, but the unattacked targets of anyone system have consistently left more than adequate capacity to meet all essential requirements. Furthermore, the attacks on major targets have often been phased over such long periods of time that adequate readjustment to meet the disruption could be accomplished.
Bomb them back to the stone age? They were already there.