Losing Vietnam (6 page)

The procurement, storage, maintenance, distribution, and transportation of supplies and equipment for a force of over 1 million troops was a formidable undertaking. Particularly when under the Vietnamization program and the pre-cease-fire PROJECT ENHANCE, much equipment was introduced and turned over to the RVNAF in a short period of time. Yet, they managed adequately. The CLC directed and supervised all logistical aspects.
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Lieutenant General Khuyen headed the Central Logistics Command. The DAO was established primarily to assist the Vietnamese in the critical logistics support area, and it effectively monitored the situation, working closely with the Central Logistics Command. Besides its in-house experts, the DAO provided contract assistance in many critical areas—particularly with respect to aircraft maintenance. In late 1973 there were more than 215 Department of Defense contracts, valued at about $144 million, utilizing about 12,200 contract personnel (Americans, locals, and third-country nationals).
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The responsibility for supervising training activities and operating the school and training center system was with the chief of the Central Training Command, Lt. Gen. Nguyen Bao Tri, a member of the JGS. The training system was advanced and almost a mirror image of the one in the United States. It had eight national training centers and nineteen service schools as well as air force and naval training centers. The
centers taught basic combat training and advanced individual training. The schools had officer and noncommissioned officer training courses, and there was a national military academy. Many of the personnel in positions of responsibility had been trained in the United States. Compared to the one in Cambodia, the South Vietnamese system was very advanced. In all, the Central Training Command supervised some sixty training centers and schools.

Toward the end of 1972 it became readily apparent to all that a Paris treaty was in the making, and this set both sides into motion to increase their combat power as they jockeyed for position prior to the signing. The allies, too, learned from the Easter Offensive, in which the awesome firepower of the U.S. Air Force saved the situation. The offensive's most important lesson was that if the Vietnamization program was to be successful, a tremendous effort was required to enhance the firepower and mobility of the military, in order to replace that of the departing U.S. forces.
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Therefore, the Pentagon undertook projects to accelerate the delivery of equipment to improve combat capabilities. The U.S. Army Matériel Command initiated PROJECT ENHANCE after the 1972 Easter Offensive to replace the heavy losses in equipment and the munitions expended in countering the North Vietnamese and prior to the cease-fire to bring the force structure up to authorized levels. Major equipment delivered to the army included three 175 mm artillery battalions, two M-48 tank battalions, two air defense battalions, and one hundred wire-guided antitank weapons as well as numerous aircraft and ships. The U.S. Air Force established a similar program to modernize the Vietnamese Air Force. The South's main advantages over the communists were in their firepower and tactical and strategic mobility. All three services contributed to these advantages: the VNAF, the Vietnamese Navy, and the ARVN armor and artillery.

The massive North Vietnam Easter Offensive in 1972 included major attacks in MR-1, -2, and -3, which were eventually turned back by allied troops and the U.S. and Vietnamese air forces. Air power played a pivotal role, providing much of the tactical firepower interdicting the enemy supply lines, and ultimately carrying the war into North Vietnam
proper. The destruction wrought by B-52 strikes against attacking North Vietnamese forces and their logistical base areas was awesome. However, in situations like the siege of An Loc—where enemy SA-7 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles were used—the slow-flying helicopters and C-123s were not capable of sustained operations. At the conclusion of the offensive all sides had learned valuable lessons, but foremost among them was that the ARVN required and relied on close air support to be effective against large-unit attacks. With the dispersed disposition of forces, with outposts generally out of artillery range and ground mobility limited by terrain and distance, the air force's quick response capabilities would also be a very critical element, since aircraft provided firepower and tactical as well as strategic mobility.

One of the purposes of President Richard Nixon's December 1972 resumption of bombing was to force North Vietnam to the peace table. And it did. Among the provisions in the negotiations was that military equipment could be replaced only on an item-for-item basis. This led to an all-out effort to provide the VNAF with the assets necessary to protect South Vietnam. This program to augment and modernize the air force was called ENHANCE PLUS. The improvement of the VNAF had begun in earnest in 1970. Actually, the rate of expansion since 1970 was more than the VNAF could absorb. Also, in the few months prior to the cease-fire, ENHANCE PLUS increased the size of the air force by 45 percent, providing an additional 685 aircraft. When the United States departed Vietnam in early 1973, the air force was left with twenty-five different types of aircraft, including 1,099 fixed-wing aircraft and 1,098 helicopters. This inventory far exceeded the force's capabilities to maintain them.
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Consequently, U.S. contractors had to fill the gap in maintenance and depot support. Rationalizing the situation, in 1973 the air force retired several types of older and less effective aircraft, thereby reducing the inventory to 1,857 aircraft, organized into sixty-six squadrons. In 1973 and early 1974 the VNAF met its basic requirements of providing close air support, ensuring the critical redeployment of ground troops, providing intelligence, and securing the established lines of communications.

In 1972, the U.S. Air Force flew 58,395 tactical sorties, an order of magnitude greater than the number flown by VNAF. However, the
Vietnamese pilots attempted to pick up the slack caused by the withdrawal of U.S. Air Force combat support. This improved the number of bomber, observation, and helicopter sorties appreciably over the 1972 levels.

In August 1973, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution that required the complete disengagement of U.S. combat forces in Southeast Asia.
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The immediate effect was to stop the U.S. Air Force support of combat in Cambodia; all U.S. air combat activities were terminated. Since the cease-fire, the North Vietnamese had had free reign to improve their lines of communication and move troops, equipment, and supplies into South Vietnam. The relief from potential bombing allowed the sophisticated antiaircraft defenses in North Vietnam to move south. Soon there were at least twenty antiaircraft regiments in South Vietnam, which protected the communist supply and storage areas and supported their combat initiatives. The VNAF's slow-moving helicopters and fixed-wing assets could not cope with the SA-7s and the radar-controlled guns, since they had no electronic countermeasure equipment. Therefore, the air force had to fly A-37 and F-5 aircraft at altitudes of ten thousand feet, and the forward air controllers were completely forced out of the areas of contact.

Our air experts at Headquarters USSAG cited two major VNAF deficiencies, one equipment-wise and the other organizational as the RVNAF faced the forthcoming dry-season campaign in late 1974 and early 1975. First, the South Vietnamese aircraft assets were configured for low-level intensity combat and could not cope well with the mid-intensity conflict now being waged by the enemy. The initial force-planning structure of the Vietnamese Air Force has been severely criticized for not having provided an electronic countermeasure capability or more advanced aircraft like the F-4. One could presume that the planners were counting on a reduction in combat intensity rather than an acceleration and that they did not want to provide the South with the capability to interdict North Vietnam, thereby violating the cease-fire agreement. Unfortunately, they did not consider the possibility after the cease-fire of North Vietnam's highly effective antiaircraft units moving south, which turned out to be a game changer.

The second deficiency was that the air force did not have centralized control over its assets. With the exception of reconnaissance assets,
all South Vietnamese squadrons were assigned to the corps. Each corps commander had full control over the tactical air and transport assets assigned to his MR, and he looked upon those assets as
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air force. The JGS issued directives to the VNAF, which generally followed these only with the acquiescence of the respective corps commander, who, if he desired, would go around the JGS directly to President Thieu. This assignment policy was always a bone of contention with the air force; it violated the basic principle of the flexible use of airpower.
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With the existing organization, it was difficult for aircraft in one corps to assist in major engagements of another. However, such instances were few. Whenever there was a serious threat, the president could and did step in. More of a problem was that the air force representatives to the corps were generally more junior than their army counterparts and as a consequence often had little impact on the planning of operations. VNAF complained that it was generally utilized solely for protecting ground troops, often bombing (in their opinion) low-priority targets for the psychological effect in lieu of striking enemy troop buildups and storage for petroleum and other supplies. This may have been the case in 1973, but with the enemy antiaircraft buildup to protect such areas, VNAF attacks would have had marginal effect. By and large, army and air force officers functioned very well at the working and intermediate levels of command.

The Vietnamese Navy played an important but relatively unpublicized role in the war. The main missions the joint staff assigned to the navy—all of which were vital—were logistics mobility, coastal surveillance, and riverine operations. Conscious that it had no strategic reserves, the JGS looked to the navy for its sealift capabilities. The JGS was always careful to retain the ability to move the airborne division and marine brigades in MR-1 and MR-2 to Saigon, should the situation demand the protection of the heartland, Saigon, and the delta. The Vietnamese Navy had two major components: the blue-water navy (the large ships that patrolled the China Sea) and the brown-water navy (the riverine forces that patrolled the Mekong Delta and the inland waterways of MR-3 and MR-4). The blue-water fleet had line ships capable of providing supporting fire to land forces as well as combating enemy ships. These ships provided coastal surveillance of the twelve hundred nautical
miles of coastline to prevent the North from supplying its forces by water and harbor defense to protect the harbors so essential for logistics support. The navy's tank landing ship fleet, composed of six tank landing ships and two converted cargo carriers modified as troop carriers, was a key element of the navy. This fleet and the air force's C-130s comprised South Vietnam's strategic mobility. The late-1973 navy ship inventory included ninety blue-water vessels, 1,450 brown-water vessels, and 265 army watercraft—1,805 total.

In the 1972 campaign, for the first time, the North Vietnamese Army used armor on a large scale. About four hundred enemy tanks were initially deployed to South Vietnam for the 1972 offensive. There were some further NVA commitments of armor as replacements for combat losses. The enemy's use of tanks was usually ineffective because they were not part of a combined arms operation utilizing infantry and artillery; rather, the enemy generally used them in small numbers to provide supporting fire for its infantry. Notwithstanding that allied ground, air, and naval actions destroyed almost all of the enemy armor, the NVA recognized the advantages of armor and the necessity for coordinated combined arms tactics. To that effect, in 1973 USSAG aerial reconnaissance detected new shipments of tanks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the stationing of armor in the demilitarized zone area. All intelligence reports indicated major increases in enemy armor capabilities in South Vietnam since the cease-fire. The enemy armor threats in MR-1 and MR-3 were of the greatest concern to senior Vietnamese officers, who realized that antiarmor capabilities would be essential against a major attack.

On 22 September 1973, North Vietnam's 26th Army Regiment attacked the 80th Ranger Border Defense Battalion in MR-2. The enemy initiated the assault with a heavy artillery bombardment—including 122 mm and 130 mm guns, mortars, and rockets—providing supporting fire for at least six T-54 tanks. Of the 293 men in the ranger battalion, some two hundred were killed or captured. Shortly thereafter, in October, an enemy battalion supported by five T-54 tanks engaged the 2nd Battalion, 40th ARVN Regiment, near Pleiku. It withdrew when confronted by the tanks and fired only one light antiaircraft weapon in
defense. From an operational point of view, the situation in late 1973 appeared different than it had been during the 1972 offensive. Reports indicated that the enemy was improving its armor techniques. It was conducting combined arms tactics and had learned how to use armor in the exploitation phase of an attack. But most disturbing was that the ARVN was not standing up to the armor threat.

To assess the RVNAF antiarmor capabilities, I asked the USSAG J-3 to review source documents to determine the allied efforts against tanks during the 1972 offensive. His assessment included U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps tactical air attacks, B-52 ARC LIGHT strikes, and engagements by the VNAF, U.S. Army helicopters, U.S. naval gunfire, and ARVN ground weapons.
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Of the tanks reported as destroyed in South Vietnam, 56 percent were destroyed by tactical aircraft, 31 percent by ARVN ground forces, and 13 percent by naval gunfire and other means. However, when VNAF and ARVN kills were added together, clearly, 63 percent of the armor kills could be attributed to the South Vietnamese, that is, 37 percent were attributed to U.S. activities, which would not be a factor in future battles. It is worthy of note that the ratio between air force tactical air and army ground troops was even, indicating the RVNAF's proven tank-killing capabilities.