For Americans, there was perhaps nothing more exhilarating in CNN’s coverage of the Persian Gulf War than the footage of American "smart bombs" hitting targets with incredible accuracy. Americans reveled in this image of raw technical superiority. For in the videos was an almost aesthetic war--fought in an antiseptic, electronic world of computer chips and supersonic fighter-bombers. Air power, it seemed, was an easy answer to military questions.
Air power was not always so universally popular. Really beginning in World War II, air warfare reached new heights during the Vietnam War. For while Vietnam era air warfare did include traditional strategic bombing, it also made new uses of aircraft, providing close-in tactical support and serving in supply, transportation and medical evacuation (medevac) capacities. In these two periods, air power received both enthusiastic support and criticism. For some reason, these criticisms seem to have for the most part disappeared, and few major shifts in air doctrine have come about in response to the Vietnam War. In fact, air power is often cited as one of the few success stories of the war, with Nixon’s LINEBACKER bombing campaigns viewed as forcing Hanoi’s hand in the final negotiations. However, things are unfortunately more complicated than that. The debate so quickly swept under the carpet by various "Air Marshals" was a real one, dating back to the Second World War.
In most contexts, World War II was "the good war," a war with simple moral objectives and clear military goals. The bombing campaign, however, was not nearly so simple. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey glosses over this, stating:
Allied air power was decisive in the war in western Europe. Hindsight inevitably suggests that it might have been employed differently or better in some respects. Nevertheless it was decisive. (SBS 107)
Despite the findings of the Survey, several of the authors had private doubts about the strategic bombing effort. According to John Kenneth Galbraith, Director of the Economic Effects Division, "the aircraft, manpower and bombs used in the campaign had cost the American economy far more in output than they had cost Germany" (Callahan 42). Survey Vice-Chairman Paul Nitze’s assistant, Phillip Farley, noted that "the basic lesson was that there were no easy ways to win a war" (Callahan 42). Looking at the data from the Strategic Bombing Survey, these comments seem justified. According to the Survey, Allied bomb tonnage, number of air-related personnel, and amount of sorties peaked during late 1944 and the beginning of 1945 (SBS 9-11). However, the German industrial machine did not falter. German aircraft production increased throughout this period--the number of aircraft produced in 1944 more than doubled the number produced in 1942 (SBS 93). German bearing production, a primary target of the bombing effort, actually peaked during the end of 1944, at the height of allied bombing (SBS 110). The question that such statistics raise is not "is air power destructive?"--because it certainly was--but "is it effective?"
Twenty years later, in an obscure strip of land in Indochina, cold war theories and intense anti-imperialistic nationalism would mix, embroiling the United States in the Vietnam quagmire. A common criticism of the war effort in Vietnam was that it tried to apply World War II lessons inappropriately. Most unusual then, is the way that military leaders in Vietnam seemingly ignored the air power lessons learned in World War II. For instance, the targeting of petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) during ROLLING THUNDER was suspiciously reminiscent of the failed targeting of German ball-bearing production. Innovations in air warfare made the question of its efficacy even more complicated, and the answers--even in retrospect--are very unclear. The 1968 Battle of Khe Sanh, incorporating nearly all facets of the air war’s "new look," is an excellent point to begin looking for answers. The successes and failures of air power at Khe Sanh can be understood in light of two conflicting theories on the subject.
Two Theories of Air Power
There are essentially two extreme ways of looking at air warfare: (1) an incredible and versatile new weapon which makes all others obsolete or (2) a military fad which, though new and exciting, cannot replace tried-and-true functions of more traditional units. The truth, I suspect, is neither of these extremes, but is somewhere in the middle. Since most views are a composite of these two approaches, studying them in relatively pure form will suffice. The writings of Alexander de Seversky and Mark Clodfelter do well to illustrate these two views, respectively.
De Seversky, writing directly after World War II, was an ardent supporter of air power, considering himself a visionary in this new type of warfare. In his book, Air Power: Key to Survival, de Seversky urgently advocates a nearly complete shift to "air power alone" (198). Citing Britain’s historical dominance at sea, de Seversky argues against the US’s diverse fighting forces, suggesting that the US might achieve "strategic balance" through "absolute dominance in one medium" (343). Describing air as the "most effective medium through which to overcome geography and carry war to the enemy" (12), de Seversky picked air power as the proper arena for US dominance. He maintained that "once a nation has stripped its adversary of air power--bombing follows as needed to confirm the victory and enforce surrender" (198). In light of the American inability to "confirm the victory" in Vietnam despite its eventual nearly uncontested mastery of the air, this last hypothesis seems fairly implausible. However, this optimistic view of air warfare is valuable, as long as it not taken to unreasonable extremes.
On the flip side of the coin is Clodfelter, who seriously questioned de Seversky’s beliefs in a post-Vietnam work titled The Limits of Air Power. Clodfelter points out, "Air power’s ability to achieve results through other than nuclear devastation remains uncertain--What it has done, however, is to create a modern vision of air power that focuses on the lethality of its weaponry rather than on that weaponry’s effectiveness as a political instrument" (203). Not only does Clodfelter question the efficiency of air power, as analysts such as Galbraith and Farley did during the Strategic Bombing Survey--he also questions whether the vision with which that "uncertain" military tool is applied is correct. Though it seems rather absurd that air warfare does not have the "ability to achieve results," Clodfelter’s ideas, like those of his opponent de Seversky, do have merit.
The question then, is this: which of these two theories is most true? Which of these two theories best fits the Vietnam War? With near certainty, neither is wholly correct--to assume that would be perilously close to a false dichotomy. But it also would be very unsatisfying to merely say that the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and leave it at that. Although the answer is bound to be muddy and inconvenient, it is an answer worth searching for. The answer to the air power question is not only of historical significance, for it also has bearing on the concept of war, always a matter of pressing concern. And though answering this question absolutely is beyond the scope of a short paper, looking at air power’s role at Khe Sanh offers many clues.
The Battle for Khe Sanh
"They have us just where we want them."
--Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Puller, USMC
On January 21, 1968--nine days before the Tet offensive--tens of thousands of North Vietnamese regulars began the siege of Khe Sanh. An initial force of about 6,000 US Marines held them off, receiving reinforcements during Operation PEGASUS while extremely concentrated bombing began through Operation NIAGARA. Thinking that the North Vietnamese mastermind General Vo Nguyen Giap sought another Dien Bien Phu, General Westmoreland (then COMUSMACV) and President Lyndon Johnson obsessed over the outcome of the battle. Although Khe Sanh was a diversionary battle in the larger Tet offensive, it was one of the largest set-piece battles in the entire war. As one of the biggest, longest and most careful battles fought by the United States, it provides examples of air power in many different contexts. From dangerous supply drops to ARC LIGHT bombing to the innovative "Super Gaggle," American air power played as wide a role as ever before.
In the first phase of the battle though, rough weather and poor visibility hampered aircraft (Nalty 38). Bombing continued throughout this period, but it was not at peak efficiency. NVA mortars and rockets threatened the integrity of Landing Zone STUD. As the fighting continued, so many valuable Air-Force C-130 Hercules transports were damaged that Air Force General William Momyer practically forbid those transports from landing at Khe Sanh after February 10. While the C-130s were still used in supply drops , the smaller and more expendable Fairchild C-123K’s made the dangerous supply landings. On the very next day, the 11th, a Marine Lockheed KC-130F carrying helicopter fuel failed to make it through the gauntlet of enemy fire and exploded in a fireball, killing six and wounding eight (Nalty 33-34). These February days saw the toughest fighting of the battle, as the weather tied air power’s hands. At the high tide of their attack, the NVA was able to get within 100 yards of the base, but Marine machine-guns, mines and small-gun fire were able to repulse them. Without full support of air power, Marine ground troops had turned the tide of one of the greatest battles of the Vietnam war. Reflecting the view that the battle had commonly been misunderstood, Captain Harry Baig credited the marine’s big guns, saying, "Newspaper correspondents never knew of the total weight and effectiveness of our artillery" (Hammel 482). Ground forces had made a very strong showing, while air power, in the early goings, dealt with capricious weather.
On the first of March, air power would finally get its chance, when the weather at last cleared up. The air war over Khe Sanh could begin properly.
The bombing campaign was one of the most ambitious of all time, with the tonnage in the same ballpark as that dropped throughout World War II. Major General Ron Beckwith, then a Major on his first of two tours as a Marine aviator, describes what was known as "The Stack." Over some areas, skies from 11,000 ft. to 20,000 ft. were filled with circling aircraft, waiting to drop their ordnance--and about every thirty seconds, a bomber would complete it’s mission and leave The Stack. Beckwith, flying an F-8 Crusader, also escorted B-52 ARC LIGHT missions. He remembers that "it seemed that the earth shook." And according to Marines on the ground, it did (interview).
The "Red Watch," a group of intelligence specialists who chose the ARC LIGHT targets, was pressured to provide three B-52s with targets every hour and a half. Army Lieutenant Bruce E. Jones was on the Red Watch, and remembers the difficulty that the group had in meeting MACV’s quota. On one occasion, he recalls that they called a footpath across a small stream a sign of troop concentration, and ordered a full ARC LIGHT strike against it (Prados 294).
Certainly though, not all bombing was so frivolous. Nonetheless, the North Vietnamese troops at Khe Sanh had mixed feelings about the bombing. Some Vietnamese were extremely afraid of the bombing and felt that it had a major impact. Pham Van Hong, though, tells a different story. Receiving warnings of incoming ARC LIGHT strikes (perhaps from Russian trawlers in the Pacific, which might intercept orders), his unit was able to systematically evade most of the bombing at Khe Sanh (Nalty 88). On the other hand, Major General Beckwith recounts repeatedly bombing a hill at Khe Sanh reported to be "honeycombed" with North Vietnamese tunnels. Years later, he met a former North Vietnamese officer who had been right across the DMZ, watching the bombing. This officer said he had prepared waves of new soldiers to take the place of those who died in the bombing (interview). Such stories, besides revealing something about the horror of war, are a testament to the power of the air effort.
A favored tactic of the NVA was to hide in the "safety radius" of three kilometers around the Marines. ARC LIGHT strikes, prior to Khe Sanh, were conducted farther than three kilometers from US forces. The North Vietnamese, realizing this, would stay close enough to the US ground troops to be safe from ARC LIGHT strikes but not engage the Marines. An off-target bombing in late 1967 fell within the safety zone, setting off many secondary explosions and killing a large number of Vietnamese taking advantage of the three kilometer rule. No Marines were harmed. From this experience, US forces developed a concept of "close support," lowering the safety radius to 1 kilometer. During Khe Sanh, the technique of close support was perfected, with over 400 such sorties flown in March. Though the theory seemed reasonable, Marines were sometimes wary of the Air Force’s idea of "close support" (Nalty 85-86).
In addition to "close support," another new tactic was the "Super Gaggle," developed in response to heavy antiaircraft fire at Khe Sanh. The innovation of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing (1st MAW), "The Super Gaggle was designed to flood the air with CH-46s bringing supplies to the hill outposts--the NVA never figured out how to counteract the Super Gaggle. There were too many targets at once, and too much going on," said Major Jim Stanton (Hammel 236). Meanwhile, bomber cover from Marine Skyhawks and small-arms fire and grenades from the ground would further distract NVA troops. The "Super Gaggle" was one of the success stories of the air war at Khe Sanh—as US forces found a way to overcome tenacious antiaircraft fire and give the vulnerable Hueys a fighting chance.
But the "Super Gaggle" was a primarily defensive tactic--designed to protect Huey helicopters as they made their supply and Medevac runs. It was not geared toward attrition, the mission of choice for General Westmoreland. Although discussing attrition and kill ratios is a serious oversimplification in most Vietnam War discussions--as it ignored the "hearts and minds" campaign--Khe Sanh was not a battle fought in villages, where the line between enemy and villager was blurry. Khe Sanh was fought in an unpopulated area, against NVA regulars with military haircuts and uniforms. If ever Westmoreland’s strategy of attrition was valid, this was the place. How effective was air power in this context? On this matter, the military statisticians, so quick to spout kill ratios in other situations, are oddly silent. Account after account of the bombing effort, at Khe Sanh and elsewhere, refer to tonnage, explosions, qualitative descriptions of destructiveness or nebulous psychological factors. Here is one such account, taken from Air Power and the Fight for Khe Sanh, an Air Force pamphlet by the Office of Air Force History:
Records Kept by the 3d Air Division indicated that the B-52s had flown 2,548 sorties and dropped 59,542 tons of bombs...Bomber crews reported 1,382 secondary explosions and 108 secondary fires. (88)Such statistics avoid one truly important number: enemy kills. The author, Nalty, admits that, "to estimate the number killed by B-52 bombardment was patently impossible." According to Nalty, the Strategic Air Command (SAC) was only able to accurately score about 7 percent of the bombing at Khe Sanh, because of poor visibility (86). Even less optimistic than the Air Force’s assessment of it’s own military prowess was the Jason Study, contracted by the Department of Defense to the Institute for Defense Analyses. According to Cornell University’s Air War Study Group:
Their report, submitted in December 1967, was "probably the most categorical rejection of bombing as a tool of our policy in Southeast Asia to be made before or since by an official or semi-official group." (45)
Not surprisingly, the Jason Study was included in the Pentagon Papers. But the point is not that one or the other is wholly right, but that there are serious groups on both sides of the Seversky-Clodfelter debate.
Conclusion
Khe Sanh relates to the air power debate in several key ways. Certainly de Seversky’s call for "air power alone" seems unjustified in light of the poor weather which limited its efficacy through February. But at the same time, air power played a very decisive role in other areas--particularly through supply. While supply was a huge problem for the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, American air power was able to overcome this difficulty. De Seversky’s view of air power as less susceptible to problems of "geography" clearly seems correct in this context. But whether or not complete control of the skies was as necessary for victory as de Seversky suggested is unclear--the Marine ground forces performed admirably even during the bad weather of January and February.
Clodfelter, though, hardly has a monopoly on truth himself. His depiction of the "uncertainty" of air power--though somewhat justified in terms of the sketchiness of the statistical data--is unreasonable in its extreme. For not only were aircraft tremendously important at Khe Sanh in supply roles, they also contributed to the offensive military effort. The utter decimation of the Khe Sanh area as evidenced by photographs and Marine-confirmed bombing kills, though not particularly impressive statistically, do suggest the value of Operation NIAGARA. Still, Clodfelter’s description of "a modern vision of air power that focuses on the lethality of its weaponry rather than on that weaponry’s effectiveness as a political instrument" does have the ring of truth to it. At Khe Sanh, ARC LIGHT bombing and the frivolous bombing runs planned by the "Red Watch" seem to emphasize destructiveness for its own sake, rather than as a means to win a battle.
The US victory at Khe Sanh was a largely profitless one--the Marines did not hold the base for any meaningful amount of time, or use the position to achieve a serious strategic aim. For the North Vietnamese forces, it was important more as a diversion in the larger Tet offensive of 1968. But the US forces achieved at least a tactical victory at Khe Sanh, avoiding the Dien Bien Phu that Johnson feared and the American press predicted. Often the credit goes to air power, and air power certainly had a decisive impact. But it hardly seems fair to ignore the ground forces, as the statistics concerning air power are so inconclusive and the ground Marines managed so well without full-capacity air support during the January-February period of the siege. Nonetheless, for Khe Sanh at least, de Seversky’s theory of air warfare seems for the most part to hold. But then, Clodfelter’s views also make sense: the bombing campaign clearly had its limitations and misapplications. If Khe Sanh is representative of the Vietnam war as a whole , why was de Seversky’s way of looking at air power so successful while Clodfelter’s, while acknowledged, were largely ignored? Why hasn’t air power doctrine changed noticeably in response to the war?
There are several possible reasons. There is always the off chance that military leaders in general simply favor air power as it is, for some personal, psychological or aesthetic reason. Or perhaps the public image of air warfare--built up by the media and sustained by Air Force programs designed to bolster this image, such as television advertisement campaigns and the "Blue Angels"--is more positive than other mediums of warfare. But the most plausible explanation is political. In the modern era, the President as Commander in Chief has sought more and more freedom to exercise autonomous military power. Air power plays directly to this desire, as it can be so quickly turned "on and off". Ground troops must be committed and cannot be so easily withdrawn, but air power can nearly instantaneously respond to the whims of the President or commanding military leader. To such leaders, the "instant gratification" that air power can provide is very appealing. And if statistics are "uncertain," as Clodfelter points out, images of sudden destruction and videotapes of "smart bombs" speeding through air-conditioning vents are convincing enough.
The thing that advocates of air power really seem to be chasing is, in the end, the holy grail of limited war. It was this conception of "limited war" which first embroiled the United States in Indochina, and in air power people still seek the same end. Air power seems to promise the capability to fight only on the United States’ terms, attacking as is convenient, and always being in control. That is perhaps the greatest allure of air power. But as Karl von Clausewitz noted in On War, "War is an act of force--which can theoretically have no limits" (76). Trying to create limited war is to risk both defeat and a misunderstanding of the nature of war. Many have realized that the dream of limited war can, as in Vietnam, become a nightmare. Nonetheless, in regards to air power the dream--or fantasy--is still very much alive.
Though at Khe Sanh air power may have been less perfect than its popular portrayal today, it nonetheless seems to have been generally decisive and extremely destructive. But the usual criticisms are questions of efficiency, not destructiveness. In this respect, air power at Khe Sanh seems more questionable. But while the Vietnam war has led the United States to question a great many things about itself--militarily, politically and socially--the nation, lured by the dream of limited warfare, has remained remarkably confident about air warfare. Maybe it too deserves a little Vietnam era doubt.
Works Cited
"The United States Strategic Bombing Survey" Washington: National Archives Microfilm Publications, 1975.
Callahan, David. Dangerous Capabilities: Paul Nitze and the Cold War. New York: Harper-Collins, 1990.
De Seversky, Alexander P. Air Power: Key To Survival. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1950.
Clodfelter, Mark. Limits of Air Power. New York: MacMillan, 1989.
Nalty, Bernard C. Air Power and the Fight for Khe Sanh. Washington: Office of Air Force History, USAF, 1973.
Hammel, Eric ed. Khe Sanh: Siege in the Clouds: An Oral History. New York: Crown Publishers, 1986.
Interview, Maj Gen Ron Beckwith, USMC, May 10, 1997.
Prados, John et al. Valley of Decision: the Siege of Khe Sanh. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1991.
Littauer, Ralph and Norman Uphoff eds. Air War Study Group, Cornell University. The Air War in Indochina. Boston, 1972: Beacon Press.
Clausewitz, Karl von. On War. Michael Howard et al, trans. Princeton: 1976.
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© 1997 Garrett Moritz. All rights reserved.