Operation LINEBACKER
May 10, 1972
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In response to the Easter Offensive, The U.S. Air Force and Navy begin the massive aerial bombardment of targets in North Vietnam, known as Operation LINEBACKER. The bombings last until October, and their objective is to destroy or interdict North Vietnam’s military supplies in order to turn back the Communist invasion of South Vietnam. Targets include roads, bridges, military bases, power plants, warehouses, and petroleum storage facilities. President Nixon also hopes LINEBACKER will compel the North Vietnamese to negotiate an acceptable peace agreement.
In LINEBACKER, U.S. aircraft drop over 150,000 tons of bombs in North Vietnam. The operation is the first sustained bombing campaign to extensively use laser-guided and electro-optically guided munitions. It helps stall the Easter Offensive and is one of the most effective campaigns of the war.1
While the LINEBACKER I air campaign resembled ROLLING THUNDER in many of the types of targets selected and aircraft used, historians argue that President Nixon’s bombing campaign succeeded where President Johnson’s failed for one or more of four reasons. Henry Kissinger’s diplomatic efforts at distancing China and the Soviet Union from the North Vietnamese ensured that the United States could bomb intensely without compelling either Communist nation to intervene in the Vietnam War. Secondly, the Americans used laser-guided smart bombs and missiles during this campaign, and these new weapons proved much more accurate than the unguided munitions of the 1960s. Thirdly, American military commanders wielded greater license in selecting targets, streamlining the process from obtaining intelligence to delivering airstrikes. And lastly, the North Vietnamese invaded South Vietnam in spring of 1972 with a large number of conventional forces, a war strategy that was much more vulnerable to airstrikes because it required a long logistical tail dependent on industrial and transportation resources in Hanoi. As a result of these developments, LINEBACKER I played an instrumental role in the interdiction and defeat of the Communist invasion of South Vietnam in the spring of 1972.
Historians are divided on whether additional air campaigns such as LINEBACKER I would have prevented a Communist victory in the Vietnam War or if they would have merely delayed the inevitable collapse of South Vietnam. Some historians assert that Nixon’s Vietnamization policies were working to create a stable, secure regime in South Vietnam. Additionally, Nixon’s behavior as a “mad man,” whereby he arbitrarily escalated the war, kept the leaderships in Hanoi, Beijing, and Moscow on edge and theoretically more likely to accept a peace agreement on the president’s terms. To these scholars, the Easter Offensive failed because of airstrikes during LINEBACKER I and American military advice to South Vietnamese troops on the ground. The South Vietnamese military gained confidence as a result of these victories, and some non-Communists in South Vietnam warmed up to Nguyen Van Thieu’s government in Saigon. Had the United States intervened with a similar bombing campaign in 1975, Saigon would not have fallen, but Congress and American antiwar activists prevented the military from taking this action.
Another group of scholars maintain that the opposite is true: that the war in Vietnam could never be won by American intervention. These writers argue that the LINEBACKER I campaign only delayed a Communist victory and gave President Thieu a false sense of security that the United States would continue to protect South Vietnam when necessary. In 1975, however, after the United States armed forces had left Southeast Asia, North Vietnamese forces overran South Vietnam with a massive conventional invasion, and Congress refused to authorize President Gerald Ford to send troops or aircraft to assist the government in Saigon.
Clodfelter, Mark. The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam. New York: The Free Press, 1989.
Hess, Gary R. Vietnam: Explaining America’s Longest War. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2009.
Willbanks, James H. Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.
Summers, Harry G. A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. Novato: Presidio Press, 1982.