When North Vietnamese delegates fail to return to the negotiating table, President Nixon orders the resumption of bombing in North Vietnam above the 20th parallel. In Operation LINEBACKER II—derisively nicknamed by some as the “Christmas Bombings”—the U.S. Navy and Air Force launch a series of devastating strikes against North Vietnam, mostly in the Hanoi-Haiphong area. The bombing operation, carried out primarily by B-52s, lasts for 11 days, with a 36-hour pause for Christmas Day. A total of 15 B-52s and 10 other U.S. aircraft are lost, primarily due to surface-to-air missiles.
LINEBACKER II ends only after North Vietnamese officials agree to Nixon’s terms for continuing peace talks. The United States continues to bomb North Vietnam south of the 20th parallel.1
The LINEBACKER II bombing campaign has proven to be a highly contentious subject for historians and proponents of airpower, with debates ranging from strategic methods to operational objectives. Discourse primarily revolves around the operation’s viability as an example of strategic bombing. As a doctrine, strategic bombing maintains that coordinated and persistent airstrikes against a nation’s “centers of gravity” – communications, transportation, production, and command assets – sufficiently degrade both the will and capacity of the enemy to continue to engage in war. The ability to classify the operation as an example of strategic bombing is impacted most by contemporary review of the role it played in the ensuing peace negotiations. Those invested in the topic tend to adhere to one of two general perspectives.
Some scholars argue that LINEBACKER II must not be used to vindicate strategic bombing, as it did not cease conflict nor curtail North Vietnamese ambitions. These authors emphasize that the Communists in South Vietnam returned to a strategy of guerrilla insurgency—which was unaffected by strategic bombing—immediately after LINEBACKER II. They additionally point out that the resulting January peace treaty was largely indistinguishable from the October draft agreement, which was already deemed favorable by the North Vietnamese negotiators that sought its signing. They thus find the United States responsible for the cessation of negotiations, backtracking on the finalized draft due to South Vietnamese President Thieu’s opposition to Northern demands. From their perspective, LINEBACKER II had the successful goal of convincing President Thieu to agree to the treaty, though it only served to antagonize the North Vietnamese, who had sought for negotiation all along.
With a different perspective, many historians and former Air Force commanders claim that LINEBACKER II successfully compelled the North Vietnamese to resume peace negotiations, and thus served to prove that “maximum effort” strategic bombing was still viable and effective on the post-WWII battlefield. This group claims that North Vietnamese ambitions to sign the agreement in October were an attempt to prematurely withdraw the United States from the war and isolate South Vietnam. These authors emphasize North Vietnam’s unwillingness to commit to measures that would ensure that the peace agreement would be respected, and see the draft agreement as being an ultimatum by the Politburo, as key Southern demands—such as the removal of North Vietnamese forces from the country—were promptly rejected. They claim that LINEBACKER II prevented communist forces from quickly reestablishing a conventional offensive, and that post-operation rewording of the agreement served to better reflect U.S. interests in both English and Vietnamese translations. For these reasons, many of those involved in the planning and execution of LINEBACKER II would later voice frustration about the cessation of the operation on December 29th, holding the belief that the U.S. had not taken full advantage of its strengthened position.
Veterans, historians, and policymakers across both camps have found common ground in that LINEBACKER II’s legacy has been greatly affected by the personal experiences of participants, observers, and researchers, and has resulted in many questions on what could have been.
SOURCES: Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, vol. 1, March 1992, 11.
John M. Carland, ed., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XLII, Vietnam: The Kissinger-Le Duc Tho Negotiations (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2017), Document 26. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v42/d26.
Arnold Isaacs, "After 50 Years, the Truth About the Vietnam Peace Agreement Remains Elusive," October 23, 2022, https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/184244 (accessed 1/24/23).
John Darrell Sherwood, Afterburner: Naval Aviators and the Vietnam War (New York, NY and London, UK: New York University Press, 2004), 287; Richard Secord and Jay Wurts, Honored and Betrayed: Irangate, Covert Affairs, and the Secret War in Laos (New York, NY and other cities: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), 108-109.
Mark Clodfelter, “Fifty Shades of Friction: Combat Climate, B-52 Crews, and the Vietnam War” (Case Study, National War College, 2016), 32-36.
Clodfelter, Mark. The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam. New York: The Free Press, 1989.
Eschmann, Karl J. LINEBACKER: The Untold Story of Air Raids over North Vietnam. New York: Ivy Books, 1989.
Hess, Gary R. Vietnam: Explaining America’s Lost War. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2009.
Sorley, Lewis. A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1999.