Vietnam's Final Air Campaign: Operation Linebacker I & II, May-December 1972

by Stephen Emerson

Overview

On March 30, 1972 some 30,000 North Vietnamese troops along with tanks and heavy artillery surged across the demilitarized zone into South Vietnam in the opening round of Hanoi’s Easter Offensive. By early May South Vietnamese forces were on the ropes and faltering. Without the support of U.S. combat troops – who were in their final stage of withdrawing from the country – the Saigon government was in danger of total collapse and with it any American hope of a negotiated settlement to the war. In response, President Richard Nixon called for an aggressive, sustained bombardment of North Vietnam. Code-named Operation Linebacker I, the interdiction effort sought to stem the flow of men and material southward, as well as sever all outside supply lines in the first new bombing of the North Vietnamese heartland in nearly four years. To meet the American air armada, North Vietnamese MiG fighters took to the skies and surface-to-missiles and anti-aircraft fire filled the air from May to October over Hanoi and Haiphong.With the failure of its Easter Offensive to achieve military victory, Hanoi reluctantly returned to the negotiating table in Paris. However, as the peace talks teetered on the edge of collapse in mid-December 1972, Nixon played his trump card: Operation Linebacker II. The resulting twelve-day Christmas bombing campaign from 18–30 December unleashed the full wrath of American air power. More than 2,200 attack sorties, including 724 B-52 sorties alone, were flown by Air Force and Navy aircraft delivering 15,287 tons of bombs that laid waste to the North Vietnamese capital. Railyards, military storage depots, power stations, and bridges, as well as radar and communication sites, airfields, and anti-aircraft defenses were pummelled day and night. Linebacker II would prove to be decisive: a ceasefire agreement was signed on 23 January 1973.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526728456
Publisher:	Pen and Sword
Publication date:	03/14/2019
Series:	Cold War 1945-1991
Pages:	136
Sales rank:	291,010
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Stephen Emerson was born in San Diego, California into a U.S. Navy family: his father was a career naval aviator and his mother a former Navy nurse. Steve grew up on various Navy bases during the Vietnam War. His father served two combat tours as an attack pilot in Vietnam flying the A-4 Skyhawk in Operation Rolling Thunder while flying off the USS Midway in 1965 with VA-22 and later as commanding officer of VA-146 flying the A-7 Corsair II while embarked on the USS Enterprise in 1969. Steve worked as intelligence analyst covering political-military affairs in Africa and the Middle East. He served as Security Studies Chair at the National Defense University’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies and previously as an associate professor of National Security Decision-making at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. As the author of more than 100 classified and unclassified publications, Steve has written widely on subjects from American national security affairs and political instability to terrorism, African conflicts, and counter-insurgency. Chief among these are his critical assessment of U.S. counter-terrorism policy in Africa, ‘The Battle for Africa’s Hearts and Minds’, and his comprehensive military history of the Mozambican civil war in The Battle for Mozambique. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations/Comparative Politics from the University of Florida and currently resides in Orlando, Florida.

Table of Contents

Glossary 4

Acknowledgements 6

1 Searching for Peace with Honor 7

2 The Year of the Rat-A Time of Decision 18

3 American Air Power Heads North 34

4 Turning the Tide 60

5 The Illusion of Peace 77

6 Unleashing the Dogs of War 88

7 Post-Mortem 114

Notes 117

Bibliography 123

Index 125

List of Maps & Charts

Map 1 Southeast Asia Theater of Operations 8

Map 2 Easter Offensive, 1972 29

Map 3 North Vietnam Theater of Operations, 1972 36

Map 4 The North Vietnamese Heartland 60

Map 5 B-52 Flight Routes and Support Aircraft Locations 98

Map 6 Hanoi Targets 104

Map 7 Haiphong Targets 112

Chart U.S. Troop Levels, 1964-1973 10

Diagram Typical Linebacker Strike Force Composition 66

Table U.S. Air Losses for Linebacker II, December 18-28, 1972 115

Editorial Reviews

"How the U.S. answered the challenge with two aerial bombardment campaigns is told exactingly by Stephen Emerson, the son of a naval attack pilot who flew combat tours in the war."

Aviation History Magazine