Operation Linebacker - Nguyen Hue Offensive

Nguyen Hue Offensive

At noon on 30 March 1972, 30,000 North Vietnamese troops, supported by regiments of tanks and artillery, rolled southward across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separated the two Vietnams. This three-division force caught the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and their American allies unprepared. The PAVN force struck the defensive positions of the Third ARVN Division and threw it into disarray. South Vietnamese forces then fell back, and a race began between both antagonists to the bridges at Dong Ha and Cam Low.

By 4 April, ARVN officers had patched together a defensive line that held the PAVN at bay, but it was only a temporary respite. Although the conventional attack by the North Vietnamese, which included the extensive use of armor and heavy artillery, riveted the attention of the allies on the northern provinces, it was only the first of three such operations that were launched that spring. On 5 April, a PAVN force of 20,000 crossed the border from their sanctuaries in Cambodia in another three-division, combined arms force to attack Binh Long Province, north of Saigon. They quickly seized the town of Loc Ninh and then surrounded the town of An Loc, cutting the road to the capital. On 12 April, PAVN struck again, this time moving in from eastern Laos and seizing a series of border outposts around Dak To in Kontum Province in the Central Highlands. The North Vietnamese then proceeded east toward the provincial seat of Kontum. Hanoi had initiated the offensive to coincide with the winter monsoon, when continuous rain and low cloud cover made air support difficult.

The initial U.S. response to the offensive was lackadaisical and confused. The Pentagon was not unduly alarmed and the U.S. Ambassador and the commander of U.S. forces, General Creighton W. Abrams, were out of the country. President Richard M. Nixon's first response was to consider a three-day attack by B-52 Stratofortress bombers on Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong. His National Security Advisor, Dr. Henry Kissinger, convinced the president to reconsider, since he did not want to jeopardize the formalization of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) with the Soviets, that was due to be formalized in May. Another stumbling block to the plan was General Abrams' desire to utilize the available bombers (with their all-weather capability) to support the ARVN defense.

Both Nixon and Kissinger considered a plan offered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be both unimaginative and lacking in aggressiveness. On 4 April, he authorized the bombing of North Vietnam (which had been limited to reprisal raids just above the DMZ) up to the 18th parallel. In order to prevent a total ARVN collapse and to protect American prestige during the upcoming summit meeting with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, Nixon decided to risk a massive escalation of force.

Due to the continuous withdrawal of American forces and the ongoing policy of Vietnamization, at the time of the invasion fewer than 10,000 U.S. troops remained in South Vietnam, and most of them were scheduled to leave within the next six months. The number of combat aircraft stationed in Southeast Asia was less than half that of its peak strength in 1968–1969. At the beginning of 1972, the U.S. Air Force had only three squadrons of F-4s and a single squadron of A-37s, a total of 76 aircraft, stationed in South Vietnam. Another 114 fighter-bombers were located at bases in Thailand. 83 B-52 bombers were stationed at U-Tapao RTAFB, Thailand and at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. The U.S. Navy's Task Force 77 (stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin), had four aircraft carriers assigned to it, but only two were available at any one time to conduct operations. Their air wings totaled approximately 140 aircraft.