Operation Linebacker - Operation Pocket Money

Operation Pocket Money

On 27 April, ARVN defenses in Quang Tri Province began to collapse. Due to conflicting orders from their high command, South Vietnamese units joined an exodus of refugees heading southward, abandoning Quang Tri City. PAVN forces entered the city on the same day as the meeting between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. The PAVN offensive had become a massive conventional military operation that was being conducted on three fronts simultaneously, involving the equivalent of 15 divisions and 600 tanks. As the North Vietnamese continued to gain ground in three of South Vietnam's four military regions, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff updated their contingency plans (drawn up before the bombing halt of 1968) for the resumption of bombing in the north and recommended it to the president, who approved it on 8 May.

Shortly after his inauguration, Nixon had ordered the preparation of a contingency plan, one that would hopefully bring the Vietnam War to an end. Operation Duck Hook was to include an invasion of the north itself and included a proposal to mine its major harbors. The plan had been shelved at the time as too extreme, but it was not forgotten. The U.S. Navy had also been updating its own contingency plans for just such a mining operation since 1965. On 5 May, the president ordered the Joint Chiefs to prepare to execute the aerial mining portion of the Duck Hook plan within three days under the operational title Pocket Money.

At precisely 09:00 (local time) on 8 May six Navy A-7 Corsair IIs and three A-6 Intruders from Coral Sea entered Haiphong harbor and dropped 36 1,000-pound Mark-52 and Mark-55 mines into the water. They were protected from attack by North Vietnamese MiG fighters by the guided-missile cruisers Chicago and Long Beach, several destroyers including the guided missile destroyer USS Berkeley (DDG-15), and by flights of F-4 Phantoms. The reason for the precise timing of the strike became apparent when President Nixon simultaneously delivered a televised speech explaining the escalation to the American people: "the only way to stop the killing is to take the weapons of war out of the hands of the international outlaws of North Vietnam." The mines were activated five days after their delivery in order to allow any vessels then in port to escape without damage. Over the next three days other carrier aircraft laid 11,000 more mines into North Vietnamese secondary harbors, effectively blockading all maritime commerce.

Both before and during Pocket Money, Nixon and Kissinger had worried about the Soviet and Chinese reaction to the escalation. Hours before the president's speech announcing the mining, Kissinger had delivered a letter to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin which outlined the U.S. plan, but which also made clear Nixon's willingness to proceed with the summit. The next day, Nixon shook the hand of Soviet Foreign Trade Minister Nikolai Patolichev at the White House. Although both Moscow and Beijing publicly denounced the American operation, they were not willing to jeopardize their thawing relationship with the U.S. and Hanoi's requests for support and aid from its socialist allies met with only cool responses. Nixon and Kissinger's diplomacy had triumphed and the U.S. was free to act as it pleased.