SEA POWER AND MARITIME AFFAIRS

Lesson 24: The US Navy, Vietnam and Limited War, 1964-1975

Learning Objectives
Know the role of the US Navy in the Vietnam War

(1964-1975) Comprehend the impact of the Vietnam War on the Navys force structure under Admiral Zumwalt during the Nixon administration. Recall the reasons for the relative decline in the U.S. naval preeminence from 1962-1977.

Remember our Themes!

The Navy as an Instrument of Foreign Policy Interaction between Congress and the Navy Interservice Relations Technology Leadership Strategy and Tactics Evolution of Naval Doctrine

Republic of Vietnam (South) U.S. Ally Capital: Saigon

Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North) Communist Capital: Hanoi

Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ)

Succeeds Kennedy as

President after his assassination in Dallas in 1963. Increases U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. High level of restrictions put on military planners by his administration. Concerned with Great Society and domestic politics.

Robert S. McNamara
Secretary of Defense in

Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. Use of mathematical models to calculate required military force in Vietnam. Attempted to avoid escalation of the war by putting restrictions on military operations.

Tonkin Gulf Incident - 1964

U.S. Seventh Fleet operating off Vietnam coast Surveillance and covert operations against North Vietnam Destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy: Night attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats reported Evidence supports North Vietnams claim that no torpedo boats were present in the area Carrier strikes ordered in retaliation

Tonkin Gulf Incident

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

LBJ requests authority from Congress to increase

U.S. involvement
Congressional approval for the President to take

all necessary measures to repel any armed attack in Vietnam

Made him look good against Barry Goldwater

Escalating Intervention - 1965

Johnson Administration goes to work after the election MACV- Military Assistance Command Vietnam Overall- General William Westmoreland Naval Advisory Group Sea Force River Force Junk Force Task Forces

Ground war of attrition against North Vietnam begins.

FLAMING DART ROLLING THUNDER MARKET TIME GAME WARDEN SEALORDS

TF 77 (CVs) TF 77 (CVs) TF 115 (WPBs, PCFs) TF 116 (PRBs) TF 194 (PRBs)

Retaliatory strike on enlisted barracks North Vietnamese bombing campaign

Coastal Interdiction Mekong Delta Interdiction

Interdiction in Mekong Delta on Cambodia border

Westmoreland and LBJ Cam Ranh Bay 23 DEC 67

WESTYs STRATEGY: SEARCH AND DESTROY MEASUREMENT: BODY BAGS

Rolling Thunder
Theory: punish north until it stops supporting V.C. in South Reality: lasted intermittently until 31 OCT 68 Interrupted by 7 bombing halts which North used to rebuild 304,000 fighter bombers and 2,380 B-52 sorties Evaluation

Rolling Thunder must go down in the history of aerial warfare as the most ambitious, wasteful, and ineffective campaign ever mounted. While damage was . . . done to many targets in the North, no lasting objective was achieved. Hanoi emerged as the winner of Rolling Thunder. (CIA analyst quoted by COL Harry Summers, USA, Historical Atlas of the Vietnam War, p. 96)

Douglas A-1 Skyraider - AD or Able Dog

Spad or Sandy

Flew close air support missions in Vietnam.

Douglas A-4 Skyhawk

Navy and Marine light attack aircraft in Vietnam.

ntruder

Introduced in Vietnam. Navy and Marine carrier-

or land-based medium bomber. Evades enemy radar by low level flight.

F-4 Phantom
U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps fighter aircraft

flown in Vietnam on fighter and attack missions

Soviet-built MiG-19

Used by North Vietnamese Air Force to defend

against U.S. attacks during the Vietnam War.

Overall Conclusions on Naval Aviation

Cost were too high Results were uncertain POW suffering

N. Vietnam SAM sites

Coastal Patrol Force: Oper ation Mar ket Time (March 1965- December 1972)

Market Time
Coastal interdiction of supplies moved from N.

Vietnam to South Vietnam by small boats, etc. Improvised Force

84 PCF armed with .50 cal machine guns and 81-mm

mortar. Destroyers, destroyer escorts, minesweepers Coast Guard Cutters

Not unlike Norths blockade during Civil War!

Evaluation as outstandingly effective: From January to July 1967, Market Time forces . . . inspected or boarded more than 700,000 vessels in South Vietnamese waters. Except for five enemy ships [sighted during Tet] . . . no other enemy trawlers were spotted from July 1967 to August 1969. (COL Harry Summers, USA, Historical Atlas of the Vietnam War, p. 150)

Cautious evaluation: There are no statistics to show what MARKET TIME did not interdict. At the very least, MARKET TIME forced the enemy to be even more inventive and creative in bringing into the South the tools of war. (Symonds, Historical Atlas, p. 210)

.50 caliber machine guns of PCF

S. Viet Junk Boat Force operating during Market Time

Certain evaluation: Forced North Vietnam to expand and rely more heavily on the overland Ho Chi Minh Trail running south through Laos and Cambodia.

Mobile River ine Force of the Brown Water Navy Oper ation Game War den (December 1965- September 1968

Brown Water Navy

Deny use of Mekong River and tributaries Specially designed and improvised small craft 50 FT, aluminum hull fast patrol craft (PCFs), .50 cal and 81-mm 31 ft, fiberglass, river patrol boat. ~ 25 knots Monitors, armored troop carriers (ATC) Highly Dangerous Less effective and more costly than coastal interdiction Turned over to S. Vietnamese during Vietnamization in Feb 69

River Patrol Boat

Huey Landing on ATC

Monitor leading ATCs

SEALS on a Assault Boat on Mekong Delta

Mar ines unloading from at ATC for a River Assault

Tet and Its Impact (30 J an 1968 20 J an 1969) The Tur ning Point in the War

Tet Offensive -- January 1968

Conceived by N. Vietnams General Vo Nguyen

Giap, architect of Dien Bien Phu (1954 defeat of France) Combine attack by N Vietnamese and Vietcong
Goal: popular uprising (failed) Achieve Dien Bien Phu- like tactical battlefield victory for

propaganda purposes
Scope Struck at 36 of 44 provincial capital and military bases (most notably, Hue and Khe Sanh) 100 other villages

What the Hells Ho Chi Minh Doing Answering Our Saigon Embassy Phone. . . ?
Paul Conrad, Los Angles Times, 1968

General Vo Nguyen Giap Former history teacher

TET in and near Saigon 0245 Jan. 31 - 7 Mar. 1968 NVA and VC attack city-wide, especially against US Embassy and MACV HQ (Gen. Westmoreland), near Tan Son Nhut airbase. Also at Bin Hoa airbase (NE of Saigon), busiest in world. (875,000 landings & takeoffs per year) Enemy repulsed by strategic/ tactical foresight of LGEN Fred C. Weyand, veteran of China-BurmaIndia campaign, WW II

Marines in the Tet Offensive

Hue City Ancient capital of Vietnam. Held by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong for 26 days. Retaken by Marines and South Vietnamese forces.
Street fighting from house to house.

Khe Sanh Important base in northern South Vietnam near DMZ. 6,000 Marines under siege by 20,000 North Vietnamese Army regular troops. Supplied by air drops and supported with air strikes. Eventually abandoned.

Hue City

Tet at Hue 0330, 31 Jan. - 2 Mar. 1968

The twenty-five day struggle for Hue was the longest and bloodiest ground action of the Tet offensive, and, quite possibly, the longest and bloodiest single action of the Second Indochina War. --- Don Oberdorfer author of Tet!, first-hand witness

Temple for victims of the resistance against French colonial rule, Hue.

Marines patrol streets Hue, Feb. 1968

(USMC photo)

Khe Sanh

Tet at Khe Sanh 21 Jan. - 8 Apr. 1968 I dont want any damn Dinbinfoo. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson to Gen. Earle Wheeler, CJCS, as 77-day siege began

Immediate Results
Vietcong forces assaulted and entered U.S.

Embassy, Saigon
General Westmoreland, MACV declared victory in

Saigon by 0915, 30 January.

After initial shock, U.S./ARVN repelled all NVA

forces. No popular uprising- disappointment to Giap, BUT: Dismay in USA

Short Results
No popular uprising Dismay in USA President Johnson renounces candidacy for

re-election (31 Mar 68) Secretary of Defense, McNamara, forced to resign General Westmoreland replaced by General Abrams as U.S. overall commander in Vietnam. VADM Zumwalt appointed Commander, U.S. naval Forces , Vietnam ( Sept 68)
MERGES Game Warden and Mobile Riverine Force

into SEALORDS

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 1972 NIXON vs. SEN. GEORGE McGOVERN

--- 60 % of popular vote --- 49 states

The bastards have never been bombed like theyre going to be bombed this time.
---President Richard M. Nixon March 1972 Linebacker I (ended 22 Oct.): 40,000 sorties; 125,000 tons of bombs Linebacker II (18-26 Dec. 1972) 742 B-52, 640 fighter-bomber sorties 15 B-52s lost!!!

VADM Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. Commander, U.S. Forces, Vietnam

ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT

Chicago, Demo. Convention Aug. 1968 Kent State University 4 May 1970

Vietnamization
Turning over the war to S. Vietnamese with

withdrawing American forces as quickly as possible U.S. forces reduced from over 500,000 combat/combat support to a handful of advisors. Admiral Zumwalt, Jr. - withdrawal of naval forces Hanoi signed Paris Accords (Jan 1973) calling for cease-fire throughout S. Vietnam and release of POWs
Nixon opens to China and conducts arms limitation summit

with Moscow Peace negotiations in Paris - Henry Kissinger.

U.S. withdraws forces from South Vietnam North Vietnam agrees to allow South Vietnam to decide government in a free election and to release American POWs

Vastly different from last two years of Korea: U.S. was now withdrawing before indigenous forces were built-up and able to stand on their own. -- COL Harry Summers

Marine regimental commander to Marine LCOL Bernard Trainor, 1969: Were no longer here to win, were merely campaigning, so keep the casualties down. -- from Marine retired MGEN Bernard Trainor, author of Generals War on Gulf

1972: The fighting wasnt over, but the war was won . . . There came a later point at which the war was no longer won. -- Lewis Sorley, author of Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times

Watching South Vietnam Go Under (1973-1975)

Congress rejected any further military

intervention in Southeast Asia and refused to appropriate the full $1 billion in military aid promised South Vietnam by the Nixon administration 30 April 1975: North Vietnamese forces overran South Vietnam; South Vietnams president proclaimed unconditional surrender; U.S. Embassy in Saigon evacuated, the final few Americans leaving by helicopter from the Embassys roof. In operations Eagle Pull and Frequent Wind, 7th Fleet evacuates remaining Americans and foreign

Postwar Problems of U.S. Navy

Impact of Vietnam Hiatus in shipbuilding Inadequate Funding High personnel costs Aging WWII fleet Skyrocketing procurement

costs
Bigger, more sophisticated

ships Push for Nuke power: Admiral Rickover

Shaping the Navy after Vietnam

ADM Elmo Zumwalt, Jr. High-low mix Missions:
Sea Control Power Projection

High End: Carriers Low End: Inexpensive

platforms, escort duty etc. Sea Control Ship

Other Issues Equal opportunity for minorities Adm Rickover Differences with Nixon

US USSR Navy Comparison

US Old Navy
Carriers

Quality over quantity Configured for log wars

far from home

USSR New Navy (US in 1890s) Numerous but austere Configured for short war close to home

Conclusions from Vietnam

The Vietnam conflict has impacted every use of the U.S.

military since that time.

Cost to American people dramatic Vietnams civil war became Americas civil convulsion Debates on use of force centered around clear military objectives

and a clearly defined withdrawal point

Powell and Weinberger Doctrines