Air Power and the Fight for Khe Sanh PDF Download

Author: Bernard C. Nalty
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428993398
Category : Khe Sanh, Battle of, 1968
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Author: Lt.-Col Shawn Callahan USMC
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1782894438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Includes 7 maps, 3 tables, and more than 80 photo illustrations. In the 77 days from 20 Jan. to 18 March of 1968, two divisions of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) surrounded a regiment of U.S. Marines on a mountain plateau in the northwest corner of South Vietnam known as Khe Sanh. The episode was no accident; it was in fact a carefully orchestrated meeting in which both sides got what they wanted. The North Vietnamese succeeded in surrounding the Marines in a situation in many ways similar to Dien Bien Phu, and may have been seeking similar tactical, operational, and strategic results. General William C. Westmoreland, the commander of the joint U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (COMUSMACV), meanwhile, sought to lure the NVA into the unpopulated terrain around the 26th Marines in order to wage a battle of annihilation with air power. In this respect Khe Sanh has been lauded as a great victory of air power, a military instrument of dubious suitability to much of the Vietnam conflict. The facts support the assessment that air power was the decisive element at Khe Sanh, delivering more than 96 percent of the ordnance used against the NVA. Most histories of the battle, however, do not delve much deeper than this. Comprehensive histories like John Prados and Ray Stubbe’s Valley of Decision, Robert Pisor’s End of the Line, and Eric Hammel’s Siege in the Clouds provide excellent accounts of the battle, supported by detailed analyses of its strategic and operational background but tend to focus on the ground battle and treat the application of air power in general terms. They do not, however, make significant distinction between the contributions of the two primary air combat elements in this air-land battle: the 7th Air Force and the 1st Marine Air Wing. An analysis of their respective contributions to the campaign reveals that they each made very different contributions that reflected very different approaches to the application of air power.

Author: Lt.-Col. Alan L. Gropman
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1782898964
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Illustrated with over 30 maps, diagrams and photos THIS slender volume has value for both the general reader and the aviation specialist. For the latter there are lessons regarding command and control and combined-unit operations that need to be learned to achieve battlefield success. For the former there is a straightforward narrative about American aviators of all four services struggling in the most difficult of conditions to try to rescue more than 1,500 American and Vietnamese military and civilians. Not all the Americans moving through the events recounted in this monograph acted heroically, but most did, and it was their heroism that gave the evacuation the success it had. Airpower and the Airlift Evacuation of Kham Duc is fully documented so that readers wishing to look deeper into this incident may do so. Those who study the battle will see that it was something of a microcosm of the entire Vietnam War in the relationship of airpower to tactical ground efforts. Kham Duc sat at the bottom of a small green mountain bowl, and during most of 12 May 1968 the sky was full of helicopters, forward air controller aircraft, transports, and fighters, all striving to succeed and to avoid running into each other in what were most trying circumstances. In the end they carried the day, though by the narrowest of margins and with heavy losses.

Author: Captain Moyers S. Shore II USMC
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1782893563
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Includes more than 10 maps and 20 Illustrations “The Marines’ heroic defense of the Khe Sanh area against numerically superior North Vietnamese forces stands out among the many battles fought to defend the Republic of Vietnam against Communist aggression. “The enemy’s primary objective of his 1968 TET Offensive was to seize power in South Vietnam by creating a general uprising and causing the defection of major elements of the ARVN. In conjunction with this, the enemy apparently expected to seize by military action large portions of the northern two provinces lying just south of the Demilitarized Zone and there to set up a “liberation government.” The virtually unpopulated Khe Sanh Plateau, which lay astride the enemy’s principal avenue of approach from his large base areas in Laos, was obviously an initial objective of the North Vietnamese Army.... “This report provides a detailed and graphic account of events as they unfolded. It centers about the 26th Marine Regiment, the main defenders of the Khe Sanh area, who tenaciously and magnificently held off the enemy during the two-and-one-half-month siege. Yet the battle of Khe Sanh was an inter-Service and international operation. Consequently, appropriate coverage is given to the contributions of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, and to South Vietnamese regular and irregular military units, all of whom contributed to the defense of the area and to the destruction of the enemy. As Marine artillery from within the fortified positions pounded the enemy, Army artillery located to the east provided heavy, long-range fire support. Fighter aircraft from the Marines, Air Force, and Navy provided continuous close air support, while B-52 bombers of the Strategic Air Command dealt decisive blows around-the-clock to enemy forces within striking distance of our positions and against enemy supply areas....”-General Westmoreland

Author: General William W. Momyer USAF
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786250721
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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[Includes over 130 illustrations and maps] This insightful work documents the thoughts and perspectives of a general with 35 years of history with the U.S. Air Force – General William W. Momyer. The manuscript discusses his years as a senior commander of the Air Force – strategy, command and control counter air operations, interdiction, and close air support. His perspectives cover World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Author: Ronald J. Drez
Publisher: Little Brown GBR
ISBN: 9780821261965
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Offers a vivid narrative of the seventy-seven-day struggle to control the remote Khe Sanh base in Vietnam, during which a severely outnumbered and isolated group of Marines held off an enemy onslaught, in a multimedia history that features firsthand remin

Author: Shawn P. Callahan
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 9780160872563
Category : Close air support
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Author: Donald J. Mrozek
Publisher: The Minerva Group, Inc.
ISBN: 9780898759815
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Dr. Donald J. Mrozeks research sheds considerable light on how the use of air power evolved in the Vietnam War. Much more than simply retelling events, Mrozek analyzes how history, politics, technology, and the complexity of the war drove the application of air power in a long and divisive struggle. Mrozek delves into a wealth of original documentation, and his scholarship is impeccable. His analysis is thorough and balanced. His conclusions are well reasoned but will trouble those who have never seriously considered how the application of air power is influenced by factors far beyond the battlefield. Wether or not the reader agrees with Mrozek, the quality of his research and analysis makes his conclusions impossible to ignore. John C. Fryer, Jr. Brigadier General, United States Air Force Commander, Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education

Author: Mark Clodfelter
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803264540
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Tracing the use of air power in World War II and the Korean War, Mark Clodfelter explains how U. S. Air Force doctrine evolved through the American experience in these conventional wars only to be thwarted in the context of a limited guerrilla struggle in Vietnam. Although a faith in bombing's sheer destructive power led air commanders to believe that extensive air assaults could win the war at any time, the Vietnam experience instead showed how even intense aerial attacks may not achieve military or political objectives in a limited war. Based on findings from previously classified documents in presidential libraries and air force archives as well as on interviews with civilian and military decision makers, The Limits of Air Power argues that reliance on air campaigns as a primary instrument of warfare could not have produced lasting victory in Vietnam. This Bison Books edition includes a new chapter that provides a framework for evaluating air power effectiveness in future conflicts.

Author: Gordon L. Rottman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1782004610
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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A concise, focused volume on the NVA's fight for a strategically important military base. Khe Sanh was a small village in northwest South Vietnam that sat astride key North Vietnamese infiltration routes. In September 1966 a Marine battalion deployed into the area. Action gradually increased as the NVA attempted to destroy Free World Forces bases, and the siege of Khe Sanh proper began in October 1967. The bitter fight lasted into July 1968 when, with the changing strategic and tactical situation, the base was finally closed. This book details the siege and explains how, although the NVA successfully overran a Special Forces camp nearby, it was unable to drive US forces from Khe Sanh.