The case of General "Jack" Lavelle
file:///Users/edmarek/Documents/Talking%20Proud/HistoryLav...
The case of General "Jack" Lavelle, the
suits double-crossed him
March 23, 2007
Go!
The year 1968, a pivotal one to this story
We've introduced you to the organizational mess, and the
ROEs. We're now jumping to 1968. It was a busy year for the
Washington political establishment and for our forces in
Vietnam. We present this to remind you of the environment
that year, and to remind you of the LBJ bombing halt.
The year started with a troop level of about 463,000. Some
16,000 American military had already died.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The organizational mess: the
cardinal military rule, unity
of command, demolished.
The "Rules of Engagement"
story in the Vietnam-Laos
Wars
The year 1968, a pivotal one
to this story; a reminder of
the significant events
"A fiery memory: An ammo dump exploded at Khe Sanh." Photo credit:
Robert Ellison. Presented by popasmoke.com
An estimated 20,000 North Vietnamese invaded South
Vietnam from the North and from Laos and laid siege against
the US Marines at Khe Sanh for 77 days. The press called this
the American "Dien Bien Phu," expecting it would be the
decisive battle that would defeat the Marines and force the US
to leave Vietnam. The press was wrong. The Marines
defeated the NVA and forced them to retreat, setting back the
enemy's plans by years and causing the enemy enormous
ground force and equipment losses.
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Reconnaissance over North
Vietnam: the RF-4C
Phantom II and the 432nd
Tactical Reconnaissance
Wing (TRW)
Events leading to the
double-cross, a sad episode
in civilian control of the
military
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The case of General "Jack" Lavelle
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The Marines fooled the enemy. The Marines don't like to dig
in and stay put. They are not "hit me again" kinds of people.
They dug in to protect the men on the base, but they
vigorously sent out recon teams and took the fight to the
enemy outside the perimeter of the base, fighting and killing
enemy when they found them, and employing air power
shortly thereafter. They were most often vastly outnumbered
by enemy when they met up with them. Many had
underestimated the enemy's strength out there. But at the end
of the day, the Marines and US air power prevailed and won
the day.
We have written about Khe Sanh: "RT Breaker Patrol, the Hill
Battles of Vietnam," March 1, 2006;
US forces fighting at Hue during the Tet 68 enemy offensive.
Ten days after the siege of Khe Sanh began, some 84,000 Viet
Cong insurgents supported by the North Vietnamese Army
(NVA) launched their Tet 1968 offensive across the breadth of
South Vietnam.
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Map of South Vietnam showing some of the major targets of the Tet
Offensive. Also shown is Khe Sanh, where the attack predated Tet. Presented
by wikipedia.
The press cited this as the beginning of the end for the US in
Vietnam. The press was wrong. The US defeated the NVA
and Viet Cong and stopped them from achieving any of their
objectives. The Viet Cong endured massive losses and left the
campaign crippled. In retrospect, the US and RVN were in a
position to give the enemy a knockout punch right here.
Despite the monumental Allied victories at Khe Sanh and
during Tet, the press treated both events as though the enemy
had dealt the US multiple humiliating blows. The US press
ceded the information battlespace to the enemy. Clarence
Wyatt, author of Paper Soldiers, said the press "turned a
military triumph for the United States and the South
Vietnamese into a 'psychological victory' for the enemy."
General Westmoreland would write:
"Press and television had created an aura, not of victory,
but defeat."
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My Lai massacre. Presented by Virginia Western Community College.
An alleged US massacre of from 347 to 504 innocent
Vietnamese civilians at My Lai occurred in March. The press
covered the carnage in detail, though it took over a year to get
it out into the open. There was international outrage. Lost in
the story was the fact that an Army helicopter pilot landed his
helicopter, threatened to order his door gunners to fire on the
American soldiers conducting the attack, and two Army
enlisted men reported the massacres to higher authorities,
military and civilian. The American peace movement used the
massacre to inflame the nation. The press dug as hard as it
could for soldier misconduct.
LBJ's renunciation speech, delivered March 31, 1968. Photo credit: Yoichi
R. Okamoto. Presented by the LBJ Presidential Library
Later that month, on March 31, President Johnson announced
he would not run for re-election. This became known as his
"Renunciation Speech." We do not know with certainty why
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he decided against running again. The reason that makes the
most sense is he knew he could not win, and hoped some other
candidate from the Democratic political party would. He was
wrong.
Presented by Air Battle UK.
With that, he also announced, in that same speech, a partial
halt to US bombing of North Vietnam north of the 20th
parallel. He offered to negotiate with the North Vietnamese,
and peace talks began in Paris.
But militarily, this was a huge and very restrictive ROE. Prior
to this halt, the US was attacking supply points, marshaling
yards and rail centers, trying to stop the flow of supplies and
men from North Vietnam into South Vietnam and Laos. Now
they could not do that.
Instead of giving the enemy a knockout punch after the North
suffered such major defeats at Khe Sanh and Tet 68, the North
now had time to regroup and operate its very long logistics tail
to maximum effect. It used the "time-out" to send an estimated
22,000 troops per month from the North to the South. As a
result, the air campaign south of the 20th parallel intensified,
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focused on enemy troops and supplies entering and crossing
the DMZ.
This image was taken by South African documentary photographer Joseph
Louw moments after the assassination of civil right's leader Martin Luther
King, Jr. King was shot once through the head whilst walking along the
balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. Presented by Google Earth
Community.
In April, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Racial unrest
spread throughout the US and the press covered it intensely. It
was 1968 and the decade had been tumultuous in the US. On
the civil rights side, Malcolm X talked of black nationalism,
and was assassinated The Black Panthers carried on in a very
hostile mood. In 1965, the Watts riots burned down a section
of Los Angeles. The press alleged that the draft had caused an
overpopulation of the military by blacks and charged blacks
were dying in Vietnam for a white man's war. Women's
liberation movements were on the rise. Respect for authority
declined. Riots were frequent. The hippie movement endorsed
use of illegal drugs. Cuba became communist under Fidel
Castro. The CIA conducted a disastrous invasion of Cuba. The
draft was accelerated. Robert Kennedy was assassinated And
now, Martin Luther King was murdered. The country seemed
to be in a self-destruct mode at home, with nearly 500,000
troops fighting abroad in Southeast Asia.
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Image of Vietnam anti-war rally from "The Effects of Photojournalism on
the Protest Movement during the Vietnam War," text by Brady Priest,
presented by Wellesley College
This chaos at home enabled the anti-war protest to kick into
high gear. Brady Priest, who has written "The Effects of
Photojournalism on the Protest Movement during the Vietnam
War," argues that by the late 1960s, the stance of the American
people evolved from one that was, for the most part,
supportive of the war effort in Vietnam, to one that was
decidedly against the conflict. The anti-Vietnam protest
movement was the news story of the late 1960's and early
1970's."
The NVA tried again to invade through the DMZ. Despite all
of America's problems, and despite the information warfare
campaign being waged by the press against our forces in the
Vietnam-Laos War, a battalion of US Marines stopped the
NVA dead in its tracks.
With this invasion defeated, the loss at Khe Sanh, and the
defeats of Tet 68, NVA thoughts of invasion had to be set
aside. They waited until 1972 before they tried it again. This
date is important to the Lavelle story, as that is the period
during which he commanded 7th AF, and we will come back
to it later.
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Assassination of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Presented by the
Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney, Australia.
We'll mention again that Attorney General and presidential
candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, in June 1968.
He vigorously supported the Vietnam War while JFK was
running it. But he did not see eye to eye with LBJ. He became
a senator to New York. As a senator, he called for a halt in any
further escalation of the Vietnam War, raised issues about its
morality and linked it to the "divisions, the violence, the
disenchantment with our society." LBJ was certain he was
leaking anti-war sentiments to the press. RFK used the
Vietnam War as a personal political tool to gain power during
both administrations.
The 17th Parallel. Presented by Air Force Magazine.
Then came the bombshell to American combat forces fighting
in the Vietnam-Laos War. In October 1968 President Johnson
announced a total halt to US bombing of North Vietnam above
the 17th parallel, above the DMZ, confident the halt would
accelerate the Paris peace negotiations and bring them to a
successful conclusion. There was no reason for him to believe
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that. Every time the US announced a bombing halt, the North
Vietnamese used the respite to reorganize, refit, resupply, and
prepare for another invasion.
Colonel Jimmie Butler, USAF (Ret.) has written several books
about the Vietnam War and operates a wonderful web site with
some great photography. We are going to borrow a few of
those images to underscore that LBJ had no reason to believe
a bombing halt would help end the war sooner.
On December 23, 1966, bombing of Hanoi was restricted. On
December 24, 1966, at the direction of President Johnson, a
48-hour Christmas truce went into effect. General Earle
Wheeler, then the CJCS, agreed so long as he could conduct
reconnaissance. LBJ agreed. So LBJ declared a bombing
pause from December 24, 1966 through January 31, 1967. He
also respected a Tet Truce from February 8-13. Bombing of
the Haiphong harbor area was suspended January 15 February 10, 1967. Bombing of Hanoi was suspended on
January 18.
Here's what the American GI got in return:
This is a reconnaissance photo of the Mu Gia Pass area on
February 8. You'll recall it was one of three major passes from
North Vietnam into Laos and to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The
full photography taken this day of this area showed 75 fully
loaded trucks heading south on Route 15 to the Mu Gia. Since
the truces declared by the US applied only to North Vietnam,
the enemy concentrated on moving as many supplies at it
could to storage areas near the Laotian border, but stored them
on the North Vietnam side. Another 130 trucks were
photographed on February 9 just north of the Laotian border.
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During the first two days of the Tet 1967 truce, US
reconnaissance detected 1,500 trucks on the roads above the
Mu Gia and around Dong Hoi near the DMZ.
This is the Quang Khe port in North Vietnam on February 9,
1967. More than 70 small boats are unloading war supplies
from larger ships. Large numbers of containers were seen
along the beach and trucks were moving in and out of the area.
During the first two days of the Tet Truce of 1967, US
reconnaissance detected 176 barges and fourteen 100-foot
freighters offloading supplies. This stuff was on Route 912 in
Laos headed for the RVN within days.
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This map was extracted from a paper, "Going to Tchepone: OPLAN El
Paso," by John Collins, who was one of the planners.
The military was acutely aware of what the enemy was doing.
The enemy had infiltrated an estimated 150,000 men into
South Vietnam through Laos along the Ho Chi Minh trail
through 1968. Peace, being preached by the protest movement
in the US, was nowhere on the enemy's mind or in its lexicon.
General Westmoreland, the commander, Military Assistance
Command Vietnam (MACV), the top Allied commander in
Vietnam, presented a plan, known as Operations Plan El Paso,
to invade Laos and shut down the trail with a corps-size
ground force supported by air. Militarily, this is what the
doctor ordered. Air power alone had only been able to slow
the flow and make it harder for the enemy to move supplies,
but it alone could not stop it. However, this plan would
combine air power with boots on the ground, blocking the
very long supply route with three US-ARVN combat
divisions. The North Vietnamese knew, and their leaders have
acknowledged, the war would have been over for them had El
Paso gone forward. They knew they could not withstand this
kind of blockade. Nonetheless, the Johnson administration
refused to approve it and the trail remained open for business.
In effect, Johnson opened the spigot of enemy resupply. Not
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only could we not block the trail with ground forces, we could
not attack its supply sources in North Vietnam by air. Instead
of a Ho Chi Minh Trail, it became a logistics "superhighway."
The North Vietnamese were free to send whatever they wanted
down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and to the DMZ.
President and Mrs. Nixon waving to the crowd from the Presidential
limousine in the Inaugural motorcade, January 20, 1969. The National
Archives. Presented by PBS.
President Nixon took charge in January, 1969. The US troop
level in Vietnam was at about 495,000 and the number of dead
had risen to 30,000.
To the surprise of many, Nixon kept Johnson's bombing halt in
effect. So the North Vietnamese continued business as usual.
So where are we in early 1969?
From the Truman administration on, our military participation
in the Vietnam Laos War had been a "seat-of-the-pants"
operation by the civilians who controlled the military.
Throughout the endeavor, they had no strategy, and they
developed "what to do "next" scenarios on a day-to-day basis.
The secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, did not think
much of the application of air power in this war. He saw this
as a ground and counter-insurgency operation. The Army had
far greater latitudes than did the USAF. Senior USAF leaders
would later say if they had the freedoms the Army had, they
would have had the whole thing wrapped up by 1966. He
continued obstructing the employment of air power. Both he
and LBJ had the enemy on the run, and let the enemy off the
hook, enabling him to get reorganized.
Perhaps most important, the presidents involved entered this
war knowingly violating the Geneva Accords of 1954. Indeed
they had no intention of ever supporting those accords, and
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did not sign them. Those accords stipulated there was to be an
election unifying the North with the South in 1956. The US
correctly assumed the communist leader of the North, Ho Chi
Minh, would win by a landslide. So, the president simply
ignored those accords and set up South Vietnam as an
independent country. There was no election. In effect, the US
closed down the democratic option for Vietnam. The suits set
up a government in Saigon and began to slowly, gradually,
wage war throughout the region with little idea about how best
to do that. Since the suits did not know what they were doing,
they felt they had to maintain a firm grip on the military. One
is compelled to ask "what if" the US had continued to support
Ho Chi Minh as it done through WWII and thereafter.
We'll not address that "what if" here. That said, it is our
contention that the combination of the Kennedy administration
violating the Geneva Accords of 1954 and McNamara seeing
Vietnam as a ground combat situation set the stage for the
USAF and Navy having to endure an endless stream of ROEs,
and for the combatant commanders involved to have to endure
a dysfunctional suite of command arrangements that violated
the principle of unity of command.
President Kennedy leans over the table in a crowded Cabinet Room during
the Cuban missile crisis. Photo credit: Cecil Stoughton. Presented by The
White House Historical Association.
Adding to these terrible blunders, in October 1962, just a year
after sending Jungle Jim to Vietnam, President Kennedy
experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis. During that crisis, he
and his staff set many precedents for centralized control of the
military, detailed control from Washington. That concept
would prevail during the years ahead in Vietnam.
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RF-4C reconnaissance aircraft over Vietnam, 11th TRS, 432nd TRW, Udorn
RAFB, Thailand, 1968. Presented by Gary Avey at flickr. This is an actual
combat reconnaissance mission flown by Capt. Raymond I. Lennon, the
pilot, and Major Donald B. Avey, the navigator/photo systems officer (PSO),
in USAF parlance at the time, the front-seater and the back-seater. Both were
assigned to the 11th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron (TRS), 432nd
Tactical Reconnaissance Wing (TRW), Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base
(RTAFB). As an aside, Major Avey flew his last RF-4C Vietnam mission in
early afternoon through the Mu Gia pass, arguably one of the most
dangerous zones over which to fly, and he and his pilot did it in broad
daylight. Thanks to Gary Avey, Major Avrey's son for use of the photo and
the background. Consent is not given to redistribute, reprint, sell or use
the image in any way.
While President Nixon kept the bombing halt in place,
reconnaissance flights over North Vietnam were still
permitted, with many ROEs attached. These flights are central
to the Lavelle story.
Given what we have explained thus far, we want to introduce
you to the RF-4C Phantom II and the 432nd Tactical
Reconnaissance Wing. We want you to know what their
missions were like, what the crews had to face. Knowing that,
and knowing what we have told you thus far, you can better
understand what General Lavelle was up against in
1971-1972.
Reconnaissance over North Vietnam
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