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Die sekretaris van verdediging, Robert McNamara, verskyn voor die pers om die bomaanval op die groot stede in Noord -Vietnamese Hanoi en Haiphong te verdedig. Die bombardemente moes die weermag ontneem van noodsaaklike voorrade. Die bombardemente het die Verenigde State die veerkragtigheid van die Noord -Viëtnamese getoon, en dat die oorlog nie so vinnig sou eindig as wat hulle gehoop het nie.
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British Path & eacute verteenwoordig nou die historiese versameling van Reuters, wat meer as 136 000 items bevat van 1910 tot 1984. Begin verken! 
Bekroonde stromingsdiens van volledige dokumente vir liefhebbers van geskiedenis, koninklike kykers, bioskoopliefhebbers en entoesiaste oor die trein. Besoek britishpathe.tv
British Path & eacute verteenwoordig nou die historiese versameling van Reuters, wat meer as 136 000 items bevat van 1910 tot 1984. Begin verken! 13 Junie 1971: New York Times publiseer Pentagon Papers
Die New York Times publiseer uittreksels uit 'n geheime Pentagon -studie wat Daniel Ellsberg van die RAND Corporation aan die joernalis Neil Sheehan gelek het. Ellsberg het in die Pentagon gewerk onder die minister van verdediging, Robert McNamara. Die studie, later bekend as die “Pentagon Papers, ” was in opdrag van McNamara en voltooi in 1968. Dit fokus op hoe beleid en taktiese besluite tydens die oorlog geneem is. Tussen 30 en 40 skrywers en navorsers het aan die projek van 40 volumes deelgeneem, wat 3 000 bladsye analise vervaardig en 4 000 bladsye oorspronklike dokumente saamgestel het. Nadat die Times sy eerste artikel oor die koerante gepubliseer het, doen die Amerikaanse regering baie moeite om bykomende verhale te blokkeer. Maar op 30 Junie beslis die Amerikaanse hooggeregshof in 'n 6-3-beslissing ten gunste van die New York Times. [New York Times, 6/13/1971 National Security Archives, 6/29/2001 Vietnam Veterans of America, 4/15/2004] Die 13 Junie artikel berig dat die Pentagon Papers die volgende gevolgtrekkings bevat:
Dat die Truman-administrasie besluit het om militêre hulp aan Frankryk te verleen in haar koloniale oorlog teen die Vietminh onder leiding van die kommunistiese betrokkenheid van die Verenigde State in Viëtnam en dat die verloop van die Amerikaanse beleid ” [”] New York Times, 13.6.1971]
Dat die besluit van die Eisenhower -administrasie om 'n jong Suid -Viëtnam te red uit 'n kommunistiese oorname en 'n poging om die nuwe kommunistiese regime van Noord -Viëtnam te ondermyn, het die administrasie 'n direkte rol gespeel in die uiteindelike uiteensetting van die nedersetting Genève ’ vir Indochina in 1954. ” [New York Times, 13.6.1971]
Dat die Kennedy-administrasie, hoewel hy uiteindelik ontsien het van groot eskalasiebesluite deur die dood van sy leier, 'n beleid van 'n risiko met 'n beperkte risiko, wat hy geërf het, omskep het in 'n breë verbintenis wat president verlaat het Johnson met 'n keuse tussen meer oorlog en onttrekking. ” [New York Times, 13.6.1971]
Dat die Johnson -administrasie, hoewel die president huiwerig en huiwerig was om die finale besluite te neem, die geheime oorlogvoering teen Noord -Viëtnam verskerp het en in die lente van 1964 begin beplan het om 'n openlike oorlog te voer, 'n volle jaar voordat dit in die openbaar die diepte van sy betrokkenheid en die vrees vir nederlaag. ” [New York Times, 13.6.1971]
Dat hierdie veldtog van toenemende klandestiene militêre druk deur 1964 en die uitbreidingsprogram vir die bombardering van Noord -Viëtnam in 1965 begin is ondanks die oordeel van die regering se intelligensiegemeenskap dat die maatreëls nie daartoe lei dat Hanoi sy steun aan die opstand in Vietcong in die Suide, en dat die bombardement binne enkele maande militêr ondoeltreffend beskou is. ” [New York Times, 13.6.1971]
Dat hierdie vier opvolgende administrasies die Amerikaanse politieke, militêre en sielkundige aandele in Indochina opgebou het, dikwels dieper as wat hulle destyds besef het, met grootskaalse militêre toerusting vir die Franse in 1950 met sabotasie en terreuroorlog teen Noord Viëtnam, wat in 1954 begin, met bewegings wat die omverwerping van president Ngo Dinh Diuem van Suid -Viëtnam in 1963 aangemoedig en bewerkstellig het met planne, beloftes en dreigemente van verdere optrede wat tot lewe gekom het in die Tonkin Golf -botsings in Augustus 1964 met die noukeurige voorbereiding van die openbare mening vir die jare van oop oorlogvoering en die berekening in 1965, aangesien die vliegtuie en troepe openlik toegewyd was aan volgehoue gevegte, dat nie akkommodasie in Suid -Viëtnam of vroeë onderhandelinge met Noord -Viëtnam die gewenste resultaat sou behaal nie. & #8221 [New York Times, 13.6.1971]
Augustus 1967: Die Amerikaanse minister van verdediging, Robert McNamara, getuig dat bombardemente in Vietnam ondoeltreffend is
Ondanks 'n relatief optimistiese siening van die oorlog aan die begin van 1967, het die minister van verdediging, Robert McNamara, teen die einde van die jaar 'n heel ander siening van die vooruitsigte van die oorlog gehad. In die onderstaande video onthul 'n opgeneemde telefoongesprek tussen president Johnson en McNamara die bron van Johnson se ongevalle -ongevalle, asook die druk waarop McNamara was om die oorlog aan die pers aan die begin van 1967 te verduidelik.
In Augustus 1967 het Robert McNamara egter tydens 'n toespraak aan 'n senaat-subkomitee getuig dat pasifikasie nie werk nie en dat Amerikaanse bombardemente teen Noord-Viëtnam nie hul doelwitte bereik het nie. McNamara het volgehou dat die beweging van voorraad na Suid -Viëtnam nie verminder is nie en dat die ekonomie of die moraal van die Noord -Viëtnamese leër nie verbreek is nie.
Dit was 'n verstommende onthulling, gegewe die toewyding van Amerika tot die punt tot die oorlog. Benewens bombardemente op Flaming Dart en Rolling Thunder, was groot pogings tot grondoorlog, soos Operation Cedar Falls in dieselfde jaar, 'n groot slag vir die moraal onder Amerikaanse burgers wat reeds sterk gekant was teen die eskalasie van die oorlog. Gedurende 1967 is die Amerikaanse troepesterkte aangeteken by 400,000 man. Teen die einde van die jaar sou dit tot 500 000 mans styg. Met 11,300 Amerikaanse sterftes daardie jaar, het sosiale onenigheid in die VSA tot 'n breekpunt gestyg.
Teen November 1967 het McNamara 'n memorandum aan president Johnson geskryf waarin hy aanbeveel dat die president troepevlakke vries, ophou om Noord -Viëtnam te bombardeer en grondgevegte aan die Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) oor te gee. McNamara het toe geglo dat die VSA nie die oorlog in Viëtnam kon wen nie. Sy advies aan Johnson op daardie stadium is nie goed ontvang nie en word dus geïgnoreer.
Binne 'n paar maande na sy memorandum aan president Johnson teen einde Februarie 1968, was Robert McNamara 'n persona non grata in die Johnson -administrasie. Hy sou bedank as sekretaris van verdediging en aan die hoof van die Wêreldbank gaan. Met sy aftrede het McNamara erken dat die Amerikaanse betrokkenheid by Viëtnam in sy boek misluk het Die Mis van Oorlog. Om te sê: “Ons was verkeerd, vreeslik verkeerd. ” In die filmdokumentêre weergawe van Mis van oorlog (hieronder), verduidelik Robert McNamara dit verder:
McNamara & Vietnam
Robert McNamara se lofwaardige doel, om die verlede agter ons te plaas, sal slegs bereik word deur die geskiedenis te verstaan, nie deur dit te herskryf nie. Ongelukkig hersien beide McNamara se memoires en Draper & [8220The Abuse of McNamara, ” NYR, 25 Mei] het ons gefaal. Selfs meer as McNamara, gee Draper 'n verkeerde voorstelling van hoe ons met Noord -Viëtnam geveg het, deur die provokasie van die Tonkin -voorvalle in 1964 te verklein.
Om seker te wees, merk Draper op dat die tweede aanval, en die een wat Amerikaanse vergelding veroorsaak het, twyfelagtig was, indien nie fiktief nie. #8221, byna alle historici stem nou saam met Stanley Karnow dat dit nooit gebeur het nie. ”)
Maar waar het Draper ooit gelees dat (in sy woorde) die Amerikaanse vernietigers onder patrollie in die Tonkin-golf meer as vyf-en-twintig kilometer van die Noord-Viëtnamese kus gebly het om hulself te beskerm teen aanvalle? ” Selfs McNamara erken dat ” 8220 die naaste benadering tot Noord -Viëtnam was agt myl van die vasteland en vier myl van die buitelandse eilande af, en dat die naaste werklike benadering nie meer as vyf myl van die buitelandse eilande was nie. ”
Die skepe was op 'n elektroniese spioenasie -missie om afdrukke van Noord -Viëtnamese radars te bekom. Hulle bevele was dus om aanvalle op Noord -Viëtnamese militêre basisse te simuleer om die elektroniese reaksie te stimuleer, dws hulle aan te moedig om hul radars aan te skakel. Die verwoesters was ver van vyf en twintig myl van die eilande wat gedurende dieselfde tydperk deur Suid-Viëtnamese patrolliebote aangeval is, beveel om op hierdie gebied te fokus, herhaaldelik in die rigting van die kus in te gaan met hul eie vuurbeheerradars, asof hulle voorberei skiet.
Die feitefout van Draper het dus tot gevolg dat die missie van die vernietigers tot 'n minimum beperk is. Dit verduister ook hoe bedrieglik die versekering van McNamara in 1964 aan die kongres was dat dit 'n gewone patrollie was, en in 1968 dat pro -aksiewe optrede vermy is. 8217s beweer stilte oor sy eie twyfel na 1967. Maar tydens die verhoor in 1968 was hy die sterkste in die weerlegging van ander twyfelaars, insluitend diegene wat (in sy woorde) verkeerdelik aangeneem het dat daar ernstige twyfel bestaan of die ‘second ’ Tonkin Golf aanval het in werklikheid plaasgevind. ” Minstens drie van die senatore wat hom in 1968 gehoor het (Morse, Cooper en Gore) het tereg gekla dat hulle mislei is.
In sy memoires erken McNamara nou dat ons verkeerd, vreeslik verkeerd was, maar hy probeer steeds reg klink oor die Tonkin -golf. Hy streef beslis daarna om meer te verdedig as om te verduidelik of te versoen vir sy belangrike wanvoorstellings wat in 1964 en 1968 gelei het tot die verloop en voortgang van die Tonkin -golfresolusie. Sy verskonings, telkens, is vir twyfelagtige beleidsfoute, maar hy weier steeds om toe te laat, laat staan ons insig gee in die meeste van hierdie noodlottige, onbetwisbare wanvoorstellings.
Dit is dus moeilik om met Theodore Draper saam te stem dat McNamara nou sy skuld betaal het.
Peter Dale Scott
Engelse Departement
Universiteit van Kalifornië
Berkeley, Kalifornië
Bekroonde stromingsdiens van volledige dokumente vir mense soos geskiedenisliefhebbers, koninklike kykers, bioskoopliefhebbers en entoesiaste oor die trein. Besoek britishpathe.tv
British Path & eacute verteenwoordig nou die historiese versameling van Reuters, wat meer as 136 000 items bevat van 1910 tot 1984. Begin verken! Die opkoms en ondergang van die “McNamara -lyn ”: Volgehoue lesse uit die Viëtnam -oorlog
Op die hoogtepunt van die Viëtnam-oorlog kondig die Amerikaanse minister van verdediging, Robert S. McNamara, die bou van 'n elektroniese versperring teen infiltrasie suid van die gedemilitariseerde sone tussen Noord- en Suid-Viëtnam aan. Deur die infiltrasie uit die noorde te bekamp, het McNamara probeer om die strategiese bomaanval teen Noord-Viëtnam te beëindig, die konflik te eskaleer en sodoende die grondslag vir onderhandelinge te lê. Weens talle politieke, tegniese en militêre gebreke het die "McNamara Line" en die verwante konsepte daarvan misluk. Die opkoms en val van die "McNamara Line" bied baie relevante lesse oor die verband tussen militêre strategie, tegnologie en politiek.
Rolling Thunder
Rolling Thunder, die lugoorlog teen Noord -Viëtnam, het op 2 Maart 1965 begin. Die eerste missie was 'n aanduiding van die komende dinge.
Die doelwitte, tydsberekening van die aanval en ander besonderhede van die operasie is almal in Washington, DC, bepaal. Daar was slegs twee teikens. Albei was relatief klein, net noord van die gedemilitariseerde sone wat Noord- en Suid -Viëtnam skei. Die werklike krag van die vyand rondom Hanoi en Haiphong is nie aangeraak nie, selfs nie bedreig nie. Dit was 'n vreemde manier om 'n oorlog te begin.
Lugmag F-105's, F-100's en B-57's het 'n ammunisie-depot by Xom Bang, 10 myl noord van die DMZ, getref. Intussen het vloot- en Suid -Viëtnamese vliegtuie 'n vlootbasis by Quang Khe, 65 myl van die DMZ, gebombardeer.
Dit sou byna twee weke duur voordat die volgende Rolling Thunder -missies plaasgevind het, weer teen klein teikens nie ver bo die DMZ nie.
Maxwell D. Taylor, die ambassadeur in Suid -Viëtnam (en voormalige voorsitter van die gesamentlike stafhoofde), twyfel of die vyand beïndruk is. 'Ek is bang dat Rolling Thunder tot dusver in hul oë net 'n paar geïsoleerde donderweer was,' het Taylor gesê.
"Die Noord -Viëtnamese het waarskynlik nie eens geweet dat die vliegtuie daar is nie," het adm. U.S. Grant Sharp, hoof van die Amerikaanse Stille Oseaan -kommando, gesê.
Rolling Thunder sou langer as drie jaar duur, wat dit tot dusver die langste lugveldtog in die geskiedenis van die Verenigde State sou wees. Daar sal meer bomme op Viëtnam neergegooi word as wat in die Tweede Wêreldoorlog in heel Europa gegooi is.
Die veldtog het in 1968 geëindig sonder om strategiese resultate te behaal. Dit het die Noord -Viëtnamese nie oorreed om die oorlog te beëindig nie, en dit het ook nie gestop deur Hanoi se infiltrasie van troepe en toerusting in Suid -Viëtnam nie.
Van begin tot einde word Rolling Thunder belemmer deur 'n beleid van geleidelike eskalasie, wat lugaanvalle van hul impak beroof het en Noord -Vietnam tyd gegee het om te herstel en aan te pas. Om verskeie redes - insluitend die vrees om 'n konfrontasie met die Russiese en Chinese bondgenote van Noord -Viëtnam uit te lok - is allerhande beperkings en beperkings opgelê.
Amerikaanse vlieëniers kon nie 'n oppervlak-tot-lug-raketterrein aanval nie, tensy dit 'n missiel op hulle afgevuur het. Die eerste twee jaar is vlieëniers verbied om op die MiG -basisse te val waarteen vyandelike vegters gevlieg het. Af en toe stop Washington die bombardement om te sien of Hanoi se leiers gereed is om vrede te sluit.
"In Rolling Thunder het die Johnson -administrasie 'n lugveldtog bedink wat baie bombardemente op 'n manier bereken het wat nie die voortbestaan van die vyandelike regime bedreig nie," het Wayne Thompson, historikus van die lugmag, in To Hanoi en Back gesê. 'President Johnson het herhaaldelik die kommunistiese heersers van Noord -Viëtnam verseker dat sy magte hulle nie sou seermaak nie, en hy bedoel dit duidelik. Regeringsgeboue in die middestad van Hanoi is nooit geteiken nie. ”
Dryf na die oorlog
Rolling Thunder was nie die eerste geveg vir USAF -vlieëniers in Viëtnam nie. Lugmagspanne wat daar in 1961 ontplooi is om die Suid -Viëtnamese Lugmag op te lei en te ondersteun. Teen 1962 vlieg hulle gevegsopdragte in reaksie op noodversoeke. Genl William W. Momyer het egter in Airpower in Three Wars gesê dat hulle “nie gemagtig is om gevegsopdragte uit te voer sonder 'n Viëtnamese bemanningslid nie. Selfs dan was die missies opleidingsmissies, hoewel gevegswapens afgelewer is. ”
Die konflik het in Augustus 1964 duidelik geword toe kommunistiese patrolliebote Amerikaanse vlootvaarte in die Golf van Tonkin aangeval het. In reaksie daarop het die kongres 'n resolusie aangeneem waarin die president gemagtig is "om alle nodige stappe te neem, insluitend die gebruik van gewapende geweld" om enige aanval af te weer, verdere aggressie te voorkom en bondgenote by te staan.
Die vloot het onmiddellik weerwraakaanvalle, genaamd Pierce Arrow, teen Noord -Viëtnamese PT -bootbasisse geloods, en die lugmag het van krag na Suidoos -Asië getrek. B-57's, F-100's en F-105's ontplooi na basisse in Suid-Viëtnam en Thailand. Die teenwoordigheid van die nuut aangekomde vliegtuigbemanning is spoedig uitgedaag.
In November het 'n Viet Cong-mortieraanval by Bien Hoa vier Amerikaners doodgemaak, 72 gewond en vyf B-57's vernietig. In Februarie 1965 is agt Amerikaners dood en meer as 100 gewond in 'n sapperaanval op Pleiku. Vloot- en lugmagvliegtuie het weerwraakaanvalle, genaamd Operation Flaming Dart, teen Noord-Viëtnam van 7 tot 11 Februarie uitgevoer.
Die Johnson -administrasie het besluit dat hierdie vergeldingsmissies nie voldoende was nie. 'N Presidensiële opdrag op 13 Februarie het' ''n program van gemete en beperkte lugaksie' 'teen' geselekteerde militêre teikens 'in Noord -Viëtnam gevra. Dit het bepaal dat die stakings "tot verdere kennisgewing" suid van die 19de parallel sou bly, wat die aksie tot die Noord -Viëtnamese panhandle beperk.
In sy memoires, The Vantage Point, het Lyndon B. Johnson gesê dat die besluit vir volgehoue stakings geneem is "omdat dit geleidelik, maar onmiskenbaar duidelik geword het dat Hanoi intrek vir die moord." Die Vietnam -adviesveldtog (15 November 1961 tot 1 Maart 1965) was verby. Die Viëtnam -verdedigingsveldtog was op die punt om te begin. Die eerste Rolling Thunder -missie is gereed.
Twyfel en herleiding
Die konvensionele wysheid, wat destyds gereeld herhaal is, was dat die Verenigde State nie in 'n landoorlog in Asië vasgevang moet word nie. Nietemin, dit was presies wat op die punt was om te gebeur.
Op 8 Maart 1965 het mariniers na Da Nang ontplooi om die vliegbasis daar te verdedig. Hulle was die eerste Amerikaanse gevegsmagte in Viëtnam. "Die goedkeuring van president Johnson vir Operation Rolling Thunder het nie net die lugoorlog begin nie, maar het ook onverwags die invoering van Amerikaanse troepe in die grondgeveg veroorsaak," het McNamara gesê.
Teen die middel van Maart bestaan Rolling Thunder uit een missie per week in die suidelike deel van Noord -Viëtnam. Die Withuis het blykbaar verwag dat dit vinnige resultate sou lewer en was teleurgesteld as dit nie die geval was nie.
'Na 'n maand van bombardemente sonder reaksie van die Noord -Viëtnamese, het optimisme begin afneem,' sê die Pentagon Papers, 'n geheime geskiedenis van die oorlog wat in die kantoor van die minister van verdediging geskryf is en in 1971 aan die New York Times uitgelek het.
Alhoewel president Johnson besluit het om grondtroepe in Viëtnam te gebruik, was daar geen openbare aankondiging nie. Die besluit is vervat in 'n memorandum van die nasionale veiligheidsaksie van 6 April. Die president het beveel dat “voortydige publisiteit deur alle moontlike voorsorgmaatreëls vermy moet word”.
Die gevegsmagte is op 'n konferensie van 20 April in Honolulu, op 'n konferensie van 20 April, in kennis gestel van die verandering in strategie, toe McNamara aangekondig het dat Amerikaanse klem van toe af die grondoorlog in die suide sou wees. Doelwitte in die suide het voorrang bo die in die noorde, en afwykings sou van die noorde afgewyk word om aan die vereiste te voldoen.
"Hierdie noodlottige besluit het bygedra tot ons uiteindelike verlies van Suid -Viëtnam, net soos enige ander enkele aksie wat ons tydens ons betrokkenheid onderneem het," het Sharp later in sy boek Strategy for Defeat gesê.
Die president het op 12 Mei 'n week lange staking van die bomaanval gedoen - die eerste van vele sulke stilhoue - om te sien of Noord -Viëtnam gereed is om te onderhandel. Dit was nie.
Mikrobestuur van die lugoorlog het voortgegaan. "Ek was nooit in die vroeë dae toegelaat om 'n enkele vliegtuig noordwaarts te stuur [sonder dat ek] vertel is hoeveel bomme ek sou hê, hoeveel vliegtuie in die vlug was en hoe laat dit oor die teiken sou wees," het lt. Genl. Joseph H. Moore, bevelvoerder van die 2de Lugafdeling en sy opvolgerorganisasie, 7de Lugmag. 'En as ons op daardie tydstip (weer of wat nie) op daardie tydstip daar kon kom, kon ons nie later die staking uitoefen nie. Ons moes dit kanselleer en weer begin. ”
Thuds, Phantoms en ander
In Rolling Thunder het die VSA die Noorde aangeval met allerhande vliegtuie, maar die ergste gevegte was die F-105's en F-4's.
Die F-105 — Thunderchief, Lead Sled, Thud — het 75 persent van die aanvalle gevlieg en meer verliese oor Noord-Viëtnam as enige ander soort vliegtuig geneem. Toe Rolling Thunder eindig, was meer as die helfte van die Lugmag se F-105's weg.
Die F-4 Phantom, wat beter in staat was om die MiG's van Noord-Viëtnam te hanteer, het beide stakingsmissies en lugbedekking vir die F-105's gevlieg. Namate die oorlog aanstap, het die F-4 die dominante USAF-vegvliegtuig geword. Die F-4 was ook verantwoordelik vir 107 van die 137 MiG's wat deur die lugmag neergeskiet is.
Vlieëniers het 'n volledige gevegstoer gekry ná 100 missies oor Noord -Viëtnam. Dit was nie 'n maklike punt om te bereik nie. "Deur u 66ste missie is u twee keer neergeskiet en een keer opgetel," het F-105-vlieëniers gesê. 'N Verslag van die kantoor van die minister van verdediging in Mei 1967 lui: "Die lugveldtog teen gebiede wat swaar verdedig word, kos ons een vlieënier uit elke 40 uitstappies."
F-105's en F-4's vlieg meestal uit basisse in Thailand en werk aan die noordelike en westelike "roetepakkies" in Noord-Viëtnam. Vlootvlieëniers van draers by die Yankee -stasie in die Tonkin -golf het hoofsaaklik teen teikens naby die kus gevlieg.
Opvallend onder die vlootvliegtuie was die A-6 Intruder, 'n uitstekende medium-bomwerper vir alle weersomstandighede. Die lugmag het nie 'n weerstoestand in die teater gehad nie, behalwe op sy B-52-bomwerpers, wat nie meer as 'n paar kilometer noord van die DMZ toegelaat is nie.
Onder die wat noordwaarts vlieg of die operasie ondersteun, was tenkwaens, begeleiers, stutte, verdedigingsvliegtuie, reddingsvliegtuie en verkenningstelsels, sowel as bevel- en beheervliegtuie.
Een van die groot operasionele veranderinge in die Viëtnam -oorlog was die daaglikse hervulling van gevegsvliegtuie. Vegters wat op pad was na Noord-Viëtnam, het hul tenks aangevul van KC-135 tenkwaens, wat wentelbane bo Thailand, Laos en die Golf van Tonkin gevlieg het, en die tenkwaens weer ontmoet op pad uit om genoeg brandstof te kry om by die huis te kom. Lugopvulling het die omvang van die gevegsvliegtuie meer as verdubbel.
USAF -vegters wat uit die basisse van Thailand gevlieg het, was deel van 'n vreemde organisasie genaamd 7th/13th Air Force. Dit is om verskeie redes geskep, een daarvan om die Amerikaanse Stille Oseaan-kommando te laat beheer oor die lugoorlog in die noorde, eerder as om dit oor te gee aan die weermag-gedomineerde militêre hulpkommando Vietnam.
Toe die vliegtuie en vlieëniers op die grond was, was hulle in die 13de Lugmag, met die hoofkwartier in die Filippyne. Toe hulle in die lug was, is hulle beheer deur die 7de Lugmag in Saigon - wat vir hierdie missies by Pacific Air Forces en US Pacific Command aangemeld het, nie by MACV nie.
MiG's, SAM's en AAA
Toe Rolling Thunder begin, was die lugweerstelsel van Noord -Viëtnam nie veel nie en kon dit maklik vernietig gewees het. Die Amerikaanse beleid het die Noord -Viëtnamese egter die tyd gegee om sonder aanvalle 'n formidabele lugverdediging te bou.
Die stelsel het bestaan uit lugafweerartillerie, SA-2-raket-tot-lug-missiele, MiG-vegters en radars, almal van Sowjet-ontwerp, sommige verskaf deur die Sowjetunie en sommige deur China.
Alhoewel die SAM- en MiG-dreigemente meer aandag gekry het, was ongeveer 68 persent van die vliegtuigverliese te danke aan vuurvliegtuie. Teen 1968 het Noord -Viëtnam 1 158 AAA -terreine in bedryf, met 'n totaal van 5 795 gewere wat ontplooi is.
Die eerste SAM -terrein in Noord -Viëtnam is op 5 April 1965 opgespoor, maar Amerikaanse vliegtuie is nie toegelaat om dit te tref nie.
In 'n memo aan McNamara het John T. McNaughton, assistent -sekretaris van verdediging vir internasionale veiligheidsaangeleenthede, gesê: "Ons sal nie die terreine bombardeer nie, en dit sal 'n teken wees vir Noord -Viëtnam om dit nie te gebruik nie." By 'n besoek aan Viëtnam het McNaughton vir Moore by 2nd Air Division gesê: 'U dink nie die Noord -Viëtnamese gaan dit gebruik nie! Dit is net 'n politieke slenter van die Russe om Hanoi te paai. "
McNaughton moes op 24 Julie verbaas gewees het toe 'n SAM, afgevuur deur 'n Sowjet-missielbemanning, 'n F-4C van die lugmag neergeskiet het.
Byna 5 000 SAM's is tydens Rolling Thunder afgevuur en 101 Amerikaanse vliegtuie neergeslaan. Die vegters kon die SAM's vermy deur na laer hoogte te val, maar dit het hulle in die dodelike skietgalery van die gewere geplaas.
Volgens die reëls van betrokkenheid kan Amerikaanse vlieëniers slegs 'n SAM -webwerf aanval as dit eintlik op hulle skiet. In een geval het vlootvlieëniers 111 SAM's op spoorwaens naby Hanoi ontdek, maar is toestemming geweier om dit te bombardeer. 'Ons moes almal 111 een vir een veg,' het een van die vlieëniers gesê.
Die lugmag het twee maniere gehad om die SAM's te hanteer: jammers en 'Wild Weasels'.
EB-66-vasgeperste vliegtuie vergesel lugmagvlugte. Uiteindelik het vegters hul eie stamppeule gekry om die radars wat die SAM's en die AAA gelei het, te ontwrig.
'N Meer direkte oplossing was die veldwerk van die Wild Weasels, vegvliegtuie wat veral toegerus was om die Fan Song -radars wat die SAM's gerig het, te vind en te vernietig. Die oorspronklike Weasels, wat hul eerste SAM-perseel in Desember 1965 gesloop het, was F-100F's. Daarna is hulle vervang deur F-105G's met twee sitplekke in die Weasel-rol.
Die vyandelike vegters wat oor Noord-Viëtnam gewerk het, was MiG-17's en MiG-21's. Daar was 'n paar verouderde MiG-15's, maar dit is meestal gebruik vir opleiding. Die MiG-19, wat uit China ingevoer is, het eers in Viëtnam verskyn toe Rolling Thunder geëindig het.
Die MiG-17 was nie meer boaan die lyn nie, maar dit het goed gevaar as 'n afsnyer, veral effektief op laer hoogtes, waar hy sy gewere met voordeel gebruik het. Drie van Noord-Viëtnam se 16 ase het MiG-17's gevlieg.
Die MiG-21 was die beste vegvliegtuig van Noord-Viëtnam en 'n goeie wedstryd met die F-4. Dit was toegerus met 'n geweer, maar het hoofsaaklik op sy Atoll -missiele staatgemaak.
"Die Noord -Viëtnamese kon nuwe vliegvelde uitbrei en ontwikkel sonder enige teenstrydigheid van ons kant tot April 1967 toe ons Hoa Loc in die westelike deel van die land tref en gevolg het met aanvalle op Kep," het Momyer gesê. 'Die belangrikste vegbasis, Phuc Yen, is eers in Oktober dieselfde jaar getref. Gia Lam was gedurende die oorlog vry van aanval, omdat Amerikaanse amptenare besluit het om vervoervliegtuie uit China, die Sowjetunie en die Internasionale Beheerkommissie toe te laat om veilige toegang tot Noord -Viëtnam te verkry. Die Noord -Viëtnamese het Gia Lam natuurlik as 'n aktiewe MiG -basis gebruik.
Die bekendste lugslag van die oorlog was 2 Januarie 1967, toe vlieëniers van die 8ste Tactical Fighter Wing uit Ubon, Thailand, onder leiding van kolonel Robin Olds in die beroemde MiG Sweep, sewe MiG-21's oor die Rooi Rivier neergeskiet het. Vallei in Noord -Viëtnam.
"Ons moord was nie ons doel nie," het genl.maj. Alton D. Slay, adjunk -stafhoof vir operasies by die 7de Lugmag, gesê. 'Die doel was om die stakingskrag te beskerm. Enige MiG -moord word as 'n bonus beskou. 'N Opskiet van 'n staking vliegtuig word beskou as 'n mislukking van die missie, ongeag die aantal MiG's wat gedood is.
Lyne op die kaart
Belangrike dele van Noord -Viëtnam was buite perke vir Amerikaanse lugaanvalle. Vir die eerste maand van Rolling Thunder was die operasies beperk tot 'n stuk van die panhandle suid van die 19de parallel, wat net onder Vinh loop. Die eerste doelwitte rondom Hanoi en Haiphong is eers in Oktober en November goedgekeur.
Die grenslyn vir 'gewapende verkenning' - die gebied waarin teikens soos vragmotors en treine getref kan word wanneer hulle gevind word - kruip geleidelik noord, maar baie stadig.
"Hierdie oos-wes bomlyn is verbind deur 'n noord-suid lyn op 105 grade 20 minute oos wat gewapende verkenning in noordwestelike Noord-Viëtnam moontlik gemaak het (solank die bomme minstens 30 seemyl suid van die Chinese grens gebly het)," het gesê Historikus van die lugmag, Thompson. "Die twee lyne het Roete -pakket 6 (die 'noordoostelike kwadrant' wat die groot stede Hanoi en Haiphong bevat) omhein van gewapende verkenning tot die lente van 1966, toe spoor- en paadsegmente daarheen geteiken is."
Selfs daarna was Hanoi en Haiphong omring deur groot donutvormige gebiede op die kaart wat deur Amerikaanse beleid beskerm is teen lugaanvalle. Die buitenste gedeeltes - die "donuts" self - was beperkte gebiede, waarin stakings spesiale toestemming (wat selde gegee is) van Washington vereis het. Die "gate" in die donuts was verbode gebiede, waarin die beperkings ernstiger was.
60 myl breed, omring 'n verbode gebied van 20 myl. Die beperkte gebied by Haiphong was 20 myl breed en die verbode gebied, agt myl.
"Omdat hulle geweet het dat Amerikaanse betrokkenheidsreëls ons verhinder om sekere soorte teikens te bereik, het die Noord -Viëtnamese hul SAM -terreine in hierdie beskermde gebiede geplaas waar moontlik om hul SAM's immuniteit te bied teen aanvalle," het Momyer gesê. 'Binne 10 myl van Hanoi, 'n digbevolkte gebied wat veilig was vir aanvalle, behalwe vir spesifieke teikens van tyd tot tyd, is talle SAM -terreine gevind. Hierdie beskermde SAM's, met 'n effektiewe skietafstand van 17 seemyl, kan doelwitte bereik tot 27 myl van Hanoi af. En die meeste teikens wat verband hou met die vervoer- en toevoerstelsel wat die Noord -Viëtnamese troepe in Suid -Viëtnam ondersteun het, was binne 30 kilometer van Hanoi. ”
Die Withuis het stewige beheer oor die doelwit gehou.
'Die finale besluit oor watter teikens gemagtig sou word, die aantal soorte wat toegelaat is, en in baie gevalle is selfs die taktiek wat ons vlieëniers moes gebruik, geneem tydens 'n middagete van Dinsdag in die Withuis, bygewoon deur die president, die sekretaris van State, die minister van verdediging, president -assistent Walt Rostow en die presidensiële perssekretaris (eers Bill Moyers, later George Christian), ”het Sharp gesê. 'Die belangrike punt is dat geen professionele militêre man, selfs nie die voorsitter van die JCS, tot laat in 1967 by die middagete was nie.'
LBJ was duidelik trots op die proses en het gesê: 'Ek sal nie toelaat dat die generaals van die lugmag die kleinste buitekamer bombardeer nie, sonder om met my te praat.' By 'n ander geleentheid het hy gesê dat 'ek tien uur per dag daaroor spandeer het, en ek het die teikens een vir een gekies en seker gemaak dat ons nie die perke oorskry nie.'
Die president en sy adviseurs was huiwerig om die hawens en toevoersentrums rondom Hanoi en Haiphong te bombardeer, en verkies om die infiltrasieroetes verder suid te rig. Dit was die moeilike manier om dit te doen.
"Om die vloei deur 'n vyand se toevoerlyn tot nul te verminder, is feitlik onmoontlik, solank hy bereid is en 'n buitensporige prys kan betaal vir verlore mans en voorrade," het Momyer gesê.
'Om te wag totdat hy sy voorraad onder duisende vragmotors, sampans, vlotte en fietse versprei het en dan ons multimiljoen dollar-vliegtuie na die individuele voertuie te stuur-dit is hoe ons ons koste kan maksimeer, nie syne nie,' het hy gesê.
Die POL stakings
Die toenemende ongelukkigheid van McNamara met Rolling Thunder is verhard deur die resultate van die POL -aanval (petroleum, olie en smeermiddels) in die somer van 1966.
Noord -Viëtnam het geen olievelde of raffinaderye gehad nie. Al sy petroleumprodukte is ingevoer, meestal uit die Sowjetunie, en het deur die hawe in Haiphong aangekom. Van daar af is hulle per pad, spoor en waterweë na groot tenkplase geneem, waarvan slegs enkele gebombardeer is.
Op 29 Junie 1966 val Amerikaanse vliegtuie die Hanoi en Haiphong POL -komplekse vir die eerste keer aan. Die lugmag het toegeslaan op Hanoi, die vloot by Haiphong. Meer as 80 persent van die stoorgeriewe is vernietig.
Dit was 'n sterk operasie, maar dit het te laat gekom. Noord -Viëtnam, wat verwag het dat die POL -fasiliteite uiteindelik getref sou word, het 'n paar van sy voorraad versprei en ondergrondse bergingsgeriewe ontwikkel.
“It became clear as the summer wore on that, although we had destroyed a goodly portion of the North Vietnamese major fuel-storage capacity, they could still meet requirements through their residual dispersed capacity, supplemented by continued imports that we were not permitted to stop,” Sharp said. “The fact that they could disperse POL stores in drums in populated areas was a great advantage to the enemy. We actually had photos of urban streets lined with oil drums, but were not allowed to hit them.”
According to the Pentagon Papers, “Bulk imports via oceangoing tanker continued at Haiphong despite the great damage to POL docks and storage there. Tankers merely stood offshore and unloaded into barges and other shallow-draft boats, usually at night, and the POL was transported to hundreds of concealed locations along internal waterways. More POL was also brought in already drummed, convenient for dispersed storage and handling and virtually immune from interdiction.”
“The bombing of the POL system was carried out with as much skill, effort, and attention as we could devote to it, starting on June 29, and we haven’t been able to dry up those supplies,” McNamara later told the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations Committees, adding that “I don’t believe that the bombing up to the present has significantly reduced, nor any bombing that I could contemplate in the future would significantly reduce, the actual flow of men and materiel to the South.”
Hanoi Hangs On
One of many snide observations in the Pentagon Papers—written at the behest of Assistant Secretary McNaughton, the official who had seen no threat in the SAMs—was that “1967 would be the year in which many of the previous restrictions were progressively lifted and the vaunting boosters of airpower would be once again proven wrong. It would be the year in which we relearned the negative lessons of previous wars on the ineffectiveness of strategic bombing.”
A number of important targets were struck for the first time in 1967. Among them were the Thai Nguyen steel complex (in March), key MiG bases (in April and October), the Doumer Bridge, over which the railroad entered Hanoi (in August and December), and several other targets inside the Hanoi and Haiphong restricted areas (in July).
As always, though, political considerations were trumps. An approved strike on Phuc Yen air base was called off in September because the State Department had promised a visiting European dignitary that he could land there without fear of bombing.
“In 1967, we were allowed better targets than in ’66 and were allowed to use more strike sorties, so that the air war progressed quite well,” Sharp said later. “Of course, ships were still allowed to come into Haiphong, and we weren’t allowed to hit close to the docks. We were able to cut the lines of communication between Haiphong and Hanoi so that it was difficult for them to get materiel through. If we had continued the campaign and eased the restrictions in 1968, I believe we could have brought the war to a successful conclusion.”
For his part, McNamara had already given up on the air war, and in cooperation with McNaughton and a group of civilian consultants, was pursuing plans—later abandoned—to build a 160-mile barrier of minefields, barbed wire, ditches, and military strong points across Vietnam and Laos.
Disheartened, McNamara left office Feb. 29, 1968. In his memoir, In Retrospect, he said, “I do not know to this day whether I quit or was fired.”
End of the Thunder
President Johnson visited the war zone in December 1967, spent a night at Korat, Thailand, where he met with aircrews and commanders, and seemed buoyed by the contact.
In January, however, North Vietnam launched its Tet Offensive, the biggest attack of the war, striking bases and cities all over the South. The offensive was not a military success, but it jolted the American public. Support for the war fell severely.
Challenged by fellow Democrats in the Presidential primaries and losing ground in the opinion polls, Johnson at last decided that he had had enough. On March 31, he announced that he would neither seek nor accept his party’s nomination for another term as President.
He also announced a partial bombing halt, which ended Rolling Thunder operations north of the 19th parallel. The partial halt merged into an overall halt of bombing in North Vietnam on Nov. 1.
Rolling Thunder was over. During its course—over three years and eight months—the Air Force and the other services had flown 304,000 fighter sorties and 2,380 B-52 sorties.
Earl H. Tilford Jr., writing in The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, stated one view of the campaign, saying that: “Rolling Thunder stands as the classic example of airpower failure.”
A Senate Armed Services subcommittee, which held hearings on Rolling Thunder in August 1967, reached a different conclusion.
“That the air campaign has not achieved its objectives to a greater extent cannot be attributed to inability or impotence of airpower,” the panel said. “It attests, rather, to the fragmentation of our air might by overly restrictive controls, limitations, and the doctrine of ‘gradualism’ placed on our aviation forces, which prevented them from waging the air campaign in the manner and according to the timetable which was best calculated to achieve maximum results.”
The campaign’s failure is beyond dispute, but laying the fault to airpower is questionable. There is no way to know what an all-out bombing effort in 1965 might have achieved. Perhaps no amount of bombing would have done the job, but when Rolling Thunder ended, our best chance of knocking North Vietnam out of the war was gone. Rolling Thunder had not been built to succeed, and it didn’t.
John T. Correll was editor in chief of Air Force Magazine for 18 years and is now a contributing editor. His most recent article, “The Strategic World of Russell E. Dougherty,” appeared in the February issue.
McNAMARA: Specters of Vietnam
OVER THE BRIDGE it came, writhing and roiling toward him, like a primeval sea snake. There were cameras and helicopters and TV cars and protesters by the thousands. Some of their names he knew: Norman Mailer and Jerry Rubin and Dave Dellinger and Benjamin Spock and the poet Robert Lowell. But there were names that sunny afternoon Robert McNamara would never know, people who had ridden buses all night from Montpelier and Bellingham and a thousand other places in between. There was a young black man with a placard that said, "No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger." They had come to protest what author Mailer called Uncle Sam's Whorehouse War.
It was the March on the Pentagon.
It was Oct. 21, 1967, and from his command post on the roof, the secretary of defense could see it all.
And then, "You know, there wasn't one shot fired. I'm very proud of that to this day. Our troops didn't even have ammunition in their guns."
His voice is oddly soft. "How many of them were there?"
"Okay, 50,000. I thought it was 40,000. But can you imagine? Christ, yes, I was scared. You had to be scared. A mob is an uncontrollable force. It's terrifying. Once it becomes a mob, all the leaders are useless. It was a mess. But there was no question I would be up there. You don't delegate something like that. I was up there with Cy Vance and Warren Christopher and General Buzz Wheeler."
There was still something far back and strange in his voice, like a phone going fuzzy. He came forward and slapped his fist.
"They did it all wrong. I mean, the marchers. The way to have done it would to have been Gandhilike. Had they retained their discipline, they could have achieved their ends. My God, if 50,000 people had been disciplined and I had been the leader, I absolutely guarantee you I could have shut down the whole goddam place. You see, they didn't set up proper procedures for maximizing the force of the day."
He had said he'd be back in town at 5:30 p.m., and sure enough, there he came, into the lobby of his office building at 5:31, just off a flight from O'Hare, his raincoat turned inside out and swinging in one hand, his single piece of soft luggage in the other. The small suitcase was all he had for three days of travel, and half of it probably held paperwork. There were deep furrows sawing down from his cheekbones. Robert McNamara was tired. He looked old. Sometime in the last three days he had lost his wire glasses. Sometime in the last three days, the 67-year-old first-cabin man had been to:
His interviewer had spoken to him the day before at 7:20 a.m., West Coast time. McNamara had just gotten into San Francisco from Boston the night before, flying across a continent's dark, but by 7:20 he had already had his run on Nob Hill. How many people had he eaten for breakfast? "Oh, it's beautiful out here this morning," he had said, full of beans. "God, I love this town. I still think of San Francisco as my home town, even though I haven't lived here for 40 years. I was born here, you know."
In another eight hours he would be gone--on a plane to Chicago and some other who-knows-what meeting. McNamara says he needs eight hours of sleep, like almost anybody else, but when he gets it is anybody's guess. When he's traveling at night, he tries to have a sandwich and a drink and a sleeping pill about an hour before take-off. That puts him out.
Some of his old associates wonder if he isn't mistaking movement for action.
Some of his old associates wonder if something isn't tearing at his soul. The something they refer to but don't like to say is Vietnam, little men in black pajamas in a far-off dreamscape.
One day he tells you, "I knew as early as 1966 there were lessons to be learned. Of course I did. I started the Pentagon Papers and goddammit, that's why I did it. I never read the Pentagon Papers, by the way."
Push that subject a cubic centimeter further, and an iron gate comes down. His face gets stony.
How deeply Vietnam is troubling him only Robert McNamara knows--or maybe doesn't. But on a given day he can knock you flat-footed with his willingness to talk of it, or around it. It doesn't seem to bleed out as much as pass spiritlike through his body, as if free of all matter and spatial constraint. Suddenly Vietnam is in the room. It is hydra-headed and heinous, the country's grievous error, his own.
He is telling you about the man who immolated himself on a wall outside his Pentagon office. "He wasn't 40 feet away from my window," he says, looking out his own office window. "He was a Quaker, you know. It was a personal tragedy for me."
Are his eyes glistening? Can't tell. But his voice is squishy--even looking away can't hide that.
And the man was insane enough to have a baby in his arms, the visitor hedges, trying to keep it going.
"No, not insane," he says quickly. "I don't like that word. That's a value judgment. In some ways he may have been correct. If by such actions he could bring to bear the attention he sought."
By the way, has he ever been down to the Vietnam memorial?
"I don't want to talk about it. That's Vietnam."
His fingers have come up in front of his face, as if to interpose them between himself and the world. The iciness in his voice is almost scary. And why not: It was a transparent question, the kind that has quagmires and guerrillas waiting at the back of it. Who could win that kind of war, who could win that kind of question?
Some of his old associates tell you they cannot bring up the word or the subject in his presence. (Invariably they go off the record when they acknowledge this.) They would like to talk about Vietnam with McNamara, for his sake as much as their own. But it's as if there were a kind of electronic barrier around him when it comes to the subject. It's as if you start to say "Viet . . ." and he sends a shock of hot juice through your body.
Once, in 1966, when the war was going so badly, McNamara got nearly obsessed with the idea of an electronic barrier for Vietnam as a means of stopping the infiltration. They had even started building it. Some wondered if he was sane.
Vietnam is our great myth now. It has superseded every other 20th-century American fable. What makes it so terrible a tragedy and fine a myth is its impenetrability. It is a puzzle without pieces, a riddle without rhyme. How could it have gone so wrong, all those lost American lives, nearly 60,000? And who was the enemy, exactly?
It was the first war in American history in which the majority of the casualties were impersonal: Men blown into pieces by booby traps, by mines, by rockets. Men stepping on Pongee sticks, which were razor-sharp pieces of bamboo hidden in the ground. (The Army would later insert a steel shank into government-issue boots.) Men stepping on Bouncing Bettys, which were only the size of a fruit juice can, but which blew away buttocks and tore off arms and sent heads flying out ahead of their bodies. You stepped on a Bouncing Betty and in a billionth of a second the world was forever different.
And the mortars and B-40s whumping and spattering around you, turning night to day. For many who fought, they still whump and spatter, unquiet demons.
And the devastation to them: as if benevolent America were demonically bent on the annihilation of an entire country. Operation Rolling Thunder, a name given to the American air strikes against North Vietnam, was conducted almost daily from March 1965 until November 1968. The U.S. dropped a million tons of bombs, rockets and missiles. This works out to roughly 800 tons per day for 3 1/2 years. And it didn't work.
McNamara had been an architect of the air offensive, but in a closed session of the subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1967, he could say that ". . . enemy operations in the south cannot, on the basis of any reports I have seen, be stopped by air bombardment--short, that is, of the virtual annihilation of North Vietnam and its people."
So we circle Vietnam in these closing years of the century as if it were a sphinx we had just come on in the desert. What does it mean how do we get in? Almost a decade since the fall of Saigon, and our disgrace from that botched, dirty little Asian effort seems more primitive and brutish and naked than ever, naked as a Hemingway story, confusing as a Magritte painting. Some people wish their myths to have clear-cut lines, limpid villains and incorruptible heroes.
So which one is Robert McNamara?
"Look," he says, talking of why he will not ever write a book, "I don't need wealth as my measure of success. I don't need a big fat book as my measure of success. It doesn't matter to me whether people write about me or not. I am my own judge. I know what I did and I don't really give a damn beyond that."
Which sounds terribly defensive, though not on the day or in the tone in which he says it.
And before you can scribble it down, he has said something else: "I picked up a book the other day to look for my name in the back. By the way, I do pick up books to look in the index. I keep in touch with what . . . they're writing."
What was the book? Was it Stanley Karnow's best-selling "Vietnam: A History," the most detailed account of the war yet?
"Well, I'm not going to say, because an awful lot of the premises were . . . incorrect."
McNamara wouldn't talk to Karnow about Vietnam. Karnow went up to McNamara at a cocktail party and asked if they could meet to discuss it, but McNamara said no. Karnow is not particularly easy on McNamara in "Vietnam: A History." One of his themes is the disparity between what McNamara said publicly and seemed to feel privately. No one knows for sure just when McNamara secretly turned against the war, but Karnow suspects it was as early as November 1965. Three months later, in Honolulu, he would say in an off-the-record session with reporters, one of whom was Karnow, "No amount of bombing can end the war." But it kept up--and so did his public assurance. Karnow used the quote because he felt enough time had passed.
Like everything else in his life, McNamara has worked out the rational reasons for refusing to write his own book about Vietnam.
"A, because I don't like the idea of writing memoirs
"B, because I don't like kiss-and-tell books
"C, because I don't like to write nonpersonally
"D, because my memory is faulty and I don't have a staff for research
"E, because in particular I don't believe the participant can ever be objective. I don't believe a participant in Vietnam should be the one to write the story. Let the scholars and the historians take the raw material of the decision-makers, reflect on the lessons, see what can be learned. Participants tend to write of their experiences in a way that supports their decisions in hindsight."
There, he has gotten them out, all neatly lettered and presented. And you tag on: Would be pretty hard to do it, wouldn't it?
"Of course, it would be hard, but that isn't why I refuse."
But if not Vietnam, couldn't you write about other things--say the Cuban missile crisis? "I really couldn't improve on Bobby Kennedy's account," he says flatly. And yet, on another day, talking of why a leader cannot delegate the crisis decisions, he says, "I slept 10 days in the Pentagon during the missile crisis. I was there!" You think he's going to say something else, but no.
He can talk vividly about the '67 March on the Pentagon, as if there were no particular connection in his mind between the march and Vietnam.
"There's no natural means of defending the Pentagon, you know. There's an asphalt drive around the perimeter. We put troops shoulder to shoulder on the drive"--he is up out of the chair, at attention, trying to mimic soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder with unloaded guns--"and at the very top of the stairs the TV crews had all their cameras. So the troops are right there and the girls in the mob are trying to make them flinch. They're rubbing their naked breasts in the soldiers' faces, they're spitting on them, they're taunting them. God, it was a mess. My impression is that the mob lost public support. All we had was that one thin line around the edge of the building. The Pentagon is hollow inside, as you recall. We'd brought in some troops by helicopter."
And what if it had gotten out of his control?
"We had plans. I guess we would have used tear gas. We had plans."
Some people tell you today that what may have damaged McNamara irreparably at Defense was his statements on the bombing. Generals were going up to the Hill to say they were dropping bombs on steel factories in North Vietnam. McNamara said, no, they were really iron ore foundries, not steel mills, and what's more, he had had more foundries at his disposal when he was head of Ford than there were in all of North Vietnam. That did not sit particularly well with the White House.
Lyndon Johnson, who had once been so proud of his man Bob, would later allow, "I forgot he had only been president of Ford for a week."
There was never a formal embargo on Vietnam in the conversations resulting in this series of articles, but it was perfectly obvious McNamara began each conversation with the intention of talking of something else--such as the nuclear problem or South Africa or illegitimacy and poverty in the District of Columbia, a topic he is eloquent on. ("We are breeding maladjustment as strongly as though it were passed along through the genes," he says. And he has firm ideas about how we can begin remedying the problem.)
But Vietnamese memory would come, would wash into the room, because he had let it, because he had willed it. Someone who worked for McNamara for a decade and a half, both in the Pentagon and at the World Bank, says that it was one of his routine jobs to turn down interview requests for his boss. "So many tried to wedge in with something else, but really only wanted Nam," remembers the aide, who didn't want to be identified. McNamara knew.
This past February Robert McNamara spent a week at the University of Pennsylvania as the university's second Pappas Fellow. (Norman Mailer inaugurated the fellowship last year.) He came up to Penn on a train in a well-used tweed sports coat and his penny loafers. He went into seminars and stood behind podiums and slugged off his coat and flexed his knees and danced on the forward end of his feet like a rangy middleweight.
And almost nobody brought up Vietnam. It was as if the president of Penn, who had introduced McNamara at the opening speech, had muzzled the entire school, which of course he didn't and couldn't. But how had McNamara somehow conveyed to an ivy university that Vietnam was off-limits? And anyway, why would students, being students, be respecters of that?
You could go down into a basement video game room in the student union and interrupt collegians playing Punk and Amazon Hunt to ask them something about a man who had been sworn in as secretary of defense before they were even born, and some of them would say, as one did, "Oh, yes, I know him, Mr. We've-Stopped-Losing-the-War-But, right?"
And yet it came up at least once, in an interview with the student editors of The Daily Pennsylvanian. At the front of the published interview, which was in a Q&A format, there was this disclaimer: "McNamara consented to the interview on the condition that Vietnam would not be discussed."
But they raised it in an oblique way anyhow. "Are there any decisions you regret?" het hulle gevra. (They said afterward they were referring to Vietnam.)
"Oh, sure. All kinds of things. I'm not going to mention them today," he said.
Sometimes in conversations with McNamara, there almost seems operating a willful naivete'. For instance, you can find his phone number listed in the District directory, and when you ask why that is so, he says, "It was unlisted when I was secretary, of course, but isn't it kind of an act of arrogance to unlist it now?" And yet he tells you himself that people have called him up late at night, have misrepresented themselves in order to see him. A man did that a while ago when he wanted to serve McNamara a subpoena.
Once, this interviewer called him late at night. McNamara answered with a kind of coiled wariness. He was in bed reading and had picked it up on the first ring. Almost immediately, he warmed. He talked about Memphis, from where he had just come, and Martha's Vineyard, where he was just going.
One day, speaking of personal security, he says, "During the entire Pentagon years, I never had any security at all in terms of bodyguards."
"Because I didn't need it, of course."
People who worked with him at the Pentagon will tell you that security in his part of the E Ring was almost lax. There were two civilian secretaries and just beyond them two Marine secretaries, usually females. There was no sergeant-at-arms nearby, though a secretary had some kind of buzzer under her desk. The door to McNamara's office was unmarked and unlocked. If a distraught mother or worried priest or man with a derringer had walked by the secretaries and tried the handle on the wooden door at the side of the room, that person might have found himself face to face with an embodiment of the Vietnam war.
"Well, I did get in trouble once," he is saying. "Not at the Pentagon. At Harvard. You probably know all about it. That one was pretty rough. The demonstration against me occurred when I went up there to speak to Henry Kissinger's classes. He was still teaching at Harvard then. And when I came out of one of the houses down by the river--I can't remember the name of it just now, what was it, Lowell House, oh, it doesn't matter--well, anyway, I was supposed to be driven in a car to Henry's seminar and that's when it happened."
It didn't happen at Lowell House, but as he tried to leave Quincy House on Nov. 7, 1966. Students gathered outside the house and threw themselves under his car. They shouted obscenities at him. He shouted back. "When I was at the University of California at Berkeley, I was both more tough and courteous than you are," he said to a heckler. "And I'm still tougher than you are." University and city policemen led him away through Harvard steam tunnels.
But his mind has left Harvard and already leapt to something else. When you talk to McNamara, you must be ready for quick jumps. You also must be prepared for him to start talking before your question is fully out. His tendency is to go once he has enough.
"Sam Brown used to come over our house in the '60s. You know who he is, don't you? Well, here it is in the midst of all the goddam rioting and activist Sam Brown is eating dinner in our house and standing in the study with all these Barbara Ward books everywhere, and I guess maybe we'd been talking of mountain climbing during dinner, and he says, 'Mr. McNamara, anybody who loves the mountains as much as you do can't be all bad.' That's just what he said. And the whole goddam country's rioting. See, you've got to keep your channels open. I mean, you might learn something."
At the feet of the late Barbara Ward is where McNamara's gold may really be buried. In the early '60s he began reading that eloquent British international economist and humanitarian. Ward's view of the world, not unlike Jesus', was that crumbs for Lazarus aren't enough--society's responsibility is far greater. "You commit yourself to where your attachments are," she once said, which may have touched Robert McNamara at dead bottom. She also said that in the Third World, "if a man asks you for bread and you give him a pill, he'll spit in your eye." McNamara himself says that Ward acted as a kind of catalyst to his growing thinking about development as the true security. He and Ward became close friends in the torn '60s and remained so until her death in 1981. But it is clear, if you study only the history of Barbara Ward and Robert McNamara's connection to her, that he could not have gone to the World Bank, as the slickmeisters would have us believe, to do penance for Vietnam. The bank was a logical progression of his thinking.
Wives of Washington men can suffer quietly and greatly. When Margaret Craig McNamara died three years ago, something happened in the complicated character of her widower. Perhaps Margy had lugged around more of her husband's emotional baggage than anyone knew. And when the luggage carrier is gone, who is to suffice? Marg, her husband once said, got his ulcer over Vietnam.
For a time there had been much stress in the McNamara family, not all of it hidden. There are three grown children, a son and two daughters. The daughters live in Washington. The son is a farmer in California the Potomac is far away.
In the '60s Marg's health seemed to be deteriorating on a pace with Vietnam. Later, Craig McNamara, the youngest child, would publicly protest the Vietnam war at Stanford, and still later leave the country, riding a motorcycle 10,000 miles into Chile and then worked on a cooperative dairy on Easter Island. Afterward he went to Mexico and worked in the sugar fields of Padre Ivan Illich. Today Craig runs a 250-acre walnut ranch set into the rim of the Coast Range, and his father is co-owner. Father and son are long reconciled, and Craig himself is the first to say that. Craig and his dad personally made the arrangements for Margy's funeral three years ago. They spread her ashes high in a snowy pass in Colorado. Craig, who is 34 and can talk about his feelings in a way his father apparently cannot, is married to a woman named Julie, and five months from now, the two of them will present Robert McNamara with a grandchild.
"Nobody can get anywhere on Vietnam with my father, including me," Craig says softly one noontime on the phone. He has just come in from the fields for a break. His voice sounds nothing like his father's. But he is out of the house every day at 7, like his dad.
"It's just not in his scope to communicate his deepest thoughts and feelings to me. I keep hoping for a change, a change in both of us. I tend to believe the truth should be out. I think he can stand the truth. He must want that, he must want everything, finally, to rinse and wash. I know I do. I don't want to hurt him, and I know that things hurt him, but I want the truth out, for all of us. I mean, I felt the contradictions of the Vietnam war. It was my father's war and I was his son. Our generation seeks that therapeutic response, my father's couldn't.
"I think we've always maintained a bottom line that I used to think every marriage had. We've always had a basic love and respect for one another, even when it was at its worst between us. I'm sure, for instance, it deeply hurt my mother and father when they came up to my room and saw me reading a copy of 'The Best and the Brightest.' Or saw my American flag turned upside down on my wall.
"It's terribly hard sometimes to be his son. There is the deepest river of love between us, and it goes dry over Vietnam."
And what does the father say of this bond?
"Oh, I was talking to him last night, no, not last night, night before last. We were discussing how you must produce a surplus in this society and then make it available to everyone else. That's how our economy works, you know."
But he also says this: "Craig learned valuable lessons when he went to South America. And . . . maybe I did, too. Did you ever hear that line--I can't remember who said it--but it goes like this: If you can't be a socialist at 20, you had no heart and if you were one at 50, you had no head. I love that."
The word "heart" has taken him again to Marg. "God, she was one of God's loveliest creatures." He has said this exact sentence at least a half-dozen times over the course of four interviews.
Craig McNamara will try to get up to the Vineyard this year to see his dad's new house. It's on land Marg tramped many times, searching for the best site. She didn't live long enough to see the house, but her husband is sure she found it in her imagination. There are 2,200 feet of south beach on the property and you can see the whole of Oyster Pond to the east. There is a lovely pond off to the west, too, and when Robert McNamara stands up there alone on the highest point and positions himself east by south, he can look across spiky grass into the huge Atlantic and know there is "nothing between me and London." Vietnam seems a long time ago.
