Operation Lan Som 719

Lan Som 719 The operation punished the EVN in the depths of their sanctuary in Laos. Things were very different from what they should have been. Permitted on 18th January 1971 and named the famous victory over the Chinese Vietnamese in 1427, Operation Lam Son 719 was to thwart any possible attack targets on communist South Vietnam for a year. The Laos border was considered the most commonly used for the supply of material and weapons to the guerrillas and was struck forcefully for two reasons:

ARVN gave more time to complete a preparation that would allow them to defeat the EVN and to warn the North Vietnamese that Richard Nixon was ready, as in the case of Cambodia, to use all means at its disposal to enforce peace. They therefore planned and launched Operation Lan Som 719.

The military objective of Lam Son 719 was to open a corridor 25km wide and 35km long along the border between South Vietnam and the Laotian city Tchepone, that cut the Ho Chi Minh trail and stopped guerrilla operations in the South.

Unfortunately for the general and his men Xuan Lam, the EVN had much more resistance due to better weapons than a year before in Cambodia and, midway through, the numerous casualties on Highway 9 and in the hills north of this forced them to stop the advance and begin evacuating by helicopter.

The images of hundreds of helicopters in South Vietnam with frightened and wounded people aboard shattered the hopes of many in power. The Lan Som 719 disaster cost the South Vietnamese army nearly 10,000 men, which represented just under half of the troops. Two years later the South Vietnamese showed that there were still cards to play by facing the same enemy that had driven so hard.