The end of the Vietnam war

Nixon ordered the largest bombing campaign of the war, but the results were pyrrhic victories. On May 8th 1972 Richard Nixon suspended negotiations in Paris over the continuous attacks of the EVN and ordered the Linebacker bombing campaign to undermine the ports, military objectives, railways, oil installations, airfields and all docks in North Vietnam.

U.S sources said the President was outraged by the continuing incursions of the North over the South and said that those Vietnamese were to suffer a bombardment as never before experienced. He was well aware that Operation Rolling Thunder had worn out much of his predecessor but he was man of energy and did not hesitate to order the removal from the B-52.

This time, the Phantom and the B-52 (second part) were equipped with smart bombs, which would become so famous in later conflicts, and, as the Nixon administration would attack only military targets or economic, the civilian populated areas were never affected.

In this way, they said, the ferocity of the bombs would be offset with accuracy, but the Vietnamese saw it very differently and a member of the community said “The Americans say they bombed military and economic targets and our schools and hospitals.

They are just excuses for the terrible toll that was caused among the civilian population. Schools and hospitals were built by the French, before the hostilities, and we were not stupid enough to draw fire on our children and our patients by placing them with potential targets. His definition of “precision bombs” destroy entire neighborhoods, such as the densely populated area of Kham Thien, or Bac Mai hospital with 1,000 beds which were both destroyed by bombs.

This bombing campaign was even more terrible than the Rolling Thunder of the past decade and the effectiveness of these weapons easily surpassed the previous, this time 155,548 tons of bombs were dropped in 41,000 missions.

So the factories were almost completely destroyed, just like the railroads were (including the famous bridge of Thanh Hoa who was hit for 15 laser-guided bombs and collapsed). Cities still intact in Hanoi and Haiphong were also attacked for first time in the conflict. According to Western sources they did not pursue the bombing in North Vietnam not to take back to the negotiating table, but to demonstrate to South Vietnam that they would continue to support them despite withdrawing their troops. But Nixon wanted a graceful exit from what would become the first defeat for his country and this fact also influenced launch bombing.

Certainly the situation in which the United States placed the Vietnamese people was very hard, a Vietnamese reported: “The siren sounded 20 times a day. The raids continued at night, forcing us to get out of bed in the middle of winter, cold and wet to get into the shelters.

On 23rd October the bombing stopped and negotiations resumed. However, several months after the cessation of bombing the leaders of North Vietnam did not see their demands met to begin negotiating and retreated again. At that time the USSR had received SAM missiles (land-air) and hoped to defy the new attacks, but also knew the strength of its people and the situation in the United States.

Nixon, usually firm in his decisions and robust in its application, resumed bombing (which is unofficially known as Operation Linebacker II) between 18th and 29th December 1972 (only stopping on Christmas Day).

In this second phase of the campaign they dropped 20,370 tons of bombs, killing 1,000 people, stopping internal communications and damaging the grid, ending the entire North Vietnamese air force.

However, the price was high. The North Vietnamese shot down 26 aircraft (fifteen of them B-52) and captured several drivers, which gained some leverage in negotiations in Paris and posed a major concern that the conflict left in later years where were all the drivers missing in combat?

Nixon had been achieved almost all the objectives, to demonstrate to their ally the South that their support would continue despite the withdrawal and return to talks. For many Vietnamese the conclusion was this:

On December 30th Nixon stopped the bombing and nine days later, they resumed talks in Paris. Le Duc Tho, our chief negotiator, did not depart from the position it had held before the bombing. No changes were accepted by the Americans. Nixon broke down and signed the peace accords between North Vietnam and the United States on January 27th, largely on the same terms set forth the preceding October.

The iron will of our people and their belief in fate had borne fruit. They had survived the U.S power. In total, the U.S dropped 338,000 tons of napalm on Vietnam, according to estimates and killed more than 2 million Vietnamese during the eight years of war.

As well as about 100,000 tons of herbicides (blue, orange, and white agents) were cast in an attempt to eliminate sources of food and shelter from the Viet Cong. In addition to the huge number of dead and wounded, the legacy left by the U.S chemical warfare was almost half a million Vietnamese children suffered serious birth defects (Wall Street Journal).