Kontum: The Battle to Save South Vietnam

Epilogue: The End of the Fight

Epilogue The End of the Fight Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam. —Marshall McLuhan, Montreal Gazette, 16 May 1975 Mr. Vann came to Kontum every day in early June, and every day he would complain to Colonel Rhotenberry about the NV A troops still in the city, “Hey, Rhot, haven’t you gotten this goddamned city cleared yet?” Starting around 2 June, the weather was bad enough to ground tactical air support. So the ARVN soldiers had to clear out the remaining enemy with more days of bunker-to-bunker fighting. Finally, the last NV A holdout in the city was killed on 5 June 1972, and the next day Brigadier General Ba declared the city free of enemy soldiers. When Vann came to visit on 6 June, Rhotenberry again showed him his 1:12,500-scale Kontum City map on which he used colored grease pencils to draw the defensive perimeter , the attacks, and the penetrations. He told Vann the last penetrations had been cleared out that morning. This news was a high point for Vann because then he knew for certain that the Battle of Kontum was over and we had won. After Tan Canh and Dak To had fallen, Vann had thought his entire career in Vietnam and his reputation were on the line, so he was subdued and working under a great deal of pressure to succeed. Now he was vindicated and triumphant. After the enemy was finally ejected from the city, a better drop zone became available in northwest Kontum. Sixty-eight airdrop missions were flown during the first week of June. The USAF THE END OF THE FIGHT • 257 recorded, “A prolonged airlift to battered Kontum rivaled in significance and drama the An Loc resupply. Demanding night-landing techniques, airdrop methods lately worked out at An Loc, and adverse-weather aerial delivery system equipment were all used at Kontum.” Finally, night landings at Kontum airfield—with only one plane at a time on the ground—were resumed on the night of 8–9 June. The first C-130 touched down at 2337. Five more sorties followed it. During the landings, ARVN artillery shot into the NV A lines to suppress anti-aircraft fire and fired flares to attract any Strella missiles launched at the landing planes. On 13 June a C-130 avoided a Strella in the only recorded Strella attack around Kontum.1 In all of South Vietnam, by the end of May 1972 Strella missiles had knocked down seven Allied aircraft, including one fast mover, a US Marine Corps A4 Skyhawk hit on 26 May.2 After the battle, at least eight destroyed aircraft lay on Kontum airfield: a VNAF A-1 Skyraider that had made an emergency landing and was then destroyed by incoming fire; two USAF C-130s; three VNAF C-123s; a Cobra gunship; a VNAF Hook; and a VNAF Huey hit by the Hook when the Hook had a mechanical failure.3 Kontum was littered with artillery shell casings, ammo boxes, and all the other trash combat generates. There were great heaps of garbage. In places, it looked like a city dump. Most of the fighting and thus most of the destruction were around the defensive perimeter and in the military areas of Kontum City. There was much less damage to the civilian areas. However, the province chief’s house and the post office had been destroyed.4 During the Easter Offensive, the number of Arc Light sorties authorized per month was increased from 1,000 in January to 3,150 in June. The latter number was the peak for the entire war.5 Arc Light missions in II Corps paralleled the tempo of the overall Easter Offensive. There were 136 in March, 229 in April, 334 in May, and 175 in June for a total of 874 during those four months. Between 14 May and 8 June alone, there were 300 Arc Lights in II Corps, most of them in support of Kontum’s defenders. At about 100,000 tons of bombs per three-plane mission, 300 missions, and 2,000 pounds per ton, B-52 bombers alone dropped around 60 million pounds of bombs around Kontum during those 25 days.6 Tactical air fighter-bombers dropped additional millions of pounds of bombs both inside and outside the city. Brigadier General...