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131 In order to grasp the significance of the role of the AC-130s at the end of the Vietnam War, one needs to understand how the Nguyen Hue or Easter Offensive unfolded and how US airpower responded. The enemy invasion officially lasted from March 30 to September 16, 1972.1 Communist goals were to erode flagging US public war support during an election year, to counter South Vietnamese successes in rural areas since 1969, and to win the war before Nixon’s détente policy affected Soviet and Chinese material support of Hanoi.2 What communist leaders failed to grasp was that the audacity of the attack “provided Nixon with the public support necessary to retaliate.”3 US forces were mostly caught off guard, having scheduled reductions in American troops from two hundred thousand to sixty-nine thousand in May and aircraft from 500 to 375. However, in the spring of 1971 the CIA had warned of a potential election-year invasion, but they believed the enemy could not “launch a nationwide military offensive on anything approaching the scale of Tet 1968.”4 At least two hundred NVA tanks were deployed undetected to various staging areas in 1971–72, and, as one analyst later noted, “This stealthy deployment, together with the persistent perception that the enemy’s logistical system was less efficient than it was, deflected American intelligence analysts from a correct understanding of Communist plans.”5 The initial assaults came from Laos by 40,000–50,000 troops against Quang Tri Province in Military Region (MR) I. The next day, 160 miles south of the DMZ, in the Central Highlands in MR II, 28,000 more NVA struck Kontum Province. The enemy opened a third front with 31,000 men attacking 375 miles south of the DMZ and 60 miles west of Saigon. Of 8 Linebacker I and II America’s Involvement Winds Down 132 | CHAPTER 8 the 200,000 communist troops eventually involved, 120,000 were NVA regulars , 50,000 were VC main force troops, and 30,000 were VC irregulars. Supported by tanks and artillery and protected by low-lying clouds, NVA units in MR I pushed ARVN units out of Quang Tri City by May 1, 1972. The new ARVN commander, Gen. Ngo Quang Troung, withdrew south in good order and established a tenuous defensive line on the south bank of the My Chanh River. By May 14, enemy units in MR II had overrun Dak To and put Kontum City under siege, while in MR III the NVA had destroyed an ARVN division, taken Loc Ninh, and surrounded An Loc by April 13.6 At An Loc the PAVN 5th, 7th, and 9th Divisions surrounded the outnumbered and outgunned ARVN 5th Division and 3rd Ranger Group and some Binh Long provincial forces. Throughout the battle, gunships flew numerous close air support missions, in one case killing ninety-eight enemy soldiers near the Dak Pek Ranger Camp. Gen. Spike Momyer believed that the savior of An Loc as elsewhere was American airpower. According to the general, An Loc “would have been lost without the day and night support flown by fighters and the AC-130 and AC-119 gunships.”7 At Kontum City on May 11, with the eastern part of the city under attack from NVA regulars, one enemy POW later recalled that the B-52s and gunships struck at about 5:00 a.m., pounding the city’s eastern approaches every hour on the hour for twenty-five continuous hours, bombing or strafing several targets more than once. Entire NVA units were wiped out. When Buffs were not overhead, gunships circled like great birds of prey, cutting exposed enemy columns to pieces. Five days later, a PAVN unit, supported by twenty tanks, attacked an ARVN force just south of Kontum City on Route 14. Three cells of B-52s, later supplemented by dozens of gunship sorties, targeted each enemy column and “obliterated” them “utterly.” On May 26 the communists made one last assault on Kontum City that failed in a hail of lead and raging explosions set off by a tenacious ARVN defense, American gunships, and B-52 sorties . Between May 14 and June 6, 1972, US gunships, especially AC-130s, killed 5,688 enemy troops and destroyed 38 tanks and dozens of artillery pieces.8 As mentioned earlier, in December 1971, even before the invasion, Nixon, concerned by intelligence reports, had responded with Operation Proud Deep Alpha, in which Air Force fighters...

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