Losing Vietnam: How America Abandoned Southeast Asia

2. South Vietnam

2 South Vietnam The Defense Attaché Office The U.S. military assistance objectives in the Republic of Vietnam, to be carried out by the DAO, were to “help to achieve and maintain the stable balanced conditions necessary to ensure peace in Indochina and Southeast Asia; assist in the development of an increasingly effective government responsive to the South Vietnamese people’s needs and wishes; support a balanced Republic of Vietnam armed force of sufficient size, strength, and professionalism to counter the principal threat facing South Vietnam; and contribute to the healing of the wounds of war and the postwar reconstruction and rehabilitation of South Vietnam .”6 Unquestionably, these objectives were related to circumstances well beyond U.S. control. Obviously, when they were made public, the Pentagon envisioned that the Vietnamese parties would undertake to maintain the cease-fire and ensure a lasting and stable peace, not a de facto state of war. In reality, the military assistance objectives boiled down to just one: to support balanced Republic of Vietnam armed forces. That support depended directly upon the receipt of sufficient congressionally approved funding to ensure the maintenance and replacement of essential military equipment and to procure necessary supplies, particularly ammunition and petroleum, to enable the country to counter the North Vietnamese threat. To provide that support was a huge undertaking; consequently the DAO was a major operation. Not only did it support the 1.1 millionman RVNAF, but it had to provide housekeeping activities for the approximately sixty-five hundred U.S. personnel associated with the mission. There were about four thousand direct-hire and contract employees and twenty-five hundred U.S. citizen dependents. Additionally, 6 Losing Vietnam the total local national workforce exceeded twenty thousand personnel. The DAO had personnel scattered throughout South Vietnam, but its main effort was in a compound at Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base in Saigon.7 The DAO’s internal budget was about $40 million, and it had an authorized strength of about 940 personnel. It was a huge, busy organization . Maj. Gen. John Murray was the first defense attaché and was succeeded by Maj. Gen. Homer Smith in September 1974. Both were extremely competent managers and outstanding logisticians. The DAO people were dedicated, hard-working personnel and they provided superior support to the RVNAF. Vietnam Update I knew that to properly assess the situation in South Vietnam in 1973 I needed to analyze the capabilities of both the South and North Vietnamese armed forces. It was also essential that I learn how the military situation had changed since I had left South Vietnam in 1969—particularly with respect to the Vietnamization program and the major 1972 all-out North Vietnamese Army (NVA) Easter campaign. What follows, then, is an update on friendly and communist capabilities: their relative manpower; the North Vietnamese infiltration of supplies and equipment; a review of the South Vietnamese Air Force, Navy, and Army armor and artillery capabilities; and the key U.S. funding situation , to include the effects of the worldwide oil-induced inflation on South Vietnam. Only after understanding these elements could I answer the important question “How does the RVNAF stack up against the NVA/VC?” The NVA/VC Historical Perspective In late 1973, the intelligence section of the South Vietnamese joint general staff (J-2) produced a study entitled “Communists’ Assessment of the RVNAF.”8 In wartime, it is always important to know the enemy, and this enemy’s perceptions of the RVNAF were crucial for our understanding of enemy tactics. Although intelligence-gathering South Vietnam 7 necessarily includes considering all sources of inputs, the J-2 study relied primarily on official enemy reports and assessment records on the spirit and combat capabilities of the RVNAF published by communist technical agencies, which were very difficult to acquire because they were classified as VN ABSOLUTE SECRET. However, since there were continuous leaks of important classified information from both sides throughout the conflict, this material was often available. This study summarized a historical perspective of the Vietnam conflict as well as the enemy’s view of our allies. The North Vietnamese analysis divided the war into eight different periods, commencing with the 1954 post–Geneva Accord political struggle and continuing through the 1973 post-cease-fire episode. The NVA called its 1972 episode “The Period of Ending the War,” and it opted to launch a springsummer campaign, hoping to shatter the Vietnamization plan and...