Operation Linebacker II
Operation Linebacker II, sometimes referred to as the Christmas bombings, was a strategic bombing campaign conducted by the United States against targets in North Vietnam from December 18 to December 29, 1972, during the Vietnam War. More than 20,000 tons of ordnance was dropped on military and industrial areas in Hanoi and Haiphong and at least 1,624 civilians were killed. The operation was the final major military operation carried out by the U.S. during the conflict, and the largest bombing campaign involving heavy bombers since World War II.
"Christmas bombings" and "Christmas Day Bombing" redirect here. For other uses, see Christmas bombings (disambiguation).
By late 1972, U.S. combat involvement in Vietnam had been dramatically reduced, and negotiations to end the war were underway in Paris. After secret meetings in October between lead negotiators Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, an informal agreement was reached. The terms included a total U.S. withdrawal, North Vietnam's recognition of South Vietnam, new borders based on the present front lines, and new elections in the South, which would include the then-banned Communist Party of Vietnam. South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu, however, totally rejected these terms when he was informed about them and, following Richard Nixon's reelection in November, the U.S. submitted new terms, which included the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) as the recognized national border, leading to a breakdown in negotiations on December 16. Nixon issued an ultimatum for the North to return to negotiations within 72 hours, after which he ordered the bombing campaign on December 18. Conducted by more than 200 B-52 bombers from Strategic Air Command supported by tactical planes of the Seventh Air Force and Task Force 77, the raids ran continuously over a 12-day period. The U.S. acknowledged the loss of 16 B-52 bombers, while North Vietnam claimed 34 bombers shot down.
The effect of the bombings on the peace negotiations is debated. On December 22, Nixon asked the North to return to the talks with the terms offered in October and warned Thieu that he would sign the agreement even if Thieu did not. The North agreed, and Nixon ordered a halt to the bombings on December 30. The North Vietnamese delegation stated that the campaign played no role in the decision to return to negotiations, while an aide to Kissinger remarked that "[w]e bombed the North Vietnamese into accepting our concessions". On January 27, 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed along the same terms as the initial October agreement.
Prelude[edit]
Decisions[edit]
Nixon was now working against a January deadline. Kissinger's "peace is at hand" statement had raised expectations of a settlement among the US population. Even weightier on the President's mind was the fact that the new 93rd Congress would go into session on 3 January, and the President feared that the heavily Democratic legislative branch would preempt his pledge of "peace with honor" by legislating an end to the war.[32]
Also prompting the President toward some form of rapid offensive action was the cost of the force mobilization that had accompanied Operation Linebacker. The additional aircraft and personnel assigned to Southeast Asia for the operation was straining the Pentagon's budget. The cost of maintaining this "augmentation force" totaled over $4 billion by mid-autumn and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird insisted that the President request a supplementary defense appropriation from Congress to pay for it.[32] Nixon and Kissinger were convinced that the legislative branch "would seize the opportunity to simply write the United States out of the war".[33]
After returning from Paris on 14 December, and after consultations with Nixon, Kissinger fired off an ultimatum to Hanoi, threatening "grave consequences" if North Vietnam did not return to the negotiating table within 72 hours.[34][35] On that day, Nixon ordered the reseeding of North Vietnamese ports with air-dropped naval mines and that the Joint Chiefs of Staff direct the Air Force to begin planning for a bombing campaign (a three-day "maximum effort" operation) which was to begin within 72 hours.[36] Two days after the 16 December deadline had passed, the U.S. bombed Hanoi. Senior Air Force officers James R. McCarthy and George B. Allison stated years later that the operation had been mainly politically driven, as a negotiation tool to "bring the point home".[37]
Many historians of the Vietnam War follow the lead of President Nixon, who claimed that Hanoi's representatives had walked out of the talks, refusing to continue the negotiations.[38] Both sides had proclaimed their willingness to continue the talks; however, Hanoi's negotiators refused to set a date, preferring to wait for the incoming Congress.[31] The goal of President Nixon was not to convince Hanoi, but to convince Saigon. President Thieu had to be assured that "whatever the formal wording of the cease-fire agreement, he could count on Nixon to come to the defense of South Vietnam if the North broke the cease-fire."[39]
Bombings[edit]
Initial phase[edit]
The first three missions of the operation were flown as planned by SAC on three consecutive nights beginning on 18 December 1972. On the first night 129 bombers took off, 87 of them from Guam.[37][49] 39 support aircraft of the Seventh Air Force, the Navy's Task Force 77 and the Marine Corps supported the bombers by providing F-4 Phantom fighter escorts, Republic F-105 Thunderchief Wild Weasel SAM-suppression missions, Air Force Douglas EB-66 Destroyer and Navy Grumman EA-6 Prowler radar-jamming aircraft, chaff drops, KC-135 refueling aircraft and search and rescue aircraft; the skies were dominated by American airpower to ensure the safety of the aircraft involved in the operation.[50] One B-52 bomber pilot flying out of Guam recalled "We took off one airplane a minute out of Guam for hours. Just on time takeoff after on time takeoff."[51]
Aftermath[edit]
Negotiating[edit]
On 22 December, Washington asked Hanoi to return to the talks with the terms offered in October.[82] On 26 December, Hanoi notified Washington that it was willing to "impress upon Nixon that the bombing was not the reason for this decision, the CPV Politburo told Nixon that halting the bombing was not a precondition for further talks".[83] Nixon replied that he wanted the technical discussions to resume on 2 January and that he would halt the bombing if Hanoi agreed. They did so and Nixon suspended aerial operations north of the 20th parallel on 30 December. He then informed Kissinger to agree to the terms offered in October, if that was what it took to get the agreement signed.[84] Senator Henry Jackson (D, Wash.), tried to persuade Nixon to make a televised address to explain to the American people that "we bombed them in order to get them back to the table."[85] It would have been extremely difficult to get informed observers in the U.S. to believe that he "had bombed Hanoi in order to force North Vietnamese acceptance of terms they had already agreed to".[85]
Now the only stumbling block on the road to an agreement was President Thieu. Nixon tried to placate him by writing on 5 January that "you have my assurance of continued assistance in the post-settlement period and that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam."[86][87] By this time, due to congressional opposition, Nixon was in no position to make such a promise, since the possibility of obtaining the requisite congressional appropriations was nil.[88] The South Vietnamese president still refused to agree. On 14 January Nixon made his most serious threat: "I have therefore irrevocably decided to proceed to initial the agreement on 23 January 1973… I will do so, if necessary, alone".[89][90]
On 9 January, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho returned to Paris. The agreement struck between the U.S. and North Vietnam was basically the same one that had been reached in October. The additional demands that had been made by the U.S. in December were generally discarded or went against the U.S. John Negroponte, one of Kissinger's aides during the negotiations, was more caustic: "[w]e bombed the North Vietnamese into accepting our concessions."[91] The DMZ was defined as provided for in the Geneva Accords of 1954, and would in no way be recognized as an international boundary. The demanded withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam was not mentioned at all in the text of the agreement. Kissinger did obtain a "verbal agreement" from Tho for a token withdrawal of 30,000 North Vietnamese troops.[92]
The demand for an inclusive, Indochina-wide cease-fire was simply discarded in the written agreement. Once again, Kissinger had to be satisfied with a "verbal understanding" that a cease-fire would be instituted in Laos simultaneous with or shortly following that in South Vietnam.[93] An agreement on Cambodia (where the North Vietnamese had no influence over the Khmer Rouge) was out of the question. The size of the ICCS was finally decided by splitting the difference in the number demanded by both parties at 1,160 personnel.[94] The Paris Peace Accords were signed at the Majestic Hotel in Paris on 27 January 1973.[95]