Crosswinds: The Air Force's Setup in Vietnam

Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series #30

by Earl H. Tilford

Who lost the war in Vietnam? Popular mythology has blamed politicians, the press, or Jane Fonda and the antiwar movement. Crosswinds, a riveting and incisive analysis by a former Air Force officer who served as an intelligence specialist during the war, demonstrates convincingly that the U.S. Air Force was indeed "set up" for defeat, but not by an America that tied its hands. Rather, the Air Force was a victim of its own history, its institutional values, and an intellectually ossified leadership which could not devise a strategy appropriate to the war at hand. These factors within the Air Force itself created heavy flying.
To many airmen and military analysts, the color of the flag over Ho Chi Minh City was the result of political betrayal of an Air Force that had delivered an unbroken string of unmitigated tactical victories. Many embrace the myth that the Christmas Bombing of December, 1972, for instance, had brought Hanoi to its knees before the politicians called the military off. Moreover, these commentators argue that the same "victory" could have been had at any time during the war if only air power had been unleashed. Yet, Earl Tilford convincingly demonstrates that - in spite of the nearly eight million tons of bombs dropped in Indochina, the 2,257 Air Force planes lost, and the untold thousands of people killed - air power failed to achieve victory.
This book examines the entire Air Force experience in Southeast Asia, including the "secret wars" in Laos and Vietnam. Using previously untapped, recently declassified sources, Tilford challenges the accepted Air Force interpretation that it was betrayed. Tackling the issues of the air war, he traces the doctrine of strategic bombing from its roots in World War II through its development in the 1950s and early 1960s as a response to the Soviet threat abroad and interservice rivalries at home. In concluding, he compares the debacle of the Vietnam air war with the strategies of the subsequent Gulf war. Crosswinds is a powerful piece of writing, thoroughly researched and convincingly argued. It will contribute mightily to the ongoing attempt to understand what happened in Southeast Asia and why.

252 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1993

Reviews

[Michael Burnam-Fink]

There are few topics more contentious than the use of airpower in the Vietnam War. Tilford attempts a balanced, academic dismantling of two major airpower myths, that Rolling Thunder could have been successful if Johnson and McNamara untied commanders hands and let them use maximum force, and that the Linebacker II Christmas Bombings brought North Vietnam to its knees. Vietnam was in many ways an air war: airpower was the first component in, the last to leave, and accounted for 50% of the cost of the war to America. Understanding airpower is key to understanding the war, but Tilford's efforts don't quite match up to his thesis.

The strategic analysis is quite good, as Tilford discusses the evolution of airpower theory from Douhet and Mitchell through the 1960s, the adoption as an article of faith by airforce brass that strategic bomber strikes against 'vital centers' could destroy the foe's ability and will to wage war, and how it became solidified in a nuclear-centric heavy bomber force. This doctrine might have been applicable to WW2 Germany and Japan, but the agrarian economy of North Vietnam had no vital centers, and the people were totally committed to the war. Rather, from 65-68 airpower proved ineffective because Hanoi was willing to endure any sane attack, short of nuclear weapons, and in 72 the Christmas bombings were irrelevant because the recalcitrant party were the South Vietnamese, who recognized a bad deal when they saw one. But I think acceptance of the strategic analysis is tied more to your agreement with the Revisionist school of Vietnam War historians (personally, I disagree with the Revisionists entirely. Vastly increased American firepower and commitment would not have changed the final outcome)

What I wanted from this book was more of an operational/tactical critique of the air war. In the introduction, Tilford talks about his experiences as a briefing officer, being unable to use the word 'retreat' to describe ARVN behavior during the Lam Son 719 fiasco, and being punished for 'taking the commander's planes away' to do close-air support. For the key interdiction campaign against the Ho Chi Minh trail, truck kill counts had no basis in reality. When the Air Force finally shot at real truck on a range stateside, the found a "destroyed" truck hit by a 40mm Bofors shell had easily repairable damage, and a "damaged" near-miss from the same shell might not even puncture tires.

Those are fascinating moments, but that's all there is. I've heard that the command structure for airpower in Vietnam was a mess: CINCPAC, 7th Airforce, 13th Airforce, ground commanders with on call fire support, etc. Unity of command is a basic precept of military operations, and this book doesn't adequately describe disunity in Vietnam. Likewise, while Crosswinds describes three campaigns in detail (Rolling Thunder, Linebacker, and Commando Hunt), close air support for troops in South Vietnam is barely covered at all, with just an aside that it took 110,000 tons of bombs to kill 10,000 PAVN soldiers at Khe Sanh.

The final chapter is a recapitulation of the success of airpower in Desert Storm, where stealth bombers and precision guided weapons devastated Saddam's tank army in the open field, paving the way for a stunning limited victory. This chapter feels tacked on, and at odds with the rest of the book.

Aligning the destructive force of airpower with the objectives of modern limited wars is definitely a challenge, but all I can say after reading this book is that we definitely didn't do it in Vietnam.