Invasion of North Vietnam

[Rickshaw]

Without giving the RVN nuclear weapons, the small number of missiles that the ARVN could launch against the north would be perceived as the pin-pricks of a collapsing regime, desperately trying to avert disaster. I cannot see Washington either giving the RVN nukes nor authorising their use against North Vietnam.

 

[jackalope]

"I was trying to think if, in 1975, we had attempted some type of an "Inchon landing" after the fashion of Korea, to break the back, at least temporarily, of the NVA conventional offensive.
But, by then, to give air support to a landing in the North, would have required huge pilot casualties, and would have faced horrific AA of all kinds.
?

Neither am I an expert, but most of the AA was near the China or Laos
Ho Chi Mihn trail or Hanoi areas. Very little was in the first 30 miles of the
the ocean on the delta as very few targets were there, only farmers
plying their trade. The port of Haiphong excepted, certainly.

My understanding of the situation was likely approach/exit tracks for liklely
targets was were almost all stations, to maximize the situation.

 

[Leistungsfähiger Amerikan]

One thing that has been avoided in the discussion is the possibility of an invasion during a Sino-Soviet War, similar to the events in "Fear and Gumbo" timeline. With the main communist powers out of the picture briefly, how would the NVA fair?

 

[MacCaulay]

After Tet 68, the Viet Cong were devastated to the point that NVA regulars had to infiltrate into the South to keep the war effort going. Without material support from the North, this insurgency degrades to the point where eventually ARVN efforts can succeed.

That's a very good point. One need only look at the Easter Offensive in 1972, when NVA regular forces went up against ARVN ground troops and the ARVNs came out on top: the NVA completely underestimated what they were going up against, and the materiel handling abilities of the ARVN.

That was rectified by the 1975 invasion, but the Easter Offensive showed that the NVA did in fact have a learning curve it needed to run.

Not happening. China had nukes and the risk of escalating to an out of control nuclear war was judged not worth the risk.

Yeah...that's it: China's going to start launching ICBMs at America in the 1960s because the 1st Marine Division is raiding Haiphong...

 

[phx1138]

So the first question for you is how much NVA are you going to be facing? They're going to know you are coming, let's assume their preparation time is 50% of the time we take to put this operation together. ie, after we've passed a point of no return and its obvious to everyone that this operation is going to happen. How much can they deploy in that time?

That seems to me to presume NVA knows where the landing is coming. Recall Operation Neptune? The Germans believed they knew, & were wrong. Why wouldn't NVA have to defend the entire coastline? Or substantial portions of it?

How much defensive operations in the form of Earthworks, barriers, mines and booby traps, artillery placements can they put in place? What measures can they take to harden and secure facilities?

Again, recall Neptune/Overlord. Why wouldn't USAF throw Arclights by the dozen at defended areas anywhere close to the proposed landing site? Why wouldn't U.S. tacair hammer any kind of defenses? And hammer anything resembling movement into the proposed beachhead? This situation IMO resembles Japan's in '45: very limited mobility under very hostile air.

Best case scenario?

Casualties probably between 10 and 20%.

I find that extremely unlikely.

And at the end of best case scenario? The Russians or Chinese or both amp up resupply. With resources of the Soviet Union and China flooding in on an emergency basis, all that infrastructure damage just melts away.

And the U.S. just lets it in?

Meanwhile, North Vietnam is forced to accept or invite Chinese manpower in

Don't bet on it. The Vietnamese hated the Chinese worse than the U.S. They knew the U.S. would leave eventually. They also knew damn well, from long experience, the Chinese wouldn't.

I also wonder, if this is so unlikely, why, then, Linebacker had such a salubrious effect on DRV stalling in '72. Hmm...because they didn't like the idea of having the living crap bombed out of them? Because they'd realized Nixon wasn't the micromanaging nitwit LBJ was? Because they realized MacNamara had blown his last Edsel & was gone for good, now?

 

[Plumber]

One thing that has been avoided in the discussion is the possibility of an invasion during a Sino-Soviet War, similar to the events in "Fear and Gumbo" timeline. With the main communist powers out of the picture briefly, how would the NVA fair?

I've been wondering this one too and I don't think it's been addressed much.

 

[Clibanarius]

Not very well I would think.

 

[phx1138]

To be sure, the odds would be very much in favor of the Soviets snarling publicly but taking no actual action.

However, there'd be a non-zero chance of a shooting incident if the Soviets tried to run the blockade. That has a chance of leading to war, which has a chance of going nuclear. A very, very small chance of that last, but... you're risking the complete destruction of the US for... what?

IMO the first is the probable outcome. While the second is certainly a credible prospect, & a major train wreck if it happens more than likely, it hinges on the Sovs being stupid. Why try to run a blockade? Where's the benefit to them? The blockade is already making the U.S. look (more than a little) like a bully, & anything the Sovs want to send can wait. Nor AFAIK were the Viets at the top of the Sov client list anyhow (tho aid to DRV as a way to screw PRC would certainly have been a bonus). IMO the "air bridge" idea is too Berlin Airlift.

Something else has been bugging me, too. Why presume the objective is conquest of DRV? Why not consider it a Dieppe/Dakar "shock to the system" raid to do nothing more than force a stable peace? One that would avoid the "revanchism" (if I can call it that) of OTL 1975. I picture something where the border is moved north & Ho & Co are told, "Don't f*ck around in the South any more, or we'll be back", with strong hints of very bad weather: hard clouds of B-52s & extended iron rain. Does anybody believe the U.S. couldn't enforce that, if the stupid rules of engagement hadn't put airbases off-limits? And if supplies of SAMs continued to be prohibited? (Hell, buy off the Sovs if necessary. There had to be something they wanted more than Vietnam.)

 

[MacCaulay]

Cuba was also allied to NVA. It is a possibilty that Fidel Castro might have well tried to attack the USA, or we might have had a "Red Dawn" in the 1970s?

So was Bulgaria. What difference does that make?

They're different countries in different spheres of influence in the world. Cuba's not going to start a war just because the US has landed a Marine division at Haiphong.

 

[phx1138]

that 'Nam was actually in progress, was the idea of bombing the dikes in North Vietnam... there had been a powerful humanitarian argument against doing so. The flooding that would have ensued, would have taken out primarily civilians and, IIRC the larger food supplies of the North.

That's the usual fiction. The dykes were absolutely covered with AA, so they were perfectly legit as military targets. Flooding? Bomb them in the damn dry season, not in the monsoon. Let the Viets spend the effort rebuilding them. Then bomb them again, just before the job's done. Repeat as needed.

I think, myself, that the concern about the extremely high U.S. pilot casualty count of the first waves of those US air raids of 1975, posited in the scenario cited above, would, indeed, have borne out

IMO, the casualties (high as they were OTL) had more to do with lunatic RoE than anything. Take the gloves off, allow bombing airbases & SAM sites (not having to wait til they fire), you drastically reduce losses.

I also agree with Ariosto, if there's a genuine concern of a fight with the Sovs (which, as noted, I think is very overblown), mine heavily. Actually, IMO, do it anyhow. Make the DRV cope with the headaches. Leave unfriendlies (& unco-operative allies) not knowing what the chances are they'll run into mines. (BTW, recall the adage, you don't need mines to have a minefield: you just have to say there's one, 'cause until your ship hits a mine, you really can't know...nor are you likely to risk it.)

 

[Hendryk]

With a hostile, captive force, countering with shown force would make a difference. It would not be a guerrilla war. Friends, neighbors, and family would be shot up and killed, but would they see that. Hey, all the guys expected to die anyway in South Vietnam (born in the North, die in the South). But women? And the officials would have 'drafted' everyone who could hold a gun. As Hanson states, it does work, killing the enemy in battle.


It depended upon the conditions and how they were moved. It is not difficult for people to move 50 miles, and older ones could be moved with transportation. A week or so is seven miles a day, and the first 10 miles are the most critical for security reasons. Running a guerrilla war with people who are not from that area, fractured in groups to family units and can not leave a set area is pretty difficult.


Ethnic cleansing is a permanent movement. This would be, on our behalf, a 6 week proposition, merely demonstrating what is possible. It would shatter the N. Viet Communists thinking, just like our occupation of Japan shattered the Shinto world, by showing our human face and military power in front of the opposite from the Communists. Done correctly, they would have gladly toned down their conditions at the Peace Talks.

Your analogy with Japan is flawed since US forces were only deployed in Japan after the surrender and therefore did not face any resistance; look up Okinawa to see what happened when they did face resistance, it wasn't pretty. But the real problem here is that you intend to "show our human face" through mass forced population relocation? (Leaving aside the logistical issues of such a huge undertaking).

It depended upon the conditions and how they were moved. It is not difficult for people to move 50 miles, and older ones could be moved with transportation. A week or so is seven miles a day, and the first 10 miles are the most critical for security reasons. Running a guerrilla war with people who are not from that area, fractured in groups to family units and can not leave a set area is pretty difficult. (...)

Being mean does not work with any substantial entity, as you say. However killing does. The two are very different in psychology. Now we delve into the weird world of the human mind. For example, _Shantung Compound_ where the author Gilkey time and time again observed first hand the oddity that the interned groups would accept the iron authority of the enemy far more than within their own leadership. Kill people quickly, and the survivors come around and be very nice and open to ideas. Vlad Dracula, Ghenghis Khan, and dictators around the world do/did it (available gold cup in every town square, with absolutely no crime). To a lesser extent, so exists the strange alchemy of invading forces and occupied groups.

"Kill people quickly, and the survivors come around and be very nice and open to ideas." Not only is this tantamount to endorsement of genocide, it's also stupid in military terms. It's exactly what Japan did in China--capture the capital, raze everything, terrify the population into submission. Did it work? Eight years, unspeakable atrocities, and a million military casualties later, the Japanese were still bogged down.

Tell me, did did a single German or Japanese ever fight a guerrilla war a year after 1946 on their home ground?

No, obviously, because by then their countries had surrendered.

 

[jmc247]

The U.S. could have forced the North out of the war either by Nixon's two options he talked about blow, but it would have killed at least hundreds of thousands of people and might have started another war.

Nixon: We've got to quit thinking in terms of a three-day strike [in the Hanoi-Haiphong area]. We've got to be thinking in terms of an all-out bombing attack - which will continue until they - Now by all-out bombing attack, I am thinking about things that go far beyond. I'm thinking of the dikes, I'm thinking of the railroad, I'm thinking, of course, the docks.
Kissinger: I agree with you.
President Nixon: We've got to use massive force.
Two hours later at noon, H. R. Haldeman and Ron Ziegler joined Kissinger and Nixon:
President: How many did we kill in Laos?
Ziegler: Maybe ten thousand - fifteen?
Kissinger: In the Laotian thing, we killed about ten, fifteen.
President: See, the attack in the North that we have in mind, power plants, whatever's left - POL [petroleum], the docks. And, I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: About two hundred thousand people.
President: No, no, no, I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?
Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
President: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?...I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Vietnam's_dikes

 

[Commissar]

Yeah...that's it: China's going to start launching ICBMs at America in the 1960s because the 1st Marine Division is raiding Haiphong...

No, but it may nuke American Formations and or Fleet Elements and would throw enough troops into the fray to stalmate us and throw us out like in Korea.

American planners did not want to try that again or risk a nuclear exchange.

So an invasion of North Vietnam by U.S. troops was a no-go to avoid that.

 

[Grimm Reaper]

There is no possibility of such nonsense as the US giving atomic weapons to South Vietnam nor could the US have forced North Vietnam out of the war in 1972 using conventional forces and North Vietnam had already allowed tens of thousands of Chinese in nor would the break in relations between Hanoi and Beijing take place until after neither had to wonder what the US was doing in SE Asia.

The likelihood of China starting a nuclear war or sending in enough troops to push the US out of South Vietnam, this at a time when Mao's lunatic Cultural Revolution is crippling Chinese military competence, is also pretty much nil.

 

[Grimm Reaper]

Yet another obvious problem is this idea that after so many years of war the US could somehow knock North Vietnam out with a bombing raid or a raid on Haiphong by the Marines, not to mention just how Nixon is going to get either Congress or the nation to sign off on these ideas.

 

[MacCaulay]

Yet another obvious problem is this idea that after so many years of war the US could somehow knock North Vietnam out with a bombing raid or a raid on Haiphong by the Marines, not to mention just how Nixon is going to get either Congress or the nation to sign off on these ideas.

Probably the same way he got them to sign off on the invasion of Cambodia: do it and only inform them when it's already under way. All of one member of Congress was informed prior to the Cambodian invasion.

 

[Grimm Reaper]

On an entirely different scale so that wouldn't work.

Based on force levels in South Vietnam at the end of 1970 I'm not certain the US even had a corps available for use elsewhere.

 

[MacCaulay]

No, but it may nuke American Formations and or Fleet Elements and would throw enough troops into the fray to stalmate us and throw us out like in Korea.

American planners did not want to try that again or risk a nuclear exchange.

Over Hanoi? As in...the same government that it went to war with as soon as we left? For God's sake, why?

American planners didn't want to try that because of a nuclear risk; they didn't want to try that because the public was against Vietnam.

 

[Ariosto]

A curious thought that came into my head when I began thinking about the Cambodian Campaign. What if the Invasion of Cambodia was an almost entirely ARVN operation, and Operation Lam Son (The Invasion of Laos) was the final major offensive by American Forces in Vietnam?

 

[DG Valdron]

Over Hanoi? As in...the same government that it went to war with as soon as we left? For God's sake, why?

Well, the United States left in 1972. South Vietnam fell in 1975. And the Chinese-Vietnamese Border war was 1979.

Seven years in terms of American politics means that the Chinese waited out the equivalent of three reincarnations.