The $1 billion of aerial munitions expended by the United States during the siege totaled almost 100,000 tons. That was almost 1,300 tons of bombs dropped daily--five tons for every one of the 20,000 NVA soldiers initially estimated to have been committed to the fighting at Khe Sanh. This expenditure of aerial munitions dwarfs the amount of munitions delivered by artillery, which totals eight shells per enemy soldier believed to have been on the battlefield. General Vo Nguyen Giap claimed that Khe Sanh was never of particular importance to the North Vietnamese. According to him, it was the United States that made Khe Sanh important because the Americans had placed their prestige at stake there. In the larger scheme of things, the fighting at Khe Sanh was of little lasting significance. Before the bombs and shells of Operation Niagara stopped falling on the Khe Sanh battlefield, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered severe restrictions on aerial and naval attacks against North Vietnam, declared the readiness of the United States to begin peace discussions to end the war and declined to seek re-election to the presidency. In June 1968, the base at Khe Sanh was abandoned by the Americans. Ultimately, the United States would learn that it was unable to win at the conference table what it could not win on the battlefield. |
Good Morning, Foxhole.
Good thread. A whole lot of new-tech war stuff was being tested over there at the time. The sound sensor info is interesting, but the sharp-eyed Marine seemed to to a better job than the sensors.
Incoming rounds slammed into the runway and apparently struck the C-130's left main landing gear, causing the aircraft to swerve and smash into a forklift.
Five-hundred pound bombs fall on NVA trenches at the northeast end of the Khe Sanh runway.
Bruce M. Geiger
At Khe Sanh: February 22 - April 14, 1968
First Lieutenant, 1st Battalion, 44th Artillery, 108th Artillery Group, 1st Field Force, U.S. Army Attached to the 3rd Marine Division
I hope he has a special place in hades.
That $1 billion amounted to 1/6000th of the $6 trillion LBJ wasted on his so-called War On Poverty.
In the hood this WOP would be known as Money Fo Nuthin.
The image of Niagara is apt--if LBJ had been replaced by a Patton-Halsey hybrid which would have gone through the NVA like crap through a goose until Vietnamese became a language spoken only in hell.
Of course war was much tougher than stealing ballot boxes and Johnson chickened out:
President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered severe restrictions on aerial and naval attacks against North Vietnam, declared the readiness of the United States to begin peace discussions to end the war and declined to seek re-election to the presidency.
In addition to his criminal sanitization of target lists, LBJ refused the Joint Chiefs' request to bomb Hanoi and mine Haiphong November 1965 as chronicled by their Marine aide in "The Day It Became The Longest War" in May 1996 Proceedings.
So the enemy had a secure supply line, sanctuary in contiguous countries, and the protection of a U.S. president who explained his treason by saying, "I'm trying to teach Ho Chi Minh a lesson without starting WWIII. I'm like the applicant for the schoolteacher position in a small town who answers the school board's question about whether the earth is flat or round by saying, 'I can teach it both ways.'"
ADSID III
electronic seismic sensor, one of several types dropped by U.S. aircraft along enemy roads and pathways in SEA. It was essentially a radio transmitter that picked up ground vibrations made by enemy trucks and troop movements and transmitted these signals to a friendly intelligence center through an airplane flying overhead. By keeping a record of these transmissions, U.S. personnel were able to determine the rate of enemy activity in any particular area and order an air strike when it became sufficiently promising. Siesmic sensors were designed to stick in the ground when dropped from an aircraft.
Another type of detection device was the acoustic sensor which transmitted the actual sound, not ground vibrations, made by enemy trucks and personnel. It was designed to hang from a tree by its parachute after the drop.
The sensor program, known as Igloo White, went into operation along the Ho Cho Minh Trail in December 1967.
A covert operation known as Manchurian Candidate was launched Christmas Eve 1968 when President Nixon dispatched John Kill-Em-All* Kerry to Cambodia in an aluminum canoe with an electric trolling motor to troll for votes. As shown on Red Koppel's Nightline in 2004 a large number of retired Communist warriors remembered Kill-Em-All* and were only too happy to do video testimonials to his nuanced positions below the gunwales of that craft, dodging the fierce poison-tipped darts of the C'mere, Rouge.
*Kill-Em-All is a registered trademark of Valin Associates, LLC.
"Anti-terrorism" or gun control? I'm the NRA and I eschew back alleys--as assiduously as traitor-rapist42 eschewed our constitution, e.g., the Second Amendment--while allowing his prime donor Wang Jun of Poly to bring 2,000 AK-47s to our nation's underprivileged street gangs.
Besides, Rush Limbaugh did the OKCBomb deal.
Scott, you should have read the memo, dude: