Rolling Thunder Failure

Before Operation Rolling Thunder could truly begin, it was already destined for failure. The bombing campaign, which lasted from March 1965 to October 1968, lacked any clear direction from the start. Differences in what civilian officials and political leaders called for resulted in a military operation with no stated objective. Several key leaders played a role in the failure of Rolling Thunder. On the civilian side of the house, President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security John McNaughton, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Ambassador to South Vietnam Maxwell Taylor all played pivotal roles in the self-destruction of Rolling Thunder. The military

leadership did their fair share of the harm as well, with William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam during Rolling Thunder, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff all adding to the debacle in Vietnam. To reach the point to declare Rolling Thunder a failure, this paper will examine its conception, implementation, and lasting impact. Through thorough evidence and analysis, this conclusion will be reached. It will begin with an understanding of the creation of Rolling Thunder.
President Lyndon Johnson is often blamed for expanding the Vietnam War and his oversight created Operation Rolling Thunder. Ironically, Johnson ran his presidential campaign on promise involving the domestic front, not foreign affairs. Instead of the Vietnam War, The Great Society was Johnson’s hoped-for crowning achievement, and as the expenses of Vietnam began to add up, he did not inform Congress or the American public due to concerns of putting his reform agenda on the backburner. In an interview years later, Lady Bird Johnson, the First Lady, said that in regards to her husband, that he "he has no stomach for it, no heart for it; it wasn't the war he wanted. The one he wanted was on poverty and ignorance and disease and that was worth putting your life into." In reality, Johnson had little choice but to expand the war. Early in 1965, an attack by the Viet Cong on the American Base at Pleiku resulted in the death of eight U.S. advisers. This was followed shortly after by another attack on the base at Qui Nhon, which killed another twenty-one Americans. In direct response to these attacks, John approved Rolling Thunder of February 13th of 1965. It is here that the controversy starts, as the desired outcome of the campaign was unknown.
Several different objectives were thrown around in hopes that one would stick when it came to Rolling Thunder. These include forcing Hanoi to negotiate, coercing the North to stop supporting the Viet Cong, air interdiction of supplies and men headed south, to punish North Vietnam and destroy morale, to build morale in the South, the destruction of North Vietnamese military capabilities, and finally, to protect U.S. credibility and prevent the spread of communism. From the start, there was clear confusion on what Rolling Thunder wished to achieve. Both McNamara and McNaughton supported Rolling Thunder as a form of gradualism, which was the slow applying of pressure to weaken the North Vietnamese’s will to fight. The President compared gradualism to a filibuster, saying that he expected "enormous resistance at first, then a steady whittling away, then Ho hurrying to get it over with." In the White House, they expected gradualism to end the war in twelve to eighteen months. On the other hand, the Joint Chiefs of Staff felt that gradualism would prolong the fighting as it would give the North time to strengthen their defense and build upon their will to fight. General Curtis LeMay, the hard-hitting, cigar-chomping Chief of Staff of the Air Force called for "bombing North Vietnam back to the Stone Age." To further confuse the situation, the U.S. Intelligence Board in 1965 concluded that bombing North Vietnam would, beyond just having no negative impact on Hanoi’s support of the Viet Cong, may, in fact, result in an intensification of insurgency actions against the South. To counter this, Maxwell Taylor fully believed in Rolling Thunder. In his recount of events, Westmoreland states that Taylor was “really convinced that graduated response was going to work" and if Rolling Thunder continued, Hanoi would "collaborate in obtaining cessation of the insurgency, not just stop its support.” Taylor’s counterpart in Moscow, Llewellyn Thompson believed the opposite, stating that Hanoi would not cease aggressions until it faced "a crushing military defeat.” Even Johnson had doubts himself about the outcome of Rolling Thunder, as he was unsure if it could end aggression in the long term, but expected the immediate outcome of forestalling a Communist victory. Still without a clear direction, preparations for how Rolling Thunder would be carried out by aviators began.
Before the first bombs fell, issues with targeting arose.

Civilian authorities continued to push for a strategic persuasion aimed at coercing the North to cease its support of the Viet Cong, while the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed a shift to air interdiction, the attack of supplies and men to prevent reinforcement. There was an understanding by the Joint Chiefs that North Vietnam lacked any true industrial infrastructure or ability produce war goods, which led them to doubt the impact of Rolling Thunder, but Johnson further hampered their ability to wage war. Fearing expansion of the war to China or the U.S.S.R., Johnson limited the bombing to only a few targets at a time and started with the least important first. In an attempt to interdict enemy supplies, Rolling Thunder bombed weapons, trucks, and oil. However, the President did not allow the bombing or mining of ports, a key part of air interdiction. Furthermore, several critical rail lines were off limits as well, allowing the North Vietnamese to continue sending supplies south. The reasoning behind these limitations was to prevent the death of civilians, North Vietnamese leadership, along with Chinese and Russians in North Vietnam. Chief of Staff of the Army, General Earle Wheeler, informed Westmoreland that he and McNamara were working with Washington to relax restrictions. Wheeler reasoned that once the bombing began, it would be easier to lower restriction and ramp up the campaign. On the contrary, it took

months to years for Johnson to lift any such restrictions. The majority of major North Vietnamese air bases could not be attacked until 1967, which gave them ample time to prepare defenses. To complicate the issue even more, Johnson routinely ordered bombing halts against the advice of all his military leaders.
The goal of such bombing pauses was to allow the North Vietnamese to realize the gravity of their situation and the seriousness of the American policymakers. A bombing halt in May and Christmas of 1965 hoped to bring Hanoi to the negotiation table. Predictably, this had the opposite effect. Instead of working with the Americans to end the war, the communists strengthened their air defenses, knowing that it would prolong the war. This impeded the Air Force’s ability to successfully attack targets, as Soviet surface to air missiles poured into the country. The restrictions of Rolling Thunder turned it into a war of attrition, something the Air Force was not prepared for. In 1965 when asked to expand aircraft production and facilities to train pilots, McNamara refused. When the gravity of the situation set in in 1967, McNamara ordered an increase in the number of pilots and aircraft. Unfortunately, this was already too late, and the Air Force struggled to increase its output. The rules of engagement further hindered the Air Force in three ways. First, it gave the North Vietnamese sanctuaries within their own country that they could attack from and retreat back into. Next, it freed communist defense from several major concerns, such as the loss of the port of Haiphong, attacks on the flood control system in the Red River delta, and any thoughts of a naval invasion or push through the demilitarized zone. Finally, Air Force aircraft must meet a high standard of accuracy. This means that they had to attack during the day in clear weather, putting themselves at greater risk. While the loss rate stayed relatively low, at less than one loss per thousand attack sorties, it jumped to more than twenty-five per thousand attack sorties in the Hanoi/Haiphong area. This buildup of anti-aircraft weapons greatly limited airpower actively, most importantly when it came to the B-52.
The B-52, the Air Force’s newest strategic bomber, saw limited use in Vietnam.

Due to the prevalence of anti-aircraft missiles in the North, B-52s only attacked targets in South Vietnam during Rolling Thunder. Even here, their role was limited. The B-52 fell under Strategic Air Command (SAC) and was part of the nuclear deterrence triad. Every B-52 in the Southeast Asian Theater was one less bomber performing nuclear deterrence. This harmed American credibility when it came to nuclear capabilities and increased the reluctance of SAC to give their aircraft to an outside theater commander. Furthermore, in the event of a strategic crisis, it would take far too long to transfer these aircraft back into SAC command, further reducing the impact B-52s made on Rolling Thunder. To offset the lack of strategic bombers, small, single-engine aircraft had to pick up the majority of the heavy lifting. At the peak of Rolling Thunder, 200 Air Force fighters stationed across Thailand and throughout South Vietnam attack the North along with Navy fighter wings from two aircraft carriers in the South China Sea. A further 400 Air Force fighters bombed targets in South Vietnam. In total, more than five times as many bombs hit targets in the South than in the North. More bombs were dropped during Rolling Thunder than the campaigns against Japan and Germany in World War II. By 1968, the Air Force flew 12,000 sorties in a month. When Rolling Thunder came to a disappointing end in October 1968, the

Air Force flew a total of 300,000 missions and dropped 643,000 tons of bombs. Despite these impressive states, Rolling Thunder did little to impact the outcome of the war.