It was an independent strategic interdiction campaign designed to disrupt the flow of Soviet supplies, as the North Vietnamese had few resources of their own at the time. Thus, although painted as an alliance between South Vietnam and America in the press, it was by and large an independent effort. "Operation Freedom Train began in April 1972 in response to the North Vietnamese Army's massive Easter Offensive invasion. Freedom Train consisted of U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine strikes against North Vietnamese targets. The operation was renamed Linebacker I in May 1972." (Phan, 2002) Again, in all of these missions, the United States armed forces dominated, the only variation being that the air force took temporary prominence over the usually dominant land conflict.
Command & Control of Air Assets
Cargo skips like Sky hawks manned with machine guns, cargo ships, and lightly armed planes designed to mark targets were all deployed. The North Vietnamese by and large stayed above the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) so air superiority over the South was not a concern. Rather the air was used as a way of driving the North Vietnamese from their bases. Until 1968 the major strategic objective was to intercept the South supply route on the Ho Chi Minn Trail. After that, it was too coarse the North Vietnamese to sigh a peace treaty, the major goal of the later Linebacker I and Linebacker II campaigns. Unlike "Rolling Thunder," these targeted Hanoi and Hopakong and allowed less time for North Vietnamese 'resting and regrouping.' Some believe that if the U.S. had pursued a similar strategy from the beginning it might have 'won' Vietnam, although this is debatable.
Lessons that U.S. Forces learned...
missions were failures. Throughout the war, the air forces were used for reconnaissance missions, airlifts, interdictions, and refueling, as well as carpet-bombing missions. B-52s were the major crafts used in successful interdictions. One of the most successful operations was the use of tactical airlifts to drop supplies. Search and rescue missions by 'Jolly Green Giant' crafts resulted in the successful rescue of 3, 883 Americans. But these individual missions did not satisfy the overall strategic objective. Thus, the two major lessons learned are firstly, one must understand the loyalty of ground forces when using even carpet-bombing techniques, as the opposite effect upon morale can be had upon an emotionally cohesive populace. Secondly, after an understanding of history, carpet-bombing must be specifically timed so as not to let the enemy have time to regroup. Historical analogies are far from perfect, as both the domino theory and the application of the Berlin bombings to Vietnam illustrate.
Works Cited
Humphrey, David C., "Tuesday Lunch at the Johnson White House: A Preliminary Assessment." Diplomatic History. Volume 8: Winter 1984.
Thies, Wallace J. (19800 When Governments Collide: Coercion and Diplomacy in the Vietnam Conflict, 1964-1968, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Phan, Quong. (2002) "An Analysis of Linebacker II Air Campaign: The Exceptional Application of U.S. Air Coercion Strategy." Lubbock, TX, Vietnam Center, Texas Tech University. Available online at 23 Jan 2005 at http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/2002_Symposium/2002Papers_files/linebacker.htm
