Word: 52s
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Laos in a mission new known as Dewey Canyon I-a mission which even a number of close Kissinger aides didnot know of at the time. The bombing of predominantly civilian areas in Laos was vastly stepped up, and the U. S. air command began the use of B-52s in raids on Cambodia that May. Throughout this period, Kissinger was telling visitors-particularly student groups-that the war would be over soon, that the Administration needed only nine more months to master the situation and begin to move...
...same time, there is deep disenchantment with the way the U.S. has fought the war. The Asians have seen that B-52s and free-fire zones are no answer to a local insurgency, and they are aghast at how badly U.S. technology and firepower have ravaged the countries they were supposed to save. Says the Philippines' Marcos: "I articulate what most of the nations feel-and what is that? Heaven forbid that war should come to their countries, and heaven forbid that the U.S. should duplicate what it has done in South Viet Nam if that war should come...
...reason why the operation stalled was that it took six days for General Hoang Xuan Lam, the ARVN commander, to get around to establishing a forward command post inside Laos, where the troops, the B-52s and the other elements could be coordinated. What is more, Lam's staff was riven by jealousies. Major General Le Nguyen Khang, who bosses South Viet Nam's elite Marines and holds a slight seniority edge over Lam, was so miffed when Lam was named to run the Laos operation that he retired to Saigon and turned his responsibilities over...
That the ARVN withdrawal was not yet a rout was due very largely to U.S. airpower. Day after day, B-52s, F-4 Phantoms and F-100s, flying as many strike sorties for the Lam Son operation alone as they ordinarily stage in all of Indochina, kept the battlefield under incessant barrage. Giant B-52s, used like Phantom jets for close ground support, pursued North Vietnamese soldiers through jungle and elephant grass, dropping their 30,000-lb. bomb loads as close as 600 yards to allied positions. Everywhere ARVN soldiers went, they stumbled upon phalanxes of enemy bodies, or survivors...
Advancing North Vietnamese forces this weekend sent the remnants of what was once an elite South Vietnamese army hurtling back across the Laotian border towards the protection of American units. American helicopters, jet fighters, and B-52s flew hundreds of missions in an attempt to keep the South Vietnamese units from being completely wiped...