The General Public Did Not Know All Of These Details During The Vietnam War

When the President Finally Lost Confidence in His top General in Vietnam

FRACTURE JAW never went beyond the planning stage. As things turned out, fears of an American Dien Bien Phu at Khe Sanh proved to be overblown. The French debacle in the earlier siege was caused by France’s inability to resupply its beleaguered garrison from the air. However, America had an ace in the hole that France did not: the US Air Force, whose capabilities were orders of magnitude greater than that of the French air force. American aerial assets managed to sustain the US garrison at Khe Sanh with adequate resupplies of men and materiel. Simultaneously, American air power severely pounded the North Vietnamese besiegers until they gave up and retreated in the summer of 1968.

As to General Westmoreland, after years of LBJ acquiescence to his requests for more and more troops, the president finally drew a line in 1968. That year, the American buildup in Vietnam reached a peak of 535,000 men. When Westmoreland asked for 200,000 more men, the president had enough. The general was already on thin ice because of his insatiable appetite for troops and materials. The attempt to keep secret from the White House a plan to nuke North Vietnam, and overall dissatisfaction with the war’s direction and prospects, soured LBJ on him even more. So Johnson decided to get a new commander. Westmoreland was sacked with a promotion upstairs to Army Chief of Staff. He was replaced with his deputy, Creighton Abrams, who began a steady troop draw down.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

All That is Interesting – Newly Declassified Documents Reveal That a Top US General Planned For Nuclear Attack During the Vietnam War

Angers, Trent – The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story, Revised Edition (2014)

Beschloss, Michael – Presidents of War (2018)

Big Think – Project 100,000: The Vietnam War’s Cruel Experiment on American Soldiers

Davidson, Phillip – Vietnam at War: The History, 1946-1975 (1988)

Dickinson College, History 118 – Best Kept Secrets of the Vietnam War

Encyclopedia Britannica – My Lai Massacre

Encyclopedia dot Com – Vietnam: Drug Use In

Fall, Bernard B. – Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1967)

History Collection – Here is the Intense Training Soldiers Went Through During the Vietnam War