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Although the American involvement in Vietnam is best known for the Army’s involvement, the US Navy also played a major role in the conflict, with the US Seventh Fleet playing a major role in the war from the Gulf of Tonkin incident to the final air campaigns of 1972. Those familiar with the Pacific War will find much that is similar here – the focus is on carrier groups, and on the major logistics program needed to maintain these sizable forces at sea.
One big difference is that the Seventh Fleet in Vietnam didn’t have any major rival at sea. The North Vietnamese had some patrol vessels, which were involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, but no powerful warships. The biggest threat to the US carriers came from accidents, with three major fires on carriers killing hundreds and wounding many more.
We get an interesting look at the US Navy during a time of rapid change, fighting a war it wasn’t entirely prepared for. This was a Cold War navy build around the idea of providing a nuclear deterent, now forced to fight a semi-conventional land war against an opponent without obvious targets for a strategic bombing campaign. This is almost entirely a story of naval aviation, with carrier air power being used to hit targets well beyond the range of the fleet’s guns.
We get the obligatory comments about how political control of the air campaign crippled it, with the underlying assumption that all would have been well if only the military had been allowed free reign. There are three problems with this argument – first is that the US military carried out one of the longest and most intensive air offensives of all time during the Vietnam War, and it failed to achieve its aims (Rolling Thunder alone saw more weight of bombs dropped by the US than during the entire Pacific War). The second is that this comes just after we’ve been told that all three of the main services had wanted to be in charge of all air power in Vietnam, giving the political leadership three very different contraditory options to pick from. The third is that this view never addresses the main issue behind the political limits – the fear of triggering a full scale clash with China or Russia. This has always seemed to me to be a legitimate concern. I’m equally unconvinced by the argument that Nixon’s willingness to allow the military a freer hand during Operation Linebacker in 1972 proved the military’s argument that unrestricted bombing could force a victory. While it did force the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table, it very much failed to convince them to give up the idea of uniting Vietnam, and only delayed their eventual victory by two years.
This is a useful look at how the US Navy coped with the unplanned nature of the fighting in Vietnam, which forced it to adapt to a type of battle it wasn’t prepared for at the start of the conflict, against an opponent that became increasingly dangerous as the war went on. Linebacker showed that Naval air power could be effective when the North Vietnamese chose to fight a more conventional war, but the earlier years of the conflict suggest that air power was less effective against guerrilla fighters and an opponent with few obvious strategic targets.
Chapters
The Fleet’s Purpose
Fleet Fighting Power
How the Fleet Operated
Combat and Aftermath
Author: Edward J Marolda
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 80
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2023