‘For all practical purposes, Khe Sanh was totally dependent upon air support for its existence,’ noted General William W. Momyer, deputy commander of MACV (U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam) and Seventh Air Force commander. ‘By the fall of 1967, enemy activity around Khe Sanh forced us to decide whether the base should be evacuated or defended. We thought of Dien Bien Phu and its isolation, but decided we could do the job with intensive air support.’

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Operation Niagara, as the air effort in support of the Marine base at Khe Sanh was dubbed, is usually thought of in terms of the enormous bomb loads dropped on the surrounding enemy positions, but equally critical was the aerial resupply of its defenders by Air Force and Marine airlifters.

If there was anything that kept the morale of the Marines at Khe Sanh alive during the darkest hours of the siege, it was the sight of a load of parachute-borne cargo containers drifting to earth from a low, overcast sky. Even when bad weather and enemy fire prevented Air Force and Marine airlifters from landing, the beans and bullets that were necessary for the survival of the combat base continued to come in. No doubt the outcome of the Siege of Khe Sanh would have been quite different without the airlift operation.

Before making his decision to hold Khe Sanh in the face of an obvious enemy buildup, the MACV commander, General William C. Westmoreland, was briefed by a historian about the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Study groups within his own command, as well as the chiefs of staff, believed that General Giap would attempt to re-enact the full Dien Bien Phu scenario around the Marine combat base.

There were many similarities between the two: Like Dien Bien Phu, Khe Sanh was isolated; both were located in valleys surrounded by high, mountainous terrain. Because the enemy controlled the countryside, Khe Sanh was cut off from all resupply except by air, as had been Dien Bien Phu. But though there were similarities, the American situation was much better than that of the French 14 years before. Though Khe Sanh was isolated, the distance to the nearest allied bases could be measured in tens of miles instead of hundreds, and flying time between the combat base and the nearest supply base involved minutes, not hours.

And General Westmoreland had an asset in abundance that the French had lacked — adequate airlift resources to keep the Marine base supplied during an extended siege.

In 1954, French air transport squadrons were equipped with twin-engine C-47 transports: rugged and reliable airplanes to be sure, but also very slow and limited in payload for the 400-mile round trip required to supply the isolated base at Dien Bien Phu. In 1968, General Westmoreland had at his disposal a massive airlift apparatus, including three full wings equipped with fast, modern four-engine C-130 Hercules turboprop transports capable of carrying 35,000-pound payloads over fairly long distances — yet they would have to fly only a little more than 100 miles to get to Khe Sanh from Da Nang.

Weather conditions at Khe Sanh were expected to be bad during the late winter months, and MACV assumed the enemy would take advantage of them. Evidence of increasing enemy anti-aircraft resources around the combat base would present a formidable obstacle — the historian pointed out that a major problem for the French at Dien Bien Phu had been their failure to suppress enemy groundfire. And so far this was also true at Khe Sanh in early 1968. But Westmoreland had confidence in the ability of the airlifters of the Air Force’s 834th Air Division (AD), as well as in the Marines? own C-130, CH-53 and CH-46 crews, to get through.

The airlift apparatus upon which General Westmoreland was depending to keep Khe Sanh supplied had been in place in South Vietnam since 1966, when the 834th Air Division was activated to control all airlift within South Vietnam. Commanded in 1968 by Brig. Gen. Burl McLaughlin, the 834th consisted of two airlift wings — the 325th Air Commando Wing and the 483 rd Tactical Airlift Wing — along with the 2nd Aerial Port Group. In addition to the two airlift wings, equipped respectively with C-123 Providers and C-7 Caribous, the division also had operational control of four-engine C-130 Hercules transports that were based out of country with the 315th Air Division, but whose main duties were to provide aircraft and crews for in-country airlift operations.

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