The Marine hill outposts, originally supplied from the base at Khe Sanh, were thereafter served by helicopters flying from the Marine base at Dong Ha. Air Force and Marine crews en route to Khe Sanh flew the last few miles through a wall of enemy anti-aircraft fire.

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As tactical air supported the Marines on the ground, so too did it accompany transport aircraft on their supply missions into the Khe Sanh TAOR. NVA anti-aircraft guns in calibers up to 37mm were dug into the hills around Khe Sanh and menaced the aerial highway leading to the base. By March, the danger from enemy fire was so acute that all transports were provided with tactical air escorts. Air planners drew on their maps a line indicating the flight path for a cargo plane from the time it dropped below 3,500 feet until it regained that altitude after disgorging its cargo. The potential danger area from which a 37mm gun could hit a plane was calculated. Fighter-bombers were directed against known or potential enemy gun positions, using 20mm cannon and fragmentation bombs. These attack runs commenced when the cargo planes descended to 1,500 feet.

In clear weather, two fighters would lay smoke screens to conceal both sides of the flight path of the incoming transports. During the siege, every 37mm gun emplacement was repeatedly attacked until intelligence showed the gun to be destroyed or abandoned. More than 300 anti-aircraft sites were reportedly destroyed. When necessary, Air Force F-4 Phantoms equipped with cannon were kept in the area to discourage the North Vietnamese Air Force from intervening in the fighting around Khe Sanh. Carrier-based aircraft bombed airfields in North Vietnam that short-range enemy MiG aircraft would have had to use to attack the Marine positions.

General Westmoreland was certain the NVA intended to overrun the Marine base at Khe Sanh as they had done at Dien Bien Phu. If so, air power was instrumental in denying victory to the Communist forces. Weather and other considerations prevented accurate measurement of the damage sustained by enemy forces from Operation Niagara. Photoreconnaissance and direct visual observation credited Niagara forces with causing 4,705 secondary explosions, 1,288 enemy killed, 1,061 structures destroyed, 158 damaged, 891 bunkers destroyed, 99 damaged, 253 trucks destroyed and 52 damaged. Without a body count, enemy personnel losses were estimates. Westmoreland’s Systems Analysis Office produced four models from which its analysts concluded that total NVA casualties–killed or wounded seriously enough to require evacuation–numbered between 9,800 and 13,000 men. The generally cited figure of 10,000 casualties represents half the number of NVA believed to have attacked the Khe Sanh combat base at the beginning of the fighting there. The number also represents 59 percent of the number of enemy killed in all of I Corps during the Tet Offensive.

The $1 billion of aerial munitions expended by the United States during the siege totaled almost 100,000 tons. That was almost 1,300 tons of bombs dropped daily–five tons for every one of the 20,000 NVA soldiers initially estimated to have been committed to the fighting at Khe Sanh. This expenditure of aerial munitions dwarfs the amount of munitions delivered by artillery, which totals eight shells per enemy soldier believed to have been on the battlefield.

General Vo Nguyen Giap claimed that Khe Sanh was never of particular importance to the North Vietnamese. According to him, it was the United States that made Khe Sanh important because the Americans had placed their prestige at stake there. In the larger scheme of things, the fighting at Khe Sanh was of little lasting significance.

Before the bombs and shells of Operation Niagara stopped falling on the Khe Sanh battlefield, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered severe restrictions on aerial and naval attacks against North Vietnam, declared the readiness of the United States to begin peace discussions to end the war and declined to seek re-election to the presidency. In June 1968, the base at Khe Sanh was abandoned by the Americans. Ultimately, the United States would learn that it was unable to win at the conference table what it could not win on the battlefield.

This article was written by Peter Brush and originally published in Vietnam Magazine.

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