‘If the North Vietnamese wanted to belly up to American defenses the way they had at Dak To and Loc Ninh and although a threat to the Marines,’ General Pearson said, ‘it was an undeniable opportunity to direct concentrated air strikes against a known enemy position on a sustained basis.’ Westmoreland agreed. The year before he had crushed one division at Con Thien, where he learned that massed firepower is sometimes in itself sufficient to force a besieging enemy to desist. As Neil Sheehan wrote in A Bright Shining Lie, Hanoi’s ambition was Westmoreland’s opportunity to bury Hanoi’s divisions under a cascade of bombs.

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Westmoreland had studied the First Indochina War, and he even met privately with French General Paul Vanuxem, a veteran of that earlier war, who supported Westmoreland’s view of Giap and advised him to hold on to Khe Sanh. Westmoreland believed that the Communists would seek negotiations after seizing Quang Tri and Thua Thien, but he thought they would also seek a major victory before the talks. The mistake in his reasoning was that the French and Viet Minh had agreed to talk before the battle started, but the Americans and Hanoi had not even agreed to begin talks.

Westmoreland’s belief that a major attack was imminent was supported when at the Battle of Dak To the Americans captured a Communist front command directive that provided roles and missions for the winter-spring offensive, specifically for NVA troops to ‘annihilate a major U.S. element.’ However, the captured document did not identify where. In November Westmoreland decided that if he were Giap, the offensive would be directed at Khe Sanh. In early January, Westmoreland prepared to meet the anticipated assault head-on with firepower. By January 5, he had conceived and planned Operation Niagara, the Boeing B-52 bombing of the area around the Khe Sanh combat base (see this issue’s Web site article, at www.historynet.com, beginning November 15, 1999). But Westmoreland still planned to defend I Corps (by moving the 1st Cavalry there) and in the future drive into Laos.

Simultaneously, Giap began to sense that Khe Sanh seemed to be worth much more to the Americans than just its normal military value. An increase in the number of press stories focusing on Khe Sanh, which always seemed to be monitored by the Communists, indicated that President Johnson was worried Khe Sanh would become another Dien Bien Phu. In fact, in December Walt Rostow briefed the president on that very idea. Although Giap planned to use Khe Sanh as the final test, he recognized another possibility–maybe Khe Sanh could divert Washington’s attention, and perhaps Johnson’s fear might force Westmoreland to divert his attention. Giap went so far as to use Wilford Burchett, an Australian Communist reporter, to plant a story that the general was personally in command at Khe Sanh. Giap did play the diversion card, but the plan was not conceived until December and not implemented until January.

Many Americans overreacted, thinking Khe Sanh would be another Dien Bien Phu. But the Khe Sanh siege was different. According to Peter Braestrup in his book The Big Story, published in the 1980s, ‘The major differences between Khe Sanh and Dien Bien Phu [that] were observable in Vietnam during the siege concerned logistics, material, distance to friendly forces, besiegers’ efforts to take ground, and the relative firepower of both sides.’ The main reasons Khe Sanh never became another Dien Bien Phu were firepower, air supply and Giap’s option play.

During the the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the French had mustered 100 aircraft, while at Khe Sanh the Americans had more than 2,000 bombers and 3,000 helicopters on call. The French had launched an average of 189 sorties a day, dropping 175 tons of bombs, whereas U.S. air power averaged 320 sorties delivering 1,282 tons. The B-52s of Westmoreland’s Operation Niagara unleashed 59,542 tons of ordnance. In 10 weeks the Air Force, Navy and Marines dropped 103,500 tons in a five-square-mile area around Khe Sanh. Westmoreland called it ‘one of the heaviest and most concentrated displays of firepower in the history of war.’

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