Air Force Security Police and South Vietnamese soldiers guard the perimeter fence at Tan Son Nhut Air Base.
Vietnam
The aerial interdiction campaign against North Vietnam which began on 6 April 1972 with attacks in the southern part of the country expanded rapidly. On 16 April, B-52s, escorted by fighter and aircraft specializing in electronic countermeasures and suppression of surface-to-air missiles, bombed the fuel storage tanks at Haiphong, setting fires that, reflected from cloud and smoke, were visible from 110 miles away. Shortly afterward, carrier aircraft joined Air Force fighter-bombers in battering a tank farm and a warehouse complex on the outskirts of Hanoi. When these attacks failed to slow the offensive, naval aircraft began mining the harbors on 8 May, and two days later the administration extended the aerial interdiction campaign, formerly known as Freedom Train but now designated Linebacker, throughout all of North Vietnam.
By LTC Craig Roberts, USAR, Ret.
Nov 2013 Soldier of Fortune
In the early morning hours of January 31st, 1968, Communist forces across South Vietnam began an offensive that would later become known as the “Tet Offensive.” For months the attacks against American and South Vietnamese bases had been planned and organized. The North Vietnamese generals, led by Minister of Defense Vo Nguyen Giap, had planned the attack to coincide with Vietnam’s Lunar New Year, a holiday season where many of the South Vietnamese troops would be home on leave, or at least not on duty at their various bases.
The plan was bold. For the Saigon attacks Giap formulated a coordinated attack with missions to seize and neutralize key command and control centers, armor and artillery depots at Go Vap, take over the Cholon sector of Saigon, neutralize Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon, and at the same time destroy the Newport Bridge that linked Saigon to L