Christmas bombing - from a US peace movement perspective
Subject: [Vsg] Christmas bombing - from a US peace movement perspective
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From: Andrew Wells-Dang <andrewwd@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 5:59 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
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From: Jerry Elmer <JElmer@clf.org>
Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 3:05 AM
Subject:
To: Jerry Elmer <JElmer@clf.org>
I am pleased that the article I sent you this past Friday has been picked up by this website:
http://www.newclearvision.com/
Jerry
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From: Fox, Diane <dnfox@holycross.edu>
Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 6:35 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thank you for this, Andrew.
It may interest some on this list (while annoying others, I suspect, for a variety of reasons) to look up Joan Baez' "Where Are You Now my Son?" -- that includes live recordings from Hanoi during those horrendous days -- the bombs, the sirens, a women's group singing energetically, a Christmas service interrupted, a recording of a walk through Kham Thien after the bombing that includes a mother wailing the words that became the title of the cut. Apparently there are at least two versions -- the one I have is 11 minutes, but I just read of another that is 22.
Hard to contemplate, even now.
Diane
Anthropology
College of the Holy Cross
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From: Andreas Margara <andreasmargara@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 1:45 PM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Thank you, Diane.
Here you can find the 22 minutes version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgDm85StSQs
Best,
Andreas
Independent Researcher, Heidelberg
--
Andreas Margara, M.A.
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From: Fox, Diane <dnfox@holycross.edu>
Date: Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 7:45 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
My turn to thank you, Andreas... and Christina.
Diane
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From: Andreas Margara <andreasmargara@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 12:20 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list and Diane,
for the German weekly news magazine DER SPIEGEL, I wrote a feature on Joan Baez and the Christmas bombings.
In 2014, I had the chance to take part in a tour through the air raid shelter of Hanoi's Metropole hotel. The path of history is open only for hotel guests, but worth a visit!
Unfortunately, the text is available only in German:
Best regards
Andreas
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From: Deo Huu <deochienhuu@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 5:23 AM
To: Andreas Margara <andreasmargara@hotmail.com>, vsg@u.washington.edu
Dear Herr Margara,
I read your article, it's nicely done, but it implies the kind of bombing of the city was taking place such as London and Berlin were subject to during WW2. In fact there was no carpet bombing of the city center or any population concentrations, no massive fires, and in the Christmas bombings the total loss of life from a total bomb load 4 times greater than was dropped on Dresden was, by their own government figures, something like 1500 people. That is a demonstration of how precise the bombing was, with the targets all having military value. Certainly people were scared, anyone near any kind of bombing would be, but in fact the danger level to them was very low.
You ended up saying that after Tet things went badly for the Americans, leading to the victory of the North. In fact, after Tet things went very badly for the VC and NVA, and by '71 all of Route 1 was clear and the cities were safe and quiet, all the fighting was out in more remote areas. When the Easter Invasion came, 200K NVA troops in a dozen divisions with 400 tanks, etc, US ground forces were gone but the South Vietnamese military stopped the invaders and inflicted huge losses on them.
Things went badly after that for the South because the level of aid to them was cut deeply, while Russia resupplied the North magnificently, and the final outcome was only a matter of time.
And a year after Saigon fell Joan Baez and others took out a full page ad in the NYTimes and two other major US newspapers complaining to Hanoi that they were not keeping their promises of good treatment for the people of the South and asking for a cessation of the various kinds of oppression that had become manifest by then. Ms. Baez has always been able to keep a clear vision of abuses committed against people, from any source.
R J Del Vecchio
Independent Researcher
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From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Date: Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 5:54 AM
To: Deo Huu <deochienhuu@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dresden? Hardly. Dresden was destroyed. Precise? All targets having military value? Please. The Christmas bombing of 1972 was so precise that it hit the Bạch Mai Hospital and killed 287 in the Khâm Thiên district. Hanoi was laid out in such a way that many targets having "military" value, such as the train station, were surrounded by populated areas. And some bombs clearly fell on places with no military value. The reality is that Nixon attacked the city less for its military targets than to shock the DRV.
Shawn McHale
George Washington University
--
Shawn McHale
Associate Professor of History
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
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From: Hawk, Alan J CIV DHA RESEARCH-DEV (US) <alan.j.hawk.civ@mail.mil>
Date: Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 10:01 AM
To: Deo Huu <deochienhuu@gmail.com>, "mchale@gwu.edu" <mchale@gwu.edu>, "vsg@u.washington.edu" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
You also have to consider that the Surface to Air Missiles (SAM) and Air to Air Missiles launched from MIGs that did not engage the attacking American bombers may have landed in Ha Noi and caused some of the collateral damage.
Also remember that Dresden was attacked with a combination of incendiary and high explosive bombs while Ha Noi was attacked exclusively with high explosive bombs, so it is not surprising that Ha Noi had more bombs dropped.
Alan
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From: Mike High <mike.high@earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 10:44 AM
To: Deo Huu <deochienhuu@gmail.com>
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu
Since the subject of coercion through bombing continues to be very relevant today, I’ll add a couple of thoughts on what was accomplished by the bombing of the DRV in 1972.
One has to remember that Kissinger and Lê Dức Thọ thought they had a deal in October, but Thiệu rejected it, primarily because it did not require the withdrawal of northern troops from the south. The actual impasse did not occur until mid-December.
The DRV/PRG negotiators returned to the negotiating table in late November in a sour mood, with some sniping from the leadership in Hanoi that they were giving away too much. They resurfaced the issue of POW’s, demanding again that the release of US prisoners of war be tied to the release of prisoners held by the RVN. Then they dropped this demand in early December—apparently to the chagrin of the PRG—and the only remaining issues by mid-December were a clause regarding the movement of civilians across the DMZ and signing protocol.
The DRV negotiators knew that the B-52s were ready to go, but amazingly, they could not bring themselves to bend on these relatively small points. And so the bombing, for all of the tonnage dropped, seems only to have accomplished a relatively small nudge towards pragmatism on the part of the DRV. (As for Thiệu, who had much more compelling reasons to reject the agreement, Alexander Haig pounded him into submission with the threat of an aid cutoff.)
The Christmas bombing is just one case study in the history of aerial bombing campaigns, of course, and perhaps an exceptional one. One might draw other conclusions from Kosovo, as well as the “Battle of Britain Syndrome” and what it took to get Japan to agree to unconditional surrender. And, in these examples, we’re just talking about "state actors,” and not bombing in counterinsurgency campaigns.
:: Mike High
Author | Researcher
Great Falls, Virginia
USA
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From: Paul Schmehl <pschmehl@tx.rr.com>
Date: Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 10:49 AM
To: mchale@gwu.edu, Deo Huu <deochienhuu@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
One bomb hit Bạch Mai Hospital and collapsed one corner of it killing 28 people, and that was because the B-52 that dropped it, commanded by Col. John Yulli, was rocked by two SAM explosions while it was dropping its bombs.
The Bạch Mai Military Airfield was 1000 yards from the hospital, and POL storage units were 200 yards away. The airfield also housed the NVA air defense command center, less than 500 yards from the hospital. Those were all legitimate military targets, and they were deliberately built near the hospital to maximize the propaganda value of any bombing attacks that went astray.
The Khâm Thiên incident was also caused by a SAM strike redirecting the bomb string.
This is all documented in the Texas Tech archives as well as in Roger Canfield's Americong - <http://americong.com/the-true-story-of-christmas-bombing-n-vietnam-1972/>.
Paul Schmehl (pschmehl@tx.rr.com)
Independent Researcher
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From: David Marr <david.marr@anu.edu.au>
Date: Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 3:38 PM
To: Paul Schmehl <pschmehl@tx.rr.com>, "mchale@gwu.edu" <mchale@gwu.edu>, Deo Huu <deochienhuu@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I visited the town of Vinh (Nghe An) in 1978. It had been completely flattened by US bombing, and East Germans were assisting in construction of three story concrete apartment blocks.
David Marr
ANU
From: Diane Fox <dnfox70@gmail.com>
Subject: [Vsg] Does anyone know how to find the list of razed cities? Re: Christmas bombing - from a US peace movement perspective
Date: February 8, 2017 at 3:48:33 PM PST
To: David Marr <david.marr@anu.edu.au>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
When I was doing interviews in Phu Ly, I was told by the Red Cross that it had been completely razed — was third on the list of most heavily destroyed cities, with only part of the shell of a Catholic church still standing. Third? I asked? How can you be more destroyed than razed?? I was told that the list was determined by population. Not that all the population had been killed, for most had sought safety in evacuation to the surrounding mountains.
I have long since wondered — and now would find it useful for a piece of writing I am doing — what other cities were on that list, in what order… and how many there were.
I would be grateful for any leads.
Diane
Diane Fox
Independent
From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@uw.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN cities razed in the war (retitled) Re: Christmas bombing - from a US peace movement perspective
Date: February 11, 2017 at 9:47:37 PM PST
To: Diane Fox <dnfox70@gmail.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Đồng Hới was completely destroyed as well, perhaps approaching Vinh-level destruction, and serious rebuilding efforts did not start until the early 1990s. There, too, the ruins of the Catholic church remain. Some remnants of the walls of the citadel are still around as well, although you get a better sense of the dimensions of the citadel from GoogleEarth. The razing of entire cities was, I’m sure we’ll be told, due only to precision bombing.
C. Giebel
UW-Seattle
From: Deo Huu <deochienhuu@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] VN cities razed in the war (retitled) Re: Christmas bombing - from a US peace movement perspective
Date: February 16, 2017 at 3:04:34 PM PST
To: Christoph Giebel <giebel@uw.edu>, vsg@u.washington.edu
In regard to the level of damage done by bombing in Viet Nam, there was a very interesting review in the Milken Institute Review magazine, 4th quarter 2006, on long term bombing effects there. The authors went into detail on the tonnages dropped, but noted that the vast majority of it was in Quang Tri,and nearby areas, due to the long term intense fighting there since it was a major route for the incoming troops from the HCM Trail. And while they had expected to find a correlation between levels of bombing and impaired economic recovery in areas, they were surprised to find that in fact the recovery economically after 1985 (very poor records before then) actually showed most of the most heavily bombed areas recovered as fast or faster than other areas. They made mention of the residual effects of unexploded ordnance, but since both the '72 and '75 invasions made very heavy use of huge numbers of Russian 122 and 130 mm guns, plus of course mortars, tank rounds, grenades, etc, what proportion of the dangerous materials belongs to each side becomes a major question. They also note the tight restrictions on bombing targets in the North coming all the way from the Oval Office, which kept many areas off limits until Nixon's decision to provide motivation for signing the Paris Accords.
R J Del Vecchio
Independent Researcher