TET OFFENSIVE and MACV

The Tet Offensive comprised a series of attacks carried out over several weeks by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces across South Vietnam, beginning shortly after midnight on January 30, 1968. The Vietnamese were celebrating the Lunar New Year, or Tet holiday, at that time, from which the offensive gets its name. Military forces from the U.S., South Vietnam, and their allies repelled the attacks but at a high cost. Tens of thousands were killed and wounded on both sides. The Tet Offensive became a turning point in the war, as the American people realized the war was far from over and withdrew their support.

Tet and Its Aftermath
The offensive that erupted the length and breadth of South Vietnam on 30–31 January was unprecedented in the war in scope and inten- sity. At least 84,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops took direct part in the attacks; probably most of the enemy’s other available forces had offensive missions, many of which were not carried out. During the first two days of the attack, the Communists struck five of South Vietnam’s six autonomous cities, 36 provincial capitals, 64 district towns, and the major American air bases with varying combinations of ground assaults and attacks by fire. They temporarily occupied parts of many cities, including Saigon; and they took virtually complete control of Hue for the better part of a month, being driven out only after weeks of stubborn house-to-house fighting by U.S. Army, U.S. Marine, and South Vietnamese Army units. Casualties and destruction were exten- sive: more than 2,100 American and 4,000 South Vietnamese soldiers killed in a month’s combat, tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians dead and injured, hundreds of thousands homeless, sections of Saigon and other cities in ruins, South Vietnam’s economy tempo- rarily paralyzed, and rural pacification seemingly destroyed.1 (Map 2) At the cost of nearly 50,000 men killed in the first month of fight- ing—many of them hard-to-replace Viet Cong local troops, guerrillas, and political cadre—the offensive fell far short of the politico-military goals Hanoi set for it. The attackers, who suffered from local deficiencies in communications and coordination, were repulsed at many points, were unable to hold for long the objectives they did seize, and failed to destroy any large allied or South Vietnamese units. Most important, the Saigon government and its armed forces did not collapse and the urban population did not rise in support of the offensive. The General Uprising never took place. Yet military failure paradoxically produced political success, not in South Vietnam but in the United States. The fact that the offensive had occurred at all and the magnitude of its casualties and destruction shattered the faith of many American politi- cal leaders in the possibility of victory. A shaken President Johnson and his advisers continued with increased urgency the major reconsid- eration of U.S. strategy and war aims that they had begun late in the previous year.2
Regaining Control
The Communist assault on Saigon temporarily disrupted the routine of MACV headquarters and placed the “Saigon Warriors” of “Pentagon East” very nearly on the firing line. Tan Son Nhut Air Base, which bor- dered the MACV compound, came under intense infantry, mortar, and rocket attack during the small hours of 31 January. At the unfortified headquarters, the personnel on duty, alarmed by the reports pouring in of fighting nationwide and by the sound of nearby gunfire, hastily improvised a thin defense perimeter manned by frightened clerks and military police led by equally frightened junior staff officers. Inside the building, other officers and enlisted men pulled desks into the corridors as last-ditch barricades. Fortunately, these defenses were never tested. American and South Vietnamese security forces, reinforced by South Vietnamese airborne units fortuitously on the base and by armored cav- alry dispatched by II Field Force, stopped the main Viet Cong infantry attack well short of Tan Son Nhut’s vital areas and the MACV complex. Nevertheless, occasional sniper fire and mortar rounds during the next several days gave headquarters life an unaccustomed spice of danger.3
General Westmoreland lost no time in seeking to regain control of the situation. He spent most of the morning of the 31st at the U.S. Embassy, which had been attacked by Viet Cong sappers who had broken into the courtyard before being trapped and killed by American military police and paratroopers. The MACV commander oversaw the post-attack cleanup. He also reassured the State Department by long- distance telephone that, contrary to initial news reports, the enemy had not entered the U.S. Embassy building itself; and he held an impromptu press conference on the grounds. Westmoreland then moved on to MACV headquarters, where he received briefings on the situation and began telephoning the field force and III Marine Amphibious Force commanders to obtain informa- tion and give operational guid- ance. He was joined at headquar- ters during that and the following day by General Abrams and other senior officers of the staff, many of whom had their own tales to tell of tense drives across a city that suddenly had become a battleground.4
Despite the presence of Westmoreland and his key sub- ordinates, MACV headquarters was only partially operational for several days. Many staff person- nel who were off-duty at the start of the attack could not reach their jobs because of the fighting elsewhere in Saigon. Some were trapped in their billets for days as troops shot it out with holed-up Viet Cong infiltrators. Short of staff at the outset, the headquar-
ters also lacked timely information because of overloaded and in some cases battle-damaged communications networks. MACV was slow, for example, to appreciate the seriousness of the situation in Hue. Yet at the same time, the headquarters labored to meet a flurry of special information demands from anxious Washington officials. Until early March, Generals Wheeler and Johnson telephoned Westmoreland daily. These demands, Westmoreland declared in mid-February, were “rapidly overwhelming us and beginning to detract from the perfor- mance of our primary duties.”5

During this period, U.S. Army, Vietnam (USARV) headquarters, the commanders and staff of which were quartered within the well-pro- tected Long Binh base a short distance north of Saigon, took on much of the task of collecting information about the fighting throughout the country, making reports to higher authority, and coordinating resup- ply and helicopter and medical support of American units. The USARV deputy commander, Lt. Gen. Bruce Palmer, later recalled: “We were able to keep MACV informed on things that they didn’t know about, as well as [U.S. Army Pacific] and [Department of the Army], to get very quick action as needed.” Although the field force and division com- manders directed the battle, USARV, according to General Palmer, “got into some tactical shifting of our own” in response to urgent immedi- ate requirements.6
As the fighting in Saigon died down and people began returning, MACV headquarters rapidly adjusted to round-the-clock operations under enemy threat. The headquarters commandant, Lt. Col. Jack O’Shaughnessy, organized and took command of a 530-man MACV defense force made up of headquarters officers and enlisted men organized in four provisional rifle companies. As a precaution against future mortar and rocket attacks, the director of construction oversaw installation of a casemate around the combat operations center and other vital parts of the building. General Westmoreland and his senior officers bivouacked in the headquarters for several weeks after Tet because of the press of work and because at first, as General Davidson put it, it was “just too goddamned dangerous to get out in the streets.” They returned to their villas only briefly during the day, for showers (the headquarters lacked this amenity) and short naps. Gradually, a semblance of regular routine returned, including the holding of the regular Saturday morning staff conference; and General Westmoreland resumed his trips to the field and to meetings of agencies, such as the Coordinating Committee for U.S. Missions in Southeast Asia. By mid- March, the situation had settled down to the point where Westmoreland could afford time for a brief visit to his family at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines.7
Even then, working at headquarters remained far more strenuous than during pre-Tet days. General Chaisson, director of the Combat Operations Center (COC), described his routine for his wife:

Get up at five; go down to COC; Westy shows at six; fifty-five minutes of briefing; then to breakfast in his mess with C/S and Westy; then back to my desk for a couple of hours; then to field or briefings; twice a week home for lunch & bath; afternoon pushing papers; 1945 a beer in Westy’s office; then to dinner in his mess; back to desk till 2230; then late evening briefing and selection of Arc Light targets. 2300–2400 bedtime. Interruptions as required through the night. I’ve been home now two nights in 6 and 1/2 weeks. . . .8
Literally from the first day of the offensive, General Westmoreland, his principal staff officers, and his field commanders assessed the enemy attack as a failure, one which had left the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in an exposed, vulnerable position. General Davidson later declared: “It became apparent quite early, I’d say almost by sun- down of the first day, that while we were going to have some trouble, . . . now they were playing in our ball game. We knew where they were; we just had to go get them, and we were going to go get them.” General Weyand, deploying his reserves to counter the enemy’s attack on Saigon, reached the same conclusion early in the morning of the thirty-first.9
In a typical evaluation, General Westmoreland on 4 February acknowl- edged that the enemy had “dealt the GVN a severe blow” by bringing the war to the cities. However, he had paid a “high price” in casualties, had failed to hold any towns, and had not triggered a general upris- ing or disrupted the South Vietnamese government and armed forces. Westmoreland noted that the major airfields and the allies’ nationwide communications system had remained in operation throughout the first wave of attacks and that the South Vietnamese Army and territorial forces in the main were fighting well. The MACV commander viewed the assaults on the cities as the second part of a three-fold offensive, which had begun with the autumn border battles and probably would culminate in a drive to take Khe Sanh and overrun northern I Corps. He credited the enemy with the capacity for another round of city attacks as well as the northern offensive but expressed confidence that his forces “have the strength, dis- position, and are in the proper frame of mind to keep at the enemy and inflict even greater losses if he persists in the attack.”10
Early Communist assessments of the offensive’s shortcomings closely paralleled those of MACV. A COSVN directive, copies of which were captured during February, claimed a great victory over U.S. forces and the “puppet” army and government. However, the directive went on to list a number of “shortcomings and weaknesses,” specifically fail- ure to seize key objectives, destroy enemy units, hold occupied areas, and bring about mass popular uprisings. Preparing the revolution- ary forces for hard days to come, this directive and subsequent ones redefined the General Offensive–General Uprising as “a prolonged strategic offensive that includes many military campaigns and local uprisings” and admitted that “we cannot yet . . . achieve total victory in a short period.” General Davidson and his staff initially doubted the authenticity of this document because of its appearance so soon after the offensive began, but other captured documents repeated the same points. Davidson finally decided that COSVN had prepared the directive before the attack as a precaution against the possibility of less than total success.11
As the Viet Cong were driven or withdrew from the cities, MACV and mission assessments grew steadily more confident in tone. Apprehension remained, however, over the threat to northern I Corps, where the North Vietnamese divisions had yet to make their move. Westmoreland, his views shared by Ambassadors Bunker and Komer, emphasized that the enemy, by abandoning protracted rural insur- gency for a “go-for-broke” effort directed at the urban centers, had exposed his forces to allied firepower and created a power vacuum in the countryside for the pacification program to fill. Far from being a disaster for the allies, the enemy offensive thus was an opportunity if the Americans and South Vietnamese could take advantage of it. Exemplifying this point of view, Ambassador Komer declared on 12 February: “If the GVN can recover quickly enough from the near pre- Tet disaster, and we can go on the counter-offensive in other areas while containing the NVA up north, we may well force Hanoi to the negotiating table or otherwise materially shorten the war.”12
The allied military response to the Tet offensive required few modifi- cations of General Westmoreland’s established system of command. III Marine Amphibious Force, the field forces, and the South Vietnamese corps fought the battles under the guidance of Westmoreland and his counterpart, General Vien, with whom the MACV commander worked closely throughout the crisis. In immediate response to the attack on Saigon, MACV and II Field Force activated a temporary U.S. headquar- ters, Task Force ware (later renamed hurricane forward), under the II Field Force deputy commander, to control American units fighting in the capital. Westmoreland also launched a campaign, under con- sideration before Tet, to strengthen the South Vietnamese command structure in the Capital Military District and place a more capable offi- cer in charge of it. However, South Vietnamese political machinations prevented immediate action on the American proposal. In the interim, General Vien assumed personal direction of the battle for Saigon.13
General Westmoreland directed a few force redeployments in response to the enemy offensive. He reluctantly dispatched American combat units to Saigon and other hard-pressed cities to assist South Vietnamese clearing and securing efforts. Continuing the shift of MACV’s forces to counter the expected enemy offensive in north- ern I Corps, in mid-February he began moving the headquarters and two brigades of the 101st Airborne Division, which had arrived in III Corps just before Christmas, to Thua Thien Province. Aside from these movements, however, and some shifting of units within corps areas, allied dispositions did not change significantly as a result of the Tet attacks.14
In the aftermath of Tet, General Westmoreland saw no need to revise his basic strategy. Westmoreland insisted to General Vien that the “mission, objectives, and goals” set in the Combined Campaign Plan for 1968 “remain valid.” The plan, he declared, was “sufficiently flexible to permit the corps commanders . . . to accomplish destruction of VC units in the vicinity of cities, open and secure LOCs, and support the Revolutionary Development effort as required by the situation in the corps zones.”15
Westmoreland did acknowledge that the enemy offensive had caused the allies to “re-evaluate our priorities” by devoting more resources to protection of the cities. Yet the MACV commander, throughout the weeks after Tet, struggled to prevent the allies from huddling around the cities and surrendering the military initiative, and the country- side, to the enemy. While acknowledging the need to clear and secure the urban areas as the first military priority, Westmoreland continu- ally emphasized pursuit and attack of enemy forces and the earliest possible return of U.S. and South Vietnamese regular troops to their customary rural areas of operation. Repeatedly, he hammered on the fact that the Tet attacks had left enemy units exposed in a way they had not been previously and urged his commanders and his allies to seek out and destroy them. He emphasized as well the urgency of restor- ing military support of pacification. With General Vien, Westmoreland traveled to all four corps areas to preach the gospel of the offensive and prod commanders and advisers to develop and execute plans for attacking Communist units, reopening roads, and reestablishing the government presence in the villages.16
Response to these exhortations varied in speed and effectiveness from region to region, but by early March the allies gradually were turning urban defense back to the police and territorial forces and resuming search-and-destroy and pacification operations. On 11 March, for example, II Field Force and III Corps initiated a combined campaign to destroy enemy forces in the five provinces surrounding Saigon. Elsewhere, more modest but significant operations were getting under way, even as the allies still awaited the expected major North Vietnamese attack in northern I Corps.17
As urgent as the need to resume the military offensive was the requirement to relieve civilian distress and repair the damage, much of it caused by allied firepower, resulting from the fight to expel the enemy from the cities and towns. General Westmoreland and Ambassadors Bunker and Komer realized that, for both humanitarian and practi- cal political reasons, the South Vietnamese government had to act at once to help its injured and homeless citizens and restore as much as possible of normal social and economic life. They also knew that the government, never a model of administrative efficiency, had been stunned by the shock of the enemy offensive. Many of its officials, totally preoccupied with their own survival and with military secu- rity, often neglected or obstructed efforts to restore economic activity and basic public services. Even so, local governments and individual Vietnamese in the provinces were beginning self-help recovery and relief efforts. After a visit to the Mekong Delta during the first days of February, General Abrams reported that officials in every province had appointed relief committees and begun providing food, clothing, and medical assistance to their homeless citizens. The challenge for the U.S. Embassy and MACV was to push the central government to support and expand upon these initiatives.18
To get President Thieu and his officials moving promptly and in the right directions, Westmoreland and Komer, with Ambassador Bunker’s approval, on 2 February hastily drew up plans for a nationwide Operation recoVerY, to be directed by a Central Recovery Committee, chaired by Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky. With its own combined American-Vietnamese staff, the Central Recovery Committee would mobilize the various ministries for the effort and coordinate their actions. On 3 February, President Thieu promptly accepted the plan when Bunker, Westmoreland, and Komer presented it to him. The Central Recovery Committee, quartered in the presidential palace, was in operation within a few days. Headed by Ky, with Komer and his military deputy, Maj. Gen. George W. Forsythe, overseeing respectively policy and operations, and with a staff of representatives from the ministries, MACV, and U.S. Agency for International Development, the Central Recovery Committee directed the work of subordinate councils at province, district, and village levels. On the U.S. side, CORDS set up an operations center at MACV to monitor activities and relay requests for materiel and engineering support. Throughout the country, the CORDS staff acted as the nucleus of the recovery organization, spur- ring action at every level and collecting information on progress and requirements.19
During the next several months, Vietnamese officials, under the direction of the Central Recovery Committee and aided and urged on by American “bottleneck breakers and problem solvers,” fed and sheltered refugees, restored public utilities and services, and reestab- lished the normal flow of commerce within and between the cities and towns. They also conducted an intensive psychological warfare campaign to capitalize on popular resentment of the Communists’ violation of the sacred Tet festival and promote people’s self-help and self-defense movements. The South Vietnamese side of the effort gradually lost momentum, especially after President Thieu, fearing that Ky was gaining political advantage by his leadership of the recovery campaign, supplanted the vice president as chairman of the Central Recovery Committee. Nevertheless, despite setbacks, including a new wave of displaced persons from a second round of Communist attacks in May, by mid-1968 urban life was returning to what had passed for normality before Tet and the worst physical and economic damage of the offensive had been repaired. Operation recoVerY and its MACV and CORDS sponsors had contributed much to these achievements, as had the long-suffering, resilient people of South Vietnam.20
Even as they promoted urban recovery, MACV and CORDS also tried to revive the rural pacification program, which barely had begun in earnest before the enemy offensive. It became clear, as Komer’s staff pieced together the results across South Vietnam, that the Communist attack in most places had bypassed the villages and hamlets. However, the government had withdrawn many of the Regional and Popular Forces, National Police, and civilian Revolutionary Development cadres to the province and district capitals for defense and relief work, leaving the countryside open to Viet Cong recruiting, taxation, and propagandizing. Fortunately, the Viet Cong also had pulled their own local force and guerrilla units out of the villages to attack the towns, where they suffered heavy losses and remained engaged. Thus, the countryside after Tet constituted a power vacuum that both sides had to race to fill. General Westmoreland told Admiral Sharp late in March: “We unquestionably suffered a real setback [in pacification], but the enemy suffered grievous losses, too. The real question is whether we can recover and forge ahead more quickly than he.”21
Ambassador Komer recognized this fact long before the final reports were in. From the first days of the offensive, he and General Westmoreland hastened to push government troops and pacification cadres out of the towns and back into the hamlets. On 9 February, Westmoreland, in a message drafted by Komer, directed corps senior advisers and CORDS deputies to exert “maximum advisory pressure” on their counterparts to that end, lest a “major pacification setback” occur “largely through default.” Both men repeated this exhortation regularly thereafter and induced President Thieu and General Vien to do the same. At American urging, the Joint General Staff instituted special “show-the-flag” operations by Regional Force companies with attached intelligence personnel and civilian cadre to restore a govern- ment presence in hard-pressed villages. Komer and his CORDS advisers oversaw the revision of province Revolutionary Development plans to accelerate recovery and adopted a simplified set of objectives empha- sizing security, psychological warfare, elimination of the Communist infrastructure, and local self-defense. All elements of the American mis- sion maintained pressure on President Thieu to replace province chiefs and military commanders who had proven inadequate in the crisis.22
Government forces gradually moved back into the countryside. Early in April, according to Komer, 545 of 629 Revolutionary Development teams had returned to their hamlets and 519 regularly stayed over-night there. Of 51 South Vietnamese battalions assigned to support pacification, 46 were operating in their assigned areas. President Thieu replaced two corps commanders and fifteen province chiefs, to the net advantage of pacification. According to the CORDS Hamlet Evaluation System, the percentage of the South Vietnamese urban and rural popu- lation living in relatively secure areas, which had fallen immediately after Tet, began gradually rising during the spring and was approaching pre-offensive levels by the middle of the year. A government-sponsored hamlet self-defense movement made headway in some areas, and there were indications of peasant disillusionment at the Viet Cong’s failure to achieve their promised great victory at Tet. The rural economy recov- ered quickly, with no long-lasting shortages or price inflation. The progress achieved was fragile, and advisers in the hardest-hit provinces estimated that it would take six to nine months to restore the program to full momentum (pessimists doubted it ever had much momentum). Nevertheless, contrary to alarmist reports immediately after Tet in both the news media and official channels, pacification, thanks in part to timely MACV and CORDS efforts to revive it, was far from dead.23
I Corps: MACV Versus the Marines
While taking steps to control the situation in the rest of the coun- try, General Westmoreland throughout February and March focused much of his attention on northern I Corps, where he expected enemy forces to launch the next and potentially most dangerous phase of their offensive. The MACV commander told General Wheeler on 9 February that “the only really serious threat that faces me now” was in the area between the Demilitarized Zone and Hai Van Pass. There the rain and fog of the northeast monsoon and the enemy’s cutting of Highway 1, the allies’ sole land supply line, intensified the threat posed by massed North Vietnamese divisions.24
Events strengthened the MACV commander’s concern. At Hue, the North Vietnamese augmented their initial attack force and waged a bitter month-long battle to hold the city. At Khe Sanh, besides con- tinuing rocket and artillery bombardment, they assaulted two of the Marine garrison’s hilltop outposts and were repulsed only after hand- to-hand fighting. On 7 February, using tanks for the first time in South Vietnam, they overran the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei 14 kilo- meters southwest of the Marine combat base. General Westmoreland and General Abrams, who activated MACV Forward headquarters at Phu Bai in mid-February, viewed these events, and the buildup of additional North Vietnamese forces in striking distance of Hue and Da Nang, as presaging a full-scale Communist offensive aimed at seizing all of Quang Tri and Thua Thien Provinces, possibly to establish a posi- tion of strength from which to enter negotiations.25
President Johnson and his advisers anxiously watched the devel- oping siege of Khe Sanh. The president, disturbed by ominous press reports that likened the marines’ situation and probable fate to those of the French at Dien Bien Phu, repeatedly pressed Westmoreland, through General Wheeler, for reassurance that the base would not fall. The MACV commander in response reiterated his conviction that air- power and artillery would crush any North Vietnamese assault, as well as his assertion that the outpost must be held for both military and morale reasons. On 4 February, the president secured from the Joint Chiefs of Staff their written concurrence with Westmoreland’s views. At Johnson’s direction, Westmoreland, beginning on 5 February, made a special daily report on operations at Khe Sanh and in the Demilitarized Zone area, including statistics on B–52 and tactical air strikes, tons of supply delivered to the base, and American casualties. While seek- ing reassurance and military details, the president left the conduct of this battle to his field commander. Johnson and his advisers, Wheeler told Westmoreland, recognized that “you are the responsible com- mander and that no one can direct tactical operations in the field from Washington.”26
Among President Johnson’s greatest worries about Khe Sanh was that the military might ask permission to use tactical nuclear weapons there to prevent disaster. Reassurances to the contrary from Wheeler and Westmoreland were less than convincing. Westmoreland, for example, on 3 February, after the usual expression of confidence, added that “should the situation in the Demilitarized Zone area change dramatically,” the United States must be “prepared to introduce weapons of greater effec- tiveness against massed forces,” with “either tactical nuclear weapons or chemical agents” as “active candidates for employment.” During the first weeks of February, CINCPAC, MACV, and III Marine Amphibious Force continued the top-secret contingency planning, code-named fracTure jaw, which they had begun late in January for using tactical nuclear weap- ons around Khe Sanh. On the ninth, General Westmoreland approved a MACV operational plan for this purpose. By that time, however, the issue had become public in the United States, with Senator Eugene McCarthy and others charging that the military was preparing to use nuclear weap- ons in South Vietnam. The administration, facing a domestic and foreign outcry, publicly disavowed any such intent. Secretly, on the twelfth, at Wheeler’s direction, Admiral Sharp and General Westmoreland discontin- ued all fracTure jaw planning, placed the documents under tight security control, and instructed the few staff personnel involved not to disclose even the existence of the plans.27
With nuclear weapons thus effectively ruled out, the Military Assistance Command used every other means at its disposal to strengthen northern I Corps against the coming blow. Despite wors- ening weather, the command kept up round-the-clock air and artil- lery bombardment of the North Vietnamese divisions besieging Khe Sanh. With fighting still going on all over South Vietnam, General Westmoreland took the calculated risk of thinning American forces in II and III Corps to obtain additional reinforcements for north- ern I Corps, notably the aforementioned shift of the 101st Airborne Division from the Saigon area to Thua Thien. He told General Cushman on 23 February, “I have no more reserves” and warned the Marine commander, “you will have to go on extreme economy of force s[outh] of the Hai Van [and] cut corners everyplace” if still more troops were needed in the north. Reacting to the appearance of North Vietnamese tanks at Lang Vei, Westmoreland set the MACV staff to work augmenting I Corps anti-armor weaponry. In cooperation with Admiral Sharp, he resumed planning for an amphibious feint above the Demilitarized Zone to divert North Vietnamese troops from the battle in Quang Tri.28
As February gave way to March, the great North Vietnamese attack still did not materialize. The allies continued hammering the enemy with airpower, further expanded their logistical base north of the Hai Van, and deployed their reinforcements. They also began planning a counteroffensive to destroy Communist forces in the coastal lowlands and then break the siege of Khe Sanh.29
As the crisis in the north intensified, so also did General Westmoreland’s doubts about the competence of III MAF’s leader- ship. His discontent came into the open on 7 February, at a meeting at III MAF headquarters to deal with the fall of Lang Vei and with an apparent new North Vietnamese threat to Da Nang. Discerning what he considered to be an “absence of initiative” among the marines, Westmoreland gave direct instructions to General Cushman’s subordi- nate commanders for organizing the rescue of the surviving Lang Vei defenders and for deploying battalions from the Americal Division to reinforce Da Nang. This experience, and other irritations, strengthened Westmoreland’s resolve to set up a new headquarters to oversee the battle for I Corps, as well as his interest in bringing the marines’ fixed- wing aircraft under the control of the Seventh Air Force.30
The establishment of MACV Forward, decided upon before Tet, went ahead essentially on schedule. The staff, drawn from MACV and USARV headquarters, began arriving at Phu Bai on 3 February and formally activated the new command on the ninth. General Abrams, his move north delayed by the enemy offensive, took up his duties three days later. Abrams carried with him orders from Westmoreland to “provide instructions” to General Cushman “on all tactical matters in I CTZ,” to direct the reception and operations of incoming reinforcements, and “to effect such organizational arrangements as necessary to maintain a maximum defense posture, reaction capability, and preparations to apply maximum pressure on the enemy.” General Westmoreland declared subsequently that he intended Abrams to give Cushman “whatever instructions he deemed necessary . . . to include assuming direct command of elements in I Corps if he deemed it appropriate.” More succinctly, General Chaisson observed that General Abrams “is running the I CTZ show.”31
Abrams used his sweeping authority with restraint. He attempted to improve coordination of the allied forces fighting to recapture Hue and exhorted the field commanders there to speed up the attack. He ordered intensified reconnaissance of the A Shau Valley base area west of Hue, closely supervised efforts to reopen lines of communication in northern I Corps, and helped initiate planning for the relief of Khe Sanh. The effect of his efforts was uncertain. The marines at III Marine Amphibious Force complained that at Hue, for example, MACV Forward merely complicated an already difficult command situation by giving orders directly to subordinate units. For the most part, General Cushman and his division commanders conducted the defense of Khe Sanh and the battle for Hue much as they had before Abrams took charge. Nevertheless, the deputy MACV commander was in position in I Corps, ready to take over operations if III Marine Amphibious Force faltered under the climactic enemy assault.32

General Abrams spent much of his time at MACV Forward planning for his headquarters’ demise. When General Westmoreland activated MACV Forward, he also announced his intention to convert it, around mid-March, into a corps headquarters to command U.S. forces north of the Hai Van Pass under operational control of General Cushman. This reorganization, Westmoreland claimed, would improve coordination of the Army and Marine forces in northern I Corps while reducing the number of subordinate headquarters with which III Marine Amphibious Force had to deal. The new headquarters, designated Provisional Corps, Vietnam, went into operation on 10 March under the command of Lt. Gen. William B. Rosson, who moved north to Phu Bai from his previous post as commanding general of I Field Force. Under terms of reference worked out by Generals Abrams and Cushman in consultation with the service component commanders, Provisional Corps controlled the operations of the 3d Marine, 1st Cavalry, and 101st Airborne Divisions and had responsibility for most of Thua Thien and all of Quang Tri Provinces. General Cushman, besides exercising operational control of Provisional Corps, directly commanded the 1st Marine and Americal Divisions in southern I Corps and retained his corpswide advisory and pacification functions. To assist Cushman, who now acted in effect as a field army commander, in handling his enlarged Army contin- gent, General Westmoreland assigned additional Army officers to the III MAF staff. At the same time, he augmented the Army-dominated Provisional Corps staff with Marine officers, including a Marine deputy corps commander.33

With the activation of Provisional Corps as a subordinate command under III Marine Amphibious Force, General Westmoreland seemingly backed away from his initial threat to supersede the marines in control of I Corps. General Chaisson expressed relief that his commander had remedied an initially “real bad” reorganization by “putting Rosson in under Cushman and easing Abe out.” General Rosson, who earlier had worked under III MAF operational control as commander of Task Force oregon (forerunner of the Americal Division), lost no time in estab- lishing harmonious relations with the marines. On his part, General Cushman declared later that he “got along just fine with Bill Rosson and the other Army commanders. . . .” Nevertheless, suspicion of MACV’s
intentions persisted among Marine officers, in Washington as well as at Da Nang. One Marine Corps headquarters staff officer opined: “It is obvious that there are other moves in this chess game to come, and don’t believe they are meant to be advantageous to our Corps.”34
Seeming to justify Marine suspicions, as Provisional Corps went into operation, General Westmoreland challenged the marines on one of their most cherished points of doctrine: control of airpower. With Army and Marine divisions intermingled in I Corps and a desperate battle in prospect, Westmoreland became increasingly uneasy about the existing improvised air control system and receptive to General Momyer’s continuing arguments for fundamental reorganization. In mid-February, he concluded, he told Admiral Sharp, that it was “essen- tial that I look to one man to coordinate this air effort and bring this firepower to bear on the enemy in the most effective way in line with my day-to-day guidance.” That man could only be his deputy for air operations, General Momyer. Admiral Sharp, who Westmoreland saw to it was thoroughly briefed on the proposal, this time accepted Westmoreland’s reasoning, primarily out of recognition, in Sharp’s words, “of the necessity for maximum effective application of total air assets and for certain changes in light of the new ground force arrangements.”35
On 7 March, Westmoreland issued an order drafted by Momyer, which Sharp had approved with minor amendments, requiring General Cushman to place his fixed-wing strike and reconnaissance aircraft and the Marine tactical air control system under the “mission direction” of General Momyer in his capacity as deputy COMUSMACV for air operations. III Marine Amphibious Force was to retain command of its helicopters and transport aircraft. Requests for air support from III Marine Amphibious Force and Provisional Corps were to be collated by those headquarters and their direct air support centers and passed to the MACV Tactical Air Support Element, which allocated airpower throughout South Vietnam. Under direction from the Tactical Air Support Element, the Seventh Air Force Tactical Air Control Center then would issue the detailed mission orders. Marines would be added to the staffs of both those agencies. As a minor concession to mollify the III Marine Amphibious Force, Westmoreland declared that he would review the working of the system after its first 30 days in operation. In practice, it took the Seventh Air Force and III Marine Amphibious Force a few weeks to combine their two air control systems and to resolve details, including the location of the I Corps Direct Air Support Center, which had been left unsettled in the original directive. The first mis- sions under what came to be called single management were not flown until 21 March.36
Despite Westmoreland’s reassurances, the entire Marine chain of command perceived the new system as an Air Force attempt to separate their aircraft from their ground forces, as had happened in the Korean War. The marines began their war on single management as soon as Westmoreland announced his intention to institute it and never let up thereafter. Their commandant, General Leonard F. Chapman, told Marine officers: “The integrity of our air/ground team concept and pos- sibly even our force structure is at issue. We must all face this challenge resolutely to forestall any future inroads on the Marine air/ground team.” General Cushman and General Victor H. Krulak, commander of Fleet Marine Force Pacific, campaigned continuously at their respec- tive levels, while General Chapman took the marines’ case to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Through informal and formal channels, the marines brought the issue to the attention of President Johnson, the incoming secretary of defense, Clark M. Clifford, and the news media.37
The Marine leaders attacked single management on both doctrinal and practical grounds. They contended that Sharp and Westmoreland had exceeded their authority by imposing an air command arrangement contrary to Defense Department doctrine for organizing joint forces. They claimed that single management deprived the Marine divisions in Vietnam, which relied on tactical air support to compensate for limited quantities of organic artillery and helicopter gunships, of an impor- tant element of their inherent firepower. They insisted that the change was unnecessary, because the two air control systems in I Corps had coexisted without major difficulty, and unified command for specific operations could be arranged when required, as at Khe Sanh. Finally, the marines declared, on the basis of a steady stream of data from III Marine Amphibious Force, that single management had made the securing of air support slower and more complicated for ground commanders by inserting additional headquarters into the process and by replacing a “consumer-oriented” Marine strike request and control system with the Air Force’s “producer-oriented” one. In conclusion, the marines asked Admiral Sharp and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to direct General Westmoreland to restore the previous arrangement under which III Marine Amphibious Force had controlled its own aircraft and provided those sorties it could spare to the Seventh Air Force. General Cushman went so far as to sug- gest that, if a single manager for airpower were needed in I Corps, it should be himself, since he commanded a considerable air force and his strike request and control system easily could handle aircraft of other services.38
General Westmoreland strongly defended single management. He disavowed any intention to revise current joint doctrine or break up the Marine air-ground team, and he promised that Marine airplanes would continue to fly missions for Marine ground troops unless urgent tacti- cal needs dictated otherwise. Citing Seventh Air Force evaluations, he insisted that the system, after initial adjustment problems, was working with steadily increasing efficiency. He noted that the Army provided the Marine divisions in I Corps with helicopter, artillery, reconnaissance, engineer, and communications support; hence, the marines could not legitimately object to sharing their airpower with the other services. Above all, Westmoreland emphasized the need for unified control of MACV’s airpower given the intermingling of Army and Marine units in I Corps, the creation of Provisional Corps, and the need to concen- trate forces in situations like the defense of Khe Sanh. Under these conditions, he told Wheeler, “the continuation of dual strike support systems was operationally unacceptable” to him as “the responsible commander in Vietnam.” Increasingly irritated at what he considered the marines’ “parochial inflexibility,” Westmoreland declared in retro- spect that single management was the only issue during his tenure at MACV over which he considered resigning.39

When the issue reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Navy, Marine, and—to Westmoreland’s disgust—the Army chiefs came out against single management. All were reluctant to upset existing hard-won roles and missions agreements, and they distrusted Air Force intentions toward their own air arms. Only General John P. McConnell, the Air Force chief of staff, along with General Wheeler, upheld Westmoreland. Wheeler’s support came with qualifications. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff late in April advised the secretary of defense against vetoing single management, on the premise that it was “militarily unsound to dictate to responsible senior commanders of the level of COMUSMACV and . . . CINCPAC, how to organize their forces and exercise command and control of them.” Wheeler added, however, that single management in Vietnam should not be seen as a precedent governing the future control of Marine air units. Instead, it was a expedient adopted to meet a situation imposed by the enemy,” which Westmoreland “can and should” adjust as the situation changed.40
Even as Wheeler made his recommendation, circumstances com- pelled General Westmoreland to modify the workings of single man- agement. As the time for the first thirty-day review approached, it was apparent that single management was slower and more cumbersome than the old system in handling requests for ground force support and had resulted in the Marine divisions receiving fewer tactical air sorties—facts that III Marine Amphibious Force and the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing documented in great detail. Admiral Sharp, increasingly concerned about III MAF complaints on this point, early in May over Westmoreland’s protests dispatched a CINCPAC team to Vietnam to evaluate the system. The team, after consultation with all the concerned commanders, essentially affirmed the validity of Marine criticisms of single management’s workings. At the same time, General Wheeler also expressed unease about single management’s reported unresponsive- ness to ground commanders.41
Before the CINCPAC team made its report, Westmoreland and Momyer, under pressure from all sides, agreed to change single manage- ment in practice to save it in principle. Following MACV commanders’ conferences on the subject on 2 and 8 May, Momyer, at Westmoreland’s direction, developed a revised air strike request and control procedure that went into effect later that month, after thorough review and approval by Admiral Sharp. Under it, the Seventh Air Force allocated large blocs of sorties weekly to each corps area commander, who then could employ them as he saw fit. This meant in practice that III Marine Amphibious Force regularly received back about 70 percent of the Marine sorties it turned over to the Seventh Air Force. Other changes at the same time enhanced the system’s speed and flexibility in respond- ing to support requests from ground commanders. These alterations alleviated Sharp’s and Wheeler’s concerns about single management, though they did not fully satisfy the marines.42

Not coincidentally, the Office of the Secretary of Defense issued its final decision on single management only after these changes were under way. On 15 May, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze, acting for Secretary Clifford, endorsed Wheeler’s view that COMUSMACV, as the unified commander on the scene, must be allowed to organize his own forces as he deemed necessary to meet the threat. Nitze, how- ever, also repeated Wheeler’s dictum that single management was not a precedent for centralized control of airpower under “other combat conditions”; and he declared further that MACV should “revert to normal command arrangements for III MAF when the tactical situation permits.” Taking note of Marine Corps complaints about the workings of single management and of the changes MACV was making, Nitze directed General Wheeler to continue to review “personally” the oper- ation of the system and to determine, in conjunction with Sharp and Westmoreland any additional revisions needed to “minimize delays between requests for air support and their execution.”43
Nitze’s ruling represented a partial victory for both sides. Westmoreland and Momyer gained the principle, and to a degree the reality, of centralized Seventh Air Force direction of fixed-wing airpower. MACV also ended the dual air control system in I Corps, an action that even General Cushman acknowledged in retrospect had been necessary. The marines, if only for doctrinal reasons, continued their campaign for formal termination of single management. Nevertheless, under the May revisions of the system and through later incremental changes, they were assured of the availability of their airplanes to support their own ground troops. Army forces throughout South Vietnam perhaps benefited most from single management. The changes the Seventh Air Force made in its strike request and control system to defuse III Marine Amphibious Force complaints made the Air Force system work more like that of the marines, ensuring Army division commanders highly responsive close air support. As a result, the Army in Vietnam became a strong defender of single management.44

By the time the single management controversy was resolved, the question largely had lost its urgency. During March, the North Vietnamese, battered by American airpower, gradually abandoned their siege of Khe Sanh. Army units employing airmobile tactics and Marine units advancing along Highway 9 linked up with the defenders on 6 April. Similarly, the Communist threat to overrun Quang Tri and Thua Thien withered under allied counterattacks. Greater changes in the war also were in progress. Generals Westmoreland and Momyer and Admiral Sharp, three principals in the airpower controversy, were pre- paring to end their tours at MACV, Seventh Air Force, and CINCPAC. A partial cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam, ordered by President Johnson on 31 March, reduced demands on MACV’s airpower resources. When Secretary Nitze issued his ruling, the United States and North Vietnam were preparing to begin peace negotiations. These events stemmed largely from the political and psychological impact of the Tet offensive in the United States, an impact MACV’s actions inadvertently intensified.45

for the Book  lick Here