Operation Vulture
21°23′13″N 103°0′56″E / 21.38694°N 103.01556°E
Operation Vulture (
Background
Viet Minh forces under General
French-American meeting
Giap's initial assault began on March 13, 1954.[2] General Paul Ély, the French Chief of Staff, arrived in Washington to plead the French case to US policy-makers. on March 20.[3] Discussions involved General Ély, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.[1] At a meeting in Washington on 20 March 1954, Admiral Radford proposed to General Ély a plan calling for United States to use 60 B-29 bombers in the Philippines together with the aircraft of the 7th Fleet based in the Gulf of Tonkin to bomb the Vietminh forces besieging the French at Dien Bien Phu.[4] Ély came away from the meeting with the impression that the Americans would intervene and promptly reported to Paris that he had Radford's assurances to that effect.[4]
The plan
The plan included as many as 98 B-29s from Okinawa and the Philippines that would drop 1,400 tonnes of bombs on positions held by the Viet Minh.[5] Another version of the plan envisioned sending 60 B-29s from US bases in the region, supported by as many as 150 fighters launched from US Seventh Fleet carriers, to bomb Giap's positions.[1]
The plan included an option to use up to three small atomic weapons on the Viet Minh positions in support of the French.[1] The Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up plans to deploy tactical atomic weapons, U.S. carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin, and reconnaissance flights over Dien Bien Phu were conducted during the negotiations.[6] Radford, the top American military officer, gave this nuclear option his backing. US B-29s, B-36s, and B-47s could have executed a nuclear strike, as could carrier aircraft from the Seventh Fleet.[1] Admiral Radford was the leading voice within the government for Operation Vulture, citing a study that three tactical atomic bombs "properly employed" would decisively smash the Vietminh forces besieging the French at Dien Bien Phu, and thereby turn a certain defeat into a victory.[7]
The U.S. Air Force's commanding officer, General Nathan F. Twining, endorsed Vulture, but General Matthew Ridgway of the U.S. Army was stoutly opposed.[7] Ridgway stated that air power alone could not save the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu and argued that only the commitment of seven U.S. Army divisions could save the French.[7] Ridgway further contended that if the United States intervened in Vietnam it was almost a given that China would likewise intervene.[7] Dien Bien Phu was located in the northern part of Vietnam that put it into the proximity of China, and China had intervened in the Korean war in 1950 on the grounds that the United Nations advance into North Korea was a threat to its security. If China intervened in Vietnam, Ridgway asserted the U.S. Army would need twelve divisions in Vietnam to have a chance of victory.[7] Ridgway concluded that "Indochina is devoid of decisive military objectives" and fighting another land war against China "would be a serious diversion of limited U.S. capabilities".[7] Ridgway thought that Radford as an admiral was far too dismissive of Chinese power and that he was blind to the political dangers of the United States fighting again against China in less than a year after the end of the Korean war, causing much discord on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[8] Ridgway was the leader of a faction within the U.S. Army known as the "Never Again Club" that regarded the Korean War which ended in a draw as an unsatisfactory outcome from the American perspective, and were strongly opposed to fighting another land war in Asia, especially against the Chinese.[8]
Both the Vice President, Richard Nixon, and the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, were all for Vulture and lobbied Eisenhower hard to accept it, arguing that it was essential to stop Communism in Vietnam.[7] Eisenhower himself felt much guilt over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and during one meeting told Admiral Radford and General Twining: "You boys must be crazy. We can't use those awful things against Asians for a second time in less than ten years. My God!"[9] Eisenhower finally agreed to carry out Vulture, but if Congress gave its approval first and if Great Britain agreed to join in.[7] At a press conference Eisenhower stated: "There is going to be no involvement of America in war unless it is the result of the constitutional process that is placed upon Congress to declare it. Now, let us have that clear".[10][11] Eisenhower was referring to the clause in the American constitution that gave the power to declare war to Congress.
The leaders of both houses of Congress gave an equivocal answer to Eisenhower's request for approval, opposed to the idea of Vulture as an American operation, but willing to accept it as an Anglo-American operation.
Beyond that, Eisenhower was dissatisfied with French policies in Vietnam. In 1949, the French had granted nominal independence to Vietnam, creating the
Eisenhower wrote the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill a letter urging the United Kingdom to intervene, saying the situation was no different from the 1930s when other nations "by not acting in unit and in time" failed to stop Nazi Germany.[12] Dulles was dispatched to London to make the case for intervention, but he was coldly received.[12] The Foreign Secretary, Sir Anthony Eden, who was to serve as co-chairman of the upcoming Geneva Conference alongside the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, was opposed to intervention, telling Dulles that his country would not be "hustled into injudicious military decisions".[12] In a speech before the House of Commons, Churchill stated that Great Britain "was not prepared to give any undertakings...in Indochina in advance of the results of Geneva".[12] At most, Churchill and Eden promised Dulles that Britain was prepared to join a NATO-type organization for Southeast Asia, which was later created in September 1954 as the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).[12]
Decision against the operation
Vice-president Nixon, a so-called "hawk" on Vietnam, suggested that the U.S. might have to "put American boys in".
See also
- Franco-American relations
- Suez Crisis
- Vietnam war)
Books and articles
- Karnow, Stanley (1983). Vietnam A History. Viking. ISBN 0140265473.
- Langguth, A.J. (2000). Our Vietnam The War 1954-1975. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743212312.
- Wicker, Thomas (2014). Dwight D. Eisenhower. New York: Times Books. ISBN 978-1466871809.
References
- ^ a b c d e Rebecca Grant (August 2004). "Dien Bien Phu". Air Force Magazine. Vol. 87, no. 8. Archived from the original on 22 July 2009.
- ISBN 9781137098917.
- ^ "When Ike Was Asked to Nuke Vietnam". The Washington Post. 21 August 1982.
- ^ a b Karnow 1983, p. 196.
- ISBN 978-1-936274-65-9.
- OCLC 7551292.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Karnow 1983, p. 197.
- ^ a b Langguth 2000, p. 77.
- ^ Langguth 2000, p. 77-78.
- ISBN 978-0-16-069823-1)
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link - ^ a b Wicker 2014, p. 31.
- ^ a b c d e f Karnow 1983, p. 198.
- ^ Karnow 1983, p. 174-175.
- ^ Karnow 1983, p. 179.
- ^ Karnow 1983, p. 180.
- ^ Karnow 1983, p. 174.
- ^ Wicker 2014, p. 31-33.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-85728-922-0
- ISBN 978-0-7425-4302-7.
- ISBN 978-1-55750-595-8.
- ISBN 978-0-7914-5249-3
Further reading
- The sky would fall: Operation Vulture – the U.S. bombing mission in Indochina, 1954, John Prados, Dial Press, 1983
- Operation Vulture – The True Story of America's Secret Plan to Drop a Nuclear Bomb on Vietnam in the 1950s!, John Prados, I Books, 29 June 2004
- Prados, John (2014). Operation Vulture: America's Dien Bien Phu. Diversion Books. ISBN 978-0-9893331-4-6.
- The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis, Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, Harvard University Press, 27 February 2007
- Spector, Ronald H. (1983). "11. The Question of Intervention". Advice alld Slipport: Tile Early Years, 1941- 1960 (PDF). United States Army in Vietnam series (volume 1). U.S. Army Center of Military History. pp. 191–218.