In 1971, while U.S. ground forces were prohibited from crossing the
Laotian border, a South Vietnamese Army corps, with U.S. air support,
launched the largest airmobile operation in the history of warfare, Lam
Son 719. The objective: to sever the North Vietnamese Army's main
logistical artery, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, at its hub, Tchepone in Laos,
an operation that, according to General Creighton Abrams, could have
been the decisive battle of the war, hastening the withdrawal of U.S.
forces and ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. The outcome: defeat
of the South Vietnamese Army and heavy losses of U.S. helicopters and
aircrews, but a successful preemptive strike that met President Nixon's
near-term political objectives.
Author Robert Sander, a helicopter pilot in Lam Son 719, explores why an
operation of such importance failed. Drawing on archives and interviews,
and firsthand testimony and reports, Sander chronicles not only the
planning and execution of the operation but also the maneuvers of the
bastions of political and military power during the ten-year effort to
end Communist infiltration of South Vietnam leading up to Lam Son 719.
The result is a picture from disparate perspectives: the Kennedy,
Johnson, and Nixon administrations; the South Vietnamese government led
by President Nguyen Van Thieu; and senior U.S. military commanders and
army aviators.
Sander's conclusion is at once powerful and persuasively clear. Lam Son
719 was doomed in both the planning and execution--a casualty of
domestic and international politics, flawed assumptions, incompetent
execution, and the resolve of the North Vietnamese Army. A powerful work
of military and political history, this book offers eloquent testimony
that "failure, like success, cannot be measured in absolute terms."
