Drawing on a wide range of Vietnamese-language sources, the author
presents a detailed account of the continuing efforts of North Vietnam
to invade the South, enlivened by a large number of previously
unpublished photographs, and color profiles for modelers.
A year after the Paris peace accord had been signed, on 17 January 1973,
peace had not been settled in Vietnam. During that period, the North
Vietnamese continued their attacks now that the United States had pulled
out completely their forces, with the definitive conquest of South
Vietnam as the goal. The South Vietnamese forces' erosion on the field
increased in face of a series of concerted North Vietnamese offensives
at Corps level. The drastic American aid reduction began to impact
heavily on the South Vietnamese ability to wage war. Equally, Saigon
could not respond to a Chinese invasion of the Paracel Islands after a
brief naval battle, and if Hanoi had been bolstered by massive
deliveries of equipment from Peking and Moscow, both the Chinese and the
Soviet had withheld the delivery of sufficient ammunitions for the
artillery and the tanks, to deter the North Vietnamese from attempting a
new wide scale offensive against the South.
It was with these constraints that the North Vietnamese leadership
planned their new campaign, initially expecting it to take 2 to 3 years.
A last test had to be done in order to assess the American intentions in
case of an all-out North Vietnamese offensive against the South - if a
South Vietnamese provincial capital was taken without American reaction,
then Hanoi would begin the last campaign of the war. After the fall of
Phuoc Long, the North Vietnamese decided to attack the strategic Central
Highlands area where they hoped to destroy the greater part of an ARVN
Corps.
The battle of Ban Me Thuout would be the pivotal event leading to the
rapid collapse of South Vietnam. While the battle was going on, without
taking advices from his generals, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South
Vietnam decided to take radical measures by redeploying his forces. That
meant abandoning no less than half of the country, in order to shorter
his logistic communication lines and to concentrate his remaining
depleted forces around Saigon and the Mekong Delta area. He probably
also hoped that by aggravating the military situation he would force
Washington to fulfill its promise that "in case of massive violation of
the cease-fire", the Americans would resume their military aid and would
send back the B-52s.
