Word: saigon
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...just bomb the hell out of them.' " But over the years it has not always worked, and it still may not. The inability of the South Vietnamese army to make headway against the Communist invaders on the ground seems to illustrate another saying heard often in Saigon: "Airpower can keep you from losing ground, but it can't get any back...
Indefinite Presence. When can the South Vietnamese take over their own air war? After the training and equipping of the Vietnamese air force is complete late in 1974, Saigon will have the world's seventh largest air force, with 1,300 planes. But even then it will not be self-sufficient. Partly because Washington does not want Saigon to have an air force advanced enough to tempt it into unwise adventures, VNAF will not be given the long-range planes that would enable it to keep pressure up on the Ho Chi Minh Trail or hold Hanoi...
Nowhere was the South Vietnamese failure more evident-or more costly in military and civilian lives-than in the siege of An Loc, a provincial capital of approximately 17,000 people 60 miles north of Saigon. Its population had been swollen by 6,000 men of the battered South Vietnamese 5th Division and some 2,000 refugees who had fled south after the fall of the district town of Loc Ninh three weeks ago. North Vietnamese troops threw a cordon around...
...decreeing that An Loc be held, President Thieu had inadvertently given it a symbolic importance far beyond its actual strategic value. It bestrides the highway to Saigon, but the city itself is of little military worth. After a two-week siege, An Loc was a shattered city of rotting corpses and walking wounded. From tree-covered cliffs and rubber plantations overlooking the town, North Vietnamese gunners poured in round after round of artillery, mortar, rocket and tank fire. Several shells landed on the overcrowded hospital, located near the South Vietnamese army headquarters. "The wounded were everywhere," said South Vietnamese Captain...
...ideal for bombing enemy troops and for taking up a defensive position should the North Vietnamese choose to attack. The NVA declined the bait, and only harassed the column while the troops' morale and supplies dwindled. Minh, who has built up a reputation as the most successful of Saigon's generals at avoiding a set battle, kept insisting that he was on the verge of "a great victory." His apparent reasoning: since An Loc had not yet fallen, "our reinforcements saved the city...