Operation Lam Son 719, 1971: South Vietnam's drive into Laos

Lam Son 719 was meant to show that South Vietnam's army could fight on its own while American troops went home. It turned into some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and the pictures of South Vietnamese soldiers clinging to the skids of helicopters leaving Laos became one of its most lasting images.²

Cutting the trail

The Ho Chi Minh Trail, a logistical corridor through eastern Laos, carried North Vietnam's men and supplies south. Striking the supply bases around Tchepone, a small town at a junction of supply routes in southeastern Laos, was meant to cut a major artery of the trail and forestall a North Vietnamese offensive. After the incursion into Cambodia in 1970, Nixon's staff and the allied commanders turned to the Laotian border, and at their behest General Creighton Abrams began planning the offensive.³ › Operation Menu, 1969

It was also a political test. President Nixon saw the operation above all as a test of Vietnamization, the policy of handing the war to the South Vietnamese. Under the Cooper-Church Amendment no American ground troops or advisers could enter Laos, so the United States would provide aircraft, helicopters, artillery and logistics from the South Vietnamese side of the border.⁴

Into Laos

In the first phase, Dewey Canyon II, American troops reopened Route 9 up to the border and the air base at Khe Sanh. On 8 February the South Vietnamese crossed the border. James H. Willbanks, writing in HistoryNet, describes a corps level operation under Lieutenant General Hoang Xuan Lam with more than 17,000 men in 34 battalions, supported by nearly 700 helicopters and 2,000 fixed wing aircraft. Its targets were Base Area 604 and Tchepone, 42 kilometers from the border.⁵

The start went well. By 10 February the column had taken A Luoi on Route 9 and captured Ban Dong with large caches of weapons, fuel and food, while Rangers and paratroopers were landed on hills to the north and the 1st Division on the escarpment to the south. Then, on 11 February, the advance stopped about 5 kilometers beyond A Luoi. Willbanks writes that President Nguyen Van Thieu had told Lam to be careful and to cancel the operation if he took 3,000 casualties, worried about elections in the fall and about his airborne division, his protection against a coup.⁶

The firebases fall

The North Vietnamese answered in strength. By Willbanks's count they eventually moved five divisions, more than 60,000 troops, into the area.⁷

They took the hilltop firebases one at a time. Ranger Base North fell on 20 February, when its survivors fought their way out; 178 of its 430 Rangers were killed or missing. On 25 February North Vietnamese infantry and T-54 tanks overran Fire Support Base 31, held by the 3rd Airborne Brigade, after an armored relief force sat idle a few kilometers away amid conflicting orders; the paratroopers lost 155 killed and more than 100 captured, including the brigade commander. Fire Support Base 30 had to be abandoned in early March. An American adviser said the North Vietnamese plucked the bases like ripe grapes, one by one.⁸

The American helicopter crews flew into heavy anti-aircraft fire every time they crossed the border. Willbanks quotes a Chinook pilot who could not remember an evening when a damaged Huey or Cobra was not slung beneath a returning Chinook.⁹

Tchepone and the retreat

Thieu shifted the aim from destroying supply bases to simply taking Tchepone, which Willbanks calls a public relations move ahead of the elections. In one of the largest airmobile operations of the war, troops of the 1st Division were landed near the ruined town, which they took on 7 March. It was the last good news. With Tchepone taken, Thieu gave the order to withdraw.¹⁰

Over the following weeks the South Vietnamese fought their way back to the border under heavy pressure from North Vietnamese tanks and infantry; by Willbanks's count they lost 54 tanks and 96 artillery pieces in the operation. A U.S. Army historian has the last of them out of Laos on 23 March, Willbanks most of them by 25 March.¹¹

The cost

The figures for South Vietnamese losses differ. Saigon reported 1,160 killed, more than 4,000 wounded and over 200 missing; according to Willbanks, the U.S. XXIV Corps counted more than 7,000 South Vietnamese killed, wounded or captured, and a U.S. Army historian gives the corps's figure as 7,683 casualties. American losses in Lam Son 719 and the supporting Dewey Canyon II came to 253 killed or missing and 1,149 wounded, 1,402 in all, and Willbanks counts 107 U.S. helicopters destroyed and 601 damaged.¹²

Thieu declared a complete success. Willbanks judges the outcome mixed: real damage to the North Vietnamese and their supply system, but proof that Vietnamization was still a work in progress. Hanoi promptly declared victory. A U.S. Army historian notes that by forcing North Vietnam to spend enormous resources and manpower, the operation delayed its next major offensive until 1972.¹³