19. Operation Plan El Paso

General William C. Westmoreland
to General Creighton W. Abrams
Saigon, Vietnam, March, 1968

THE HO CHI MINH TRAIL, WHICH LINKED NORTH VIETNAM'S RED RIVER DELTA WITH SOUTH VIETNAM VIA THE Laotian panhandle in the 1960s and early 1970s, was an indispensable source of supplies for Communist forces south of the 17^th Parallel.¹ U.S. air interdiction campaigns and special operations forces slowed, but by no means stopped the flow.² President Lyndon B. Johnson, primarily for political reasons, disapproved air strikes against stockpiles around Hanoi and Haiphong, which arguably might have been more successful.³

General William C. Westmoreland, who was Commander, United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (COMUSMACV), consequently commissioned Operation Plan (OPLAN) El Paso, a corps-sized operation timed to seal off the Ho Chi Minh Trail at Tchepone for 18 consecutive months during a dry season preceded and followed by torrential rains that would reduce vehicular traffic to a trickle.⁴ Members of the small joint staff that prepared OPLAN El Paso between November 1967 and March 1968 found that geographic circumstances profoundly influenced proposed answers to every question connected with that large-scale, long-duration operation far from established support facilities. Results of their efforts follow, along with the unhappy outcome of Operation Lam Son 719, an ill-conceived substitute.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail, which initially nourished Viet Cong guerrillas in South Vietnam, was nothing more than a skein of rustic traces through the wilderness when it opened in the late 1950s. Dedicated men, women, boys, and girls bent bandy-legged beneath heavy loads trudged down those paths, all but ignored by senior officials in the United States and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) because the invoices were unimpressive: a little rice, a few pitted handguns captured from the French, homemade weapons pieced together like Rube Goldberg toys. The tempo, however, gradually picked up and consignments increasingly included sophisticated items such as radios, pharmaceuticals, plastic explosives, recoilless rifles, and repair parts. Ammunition requirements multiplied exponentially after U.S. combat forces hit North Vietnamese regulars head on in 1965.⁵

Brutal courses that in the beginning traversed several hundred miles of exhausting, saw-toothed terrain between Vinh and the demilitarized zone (DMZ) later continued the grind through Laos, which in some cases more than doubled the distance to ultimate destinations in South Vietnam (map 63). Human bearers and assorted beasts struggled to tote swelling loads, yet gaps between supplies and demands became ever wider, because individual burdens grew progressively heavier--every 122-mm rocket, for example, weighed 102 pounds (46 kilograms), more than most of the porters; fewer than five would buckle the knees of pint-sized Annamese elephants which push and pull better than they bear cumbersome loads. Requirements for routes that could accommodate truck traffic thus were obvious (table 29), but most passageways in the back country were primitive, largely bridgeless, initially pitted with water buffalo wallows, and subsequently battered by bombs.

Prime Movers	Rated Capacity
Male Porters Female Porters Elephants Pack Bicycles Ox Carts Trucks GAZ-51 ZIL-151 STAR-66	68 lbs 55 lbs. 440 lbs. 525 lbs. 2,200 lbs 4,400 lbs. 5,500 lbs. 7,720 lbs.	(31 kg) (25 kg) (200 kg) (238 kg) (998 kg) (1,996 kg) (2,495 kg) (3,500 kg)

Senior decisionmakers in Hanoi accordingly initiated ambitious renovation and expansion programs to widen rights of way, span streams, level humps, fill in hollows, corduroy spongy spots, and establish way stations. The improved Ho Chi Minh Trail, constructed and maintained with tools that ranged from shovels to bulldozers and scrapers, incrementally became a labyrinth of motorable roads, cart tracks, foot paths, and navigable streams that by early autumn 1967 furnished Communist forces in South Vietnam about one-fourth of all their supplies (more than 70 percent of arms and munitions). Aerial bombardments pocked those avenues like surfaces on the moon, but dogged peasants with military supervisors patched the wreckage and built bypasses, while convoys shuttled from point to point under cover of darkness and ever more effective antiaircraft umbrellas.

Business was necessarily cyclical, since seasonal rains made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a mush from mid-April at least until late September. North Vietnamese logisticians on the lee side of mountains that block the Southwest Monsoon therefore amassed stockpiles inside their home border during summer months, when skies were sunny along the coast, in preparation for great surges south as soon as roads in Laos were dry. Communist base areas honeycombed with caves, tunnels, bunkers, and subterranean storage pits in Laos held stocks pending distribution to using units.

The Laotian panhandle comprises three parallel regions roughly oriented from north northwest to south southeast: jumbled mountains straddle the eastern frontier; a rolling plain west of Muong Phine stretches all the way to the Mekong; a rough, fever-ridden, sparsely settled transition zone occupies space in between. The Ho Chi Minh Trail traversed all three (map 64).

The Annam Mountain Chain. The highest peak along the border between Laos and Vietnam barely tops 5,500 feet (1,675 meters), and few other summits surpass 4,000 feet (1,220 meters), but such figures are deceptive, because mountain streams chisel razorbacked ridges and canyons from bedrock. Numerous inclines exceed 45 degrees or 100 percent (slopes climb one foot vertically for every horizontal foot). Topography is roughest north and west of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), where massive limestone deposits dissolve in tropical downpours, sculpting needle-shaped pinnacles, sink holes, and culs-de-sac. North Vietnamese Army (NVA) workshops, apartments, and stockpiles took advantage of giant caverns with cool, dry, blast-proof halls three or four stories high that extended 1,000 feet or more (300+ meters) into many hillsides.

Few convenient apertures other than Mu Gia Pass and the Khe Sanh Gap cross that mountain wall, because swift streams that cascade west from the divide carve constricted corridors studded with rapids--the Banghiang River traverses a gorge so steep that map contour lines sit one on top of another--and slopes everywhere are as slippery as bobsled runs when greased by rain.

Dank, gloomy, multistoried jungles with dense undergrowth mantle much of that redoubt with thick stands of teak and mahogany most of which tower 90 to 100 feet (27 to 30 meters), although occasional monsters are half again as high. Corded vines festoon the lower levels and lacerate unwary travelers with terrible barbs. Huge breaks of bamboo stretch from Khe Sanh to Ban Houi Sane, close clumped, almost impenetrable, some with stalks half a foot in diameter. Secondary growth quickly reclaims slash-and-burn plots that nomadic Montagnard tribes abandon.

The Transition Zone. Topography in the transition zone between mountains on the east and relatively level terrain on the west features discontinuous uplands that chop the Laotian landscape into a series of acute angle compartments. Two prominent east-west ridges a few miles apart with a conspicuous trough in between follow parallel paths for nearly 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Khe Sanh past Tchepone, where the northern runner peters out. Its companion, which plunges on for another 50 miles, is a natural barrier breached in just four places. The Lang Vei cleft farthest east expires south of Route 9 in a maze of serrated highlands that might have been fashioned with pinking shears. A second portal at Ban Dong widens to form a shallow, oblong bowl that generally centers on Four Corners. Tchepone, the best natural hub, boasts breakthroughs that lead southwest, southeast, and east. The final opening, farthest west, comprises a broad pass at Muong Phine.

The Banghiang River, 3 feet deep and 100 yards wide at Tchepone under optimum conditions, always is an impressive obstacle. More than 50 perpendicular runnels that drain wooded, broken ground just north of the Pon River and corrugate its flood plains are militarily insignificant during dry seasons, but become raging torrents when it rains, while trackless palisades up to 800 feet high (243 meters) shadow the south bank for 15 miles (24 kilometers) west of Ban Dong.

Blobs of blue and red that represent friendly and enemy armed forces on tactical maps more often than not are isolated from each other in the Transition Zone, where no vehicles move far off roads and trails. Foot troops may hike a mile or two an hour in open forests, but vegetative tangles make military columns backtrack and double or triple straight-line distances. Youthful Paul Bunyons wielding machetes can hew through bamboo thickets at a rate that approximates 100 yards or so in 60 blistering minutes, provided they take an interest in their work, sergeants rotate point men frequently, and no one cares how much noise is made (the racket sounds like several unsynchronized Anvil Choruses).

Desolation typified the Transition Zone. Tchepone, the largest village, once housed maybe 1,500 civilian men, women, and children, but fewer than half remained by the mid-1960s. Most hamlets were deserted, their former inhabitants dead or departed. Panhandle life had shifted from traditional rural clusters to NVA base areas in dense woods or river towns that the Royal Laotian Government held.

The Savannakhet Plain. The Savannakhet Plain, as its name implies, is relatively low, gently rolling real estate overgrown with brush and savanna grass, except where subsistence agriculture plots take precedence. Most of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1967-68 was positioned well to the east, because its architects preferred better cover and more direct routes to destinations in South Vietnam.

The Combined Intelligence Center in Saigon estimated that 90 percent of all NVA troops infiltrated into Laos through the demilitarized zone via Routes 103 and 102, after which some marched south while others swung back into South Vietnam along the Nam Samou River and Route 9, both of which showered tributary tracks like Fourth of July sparklers (map 64). Supplies and equipment, however, took different tacks in 1967-1968.

Route 92. Route 92, a rude way no more than 10 or 12 feet wide (fewer than 3 meters), was passable to one-way motor traffic from the DMZ to Ban Dong, where trucks swam the Pon River during dry weather, then negotiated extremely tight turns and steep grades en route to Four Corners. Major improvements farther south transformed that byway into the preeminent infiltration corridor in southern Laos.

Route 914. Route 914, which opened operations in 1965, sucked in traffic from numerous sources, including Mu Gia Pass and inland waterways, until, by early 1968, it became the most heavily traveled supply route between Tchepone and Route 92 at Four Corners. Its width varied from 8 to 30 feet (2+ to nearly 10 meters), and a laterite surface tolerated tractor-trailers as long as the weather was fair. Route 914 didn't exactly tip on end after it forded the Banghiang River, but the road climbed 23 percent grades before it found an easier course.

Route 23. Route 23, the only other motorable north-south avenue on the Ho-Chi Minh Trail, went dormant and fell into disrepair as soon as convoys began to take the Route 914 short-cut. Convoy traffic ceased in 1966 after fighter-bombers destroyed the triple-span Banghiang bridge, because the river at that point was unfordable, but revived a bit some months later when barges and bypasses appeared. Construction crews, however, never restored or replaced the battered bridge and wasted little time improving the natural earth roadbed, which at best was 7 or 8 feet wide.

Route 9. Highway 9, the only east-west "turnpike" across the Laotian panhandle, in its salad days was a passing fair post road that connected Quang Tri Province on the Tonkin Gulf coast with the Mekong River town of Savannakhet, a distance of 200 miles (322 kilometers). War and neglect had taken their toll, but that artery still had greater potential than any other: a stable base; crushed stone and laterite surfaces that averaged 13 to 14 feet wide, not counting shoulders; gradients that never exceeded plus or minus 3 to 5 percent, even through the Khe San Gap; and access to nearly every militarily significant feature in the study area, including transportation nodes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and NVA base areas.

Notable liabilities nevertheless counterbalanced those assets. Several gullied or grossly overgrown stretches as much as a mile long restricted horizontal clearances to as little as 6 feet (fewer than 2 meters). Many lengthy meanders around fallen trees and bomb craters additionally reduced throughput capacities and increased transit times. Few bridges that colonial Frenchmen installed survived U.S. air strikes, which systematically took them out starting in 1966. The rickety relics still standing were unable to hold fully loaded three-quarter-ton trucks, but light NVA vehicles routinely sloshed across everywhere, including the broad sand and mud Banghiang River bottom, whereas 12-ton U.S. semitrailers would have bogged down there in the absence a pontoon bridge or ferry.

U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh possessed the only operational fixed-wing airfield in the study area after January 1968. Six others were abandoned in various stages of disrepair (table 30).

Lao Bao and Ban Amo. Neither Lao Bao nor Ban Amo was worth rehabilitating, because neither had been very capable in its hey day, and both were badly in need of repair. Time, manpower, and money could have been better expended elsewhere.

Ban Houei Sane. Ban Houei Sane, on the outskirts of the sleepy village from which it took its name, served U.S. C-130 transports until January 1968, when North Vietnamese regulars overran it on their way to Khe Sanh shortly before Tet. The crushed stone and laterite runway received more than 20 deep craters at that time, but the rest was in fairly good shape and expansion room to the west was almost unlimited.

Tchepone. The former French airbase at Tchepone, 23 air miles farther west (37 kilometers), fell into Communist hands in 1961, after the Laotian Forces Arm�es du Royaume (FAR) withdrew. U.S. engineers believed its well-drained, well-compacted 3,700-foot (1,128-meter) runway could be rehabilitated rapidly, even though one end was pocked with big bomb craters and blocked by elephant grass and brush. A knife-edged ridge, which rose abruptly about one mile to the south, might have made C-130 landings and takeoffs iffy, but would not have interfered with light assault transports such as C-123s and C-17s.

Muong Phine. The derelict runway at Muong Phine, reclaimed by encroaching jungle, was scarcely visible from the air, but bomb damage was slight and its laterite surface overlaid a solid foundation. Refurbishment would have required extensive land clearing plus filling to repair erosion scars as well as one deep depression. Landings from and takeoffs to the west were unobstructed, although the runway unhappily pointed straight at a mountain mass in the opposite direction.

Muong Nong. The stubby 1,300-foot earth-surfaced runway at Muong Nong butted into a loop of the Lanong River 20-some miles (30+ kilometers) south of Route 9. Even so, there was room to double that length by planing off humps and draining a small swamp. Engineers equipped with air transportable earth-moving machines could have produced a C-123 strip in about 2 weeks.

Khe Sanh. The operational airfield at Khe Sanh combat base, just across the border in South Vietnam, was built on weathered basalt, a reddish substance that looks much like laterite, but contains few lateritic properties. Aluminum planking covered the runway, taxi strips, and parking area to ensure all-weather capabilities, because basalt churns to mush and ruts quickly after the slightest rain. Khe Sanh, unlike any other airfield in the study area, was fully-equipped with modern aids to navigation (TACAN and radio beacons), ground-controlled approach radar (GCA), and refueling facilities for helicopters as well as fixed-wing aircraft.

Open spaces that might serve as large-scale parachute drop zones (DZs) or helicopter landing zones (LZs) are scarce in the Laotian panhandle, except for sites on the Savannakhet Plain. Topography elsewhere is most often too formidable and vegetation too confining.

Parachute Drop Zones. Rice paddies around Muong Phine offered the only opportunities for sizable parachute assaults which, according to U.S. Seventh Air Force standards in 1968, required a reasonably clear drop zone 2,925 yards long for 64 troopers in a C-130, which is more than a mile and one-half (2.67 kilometers) Smaller clearings around Tchepone, Four Corners, and Ban Houei Sane, however, were more than adequate for container deliveries of ammunition, rations, POL, and other high priority items (35,200 pounds per C-130). Well-qualified crews equipped with the Parachute Low Altitude Delivery System (PLADS) generally could put 2,000-pound bundles onto 20-yard-square bullseyes on isolated hilltops or in jungle clearings, and the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System (LAPES) could slide 18,000-pound platforms down any obstruction-free dirt road or other reasonably smooth surface 50 feet wide by 1,200 feet long.

Helicopter Landing Zones. Helicopter transportation boded better than parachute delivery, although those versatile "birds" have definite limitations related to altitudes and temperatures, which affect lift capacities. Tilled flats bestraddling Muong Phine and interspersed along the Pon River could handle formation landings and takeoffs by multiple flights, but few open areas elsewhere could accommodate more than one or two ships simultaneously. High explosives and chain saws would have been required to create small chopper pads quickly in dense forests where no natural cavities reach the floor.

Monsoonal rains, low ceilings, poor visibility, heat, humidity, and destructive winds complicated planning for Operation El Paso, because armed forces committed to combat in Laos would have to stage in and be supported from one distinctive climatic zone along the Tonkin Gulf coast yet fight in another that is diametrically different. Hard data were available for most stations in South Vietnam, where French meteorologists had compiled reliable records for many years, but U.S. intelligence services never found similar statistics for particular locations in Laos. Climatic predictions there involved guesswork.

The Annamese Mountains, which present a perpendicular front to prevailing winds, separate climatic regimes just as surely as a slammed door (map 65 and figure 40). When the Northeast Monsoon soaks South Vietnam from mid-October until March Laos is dry; coastal regions bask in sunlight when the Southwest Monsoon takes over from May until early September, while wet weather saturates Laos. Indefinite circulation during transition periods produces instability and thunderstorms on both sides of the Geologic Curtain.

Spring rains in the Laotian panhandle, which generally commence in April, increase exponentially when the Southwest Monsoon hits the next month, accompanied by frequent downpours and local flooding. Fair weather roads turn into quagmires, fords vanish beneath roiling runoff, and vehicular traffic ceased on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The Northeast Monsoon revs up between the 4th and 24th of October, normally about the 12th. Precipitation perseveres in Laos for a week or two thereafter, then subsides rapidly, but low-hanging clouds close mountain passes along the eastern frontier half the days of some months (see Khe Sanh in figure 40). Military construction stops in South Vietnam and

flying weather over hill country becomes abominable as soon as the coastal rainy season starts. Fluctuations from the autumn norm moreover are fantastic. Hu�, for example, has yo-yoed from 3.5 inches one year (8.9 centimeters) to 66 inches in another (168 centimeters), enough to float Noah's Ark. Typhoon Bess in September 1968 dumped 20 inches of water on Da Nang in 1 day (51 centimeters).

Operation Plan El Paso, which was designed to interdict traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, proceeded apace after its architects identified the most logical lodgment area in Laos and a tactical area of responsibility (TAOR) within it. Thereafter, they determined optimum timing, postulated a concept of operations, estimated force requirements, and presented proposals to COMUSMACV for approval.

The OPLAN El Paso mission, paraphrased as follows, was the soul of simplicity:

Task Force Bottleneck seizes, secures, and as long as necessary blocks key choke points astride the Ho Chi Minh Trail beginning at H- Hour on D-Day to forestall the infiltration of NVA troops, supplies, and equipment from North Vietnam through the Laotian Panhandle into the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) and Communist sanctuaries inside Cambodia.

Planning guidance earmarked one U.S. airmobile division, one U.S. infantry division, and the Army of Vietnam (ARVN) airborne division for Task Force Bottleneck, plus substantial combat and logistical support. Those allocations established requirements for a "cockpit" within which a corps-sized force could conduct sustained offensive and defensive operations without excessive risks or costs.

The Logical Lodgment Area. Selection of the OPLAN El Paso lodgment area presented no special problems, because only one site meshed well with the mission:

The Tactical Area of Responsibility. The tactical area of responsibility depicted on map 66 is a 2,400-square-mile (6,215 square-kilometer) oblate spheroid that measures roughly 40 by 60 miles (65 by 95 kilometers). It contained ample room within which to deploy the forces and enclosed seven key terrain features:

Tchepone, together with the huge, heavily defended North Vietnamese Army base area nearby, was the focal point for every motorable infiltration route from Mu Gia Pass except National Highway 23. Muong Phine and Ban Dong were two other corks in the bottle. Four Corners offered a possible alternative to the hornet's nest at Tchepone, because road blocks there would have shunted all enemy motor vehicles onto vulnerable Route 23 well to the west of Vietnam. The C-130-capable airfield at Ban Houei Sane would have been essential for any large-scale operation other than a raid. Khe Sanh combat base, airfield, and communications center was the only U.S. or ARVN installation able to stage and support a corps-sized venture into Laos (it sat on the Xom Cham Plateau which, although small, offered adequate room for additional POL tank farms, ammunition pads, and helicopter maintenance facilities, which are voracious space eaters). Military planners seldom consider lines of communication to be key terrain, but Route 9 was an indispensable Main Supply Route (MSR), because no combination of fixed-wing and heliborne delivery systems could have borne long-term logistical loads.

The OPLAN El Paso concept of operation called for the ARVN airborne division to drop on Muong Phine at H-Hour on D-Day while U.S. airmobile brigades seized Tchepone, Ban Dong, and the airfield at Ban Houei Sane. U.S. tanks and infantry were to attack west from Khe Sanh simultaneously along Route 9 and link up as soon as possible. All three divisions and corps-level combat forces thereafter were to block enemy movement southward.

Airfield rehabilitation and the conversion of Route 9 to a double-lane MSR were high-priority tasks for Army engineers. Restrictions consistent with the accomplishment of assigned missions were designed to keep supply tonnages down, since aerial delivery would have to suffice until those tasks were complete: few vehicles were to accompany assault echelons; rapid evacuation of personnel casualties and inoperative equipment promised to reduce requirements for medical and maintenance facilities in the TAOR; no base camps were to be built in Laos at any time.

The optimum time to spring the trap would have been in November before communist commissaries in Laos began to replenish depleted larders in South Vietnam. There was no mandate for Task Force Bottleneck to search and destroy once it cleaned out the base area around Tchepone--the mission was merely to barricade the Ho Chi Minh Trail until the Southwest Monsoon again soaked Laos. One big "IF," however, remained: could U.S. logisticians sustain a three-division corps so far from established facilities?

All basic ingredients needed to support OPLAN El Paso were already in place within 10 or 12 miles (16 to 19 kilometers) of the Tonkin Gulf. Most dry cargo ships unloaded at the port of Da Nang, while petroleum tankers pumped bulk POL directly into storage bins at Tan My and Cua Viet. Fixed-wing aircraft, heavy-lift helicopters, and a meter-gauge railway transferred high-priority items to ultimate destinations. Armed forces and civilians shared coastal Highway 1, a heavily traveled artery that connected Saigon with Hanoi before Vietnam split in two at the 17^th Parallel, whereas military traffic predominated on Route 9, which wandered west from Dong Ha to Task Force Bottleneck's prospective area of responsibility.

Logistical limitations and tactical vulnerabilities associated with that setup were as restrictive for purposes of OPLAN El Paso as choke points on the Ho Chi Minh Trail were to North Vietnamese infiltrators, because throughput capabilities in 1967-1968 fell far short of I Corps Tactical Zone (I CTZ) requirements combined with those of the Bottleneck TAOR (map 67). Solutions to related problems took more thought and absorbed more time than any other planning aspect.

Da Nang could have handled all dry cargo requirements under adverse weather conditions with room to spare, but abilities to shift supplies and equipment north from that central market were clearly inadequate during the period under consideration. POL distribution problems were at least as perplexing.

Coastal Waterways and Railroad. The cheapest way to move freight is by water or rail, but neither alternative showed much promise. Floods, tides, and littoral drift made a deep water port at Tan My impractical despite repeated proposals, while Logistics-Over-the-Shore (LOTS) operations at Wunder Beach a bit farther north were infeasible during the Northeast Monsoon. There was plenty of room for additional LST and LCU ramps at Cua Viet, but no way to move the burden inland; Seabees figured it would take 14 battalion months to build a road across coastal swamps.

The railway trunkline was unserviceable and prospects for early rehabilitation appeared dim given the large number of demolished bridges between Da Nang and Dong Ha, including the whopper over the Perfume River at Hu�. Optimistic members of the Vietnamese Railway System (VNRS) nevertheless wagered that in 70 days the line could be renovated for single-track, daylight operations at 10 miles per hour, and U.S. military engineers generally agreed, given sufficient physical security; North Vietnamese trains ran part of the time, they noted, despite savage aerial bombardments.

Highway 1. Highway 1 fortunately showed definite promise. Upgrading already had shifted into high gear, galvanized by lessons learned during the Communists' February 1968 Tet offensive. Parts of seven Seabee battalions assisted by a U.S. Army engineer group and civilian contractors were rapidly widening and paving the roadway, straightening hairpin curves in Hai Van Pass, creating turnarounds, strengthening bridges, and improving drainage. Capacities increased accordingly.

The only feasible Main Supply Route between the Tonkin Gulf coast and Task Force Bottleneck's proposed TAOR lay directly south of the demilitarized zone where it was painfully exposed to enemy action. No suitable alternative was available.

Route 9. Maximum capacities of Route 9, which adequately served U.S. Marines at the Khe Sanh combat base, looked ludicrous compared with tonnages that OPLAN El Paso required. Enemy sappers had blown half of the 36 bridges east of Khe Sanh and ticklish bypasses cut in hillsides were impassable to heavy trucks. The roadway, which averaged 12 to 14 feet wide (barely 4 meters at best), originally was surfaced with asphalt prime, a bituminous treatment less than one inch thick. Some remained in 1968, buried under mud slides and debris, but a good deal was gone and shoulders (where they existed at all) were God's natural soil. Glutinous gumbo alternately gripped tires like molasses or caused wheels to slide during rainy seasons and clearly would continue to do so unless Route 9 received a solid, waterproof surface.

Petroleum Pipelines. Quang Tri and Thua Thien Provinces in 1967-68 sported barely 10 miles (16 kilometers) of 6-inch petroleum pipeline, which could pump 756,000 gallons (2,457 short tons) a day. Every drop of precious fuel for Khe Sanh consequently had to be trucked over Route 9 at that time. There was no possible way to satisfy Task Force Bottleneck's insatiable thirst for POL short of extending that embryonic pipeline system into Laos or paving the road for use while the Northeast Monsoon pelted South Vietnam.

El Paso's planners assigned high priorities to road and airfield rehabilitation inside Laos beginning on D-Day, because blocking positions astride the Ho Chi Minh Trail otherwise would have been logistically unsupportable. Plans consequently called for some combat engineers to arrive by air and for others to follow closely behind ground linkup parties attacking west from Khe Sanh.

Route 9, degraded by bomb craters, blasted bridges, erosion, and encroaching jungles, was in sad shape on the Laotian side of the border, but construction crews, confident that they could adhere to tight schedules (table 31), predicted that convoys could truck in 750 short tons a day as far as Muong Phine well before three weeks elapsed. Few streams would have demanded spans in the dry season, except the Banghiang River at Tchepone, where progress would stall for about a day while engineers installed a floating bridge after clearing assembly areas and preparing approaches through a welter of water-filled craters. Subsequent actions to widen rights of way and scrape out forward support areas where trucks could dump their loads would have taken somewhat longer, as table 32 indicates.

Suitable materials could have come first from basalt beds just west of Khe Sanh, which is rather remote, then from the dry stream beds of many Pon River tributaries which have rocky bottoms and steep banks. There would have been no rush to widen Route 9 as far as Muong Phine, garrisoned at most by one or two light ARVN airborne brigades.

Section

Miles

Engineer Companies

Days

Completion

Lang Vei to
Ban Houei Sane

Ban Houei Sane to
Ban Dong

Ban Dong to
Tchepone Airfield

11.8

8.7

17.4

37

40

D+40

D+47

D+66

No airfield in Task Force Bottleneck objective areas would have been serviceable on D-Day. Those at Tchepone and Muong Phine demanded immediate actions to clear obstructions, grade and compact surfaces, apply dust palliatives, then construct taxiways, parking lots, and cargo-handling areas. The runway at Ban Houei Sane looked like moldy cheese in mid-1968, but that strip otherwise was almost as good as new. D+11 was not an unreasonable date to anticipate full operational status.

Operation Plan El Paso was stillborn. COMUSMACV never got the "tickets" he needed to go to Tchepone, which consisted of additional muscle--firepower, mobility, supplies, equipment, funds--and, above all, political approval. President Lyndon B. Johnson in March 1968 announced his decision not to seek reelection and Richard M. Nixon, his successor, initiated "Vietnamization" programs that caused U.S. Armed Forces and military presence in Southeast Asia to shrink instead of expand.

No one will ever know whether Operation Plan El Paso would have succeeded, but a few speculations seem appropriate. The mission would have been hard to accomplish with or without determined enemy opposition in the empty Laotian lands west of Khe Sanh, which were remote from every established military facility and magnified all the miseries of combat in Vietnam, including merciless terrain, malevolent jungles, heat, malaria, typhus, leeches, and running sores. Unopposed operations moreover seem most improbable, because North Vietnam had a vested interest in motorable routes through the Laotian panhandle, which constituted the lifeline of Communist forces in South Vietnam and Cambodia.

General Giap, who could read a map as well as General Westmoreland, might have framed his own mission as follows: "Task Force Spoiler severs Routes 1 and 9 between the Tonkin Gulf coast and Laos beginning at H-Hour on D-Day to prevent U.S. and South Vietnamese Armed Forces from blocking the Ho Chi Minh Trail." Task Force Bottleneck would have been on the knife edge of existence if the North Vietnamese Army successfully isolated the port of Da Nang from the TAOR while blockading brigades were living on daily replenishment and logisticians were struggling to build up supplies in objective areas. A few well-placed enemy mortar rounds plumped periodically on airfield runways at Muong Phine, Tchepone, and Ban Houei Sane, plus attacks on ammunition pads and POL bladder farms, would have been particularly cost effective. The Bottleneck corps might have repulsed all such efforts, but the price in blood and sweat, if not tears, almost surely would have been high.

"Vietnamization" programs designed to strengthen South Vietnam's defensive capabilities and concomitantly reduce U.S. casualties, cut budgetary costs, and enable U.S. Armed Forces to disengage gradually began to take shape in 1969, soon after President Nixon took office.⁶ He and Henry A. Kissinger, who headed the National Security Council staff, contemplated a strictly South Vietnamese amphibious thrust against North Vietnam near Vinh or an incursion into Cambodia the following year as a test to determine progress, but in December 1970 settled instead on a sizable incursion into the Laotian panhandle, which South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu, U.S. Ambassador to Saigon Elsworth Bunker, and COMUSMACV General Creighton W. Abrams preferred. Secretary of State William P. Rogers, Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird, Richard Helms, the Director of Central Intelligence, and Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, who then was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acquiesced. Ambassador G. McM. Godley obtained prior approval from Laotian Prince Souvanna Phouma.⁷

Plans and Preparations. ARVN I Corps, minus U.S. advisers but with U.S. tactical air, helicopter, and long-range artillery support from bases in South Vietnam, launched Operation Lam Son 719 on February 8, 1971, to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail and obliterate the North Vietnamese base area centered on Tchepone. Few factors, however, favored success:

The Upshot. The upshot was predictable: Lam Son 719, according to a South Vietnamese major general on site, "was a bloody field exercise for ARVN forces under the command of I Corps. Nearly 8,000 ARVN soldiers and millions of dollars worth of valuable equipment and materiel [including more than 100 U.S. helicopters¹⁰] were sacrificed" before the last troops withdrew on March 24. Enemy body counts were considerable and ARVN raiders destroyed copious supplies but, in the final analysis, Lam Son 719 produced few if any lasting effects on North Vietnamese abilities to infiltrate down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.¹¹

Airfield Name	Runway Dimension (feet)	Elevation (feet)		Largest Potential Capacity	Status
Lao Bao Ban Amo Ban Houei Sane Tchepone Muong Phine Muong Nong Khe Sanh	1,100 x 65 2,250 x 75 3,560 x 90 3,700 x 120 2,900 x 60 1,300 x 60 3,897 x 60	650 480 480 558 656 500 1,608		C-7a C-7a C-130 C-130? C-130 C-123 C-130	Abandoned Abandoned Abandoned Abandoned Abandoned Abandoned Operational