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Review of Eleven Days of Christmas--was Friendly Fire Notebook
After raising the questions in the previous thread regarding Marshal
Michel's "Eleven Days of Christmas" I thought it might help to post the review I wrote of the book about two years ago when it was first released: Win, Loss or Draw: The Eleven Days of Christmas Participants, modern warriors and military history buffs will find Marshall Michel's latest work, The Eleven Days of Christmas: America's Last Vietnam Battle a compelling read. For years we've gone along telling ourselves that we won the war with that last intense effort, unleashing the B-52s, showing we meant business and driving the recalcitrant North Vietnamese back to the bargaining table. Now Michel reveals that the North Vietnamese also believe they won the war through this decisive battle that they call the "Dien Bien Phu of the air." And, when you've finished reading this powerful indictment of the U.S. Air Force, you may agree with them. Either way, you'll have gained insight into the bureaucratic bumbling, organizational arrogance, and pompous posturing that nearly led us into a military fiasco. Fighter pilots and bomber pilots have always chipped away at each other, but it's been in the nature of locker-room ribbing. Michel's work shows, however, that at the highest levels the competition and animosity is deadly serious. Starting with the Cold War thinking of SAC preeminence under Curtis Lemay, he tracks through the rationale for establishing SAC as a specified command, never under the operational control of theater commanders. As the Vietnam war goes on, SAC is inexorably dragged into the conflict, not as a tool of the field commander but rather as a reluctant partner who must join the party to maintain a semblance of credibility and a large slice of the budgetary pie. When the decision is made to finally unleash the total capability of American airpower, the result is near disaster caused by stereotypical tactics, inflexibility of SAC leadership, and absentee management of the bomber force by a headquarters twelve thousand miles away. The book breaks valuable new ground in the story with the incorporation of the North Vietnamese side of the battle. Michel has gone to Hanoi and talked with the SA-2 operators and the air defense coordinators to give the view from the ground. Move and counter-move play out as the bomber crews try to convince their leadership to change their tactics and the missile crews try to bring deployed units back from the panhandle of Vietnam to participate in the last ditch defense of the capital. There's plenty of heroism on both sides and even career fighter pilots have to give the nod to the incredible courage of the bomber crews who each night drive their craft into the teeth of the defensive tiger. Michel tells the story of the bomber raids of Christmas and shines a bright light on the infighting of the top level players. In doing so, he spends little time on tactical operations of Linebacker II, barely mentioning the hundreds of sorties flown each day, the MiG kills or the SAM sites destroyed. The reader will barely notice this loss of micro detail as the book dumps you into the midst of the macro machinations of the highest leadership levels. When you've finished, you may still not be sure if we won or lost, but you'll be absolutely certain to have lots to discuss. The Eleven Days of Christmas: America's Last Vietnam Battle, Michel, Marshall L., III. Encounter Books, San Francisco CA. 2002. ISBN 1-893554-24-4. $25.95. 325pp. Ed Rasimus Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret) "When Thunder Rolled" Smithsonian Institution Press ISBN #1-58834-103-8 |
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