No Exit By Dr. Earl Tilford

In April 1972, with North Vietnamese forces advancing as part of their Nguyen Hue Offensive, Seventh Air Force Headquarters in Saigon began drawing up evacuation plans. Approximately 60,000 U.S. military personnel remained in South Vietnam along with many more thousands of civilian contractors, American reporters, missionaries, businessmen, State Department personnel and employees of other U.S. government agencies. The planners soon gave up. In 1972, if South Vietnam had fallen, there would have been no way to evacuate that many Americans. If the North Vietnamese and their communist Viet Cong cohorts in the South didn’t stop us, the South Vietnamese army would have. After all, they controlled the airports and seaports and without their cooperation, we would have to shoot our way out.

No Exit ...

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