To Save Dien Bien Phu
The French in Indochina

Operation Vulture to the Fall

by John Prados


The plan for VULTURE contemplated bombings by the U.S. Air Force either separately or in conjunction with the Navy. A survey group from Far East Air Force (FEAF) Bomber Command flew to Saigon in a converted B-17 reconnaissance plane to survey air bases in Vietnam and discuss the mission with the French. Brig. Gen. Joseph B. Caldara, chief of the Bomber Command, led the group.

"Smokey" Caldara found rather poor conditions in Indochina for support of Bomber Command. There were only three bases capable of handling FEAF's 98 B-29 bombers and an engineering study showed the airfields would become useless after only about three weeks of sustained operations by heavy aircraft. At the same time the French lacked the radio navigation beacons necessary for precision use of the B- 29s, as well as the identification panels French troops could use to distinguish their positions from those of the Viet Minh. Finally there was no imagery of Dien Bien Phu suitable for the AN/APQ-13 radar bomb sights carried by FEAF aircraft. Caldara rectified the last problem by flying over the entrenched camp one night in his B-17.

Meanwhile, on 22 April, Admiral Carney ordered Task Force 70 to 12-hours notice for sea. That day the aircraft carrier Philippine Sea replaced Wasp, which would return to the United States. Essex was already en route for Japan but on 23 April, the Navy recommended it be sent back to augment the force. In Washington, on 24 April, the White House staff was ordered to be prepared to return to the office within an hour, in case air intervention had to be ordered. In Paris, acting on General Navarre's recommendation, the French again asked by intervention.

In the Tonkin Gulf there were three "fair weather training cruises" between 26 April and 15 May. By now Phillips had the carriers Boxer and Philippine Sea with 151 aircraft. Essex eventually did return from Japan as a reinforcement. The night before she left Yokosuka an unidentified submarine was spotted in the harbor. French naval sources also believed that six to eight Soviet submarines were cruising off Hainan, while, in the last week of April, American aircraft sighted submarines by radar on three occasions. On the night of 5/6 May, an American freighter inbound for Haiphong was challenged by two surfaced subs that could have been either Soviet or Chinese. [14]

Supported by Trinquier's partisans, the French commandos advanced rapidly toward their assigned positions. Loustau's 610 Commando managed to ambush one Viet Minh-Pathet Lao unit but otherwise resistance was sparse. With the equivalent of about four Viet Minh and Pathet Lao battalions in the region, the activities of the regulars of Groupe Mobile Nord fortunately drew off the opposing units. General Ciap had ordered the diversion of the 101st Regiment of his 325th Division to Laos from central Vietnam, but that force of about 2,000 had not yet arrived.

Mostly the commandos maintained radio silence, knowing that Giap's headquarters near Dien Bien Phu could easily intercept all their messages. For ten minutes an hour the ANGRC-9 radios were turned on to receive any messages that emanated from Molla's post at Nam Bac. The radios were also used to listen in to French nets at the entrenched camp, from which the news was worse and worse: one report heard the end of one strongpoint: "The Viets are in the barbed wire ... we are submerged!" [15]

By 4 May the commandos were in position in an arc to the south of Dien Bien Phu. Ready to secure the drop zone for the airborne reinforcements, on the 5th they learned that no parachute battalions were left for this facet of the operation. That day also, 31 Commando linked up with Colonel Godard's column of Groupe Mobile Nord and found it in poor shape - 250 worn out troops in the first echelon, 11/2 REI with about 350 more. Loustau ordered patrols of four or five men to fan out from his units, tracking all Viet Minh movements in the vicinity. Rain fell ceaselessly; by night the horizon to the north was illuminated by the flares and flashes of the battle at Dien Bien Phu.

The commandos did not have the strength to do more nor, for that matter, did the French troops in the entrenched camp. On Friday, 7 May, the fortress radios fell silent. Now it was only a matter of who might escape, for there had been no mass breakout by the French defenders.

A Thai soldier and two Foreign Legionnaires, all from Strongpoint Isabelle, were the first escapees found, in this case by 31 Commando. Both the Legionnaires were Germans, veterans of the Wehrmacht's breakout from the pocket at Velikiye Luki on the Russian front. Seventeen other Europeans, eight Vietnamese, and 51 Thai tribesmen reached safety with the commandos, the GMI or other French posts.

It was not much out of the 15,000 French Union forces that had fought for Dien Bien Phu. Morale collapsed among some of those involved in ALBATROS. Sixty-seven soldiers deserted from Colonel Then's 4th BLC plus a quarter of the total strength of Godard's 1st Laotian Paratroops. The commandos returning from their positions near Dien Bien Phu were almost trapped by the Viet Minh 101st Regiment.

Defeat in a major battle plus the loss of elite troops at Dien Bien Phu crippled the French war effort and triggered final defeat in Indochina. In a sense the French command contributed to this by operating both the fortress and the relief operations on a shoestring. This also led to appeals for American intervention, which could have made a substantial contribution but was withheld for failure to meet political preconditions.

That a French battle plan relied on American intervention for success, however, itself demonstrates the flawed strategy at Dien Bien Phu. The morale loss that came after the battle is symbolized in the very name of the French commander in Laos, for Crevecoeur translates as "broken heart".

Notes

[1] CONDOR plan: Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place. NY: Lippincott, 1967, p. 315. This is an excellent, accessible account in English of the entire Dien Bien Phu siege.
[2] U.S. task force operations: this material is drawn from the operational reports of the carriers, air groups, and destroyers involved, and from Admiral Phillips' report, "Fair Weather Training Operations in the South China Sea 25 February- 16 April 1954", Serial 01 OA, 29 April 1954; all from the U.S. Naval Operational Archives.
[3] Message quoted: CNO 202023Z March 1954; Naval Operational Archives; all subsequent Navy citations from same archives.
[4] Phillips biography: USN official biography, Naval History Division.
[5] Radio loading: Phillips report, op. cit.
[6] "Underway at high speed": CVA-9 Essex Operational Report Serial 0182, 17 April 1954.
[7] Air statistics: Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, "Flight Activity of Navy Aircraft, April 1954." French air statistics from Pierre Rocolloe, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu Paris, Flammarion, 1968, pp. 509-510.
[8] Diplomatic actions and quotes: see John Prados, 77ze Sky Would Fall New York: Dial Press, 1982, quoted pp. 90-91.
[9] Hanoi meeting, Navarre letter no. 118: Rocolle, op. cit. pp. 462-463.
[10] French joint chiefs chairman: Cyrus L. Sulzberger, A Long Row of Candles New York: Macmillan, 1969, pp. 993-994.
[11] et seq.: CMI partisan operations: Roger Trinquier, Les Maquis d'Indochine Paris: Albatross, 1976, pp. 148-153.
[12] et seq.: commando operations: Henri Loustau, Les Derniers Combats d'Indochine Paris: Albin Michel, 1984, pp. 219-244.
[13] VULTURE: Prados, op. cit., pp. 145-148.
[14] Submarine activity: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, v. XIII, PP. 1679-1680.
[15] "The Viets are in the wire": Loustau, quoted, p. 32.

To Save Dien Bien Phu The French in Indochina

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