USAF B-29 on a bombing mission over Korea. The French had no concept of the damage such a bomber could cause. In mid-April 1954, the French asked to borrow American B-29 bombers to attack Viet Minh positions at Dien Bien Phu.
By early April 1954, it was clear that something drastic needed to be done to help the trapped garrison at Dien Bien Phu. There were three options on the table. The first and most obvious was to get a relief column through to the base to break the siege, dubbed Operation Condor. Secondly, the garrison could fight its way out with Operation Albatros. Lastly, if Washington would agree to help with Operation Vulture, the Viet Minh could be pounded into withdrawing by American heavy bombers.
What Navarre and de Castries really needed was a combination of all three, which would enable the defenders to withdraw into Laos towards Luang Prabang, as this would be slightly easier to get to than the Red River Delta. The loss of Lai Chau and Na San meant that there was no sanctuary for them in western Tonkin. In truth, though, Giap’s strength was such that a successful escape was almost impossible. The only real solution was to kill as many of Giap’s men as possible to force him to lift the siege.
Condor had originally been conceived in the event of victory as a linkup between those French forces at Dien Bien Phu and those in northeastern Laos. This would have involved around 5,500 troops. During the first week of April, Navarre sent Colonel de Crèvecoeur, land forces commander in Laos, instructions to revise Condor. Navarre also sent de Crèvecoeur and Colonel Then, his staff officer responsible for operations, a small team to help out.
They had four battalions with just over 3,000 men available, but nearly 1,700 of these were Laotians. Only one unit was European, the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Foreign Legion Infantry Regiment. This force was optimistically designated Mobile Group North. In the light of the Viet Minh’s manpower at Dien Bien Phu, these forces were woefully inadequate, even if they were augmented while on the march. There was little de Crèvecoeur and Then could do, but proceed with their mission as they had been given their orders to help.
After some frantic planning, it was proposed that the legionnaires and the 4th Laotian Chasseurs under Lieutenant Colonel Yves Godard would march up the eastern leg of the Nam Ou River bend. A second group, commanded by Major Coquelet, consisting of the 1st Laotian Parachute Battalion and the 5th Laotian Chasseurs, would make their way up the Nam Pak towards Muong Khoua to the west. Then the two columns would merge at Pak Noua and move along the Nam Noua to rendezvous with paras from the 1st and 3rd Vietnamese parachute battalions dropped west of Sop Nao. This force would then proceed through the Massif des Calacaires to reach a point south of Isabelle.
To accomplish this, de Crèvecoeur needed 500 porters and 150 mules to carry supplies and ammunition for Mobile Group North, but these were simply not available. The region had been pillaged following the Viet Minh invasion, and the locals had fled. There was also a shortage of jerry cans to transport water and inflatable rafts to get the force over the innumerable streams and rivers that would bar their way. Navarre’s response to this was to have mules and 500 prisoner labourers airlifted in, but this put even greater pressure on the already struggling French transport fleet.
On 14 April, Navarre ordered Condor be implemented. Plans were likewise made ready to carry out Albatros. It quickly turned out that he did not have the resources to conduct the airborne phase of Condor and keep Dien Bien Phu resupplied at the same time. To drop the two para battalions would require diverting all the transport aircraft away from Dien Bien Phu for twenty-four hours. Some would also have to be regularly diverted to supply the rescue columns by air during their advance through the jungles of northeastern Laos. This would inevitably severely disrupt vital ammunition resupply flights into Dien Bien Phu.
Behind the scenes, the French government desperately sought help in Washington. The same day Condor was authorized, General Earle E. Partridge, commanding U.S. Far East Air Forces, arrived in Saigon to prepare an American bombing feasibility study. His bomber commander, General Joseph D. Caldera, flew over Dien Bien Phu three times and concluded that a daytime raid would be possible. Both generals, though, were concerned by the French lack of comprehension of the destructive power of a wing of B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers. Nor did the French seem greatly concerned about inevitable ‘collateral’ damage.
On 15 April, the French Secretary of State for the Air Force, M. Christiaens, publicly announced that France had asked if it could borrow American B-29s that would be operated by French crews. Such a pretence fooled no one, as the French had no experience of operating this type of bomber. At a staff meeting in Hanoi the following day, General Cogny began exploring alternatives to Condor. He wanted another raid on the communist base at Phu Doan and a para drop to cut Viet Minh supply lines at the Meo Pass, but these were rejected as impractical.
USAF B-29 on a bombing mission over Korea. The French had no concept of the damage such a bomber could cause. In mid-April 1954, the French asked to borrow American B-29 bombers to attack Viet Minh positions at Dien Bien Phu.
In Washington, President Eisenhower was presented with plans that envisaged up to 200 American bombers flying from Manila and Okinawa to destroy Giap’s positions around Dien Bien Phu. These proposals also considered options for deploying the U.S. Seventh Fleet to provide up to 150 fighters to escort sixty B-29 bombers to Tonkin. Such a commitment would be a significant game changer for the battle.
It was at this stage that the threat of nuclear war once again reared its ugly head. According to Vice-President Richard Nixon, ‘In Washington the Joint Chiefs of Staff devised a plan, known as Operation Vulture, for using three small tactical atomic bombs to destroy Viet Minh positions and relieve the garrison.’
In mid-April, French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault claimed that the Americans had offered to make two bombs available for such an operation. Admiral W. Radford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, backed going nuclear in Indochina. America had considered doing so in Korea to stop the Chinese, but decided that this would be a step too far in escalating the conflict, besides which, the decision to authorize the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continued to haunt American policy-makers.
All this discussion about American bombers and nuclear bombs may have been part of a deliberate ploy to get Mao to pressure Ho Chi Minh and Giap to slacken their grip on Dien Bien Phu. Mao acquiesced to the status quo in Korea, partly due to America’s very public threats to use tactical nuclear weapons if a negotiated settlement was not reached. In 1950, President Truman had been ambushed by a reporter into stating that the use of nuclear weapons in Korea was a possibility. He inadvertently added that responsibility would rest with General Douglas MacArthur, whereas such a move actually required presidential authorization. This caused an international furore, particularly in Britain, where politicians were aghast at the idea.
Although Truman sought to sooth ruffled feathers, just two weeks into the Korean War, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff did consider the use of atomic bombs in direct support of ground combat. The deployment of up to twenty bombs was discussed, with MacArthur suggesting one be used to cut off any Chinese intervention. The idea was shelved until the end of the year, when Mao committed his armies in North Korea to drive back the UN forces. The following year, with the development of tactical nuclear weapons, a single B-29 had conducted a simulated atomic-bombing run over North Korea. Sabre rattling or not, it signalled intent.
Two years later, with the U.S. military reinvigorated, President Eisenhower was even less reticent. He had begun looking at potential targets in North Korea, China and Manchuria to demonstrate the power of a tactical nuclear bomb. A warning was passed through the Indian prime minister to Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En Lai that if a resolution was not forthcoming, then America would bomb north of the Yalu River.
Whether Eisenhower was bluffing is unclear, but China and the Soviet Union believed him. In late February 1953, Mao sent his leading atomic expert to Moscow to ask Stalin either for a nuclear guarantee or the means of retaliation if Eisenhower used the bomb against China. Stalin died the following month and Chou En Lai, who acted as a pallbearer at his funeral, returned from Moscow convinced that Eisenhower meant business. The conflict in Korea came to an end.
Eisenhower now faced another terrible decision with Indochina. He had the same dilemma Truman had in not goading China into an all-out war. In 1951, General MacArthur had been sacked for pressing to expand the Korean War into China, despite the fact that Chinese troops were fighting American soldiers in Korea. In the name of maintaining world peace, the conflict had been confined to Korea.
If Eisenhower agreed to help France, then his actions might save the French garrison, but there was no knowing how the Soviet Union or China might react. Using Americancrewed bombers to drop conventional or nuclear bombs would signal Washington’s entry into the Indochina War. In response, Mao might commit his ground forces, which would simply overwhelm the French if the Americans did not then put boots on the ground in Tonkin.
General Matthew Ridgway, who had commanded U.S. forces in Korea and then served as Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO before being appointed U.S. Army Chief of Staff, was implacably opposed to using nuclear weapons. He wrote:
There is of course the school that argues for the immediate use of nuclear weapons when a stalemate threatens, that talks of “reducing the enemy to the Stone Age” by blowing his homeland to dust. This to me would be the ultimate immorality. It is one thing to do this in retaliation, or as a measure of survival as a nation. It is quite another to initiate such an operation for less basic reasons.
In Saigon, Navarre was nervous that Mao might retaliate by authorizing the Chinese air force to attack the vulnerable French airfields in the Red River Delta. Chinese and indeed Soviet air power, had played a major role in Korea. The French air force did not relish tangling with veteran Chinese or Soviet MiG pilots. This meant that U.S. carrier fighters in the Gulf of Tonkin would have to protect Navarre’s airfields as well as striking at Dien Bien Phu. It was hard to see how mission creep could be avoided.
Eisenhower wanted British support with any military intervention in Indochina, but his old ally Churchill would not sanction it. Britain’s defence budget was stretched to the limit as it was, and the Korean war had been very unpopular. Churchill was well aware that British intelligence had warned against meddling in Indochina, assessing that, ‘Any direct intervention by the armed forces of any external nation would probably lead to Chinese intervention, and there is a danger that it might ultimately lead to a global war.’
In the end, Eisenhower decided against Vulture. The French were on their own.
Everything now hung on Condor and Albatros to retrieve the situation. Intercepted Viet Minh radio messages showed that the 148th Regiment had first reported on the progress of Condor on 20 April. This intelligence also showed that the Viet Minh knew what the French were trying to achieve, and that they anticipated airdrops on Nga Na Song and Sop Nao as they were on the most direct road to Dien Bien Phu.
The following day, Goddard received some bad news: his men captured a small boat on the Nam Ou bearing mortar ammunition. When they interrogated the three-man crew, they discovered that they belonged to a 1,700-strong Viet Minh regiment.
At this point, the vexed issue to transport aircraft became a real problem. On 22 April, Navarre signalled Lieutenant General Pierre Bodet, his deputy commander-in-chief in Hanoi, telling him that the second phase of Condor was on hold until further notice.
By 23 April, the lead elements of Condor force were within 50km of Isabelle, but Giap moved at least four battalions to intercept them. Godard had reached Pak Noua and Coquelet had reached Muong Khoua. As the airborne element was postponed, Sop Nao was abandoned in favour of Muong Nha as the new drop zone.
Confusion though still reigned over the viability of the para drop and, instead, on 27 April, it was decided to reinforce Godard with two battalions that would somehow be airlifted from central Laos. Two days later, Navarre informed de Crèvecoeur that the airborne phase of Condor could not be conducted for at least another week. Feebly, he washed his hands of the operation by telling de Crèvecoeur it was up to him as to how he wished to proceed. Godard had no choice but go on to the defensive and halt his advance at Muong Khoua.
Colonel de Crèvecoeur’s men were left out on a limb in hostile territory. His understandable concern was what would happen to them in the event of Dien Bien Phu falling. By early May, there were ominous reports that some 10,000 Viet Minh from the siege were expected to move into Laos. If that should happen, General Cogny in Hanoi informed him, then Mobile Group North would have to immediately retreat with all haste. He could expect no air support or reinforcements. Effectively, they were being abandoned. De Crèvecoeur and Then must have felt that Condor had been a complete waste of time and that Godard and Coquelet were little more than sacrificial lambs.
U.S. President Eisenhower welcoming president of South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem, left, at Washington National Airport, 1957. Eisenhower threatened to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Korea, but he refused to release heavy bombers or nuclear bombs to support the French in Indochina. (Photo NARA)