“A Temporary Ordeal”- The Story of a Pilot and Prisoner During the

Interviewer: Jack Nelson Interviewee: General David E. Baker, USAF (Ret.) Instructor: Alex Haight Final Submission: 2/13/08 Table of Contents

Release Form………………………………………………………………...Pg.2

Statement of Purpose……………………………………………………………………….Pg.3

Biography……………………………………………………………………..Pg.4

Historical Contextualization- “Vietnam: The Causes, the Air War, and Treatment of American Prisoners”...Pg.6-26

Interview Transcription……………………………………………………….Pg.27-46

Recording Log…………………………………………………………………Pg.47

Interview Analysis……………………………………………………………Pg.48-53

Appendix……………………………………………………………………...Pg.54-56

Works Consulted……………………………………………………………...Pg. 57 Nelson 3

Statement of Purpose

As time goes on, events such as World War II and the Vietnam War are being forgotten. The only way that most people find out about them is from textbooks, which do not successfully convey the emotions and thoughts of the ordinary people who were directly affected by the event. This information is necessary in order to fully understand events like World War II or Vietnam. The people who took part in these events are becoming fewer and fewer as time passes, and eventually there will be none left. It is imperative that their stories are recorded while there is still time to get them down on paper. If we do not do this, then no one will ever know the things that they went through, and how they were feeling at a certain moment, and our knowledge of these events will be incomplete. Nelson 4

Biography of David E. Baker Jack Nelson

General David. E “Bull” Baker was born on September 30, 1946, in New

Hampshire. His father was a career officer in the Navy, and his childhood was very mobile. After graduating from Hofstra University, he joined the Air Force. After one year of flight training, General Baker volunteered to go to Vietnam in early 1972. He flew as a Forward Air Controller in missions mostly over . On June 27, 1972, during his fiftieth mission over Cambodia, General Baker’s O2 reconnaissance plane was hit by two SA-7 Surface- to Air missiles, and he was captured by the Viet Cong. While being transported to his prison camp, he attempted to escape, and was shot twice in the leg by an AK-47. The guards then proceeded to smash both of his feet with rifle butts.

Severely wounded and held in the very dense Cambodian jungle, General Baker’s camp was never visited by the Red Cross, and he received no treatment for any of his injuries during his captivity. On February 12, 1973, General Baker was released from captivity.

He is the only Air Force prisoner to have been released from Cambodia. Following his Nelson 5 liberation, General Baker decided to remain in the Air Force, and flew the F-15E Fighter during Operation Desert Storm. By now a full Colonel, he was the lead fighter on the so- called “Highway of Death,” during the Iraqi retreat from Kuwait, and was the only

Vietnam Prisoner of War to have flown in Desert Storm. He later served in as Vice Director for Operational Plans and Joint Forces Development with the Joint

Chiefs of Staff. General Baker retired from the Air Force in October 1997, having risen to the rank of Brigadier General. He is currently Senior Vice President for the Stanford

Research Group, a banking and research group based out of Washington, DC. He and his

Wife Carol live in Woodmore, Maryland. They have one son, David Baker, Jr. Nelson 6

Vietnam: The Causes, the Air War, and Treatment of American Prisoners Jack Nelson

As the continued to build up troop strength in the newly partitioned

Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson continually assured the American public that he was

“Not about to send American boys nine or 10, 000 miles away from home to do what

Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” (www.brainyquotes.com) This statement would prove tragically false. American involvement in Vietnam cost the United States almost 60,000 lives, more than any other war America has been involved in save World

War II and the Civil War. During the war, though, the fighting was not confined to the jungles and rivers of the country: The airpower of the United States played a great role in the American strategy of the Vietnam War, either bombing Vietnamese camps and supply lines or providing close air support in the heat of battle. The policy of the US military, however, placed extreme restrictions on their greatest tactical advantage, and this helped lead to the American defeat in Vietnam. In order to fully understand why this happened, one must study the rules of engagement that the aircraft were forced to follow, as well as to understand the threats that they faced and the risks that these men took.

Also, most of the Americans that were captured by the Vietnamese were downed pilots. It is necessary to realize how they were treated in order to further one’s understanding of the Vietnam War.

Vietnam is a small country in Southeast Asia that most Americans would have needed a map to locate prior to 1965. The first foreigners to colonize Vietnam were the

French, who first came to the country in an attempt to match the territorial gains made by the British in China. By 1862, they had taken most of the southern region of the country, as well as all of Cambodia. China, which was viewed as a protector to Vietnam, was Nelson 7 defeated by France in 1884-1885, assuring French domination of the rest of the country.

The French then established colonial rule for the country. The ancient emperors of the

Nguyen Dynasty were allowed to remain in power, but these were merely figureheads; in reality, the French Colonial Administration held all the real power. (Harrison, 36)

From the outset, the Vietnamese fiercely resented French dominion over their country. James Pickney Harrison writes “From 1885-1897, a ‘scholar’s movement to support the emperor’… bitterly fought the French, and there were almost continuous smaller revolts and terrorist actions thereafter.” (Harrison, 37) This undoubtedly influenced the great Vietnamese revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh. Born in 1890, Minh left the country in 1912, and did not return to Vietnam for 30 years, eventually working his way to Paris. Paris was, ironically, the center of the Vietnamese patriot movement, and this was where he met many of the most influential members of the Vietnamese

Communist Party. (Harrison, 38-39) An avid reader of Lenin, it became increasingly clear to him that Communism was the only thing that could save his country. He wrote that Lenin’s Theses on National and Colonial Questions greatly influenced him as a thinker and wrote that “‘by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel in participation with practical activities, I gradually came up with the fact that only Socialism and

Communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.’” (Harrison, 39) In 1924, after a short period in Moscow, Minh was appointed the assistant to the Soviet representative to China. It was during this time that he would fully begin to develop the Vietnamese Communist party.

At the beginning of World War II, the Japanese Army overthrew the French

Colonial Administration. Ho Chi Minh and the rest of the Communist leadership saw Nelson 8 this as a golden opportunity to achieve complete independence from European powers. A party document from April 1944 wrote “Zero hour is near. Germany is almost beaten, and her defeat will lead to Japan’s. Then…Indochina will be reduced to Anarchy. We shall not even need to seize power, for there will be no power.” (Harrison, 92) The military branch of the Communist Party, the Viet Minh, was formed to resist these new occupiers. The Communists eagerly fought against the Japanese troops, and openly helped the allies, with Minh even going so far as to call for “‘unrestrained affection for all Americans.’” (Harrison, 91) The Vietnamese fought the Japanese the same way that they would fight the French, and later the Americans, by using guerilla tactics, which entailed hit and run attacks against small detachments of enemy troops.

With the Japanese defeat and expulsion from Indochina in August 1945, Vietnam was divided up into different occupation zones for the allied powers. Howard Zinn writes “At the end of the war, the British controlled southern Indochina, and gave it back to France. The Chinese, under Chiang-Kai Shek, occupied Northern Indochina, and the

U.S convinced them to give it back to France as well.” (Zinn, 348) Even before this,

Communist forces had been fighting the Japanese in order to gain power in the country.

The French, though, had no intention of giving up their colonial dominion of the region.

At the end of the war, the Communists had some influence in almost all parts of the country.

The start of the Vietnamese’s war with France (The First Indochina war) can be pinpointed to the bombardment of the city of Haiphong in November 1946. When

French demands for the occupation of the city were not met, French warships bombarded the city. The French claimed that 6,000 people were killed in the attack. The Viet Minh Nelson 9 claimed that it was closer to 20,000. After this, both sides rapidly accelerated military preparations, though Ho Chi Minh and the French Government desperately tried to avoid war. Minh said “‘this war is something we wish to avoid at all cost…war doesn’t pay.’”

(Harrison, 112-13) It was too late, however, and the war began.

The war started with French demands for the Viet Minh in to lay down their arms. The Communists responded with attacks all over the city, and then melting into the jungles and mountains of the North and began to conduct guerilla operations against French Troops. (Harrison, 115) Minh was smart enough to realize that the Viet

Minh would never be able to defeat French regulars in the field, and that they would have horrific losses. He said “‘we are not unaware of what is in store for us. France disposes of terrifying weapons. The struggle will be atrocious…” He also prophetically elaborated on just what would elevate the Vietnamese to victory in this seemingly impossible struggle: “If we have to fight, we will fight. You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours. In the end, it will be you who tire of it.” (Harrison, 114) The

Vietnamese would employ this strategy just as effectively against the French in the

1950’s as they would against the Americans in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

During the first part of the war, the French mainly held the upper hand in the fighting due to their superior weapons and training. But by 1952, the Viet Minh began to wear them down with continuous guerilla warfare, and began to drive the French north.

In November, 1953, 16,000 French paratroopers dropped into the small village of Dien

Bien Phu, in an attempt to draw the Viet Minh into open battle, as well as to protect Laos from Communist incursions. Viet Minh Forces under General Vo Nyguen Giap, who would later go on to command the North Vietnamese Army against the United States, and Nelson 10 under whose brilliant leadership the Communists had been able to wear down the French, began to move troops from all over the country to the tiny village to surround the French forces. (Harrison, 123) The French were not at all aware that they were about to be completely cut off; Harrison writes “the French…declared themselves ‘enthusiastic’ for the coming battle.” (Harrison, 123) On March 13, 1954, The Viet Minh opened up a gigantic artillery barrage against the French positions at Dien Bien Phu. In the first few days of the battle, they were able to capture numerous outposts, and most importantly, destroy the French air base that had been used to supply the besieged paratroopers. The

French soldiers were completely cut off. On May 7, 1954, the remaining 11,000 French troops surrendered. This effectively put an end to the war.

At the peace conferences in Geneva, Switzerland, it was decreed that Vietnam was to be partitioned at the 17th parallel, with a Communist Government under Ho Chi

Minh established in the north, and a Democratic Government led by Ngo Dinh Diem in the South. This was not meant to be a permanent solution to the country, and there were supposed to be free elections in 1956; the elections were never held, and the country remained un-unified.

The United States’ interest in Vietnam started with World War II and continued during the French War, in which they played a large role. Harrison writes “The United

States…began to send arms to French forces and would eventually supply some

$4,000,000,000 of the total French war effort. By 1954, the U.S was footing 78% percent of the French war bill.” (Harrison, 117) The United States had even taken to guiding

French strategy. The plan to drop Paratroopers into Dien Bien Phu had been backed by the United States, and there were many in the highest levels of Government, including Nelson 11

Vice President , Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and Chief of Staff

Admiral Arthur Radford, who called for American air strikes, and even hinted at using atomic weapons to help save the beleaguered French troops.(Harrison, 123) In a foreshadowing of the future divided American public opinion, the were deadlocked on the issue of going to war. General Ridgway, the Chief of Staff of the army, was strongly opposed to sending any US troops or planes into Vietnam, while the

Chief of Staff of the Navy, Admiral Radford, was a strong advocate of direct US intervention. Eventually, President Dwight D. Eisenhower decided against involvement, leaving the French by themselves. (Palmer, 6)

Initial American objectives in the early goings of its involvement in Vietnam were summarized by a statement from the Secretary of State Dulles just before the peace talks between the Vietnamese and the French started. Though this document expressed concern for the citizens of , it was mainly concerned with how to contend with the region’s proximity to Soviet Russia and Communist China. According to Foster, the Russians and Chinese would attempt to communize South Vietnam through military action by . This would be a disaster for the United States’ interest in Asia, according to Dulles. He wrote that if all of Vietnam fell to Communism “the tragedy would not stop there. If the Communist forces won uncontested control over Indochina or any substantial part thereof, they would surely resume the same pattern of aggression against other free peoples of the area.” (www.yale.edu) This was a rehashing of the so called “domino theory” espoused by President Eisenhower, a fundamental principle of

American foreign policy during this time that stated that if Communists gained control of

Vietnam, they would have a springboard from which to take all Asia. Nelson 12

President Dwight D. Eisenhower pledged his support to the government Diem’s government in October 1954, soon after the peace was signed. By 1956, fighting had begun between the Communist North and the Democratic South. In 1960, the

Communist National Liberation Front-called the Viet Cong- was founded by Communist supporters in South Vietnam. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy began the US military presence in Vietnam by deploying 3000 combat advisors to help and train the South

Vietnamese Army. This was followed by the first US combat operation against the Viet

Cong, known as Operation Chopper (www.pbs.org), and the establishment of a strong

Naval and air presence in the Gulf of Tonkin.

The beginning of large-scale US military involvement in Vietnam came with the

Gulf of Tonkin incident, when North Vietnamese ships attacked two American destroyers that were stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin. The day after the second of these attacks,

August 5, President Lyndon Johnson ordered American carrier-based aircraft against

North Vietnamese Naval bases. (Harrison, 249) Following this was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which said that Congress “approves and supports the determination of the

President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”(http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon3/ps12.htm) The Vietnam

War had begun.

In March, 1965, the first American combat troops had arrived in Vietnam, and in

April, President Lyndon Johnson gave authorized offensive operations. The first large scale battle that took place between American troops and the North Vietnamese Army

(NVA) took place from October 19-November 27, 1965, in the Ia Drang Valley. This Nelson 13 was the first battle in which the Americans on the ground were able to make full use of the air advantage that they enjoyed over the North Vietnamese, and used the close air support of B-52 Bombers to inflict heavy losses on the Communist troops. The battle was inconclusive, however, as both sides claimed victory. (Harrison, 258) Small-scale guerilla fighting continued for several more years. The NVA and Viet Cong, an informal fighting force that was more of a militia than an army, knew that they could not stand up to American troops in the open field, and refused to commit themselves to open battle.

A major turning point in the war came in early 1968. A truce had been called for the Tet holiday, the Vietnamese New Year. On the night of January 31, during what was supposed to be the truce, NVA and Viet Cong troops launched surprise attacks on over 31 provincial capitals all over South Vietnam, catching American and South Vietnamese troops completely off-guard. The Americans were able to respond quickly, and most of the North Vietnamese assaults were beaten off, with US troops inflicting terrible casualties on the NVA and VC soldiers. The heaviest fighting came in the old Imperial

Capital of Hue City, where American Marines had to fight for months and suffer appalling losses to recapture, as well as in the hills of Khe Sanh, where surrounded

Marines were cut off for months before forcing the NVA and VC to retreat.

Though the was a major tactical victory for the American and

South Vietnamese troops, it was a major turning point in domestic support for the war.

The sight of the mangled bodies of dead American soldiers shocked and horrified the people on the home front, and a massive anti-war movement started. The press largely seemed to agree with the protesters. A New York Time’s article from 1971 began with the words “even as American casualties in Vietnam diminish, the war protests must Nelson 14 continue. For the war is not ending.” (www.nytimes.com) In the face of massive anti-war protests, the Paris Peace Talks began in May of 1968. In November of that year, Richard

Nixon was elected president, based partly on his pledge of “.”

(www.pbs.org) In June, 1969, the first US troops were withdrawn from Vietnam.

In May 1970, when Nixon ordered the ground invasion of Cambodia, the protests reached a bloody climax when four students were shot by the National Guard at Kent

State University. (Zinn, 361) This event only further served to make the war less popular in the United States.

In 1973, The United States withdrew the last of their troops from Vietnam. South

Vietnamese forces, which had been sustained by American troops, were unable to hold the North Vietnamese troops for long, and on April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. covered the event:

Communist troops… poured into Saigon today as a century of Western influence

came to an end. The President of the former non-Communist Government of

South Vietnam…appealed to all Saigon troops to lay down their arms…The

transfer of power was symbolized by the raising of the flag of the National

Liberation Front over the Presidential Palace at 12:15 PM

today…(www.nytimes.com)

The Vietnam War was over. It was the longest that the United States has ever been involved in a foreign conflict, with American involvement lasting from 1961, when

Kennedy first sent advisors to the South, to 1973, when the last American troops pulled out. During this time, almost 60,000 American Soldiers had been killed, and there had Nelson 15 been a great cultural revolution and social change at home that had been sparked by the war.

American airpower played a huge role in the Vietnam War, with American aircraft dropping twice the amount of ordnance on enemy troops than they did during

World War II. The name of the bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese was

Operation Rolling Thunder. This divided the country into six separate target zones, which were split up between the Air Force and the Navy. Pilots during Operation Rolling

Thunder were assigned to look for very specific targets, varying from one mission to the next. One day they might be assigned to attack enemy troops and transportation, and the next they might be assigned to bomb bridges. (Nichols, 22-23) The central theme throughout all of this was to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, and this put a severe handicap on the ability of the Air Force and Navy Pilots to effectively complete their objectives, prompting one former Navy Officer to say “‘At times it looked as if we were trying to see how much ordnance we could drop on North Vietnam without disturbing the country’s way of life.’” (Nichols, 15-16) Since the North Vietnamese placed many of their anti-aircraft (AA) and SAM (Surface to Air Missiles) emplacements in heavily populated areas (no doubt influencing the tactics of the terrorists of today), this caused many problems. John B. Nichols, a former Navy Pilot who flew in Vietnam, writes

“Targeting was essentially limited to communications networks-roads, canals, and bridges- and petroleum-oil lubricant facilities. Restricted areas included most cities and a

30 mile buffer zone along the Chinese Border.”(Nichols, 16) Nichols goes on to say that most Vietnamese defenses were off limits as well, another factor that greatly complicated bombing matters. Nelson 16

While in Vietnam, Air Force and Navy Planes operated under a series of confusing and often contradictory guidelines known as the Rules of Engagement. The stated aim of the Rules of Engagement was to keep civilian casualties and other collateral damage at a minimum, but this often put American aircraft into unnecessary danger, and often precluded them from even acting in self-defense. For example, American pilots were not allowed to attack SAM sites while they were under construction and vulnerable.

The rationale for this rule was that it was “neutral” Soviets who were building and operating these sites, so the pentagon ordered US planes to leave them alone. Nichols writes “One F4 squadron commander off the USS Midway actually watched the SAM site being built that eventually shot him down in 1965.” It was with this same reasoning that no bombing of North Vietnamese air fields was permitted until August 1967, since the

Chinese air force had stationed MiG fighter planes in Vietnam. (Nichols, 18) No targeting of North Vietnamese shipping was permitted, even if the boat in question was openly unloading munitions. Also, there were many foreign ships in North Vietnamese harbors, mostly from the and Communist China, and these would often fire upon American aircraft as well, confident that the planes would not retaliate or defend themselves. (Nichols, 19) In addition, the Chinese island of Hainan was a thorn in the side of the American air forces in Vietnam. The island was large, and there were a number of Chinese air bases and MiG fighter planes stationed on the island, and these would harass and occasionally attack American aircraft, and, again, no retaliation was permitted, and more than a few airmen were lost in the waters around Hainan. (Nichols,

21) Nelson 17

One of the threats that American aviators faced during the war was from MiG fighter planes. The Russian- made MiGs were never really a serious threat to any

American aviation. In 44 months of aerial dog fighting, MiGs only sent down 76 US aircraft, not even two a month, and less than seven percent of all aircraft lost during the entire Vietnam War.(Nichols, 67) This was mainly due to the fact that American pilots had received better training than their Vietnamese or Chinese counterparts. This shows in the kill ratio of MiGs lost to American aircraft lost, which improved as the war went on and the Americans learned how to best engage enemy fighters. In 1965-1968,

American F4 fighter squadrons had shot down a paltry two MiGs for every one of their own planes that was shot down. By 1972, however, they were destroying MiGs at a 12-1 ratio.

Though the MiGs would prove a sometimes deadly annoyance throughout the war, the real threat to the US air forces came from anti- aircraft, SAM, and small arms fire from the ground. Since the regulations of Operation Rolling Thunder were so strict, the NVA quickly learned where to place their AA and SAM batteries so they would not be targeted, namely, in areas with large civilian populations. An example of this was the soccer stadium in Hanoi, in which were located a large number of SAM launchers.

(Nichols, 18) The newly-developed SAM were a big part of the Vietnamese anti-aircraft arsenal, but these did not cause American planes very many casualties; between 1965 and

1972, SAMs shot down approximately 200 US aircraft, 80 from the navy and 120 from the Air Force. The biggest advantage that SAM provided for the Vietnamese was to force American fighters and bombers to fly lower, making them more vulnerable to their most deadly enemy in Vietnam, AA and small arms fire. (Nichols, 6) In many places, Nelson 18 such as the Cambodian border, there was no other option of attack other than small arms.

Surprisingly, these proved very effective against the high-powered American jet fighters.

73% o the Air Force’s casualties came from small arms fire, while the Marine Corps took

64% of their casualties from small arms as well. Of the 2300 American planes shot down during the Vietnam War, 1600 were downed by small arms. The majority of the others were downed not by the new and sophisticated SAM, but by traditional AA guns. The tactics for these guns were very simple: All the gunner had to do was to was draw a bead on the aircraft’s path, and fill that part of the sky with as much lead as possible, because the aircraft would have to fly through the flak and fire, and there was no way to avoid it.

(Nichols, 50)

North Vietnam was not the only country that experienced American airpower first hand during the Vietnam War. In 1968, in retaliation for the Tet Offensive, President

Richard Nixon authorized the secret bombing of Cambodia. The goal of this was to disrupt the supply lines and bases of the Viet Cong along the Cambodian border. On

March 17, 1969, 60 American B-52s dropped the first American bombs on Cambodian soil. Known as Operation Menu, the Cambodian bombing campaign was conducted until

May 1970. During this time, B-52 bombers made 3825 sorties and dropped 103,921 tons of bombs on six Viet Cong border camps. Even after Operation Menu ended, bombers continued to bomb the interior of Cambodia, right up to the withdrawal of American troops. (Kimball, 135-36)

There were a number of different reasons that Nixon ordered the bombing of

Cambodia. As already mentioned above, part of the reason for bombing was in retaliation for the devastating Tet Offensive in early part of 1968. Another factor in this Nelson 19 plan was that that peace talks in Paris had stalled. Nixon told two of his advisors “‘The state of play in Paris is completely sterile. I am convinced that the only way to move negotiations off dead center is to do something on the military front. That is something they will understand.’”(Kimball, 132) Cambodia was also the location of many Viet

Cong supply and training bases on the South Vietnamese border, from which they were sending many tons pf supplies as well as thousands or armed men into South Vietnam to fight American troops. , Nixon’s national security advisor as well as

Secretary of State, advocated that the “‘Act of sealing off the enemy’s Cambodian supply lines must be considered as an integral part of any plan to prevent supplies from reaching enemy forces in the Republic of South Vietnam.’” (Kimball, 125) The chief planners of the Cambodian bombing campaign were Kissinger, , Kissinger’s military assistant, and Ray B. Sitton, an expert on B-52 operations.

What set the bombing of Cambodia apart from Operation Rolling Thunder or the bombing campaigns of previous wars was that everything in Cambodia was done in secrecy. This was necessary for the operation to commence, as at this point the American public were deadest against the war, especially in the aftermath of the Tet offensive, and there certainly would have been massive protests against the bombing. Nixon’s administration appeared to be more concerned that the public be kept in blissful ignorance of the bombing than about the Constitutional need to ask Congress for a declaration of war. (Kimball, 133) Secrecy was the number one priority of all of the planners of the bombing campaign. Jeffery Kimball writes “Kissinger, Haig and Sitton developed… their scheme of dual reporting, designed to resolve Nixon and Kissinger’s greatest worry: Preventing Congress, the press, and the public from learning of the raids Nelson 20 and their rationale.” (Kimball, 31) Even with all of these precautions, the campaign was uncovered within weeks of the first bombing run on March 17 by William Beecher, a journalist for the New York Times. The story was met with mass apathy. (Kimball, 136)

There have been many different interpretations of Operation Rolling Thunder.

Howard Zinn, for example, says that it is “incredible” that anyone could think that anyone could believe that the United States fought with “One arm behind its back.” The reasoning that he gives for this is the fact that the United States “dropped seven million tons of bombs, twice as much as we dropped in World War II.” (In Defense of History,

17-18) Zinn also says that the allegations that the Vietnam War was a limited war are from the government which was unhappy about the way that the war ended, and that they needed an excuse for the reason that they lost the war. (In Defense of History, 17-18)

John P. Nichols, a former pilot of the US Navy, takes quite a different view from Zinn.

Nichols maintains that American airpower was not properly employed in Vietnam, even though the Navy and Air Force dropped a great number of bombs. He argues that the rules of engagement that American planes were forced to operate under put a severe handicap on their abilities to make war. He sites examples of planes not being allowed to attack air defense emplacements, and were not allowed to bomb cities, even if there was a large military presence in that area. Aircraft were also frequently fired upon by supposedly neutral ships many times, and were not permitted to fight back, even in self- defense.

Nichols also believes that, had the US used its airpower to the fullest possible extent, the United States would not have lost the Vietnam War. The reasons he gives for this are that, with the prospect of millions of their people dead after an unrestricted Nelson 21 bombing campaign by the Americans, they would not have continued their war for as long as they did, and that it would have forced the Communists to pull their own troops out of the south to look to their own borders. Conversely, Zinn argues that the war was un-winnable, regardless of air power, because the people were against the war. (Zinn,

367) Conservative historian Andrew Roberts agrees with this viewpoint, though he views the anti-war movement as a bad thing, unlike Zinn. Roberts writes that the anti-war movement was a “debilitating flood of counter-culture defeatism” which “sapped

America’s will to win in the sixties and the seventies.” (Roberts, 476) Both sides make valid points. Nichols is correct in saying that the airpower could have shattered the

Vietnamese resolve to fight, but it will never be known if that would have been the case.

Zinn and Roberts are also correct in saying that the anti-war movement was the downfall of American involvement in Vietnam because it was public opinion that kept the government from authorizing a more forceful strategy against Vietnam.

Throughout the course of the war, most of the prisoners taken by the NVA or

Viet Cong were downed airmen. The Vietnamese perpetrated many atrocities on

American airmen, ranging from their policy of torture of prisoners to not giving them enough food, and making them sleep in huts that were infested with rats that were, in the words of one prisoner, “‘as big as Jackrabbits’” (Rochester, 145).

Throughout the war, the Vietnamese followed a policy of torture of American prisoners. The Vietnamese always maintained that they followed a policy of “humanity and leniency” in dealing with P.O.Ws, and that if captured soldiers cooperated with them, they would be treated well. This was in direct contrast with the policy of the US military, which to this day forbids any cooperation with the enemy. This resulted in the brutal Nelson 22 torture of many captured American airmen. The goal of this was to disrupt and dishearten P.O.W resistance, as well as to obtain statements that would be useful for propaganda. (Rochester, 166) One of their most used tortures was the “rope torture.”

Stuart Rochester describes the rope torture as

When guards forced him (a prisoner) face down on his bunk, set his ankles in

stocks, and bound him tightly with rope at the ankles. The long end of the rope

was then pulled up through a hook attached to the ceiling. As a guard hoisted the

prisoner, he lifted him off the bunk enough so that he could not relieve any of his

weight, producing incredible pain-with his shoulders seemingly torn from their

sockets- and horribly constricting breathing. (Rochester, 145)

Air Force Captain Conrad Troutman described his experience with another form of the rope torture:

Imagine…with both arms tied tight together-elbow to elbow, wrist to wrist-and

then, using the leverage of his feet planted between your shoulder blades, with

both hands he pulls up with all his might, ‘til your arms are up and back over your

head, forcing your head down between your feet, where your legs are between

iron bars. The pain is literally beyond description…Besides the pain itself, you

are tied up so tight that your windpipe becomes pinched and you breathe in gasps.

You’re trying to gulp in air, because your wind passage is being completely

shrunken. Your throat in a matter of 30 seconds is completely dry… (Rochester,

148)

The Vietnamese also gave dreadful punishment to anyone found disobeying their rules. Such was the case of Ed Davis, a pilot who was found to be communicating Nelson 23 secretly with other prisoners. He was placed on a starvation diet, and by the time the

Vietnamese broke him, he lost 55 pounds. (Rochester, 151) Another example was that of Ralph Gaither, who was discovered to have carved a peephole into the door of his cell.

When his captors found this, they made him kneel on a concrete floor for hours, and beat him around his head with blows designed to make his eardrums explode. They threatened him with execution, and jabbed a bayonet into a wound on his neck as well.

(Rochester, 152) If a prisoner was caught trying to escape, the standard punishment was to smash his feet with the butt of a rifle.

If a prisoner broke and talked under torture, he then experienced a mental anguish that was that was almost as bad as the torture that they had just undergone- knowing that they had violated the number one rule of the US military code of conduct, to never give information or a confession to the enemy. Even so, many prisoners broke under this form of torture, and by the end of the war, the Vietnamese would obtain propaganda statements from 80% of all the prisoners that they held. (Rochester, 163-64)

By the middle of the war, however, most P.O.Ws realized that the code did not provide them with the means to survive in that barbaric environment, and that they would have to come up with their own rules as they went along, and trying to seem like they were appeasing their captors when in reality they were not. (Rochester, 164) For example, on many occasions, prisoners were tortured to give biographical information. At first, they would only give the answers required by the Geneva Convention, known as the “Big

Four” (Name, Rank, Serial Number, and Date of Birth). They would give these answers, and they would be beaten to within an inch of their lives. The prisoners then started to give false biographical information to their torturers. This did not mean that one gave Nelson 24 information to the Vietnamese easily, but that there had to have been substantial torment.

One former P.O.W said “‘we set a line of resistance we thought was within the capability of each P.O.W to hold, and we ruled that no man cross that line without significant torture.’”(Rochester, 164)

Another policy that the Vietnamese adhered to throughout the war was a program of indoctrination and “education” of American P.O.Ws. They attempted to indoctrinate the downed pilots with Marxist ideology, much like the Chinese did to captured UN soldiers during the Korean War. In most camps, there were two commandants: One was a regular army officer who oversaw everyday camp operations. The other was a political officer who was in charge of the indoctrination of interrogation and indoctrination, much like Soviet Commissars. (Rochester, 167) This was mainly a failure, though the complete conversion of the American fliers to Marxism may not have been their ultimate goal, and that there may have been an ulterior motive to the program. A study by the US

Air Force concluded that P.O.Ws were “frequently broken…, but for specific objectives other than political remodeling. All evidence points to the NVN understanding that they could not ideologically convert PWs- but they could, and did, induce cooperation in sufficient measures to have claimed limited success…” (Rochester, 170) Another form of torture that the Vietnamese used was trying to convince American P.O.Ws that their own country did not support them. They would play appeals from celebrities such as

Jane Fonda over the camp PA system, angering and demoralizing the Americans. Once during an extended torture session, Major Fred Cherry was forced to listen to Jane Fonda rail about how American pilots were ‘cowards’ because they bombed at night and killed women and children. He became so angry that he tried to “tear his irons from the walls.” Nelson 25

(Rochester, 180-81) In the end though, the Vietnamese program of psychological torture was not successful, though they kept trying to break the minds of American prisoners just as they attempted to break their bodies through physical torture, and this continued right up until the release of American P.O.Ws in 1973.

While most of the pilots taken in Vietnam were held by the NVA, some of them fell into the hands of the Viet Cong. The way each force treated their prisoners was largely the same, although there were some differences. For example, both groups tortured their prisoners, but, in the words of David Baker, a pilot who was captured, the

Viet Cong were “Very, very crude as far as the way they handled you,” (Nelson, 43) as opposed to the NVA, who “Were much more experienced.” (Nelson, 43) He says that the

Viet Cong “Would rather beat you up…than hang you from a meat hook.” (Nelson, 39)

Also, while most of the camps run by the NVA were large, capable of holding hundreds of prisoners and guards, and would usually be near large cities, Viet Cong camps were in the deep jungle, and would hold only a handful of prisoners. Baker says that there were only six other Americans in the camp: five from the Army, and one Marine. Of the living conditions on the camp, he remembers

“We were in your basic cage. Giant bamboo poles around a frame with a leaf

roof. It was about six feet long and about four feet wide…you were chained

around your leg 20 hours a day, so it was pretty harsh conditions. Because it was

the jungle, we had some pretty bad things coming in and out of that cage…

(Nelson, 38)

The Viet Cong did attempt to get anti-war statements from their prisoners, much like the NVA. Baker says “A couple of times they brought us out, and showed us Nelson 26 propaganda movies that they had set up. They brought around little Panasonic radios that broadcast Radio Hanoi. They made sure we heard any American that was making an anti-war statement.” (Nelson, 39) Baker goes on to say that neither he nor any of the other six soldiers in his camp ever made any statements for the Viet Cong.

It is important to understand the bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese forces as part of the Vietnam War as a whole because through the air war, it is possible to understand why the United States failed in Vietnam. The United States did not fully commit its airpower to battle, and this was the case with the overall strategy of the war.

The US sought to fight a limited war, and it was the greatest failure that the United

States’ military has ever endured. It is also important to recognize the barbaric treatment that the American P.O.Ws were forced to endure in order to have a better understanding of all the horrors of the Vietnam War. Nelson 27

Interview Transcription Interviewee/Narrator: General David E. Baker Interviewer: Jack Nelson Location: General Baker’s office, Washington, DC Date: January 4, 2008

Jack Nelson: This is Jack Nelson, and I am interviewing David Baker as part of the

American Century Oral History Project. This interview took place at 10:00 AM at

General Baker’s office in Washington, DC. So my first question for you is would you describe your childhood?

David Baker: My childhood. Well, it moved around quite a bit. I was born in New

Hampshire and my father was a sailor, so I moved around quite a bit, and I scored an undergraduate degree in New York, at Hofstra University, and then was all set to go into the Air Force. Joined, went to pilot training, and then I ended up making a career out of the Air Force.

JN: Was there anything that attracted you to the military during your childhood?

DB: My father was in the Navy as an intelligence officer, so that was always there. At the time that I graduated from college, the draft was still on, and I wanted to get my master’s degree, but it seemed like that at the time wasn’t going to happen, so I volunteered for the Air Force because I wanted to fly.

JN: Could you describe the training that you went through? Nelson 28

DB: Sure. It was a year of pilot training to get your wings. First, I went to Officer

Training School, and then got a commission as a Second Lieutenant and went straight to pilot training, and that’s a year long program. At the end of the year, you graduate and get your wings, and then an operational assignment. As it turned out, I had volunteered to go to Vietnam, and was picked to be a Forward Air Controller in an O2 aircraft, then went to training to upgrade and learn that aircraft. There was also a fighter qualification first, and then the qualification for the O2 in Florida, and then overseas to Vietnam.

JN: Do you think that you were adequately prepared for combat?

DB: You never know until you get there, I guess. It’s quite different when you’re training stateside, and no one’s trying to kill you or shoot you, or there’s no bullets coming at you. As it turned out, just about every mission that we went on, I’d probably say that we were taking some fire at the time. Here again, when I got over there, Jack, it was very late in the war. I didn’t get over there until the early spring nineteen hundred seventy two. The Spring Offensive was on, I was there for that, and I ended up flying almost every day. The experience was quick, the learning curve was quick, so you became pretty well prepared pretty quickly when you go into combat, and I was shot down on my fiftieth mission, so I had some experience in the airplane.

JN: Where exactly were you stationed in Vietnam? Nelson 29

DB: I was stationed in Saigon, Ton Sun-Nhut Airbase and we had a squadron of Forward

Air Controllers there, a Tactical Air Support Squadron is what we were called, and that’s where I flew out of. All of the missions originated out of Saigon. We also deployed to two other places in South Vietnam, but the home base was Saigon.

JN: What was the state of the equipment that you using, was it good, or sub par…?

DB: The airplane I was flying was an O2, so that’s a military version of the Super Sky

Master, so, it’s an older airplane, that’s for sure, that’s propeller driven, but for the missions in a low-threat environment(slight emphasis), it was quite adequate. As you got to higher degrees of threat, to where you actually had Surface to Air missiles that were shoulder fired, then the equipment didn’t fare so well: In An-Loc, in the Spring

Offensive, we had lost three air craft in twenty minutes. That’s when they got SA-7’s into An-Loc for the first time, because if you stay above 1500 feet, you’re above what an

AK-47 can do to you, and we did that religiously when we were in areas where there were a lot of small arms. Bring the SA-7, a shoulder fired, heat-seeking missile to the equation, and that goes right up to 10,000 feet, and you’re operating in the envelope of the missile. I had several shot at me before I was hit, and turned up over Cambodia on a mission where I got hit by two of them.

JN: How good was the mission planning, do you think? Nelson 30

DB: The intelligence was the key to the whole thing. Here again, back in the time frame of early nineteen hundred seventy two, we had already started a big withdrawal from

Vietnam, where we had troops in contact, and you had to be fighter qualified to be in that role, which I was, but basically, it was controlling fighters on suspected areas of enemy location was I guess the main mission. It was legal at that time, in ‘72, of course, to go into Cambodia, so a lot of my missions were flown from Saigon into Cambodia, and then return.

JN: What was your primary mission as a pilot?

DB: Our primary mission was to control air strikes. There were two different kinds of air strikes: One is a pre-planned air strike, on a bridge, for example. 9:00 o’clock, Saturday morning, you’re going to hit this bridge, you’re going to get two fighters, and you’re going to get your contact with them, A-37’s out of ?Ben-Wah?, for example. They rendezvous with you, stay overhead, you’re down low, and you mark the target with a rocket and make sure the fighters get their eyes on the target, and then you clear them to drop their ordinance. That’s sort of a mission where you were the orchestrater if you will, the conductor of an air strike, talking directly to the fighters.

JN: The O2 was a fighter plane, correct?

DB: No, no, it was an observation plane. As a matter of fact, it was a twin engine

Cessna, it had a propeller in the front and one in the rear, and a lot of communications Nelson 31 gear in the cockpit. At night we flew with two people. Sometimes that was with an interpreter, when you were talking with the Vietnamese on the ground, or another

American pilot. During the daytime, we flew most of our missions solo. My fateful flight was with a solo flight.

JN: What were your thoughts about the rules of engagement that American planes flew under in Vietnam?

DB: Our big deal was that even if we found troops that we knew were bad, they knew very well that we couldn’t go into the Pagodas in Cambodia, so that’s where they stored their arms, and that’s where they went, so they sort of went into a sanctuary area, and it was luck of the draw if you found some in the open. Very rarely would you find them in the open. At night along the rivers, anything that moved was cleared as a target, so that was pretty freelance, and quite a few of my fifty missions were at night.

JN: It’s sort of interesting to draw a parallel between the Viet Cong storing their SAMS in Pagodas, and the terrorists of today, I think, because they’re doing the exact same thing.

DB: You see a parallel over there, and there’s not too many you can draw with Vietnam and Iraq, but clearly the insurgents in Iraq know that we don’t go into shrines, so they did use that for sanctuary. Now that, thank goodness, we have Iraqi forces that are leading that charge, and they will go into Mosques. Nelson 32

JN: What was the effect of the air war on Vietnam as a whole?

DB: I think it should’ve gotten more credit than it actually did. I think it was portrayed by the media that the war was lost and un-winnable. If you looked at the Air Force side of things, we did pretty darn good, I think. There were quite a few air craft that were shot down over the North, but that was in a pretty high threat area where you had both Surface to Air missiles, a lot of them, and also fighters to contend with.

JN: Howard Zinn, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, he’s an extremely leftist historian-

DB: (Interjects) No, I haven’t heard of him.

JN: (Continues) He says that it is “ridiculous” to say that the United States fought a limited war in Vietnam, and specifically sites the amount of bombs that were dropped. I was wondering what you think about that.

DB: I would disagree with that. We didn’t go into the north until December of 1972 to really resume the bombing. We had a bombing halt, so that surely is restricting. The secret peace talks were going on at the time, but I think we were restricted in many different areas as far as what we could bomb and what we couldn’t, and the targets that were assigned. We probably could have done a better job on that. My particular mission as a Forward Air Controller, though, had some pretty good freedom. Nelson 33

JN: If American airpower had been differently employed in Vietnam, do you think that the war could have ended differently?

DB: I think it would have been a lot shorter war, much, much shorter. If we’d put B-52’s over Hanoi early on, we probably could have taken years off the? cushion? of that war. I never would have made it over there, it would have been well done by 1972.

JN: My dad always said that we could have destroyed Hanoi rather quickly, but that we never had the will to do it.

DB: That’s right, that’s where it always is, with the will of the people. We’ve raised the bar so high now, in my opinion, where it has to be very quick, and you better not have too many casualties. That’s the demands of the American People, especially with this new technology that we see. But with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic Extremists in Iraq, indeed sometimes technology takes a second seat, especially when you’re talking about urban warfare, and going in and clearing out blocks of buildings, and killing these guys in their own zip code. And then they go to other provinces where they’re not welcome, finding them there becomes much easier.

JN: I know you flew in Desert Storm as well as Vietnam, so could you compare and contrast your experience in Desert Storm with Vietnam? Nelson 34

DB: Yeah (chuckles). That’s quite a different deal entirely, minus the location and the targets. I was a Senior Full Colonel when I flew in Desert Storm, and I believe I was the only repatriated prisoner of war from Vietnam to actually fly in Desert Storm as a fighter.

I was flying the F-15E, which was the most advanced air craft we had, period, as opposed to the O2. There’s absolutely no comparison there. It was a dual-role mission, in a very high technology air craft, so it was quite different. I would say that I flew twenty missions over Iraq, and I would say about fifteen of them were at night. We had night enhancing things on the air craft, and we really ruled the night. It was a totally different experience for me, not just in the rank and the air craft and the location, but it was a whole entire different experience. I remember the first combat mission, though, I thought to myself, last time I put the gear handle up and went into combat, it didn’t work out very well, let’s hope it goes better this time, and it surely did.

JN: I read that you were the lead fighter when the Iraqis were retreating from Kuwait.

DB: Right. They were exiting Kuwait, and they stole trucks, busses, jeeps, everything they could get. They were an army in full retreat. Our sense was that if they made it across the Tigris-Euphrates River, then indeed it would have taken weeks and weeks to plow them out, to find them and do battle. One of the reasons that the war ended, I think, was the coverage of that road out of Kuwait because of the pictures that showed graphically what we did to those Iraqis that were leaving. We decimated them. Nelson 35

JN: Getting back to Vietnam, what did the Air Force do to prepare you for being shot down?

DB: Well, there was survival school. I went through several different survival schools:

Water survival school, and then the big one was the basic survival school where you actually role-played when you were captured and interrogated. The only thing it really helped was to help you recognize some techniques in interrogation, but you never knew if they were going to come back and get you, if they were doing something real bad to you, so it’s an unknown there. It was a little, tiny bit of exposure, but nothing can really prepare you for the actual thing. I think we do a pretty good job now. A lot of lessons came out of Vietnam that have been applied to the survival schools for the services, and I think we do a much better job now.

JN: Did they give you any equipment for if you were shot down? I read that they gave bullion to Navy pilots to give to locals to get them to Americans, and that sort if thing.

DB: We had blood chits. Everybody carried those, and they said that you would be given a reward if you turned them over to friendly forces. Seeing as how I came down in the middle of 35 Viet Cong, there wasn’t anyone to give anything to, they took it, and that was the start of a temporary ordeal, anyway.

JN: You already mentioned that you were shot down by a SAM. What were you thinking immediately after you were hit and going down? Nelson 36

DB: I think complete surprise, given the fact that it was a very benign nine o’clock in the morning, and I had some fighters coming in for a target I had found, a couple trucks that were transporting some things into South Vietnam from Cambodia. I knew what the trucks were and was waiting for the fighters to show up. My best sense is that those trucks were full of surface to air missiles that were going into An-Loc and other places in

South Vietnam, and they just took two out, and fired them at me and hit me before the fighters got there. Reflecting back on it, you go from a situation in which you’re very much in control, very smooth and feeling pretty good. Two or three seconds later, you don’t know if you’re going to live or not, and you’re coming down in a parachute from a plane that’s just gotten torn up by a missile. Pretty quick change.

JN: You said that you came down in the middle of 35 Viet Cong-

DB: (Interjects) Yeah, in the area they were all around.

JN: Were you able to evade them at all, or were you captured immediately?

DB: About ten minutes, not much longer. I ran into a field and tried to make it to a tree line, which I did, but they were on me pretty quick. I had a .38 revolver, and I fired a couple shots there, and then they were just all over me. I thought I was going to be killed almost immediately. I was not. We hid, because they knew a search and rescue effort was going to start pretty quick, which it did, and they fired a couple of SA-7’s at the first fighters that came in, and they got out of there pretty quick, and we moved out pretty Nelson 37 quickly, too. They blindfolded me, took off all my clothes except my underwear, and we were moving quickly as soon as the fighters left.

JN: Do you have any idea where you were held?

DB: Yes, I think so. I was shot down over the Parrot’s Beak, and ended up in very dense jungle. It took about, I want to say six or seven hours from the camp we ended up in to

?Loc-Nin?, the release point, so about six or seven hours in a big Russian truck. I traveled a lot through Cambodia before I ended up in the camp, and tried to escape, and was shot a couple times, and they had to carry me in a hammock, so to speak. They didn’t enjoy that. Then they dumped me in this camp with five other Americans at the time in very deep, deep jungle.

JN: You tried to escape as you were being transported?

DB: At night, yes, I tried to escape. There was still one guard that was very much awake, and he shot me twice with an AK-47. I couldn’t walk because it hit my right leg, and I ended up having to be carried.

JN: I know that the camps that the Viet Cong had in Cambodia weren’t visited by the

Red Cross, so did your family have any idea what happened to you? Nelson 38

DB: I was missing in action the entire time, and the Air Force didn’t know. They assumed that I was dead, I think. My family never gave up hope. I was married, and had a little boy, one year old at the time. But it was still a surprise when my name came out on the list after they signed the Peace Accords in January of 1973. They released the list the next day, and indeed there was an Air Force captain that was on that list in Cambodia.

There were seven in my camp, and I think there were 20 others that were mixed Army and Civilian that came out of another camp, so I think it was 27 total that came out of

Cambodia, and nine out of Laos.

JN: What was the camp you were in like? Guards, other prisoners…

DB: We were in your basic cage. Giant bamboo poles around a frame with a leaf roof. It was about six feet long, and about four feet wide, and a hole right in the middle of the cage. If we got bombed, we were supposed to jump down into that hole, and we had a hammock and that was it. You were chained around your leg to the cage about 20 hours a day, so it was pretty harsh conditions. Because it was in the jungle, we had some really bad things coming in and out of that cage, two foot snakes, and all kind of poisonous snakes, and they came in and out. Also huge centipedes, spiders, things that would really get your attention pretty quick.

JN: How were you treated by the guards? Nelson 39

DB: Good question. At the time, they were looking for anti-war statements to put on

Radio Hanoi. That was their goal, the way I got it, anyway. They tried to get us, the people in my camp to make statements. They were all Army. We had one Marine join us, who was also a pilot, and myself, so seven total, and none of us made any statements, we refused. It was pretty harsh treatment, but as far as the rope tortures and things like that up in Hanoi, they’d rather just beat you up and throw you back in the cage than hang you from a meat hook, or something.

JN: I read that there was a lot of indoctrination going on in the camps up north, and I was wondering if they did the same thing in Cambodia, make you a Communist, brainwash you…

DB: A couple of times they brought us out, and showed us propaganda movies that they had set up. They brought around little Panasonic radios that broadcast Radio Hanoi.

They made sure we heard any American that was making an anti-war statement. Again, the goal here was to get us to make a statement that was against the war.

JN: Talking about the anti-war sentiments, did you know about the protests going on back home?

DB: absolutely.

JN: What were your thoughts on those? Nelson 40

DB: I had a military background in my family, and I volunteered to go to Vietnam, I can’t be too clear about that. I didn’t join in any protests, but it was part of the whole deal of the “Sixties,” if you will, back there in the late sixties, my gosh. There was indeed protest, and it was sort of a common thing to see it. It didn’t have any effect on me, I still volunteered.

JN: What sorts of things would you do to pass the time while a prisoner?

DB: Because of the condition you were in, you wanted to take yourself away from reality, as far as you possibly could, but still be able to come back very quickly, so you could focus on something and get your mind going. I personally was in a lot of pain. I didn’t get any treatment at all for my gunshot wounds, and they were starting to really hurt. I didn’t sleep at all, hardly. Couple of hours during the day, and then the night was a whole different experience in the jungle, when things started coming around.

Sometimes large things came around the cage in pitch black, and that sort of deal. We were all in separate cages, I’d say 150 feet apart in a circle, and the guard was in the center of the circle, basically.

JN: I know you tried to escape several times from captivity. You already described the first one, but the other times, how did you go about it? Was it spontaneous, or planned?

DB: I planned it, but either the timing wasn’t right or it was impossible to get out of the cage when they put me in there. I was trying to rig the lock so I could get out, or ?try? Nelson 41 wood on the lock. It was a lot harder than I thought to get out, and then, of course, when you got out, where would you go? You’d have to do it at night, and it was pitch black in the middle of the jungle. My plan was to get out and then stay someplace close by until they gave up looking for you, and then move at least a little bit during the day. But it never actually worked out that I was able to execute some of the plans, but it was a worthwhile effort to conjure up and plan something in detail. It took a while to go through that whole process, but that’s all you’ve got is time sometimes.

JN: Why would you have wanted to stay close to the camp?

DB: I don’t think I could have gone very far, especially at night. It could be a pretty treacherous adventure in that jungle where we were. I just wanted to get somewhere, away from the camp a little bit, and try to get covered up, and just stay there until they stopped the search or there wasn’t anybody around, and then try to move a little bit further, and get back to a known reference or somewhere where I could get my bearings or direction, and try to get into South Vietnam.

JN: Were you ever able to get out of the camp?

DB: No, not really. We moved to another camp because the water was ?bad? at the original one, so we moved about four hours, I guess, to another camp that was very similar in structure. They unchained us a couple hours every day to come out of the cage, Nelson 42 and give us a bowl of really rancid rice with worms in it, and then we’d go back into the cage at night. They locked the door, and for the most part we were chained to the cage.

JN: What was the punishment for trying to get out?

DB: Well, they broke all the toes on both my feet, and they held me very closely. We were still on the road during the first escape, and they watched me very, very closely, blindfolded all the time. We were headed North, and after I was shot and carried, we turned back around, my recollection is, and went back into Cambodia, or deeper into

Cambodia, near the Parrot’s Beak that borders South Vietnam, and to the camp, where I guess the decision was made to leave me because, being MIA, if I died, which was a pretty good chance I guess in their minds, they wouldn’t have to report it to anybody.

But they sure did when those peace accords were signed, because I was an Air Force pilot, a pretty big bargaining chip.

JN: You were the only Air Force prisoner that the Viet Cong released. Do you know why?

DB: Actually, I was released by the North Vietnamese. Captured by the Cong, but because of the trucks and what they were transporting me in, they had some North

Vietnamese officers with them, and that’s where I ended up very quickly, in North

Vietnamese Army hands. Not a whole bunch of air craft were shot down over Cambodia, Nelson 43 and most of those pilots that were Forward Air Controllers and Fighter Pilots I think were killed immediately.

JN: What was the treatment like from the NVA as opposed to the Viet Cong?

DB: Much more experienced from the NVA part of it. They had somebody that spoke pretty darn good English, and that knew American history. Of course, in the Viet Cong, nobody spoke any English, and they were very, very crude, as far as the way they handled you. I was turned over pretty quickly to the North Vietnamese regular army.

JN: Were you ever in any camps up North?

DB: No, I spent my entire time in Cambodia, those two camps. Then again, I was shot down on June 27, seventy-two, and was released the following year, February 12, the first day of the first release, 1973.

JN: When did you get home?

DB: Taken by helicopter from the release site to Saigon, and immediately on a C-9

Hospital Plane to the Philippines, and then evaluation and de-briefing there. My leg was in really bad shape, and they had to figure out what they were going to do with it. They decided there’d have to be some pretty extensive cardiovascular surgery, and back at that time we didn’t have too many vascular surgeons in the United States. It was a new Nelson 44 medicine, and it took them a while to get the right people to San Antonio, so about four or five days after I was relieved, I got back to the United States, Philippines to Hawaii to

San Antonio, Texas. That was where the hospital was, the main facility where I had my operation.

JN: Why did you decide to stay in the Air Force?

DB: I wasn’t done. I guess I felt that it was an incomplete experience. I started out flying, and I wanted to fly a fighter air craft, and they told me I wouldn’t ever fly again, and I wanted to prove them wrong. I guess that was part of it. Once I got back on flying status, I said I’m going to stay in and try at least one more assignment, and see what air craft are out there in the fighter community. I enjoyed the challenges of flying a high- performance air craft. I was amazed by it. One of the big reasons that I stayed was because of the challenges.

JN: And like you said, there were better planes and technology.

DB: Yeah, I had a chance to fly a single-seat F-15 in Europe during the . That was a very challenging mission, and I was initial cadre on that air craft, and then ended up being a key player in bringing the F-15E into the Air Force. I was also Initial Cadre in the F-15E2, which was the two seat version.

JN: Was the American involvement in Vietnam justifiable? Nelson 45

DB: I guess you’d get differing opinions on that. We sure thought we were doing the right thing. There are a lot of different theories. Looking back on that now, I think it is time that we justify what we were doing. Looking back on Vietnam now, I think you’re going to get differing opinions all the way through, though. I sure wasn’t so frustrated that I got out of the Air Force quick and said “this is baloney” at all, I stayed in for 28 and a half years.

JN: Do you think the United States lost the Vietnam War?

DB: I don’t know if there’s a short answer to that. If I had to give you a short answer, I would say yes, we lost it from the fact that in 1975, in April, it turned Communist, and they still got a Communist flag over there. It was a lot of effort over a lot of time, so it’s all relative. Going back to the sixties, when we got involved, you could see how it happened. Whether we really won or lost, there’s both sides to that story as well.

JN: I find it hard to say that we lost the war militarily.

DB: Oh, yeah. I was concentrating on politically. Militarily, there were a lot more victories than failures on the battlefield, in the air and on the ground.

JN: All right, that’s it. Thank you so much for your time and this interview. Nelson 46

DB: You’re welcome. Good luck. Nelson 47

Audio Time Indexing Log

Interviewer: Jack Nelson Interviewee: General David E. Baker, USAF (Ret.) Date of Interview: January fourth, 2008 Location of Interview: Washington, DC Recording Format: Cassette

Tape 1, Side A

Minute Mark Topic

0 Introduction and childhood

5 Mission planning

10 War would have been shorter

15 Thoughts on being shot down

20 Prison camp conditions

25 Escape Attempts

30 Justification for Vietnam

32 Thanks, goodbye Nelson 48

Interview Analysis Jack Nelson

There are two main types of methods for passing on history. One way is through textbooks and other literature, which most of the time deal with the larger picture surrounding a certain event, but do not often convey the direct experiences of the people that were directly involved in the event. The other main way of passing on history is oral history. Oral history consists of word-of mouth conversations and interviews with people that directly experienced a historical event. It is invaluable to culture because it shows the thoughts and feelings of the common people that took part in an historical event.

While the history of the movers and shakers of the world is very important to know, it is at least as important to know the stories of the common people.

Studs Terkel, the great oral historian, once said that oral history is “History from the bottom up rather than history written by generals.”

(http://www.grandtimes.com/studs.html) This is especially true of the Vietnam War: The history of every other war aside from Vietnam is dominated by the memoirs of the leaders, from the ancient writings of Julius Caesar and Alexander to Teddy Roosevelt’s memoirs of the Spanish-American War. Vietnam is just the opposite. The strategies and decisions of General William Westmoreland and Vo Nguyen Giap are not as heavily scrutinized as were the decisions of Patton or Rommel. The history of the war and the way that it is remembered are largely dictated by the common people that took part in it, be they American conscripts, Anti-war protesters, or Vietnamese peasants and guerillas.

General David E. Baker (Ret.) was a pilot for the US Air Force during the

Vietnam War. The interview conducted with him on January 4th, 2008, is an important tool in helping to further advance understanding of the treatment of Americans taken Nelson 49 prisoner by the Viet Cong as well as improving public knowledge of the restrictions that

American aircraft in Vietnam flew under. Though there are many books about American

P.O.Ws in North Vietnam, very little is known about the ordeal that American prisoners in the hands of the Viet Cong went through. He also refutes the statements of many modern historians that the Vietnam War was not a limited conflict, citing the bombing halt of 1972 as well as the rules of engagement that American aircraft flew under, as well as contesting the point that the vast majority of American troops were against the war.

To begin the interview, General Baker talked briefly about his childhood, noting that his family moved frequently. He also cited his father’s Navy career as a key influence in his decision to join the military. Like most men who have made a career out of the military, his answers, while pleasant, were always clipped and to the point. He was also reticent about speaking of his own heroics and sufferings as a P.O.W. General

Baker went on to describe the training that he went through in order to become a pilot, and then discussed some of his experiences as a Forward Air Controller during the

Vietnam War. When asked about his state of preparedness for combat, he replied “You never know ‘till you get there, I guess. It’s quite different when… there’s no bullets coming at you.” (Nelson, 28) Baker discussed some of the threats that American aircraft faced in Vietnam, such as Surface to Air missiles, and also some of the tactics that were used during the war. He went on to say that he thought that American planes were severely restricted by the Rules of Engagement during the war, but that he received

“pretty good freedom” in his mission as a Forward Air Controller. (Nelson, 32) He also said that the Vietnam War would have ended much earlier if American airpower had been more effectively used in Vietnam. Nelson 50

General Baker then went on to discuss his captivity at the hands of the Viet

Cong in Cambodia, where he was held for almost a year in the middle of very dense jungle. He described his multiple attempts to escape, during which he was shot in the leg. He received no medical treatment for his injury throughout his captivity, and almost lost the leg. He then spoke of how he coped with the terrible conditions of the camps, and the Vietnamese guards who, as he describes them, would “rather beat you up…than hang you from a meat hook.” (Nelson, 39) To finish the interview, General Baker discussed his release from captivity and the remaining 25 years of his career in the Air

Force.

There are two differing viewpoints on the air war in Vietnam. The first viewpoint is that the air war was completely unrestricted, but not successful. Leftist Historian

Howard Zinn supports this view of the war. Of the claim that the Vietnam War was a limited war, he wrote that it was “ridiculous….The United States dropped seven million tons of bombs in Vietnam, twice the amount we dropped in World War II.” (In Defense of History, 17-18) The feeling was widespread that such destructive force could hardly be the result of a “limited” war. The other viewpoint is that American planes were very severely restricted by the Rules of Engagement that they flew under in Vietnam and that if American air superiority had been better employed, the United States would have won the war. This is the viewpoint shared by General Baker. In response to Zinn’s claim that

Air Force and Navy aircraft had complete freedom during the war, he said “We didn’t go into the North until December of 1972 to really resume the bombing. We had a bombing halt, so that surely is restricting.” (Nelson, 32) What Baker was speaking of were the

Paris Peace Talks between the United States and the Government of North Vietnam, Nelson 51 during which no bombing of North Vietnam was permitted, even though there was still fighting going on all throughout the South, as well as in Cambodia and Laos. The war was still going on, Baker argues, but no bombing of the enemy’s homeland was permitted. He also points out that the Air Force was not able to attack known enemy combatants if they were taking shelter in “sanctuary” areas, such as Pagodas.

Both sides have strengths and weaknesses to their arguments. Zinn is correct in saying that the Air Force did drop a large amount of bombs and was a very destructive force during the war, he does not point out that no bombing of the general population or certain industrial centers was permitted. The destruction of these targets may have broken the will of the Vietnamese to continue the fight, enabling an American victory.

While Baker is correct in saying that the Air Force and Navy were restricted in the areas they were able to attack, these restrictions were necessary due to domestic politics and international diplomacy. Limiting civilian casualties and a halt to the bombing were also necessary steps to maintain support for, and begin, the Paris Peace Talks. But, then again, in all likelihood, if the United States had fully committed its air power, such talks would not have been necessary.

Another point that Zinn and Baker disagree on is the theory that many American soldiers and pilots were against the war. Zinn writes that “Most of the anti-war action came from ordinary GI’s, and most of these came from lower income groups.” (Zinn,

364) He also cites the refusal of B-52 pilots to bomb Hanoi, as well as specific statistics about desertions and the number of dishonorable discharges during the course of the war.

(Zinn, 364) When asked about this subject, General Baker replied “We sure thought we were doing the right thing.” (Nelson, 45) General Baker came from a working class Nelson 52 family, and did not go to any of the service academies before volunteering to go to

Vietnam. He was not a part of the military elite at that point in his career, and yet he was completely for the war. He never took part in any protests, and all of the men he knew supported the war as well. While imprisoned, he and the other men in his camp had ample opportunity to speak out against the war, and yet none of them did, showing that there was much support for the war among the soldiers. While it is true that there was protest from many soldiers during the war, Zinn makes it seem as though almost all

American soldiers were against the war. General Baker is living proof that that is a false statement.

Throughout the course of this project, I have learned that oral history is essential to the development and preservation of human culture. Before this interview, the

Vietnam War was something that I had only read about in books. I had never met a

Vietnam War veteran, and it all seemed very distant and abstract to me. After talking to

General Baker, it all became much more real and personal to me, and therein lays the great fault of textbook-history: The lack of emotion.

There will always be the history of the textbook, that is, history written by people who were not actually there. It is just a dry recitation of facts and statistics. As Studs

Terkel said, “it is the history of Generals.” It is not the history of the soldier in the foxhole holding the line, or of the protester marching for equal rights. It is difficult to understand and experience the range of thoughts and feelings of people from a textbook.

But it is important this generation and all future generations learn as much as we can from the people who directly experienced events such as Vietnam or World War II in Nelson 53 order to properly remember and learn from what they did. If we do not do that, then, eventually, their stories will be forgotten.

Oral History is also essential because there are many events that are not very well documented in textbooks. For example, in the course of my research, I found an abundance of literature about American prisoners in North Vietnam, but absolutely nothing about P.O.Ws of the Viet Cong. General Baker’s story is essential because it is not well-known, and it will be forgotten if it is not recorded for the future. Though this has been a difficult project, it has also been very rewarding because I have heard a story that few people know about, and now that story can live on for at least a little while longer. Nelson 54

Appendix

An O2A Super Skymaster, the aircraft that General Baker flew in Vietnam and Cambodia

SA-7 missile launcher, the weapon that shot General Baker down on June 27, 1972 Nelson 55

An American pilot being taken into captivity Nelson 56 Nelson 57

Works Consulted

Evans, Richard J. In Defense of History. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000.

.Harrison, James Pickney. The Endless War: Fifty Years of Struggle in Vietnam. New York: The Free Press, 1982

Kimball, Jeffery. Nixon’s Vietnam War. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998.

Nichols, John B, and Barrett Tillman. On : The Naval Air War over Vietnam. Annapolis: United States Naval Academy, 1987.

Palmer, Bruce, Jr. The 25 Year War. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1984

Roberts, Andrew. A History of the English Speaking Peoples since 1900. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2006.

Rochester, Stuart I, and Frederick Kiley. Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia 1961-1973. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: The Free Press, 1980 www.brainyquotes.com 11/29/07 www.brushfirewars.org 2/11/08

Driver, Rodney D. “The War is not Ending.” www.nytimes.com 12/10/07

Esper, George. “Communists Take over Saigon; ‘.’” www.nytimes.com 12/10/07

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon3/ps12.htm 12/10/07

Battlefield Vietnam. www.pbs.org 11/30/07 http://picasaweb.google.com 2/11/08 Nelson 58 www.rollingthundertn3.com 2/11/08 www.taskforceomegainc.org 2/11/08

Albin, Kira. “Studs Terkel: An Interview with the Man who Interviews America.” http://www.grandtimes.com/studs.html 1/24/08

John Foster Dulles. “Indochina-Views of the United States on the eve of the Geneva Conference.” www.yale.edu 12/10/07