Operation Barrel Roll was a covert interdiction and close air support campaign conducted in the Kingdom of Laos by the U.S. Air Force 2nd Air Division and U.S. Navy Task Force 77 between 5 March 1964 and 29 March 1973, concurrent with the Vietnam War.
The operation was launched to persuade North Vietnam to stop supporting the insurgency in South Vietnam. It became an interdiction campaign against the Ho Chi Minh trail, North Vietnam's main logistical corridor, which ran from southwestern North Vietnam, through southeastern Laos, and into South Vietnam. The operation also increasingly provided close air support for Royal Lao Armed Forces, CIA-backed tribal allies, and Thai Volunteer Defense Corps in a covert ground war in northern and northeastern Laos. Barrel Roll and the "Secret Army" attempted to stem an increasing tide of People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and Pathet Lao offensives.
Barrel Roll was one of the most closely held secrets of the American military commitment in Southeast Asia. Due to the ostensible neutrality of Laos, guaranteed by the Geneva Conference of 1954 and the Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos of 1962, both the U.S. and North Vietnam strove to maintain the secrecy of their operations and only slowly escalated military actions there. In 1975, Laos emerged from nine years of war as devastated as any of the other Asian participants in the Vietnam War.
Preliminaries (1962–1964)
Background
After a series of political and military machinations conducted by the U.S., the Pathet Lao, and the North Vietnamese in Laos that are described in the History of Laos since 1945, the Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos was signed in Geneva, Switzerland on 23 July 1962. The agreement, an attempt to end a civil war between the Communist-dominated (and North Vietnamese-directed) Pathet Lao, neutralists, and American-backed rightists, included provisions that required the removal of all foreign military forces and precluded the use of Lao territory for interfering in the internal affairs of another country – a blatant effort to shut down North Vietnam's growing logistical corridor through southeastern Laos that would become known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
A coalition Government of National Union was installed in the capital of Vientiane, but it soon ran into difficulties. By the 2 October 1962 deadline for the removal of foreign troops, the North Vietnamese had pulled out only 40 personnel, leaving approximately 6,000 troops in the eastern half of the country. Meanwhile, rightist elements (in control of the army) opposed the new government. The U.S. played its part by increasing its assistance to the right by covertly supplying the army through Thailand. Despite another international accord, Laos remained ensnared by the political and territorial ambitions of communist neighbors, the security concerns of Thailand and the United States, and geographic fate.
Fighting soon erupted between elements of the Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao Army. Although tentative negotiations resumed between the factions, matters took a turn for the worse when neutralist Prime Minister Prince Souvanna Phouma was arrested during a right-wing coup attempt. U.S. Ambassador Leonard S. Unger then notified the generals that the U.S. government would continue to support Souvanna. This turn of events had a profound effect on Laotian politics: First, it affirmed American support for Souvanna, only a few years after the U.S. had denounced him as a tool of the leftists; It also caused the neutralists to shift political allies from the left to the right; Finally, in May 1964, Souvanna announced the political union of the rightists and neutralists against the left.
Heavy fighting broke out on the Plain of Jars as the members of each political grouping chose sides. Souvanna called upon the U.S. for support and was answered in the affirmative by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was eager to support a rightist/neutralist alliance in Laos. In November 1963 General Maxwell D. Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had proposed that U.S. armed reconnaissance missions be conducted over Laos as part of a two phase program that would warn Hanoi of U.S. determination to support the South Vietnamese government. The missions were to take place along North Vietnamese infiltration routes then developing in the Laotian panhandle.
On 19 May 1964 low-level photo reconnaissance flights (codenamed Yankee Team) over southern Laos were authorized and launched by RF-101 Voodoo aircraft. When they were fired upon during a mission, escort aircraft were provided. Two days later American aircraft began flying low-level photo recon missions over the northern part of the country, serving as the beginning of the American aerial commitment to the covert war.
Covert war
For the Americans, Laos became almost exclusively an air war, a reversal of the role air power played in the conflict in neighboring South Vietnam. In Laos, the USAF applied conventional air power in the support of an unconventional ground war. The mission of the USAF was to seal off the southern Mekong River valley, thus providing a buffer for Thailand; insulating the Vientiane government from direct communist threat; draining PAVN manpower and resources; and interdiction of the approaches to the Ho Chi Minh trail.
For U.S. interests, the aerial interdiction effort against the trail and the protection of Thailand were preeminent, and they became the raison d'être for the covert war in the northeast. According to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, after 1964 and the increasing U.S. commitment to South Vietnam, "Laos was only the wart on the hog."
Originally, the American arrangement in Laos was based on the premise that the situation in South Vietnam would be controlled within a year or two. A holding action in Laos was all that was thought necessary. No one expected that the conflict would last ten years. Air Force historian Colonel Perry F. Lamy described Washington's view of the situation succinctly:
Since the fate of Laos did not depend on a military solution in the air or on the ground in Laos and could only be decided by the outcome in Vietnam, winning the war against the DRV (North Vietnam) in northern Laos was not the objective. Instead, maintaining access to the country was paramount and keeping the Royal Lao government in power became the primary objective.
For North Vietnam, Laos was also a "limited war" with goals and objectives that were tied to its continued use of the Ho Chi Minh trail. The covert nature of the North Vietnamese logistical effort through Laos also had to be maintained in order to support the fiction that the conflict in South Vietnam was a popular uprising that was not directed by the north.
Back in 1959 Vang Pao, a Laotian Lieutenant Colonel of the minority Hmong tribe, had been taken under the wing of the CIA effort in Laos. The highland Hmong were more aggressive than the lowland Lao and Vang Pao was quickly elevated to their leadership in hopes of creating a paramilitary force that would counter the Pathet Lao in the northeast. Historian John Prados believed that the need to keep the Vientiane government weak, and to give free rein to the Hmong army, flew in the face of fostering the type of national government that could defeat the Pathet Lao. During 1961, the first weapons were delivered to the Hmong and their training was begun. Nine CIA specialists, nine U.S. Army Special Forces personnel, and 99 Thai members of the Police Aerial Reconnaissance Unit (PARU) participated in the training and equipping of what became known as the Armée Clandestine or the secret army.
The neutralization agreement forced the abandonment of the Hmong program, but that was not going to last long. Due to North Vietnamese violations of the agreement, President John F. Kennedy authorized a return to covert activities in 1963. The previous year the CIA and the Thai military had established "Headquarters 333" at Udon Thani, which acted as a joint U.S./Thai command center for covert military and intelligence collection activities in Laos. By the end of 1963, the numbers of the Hmong army had grown to 10,000. To supply the Hmong and Royal Lao armies with more firepower, the Thai government covertly dispatched artillery units to northeastern Laos. Logistical airlift for the covert effort was provided by Air America, Bird and Son, and Continental Air Services, all of which were CIA proprietary airlines.
The next stage of the military evolution took place during mid-March 1964, when the USAF began Project Waterpump, a program to train Laotian, Thai, Hmong, and Air America aircrews in flight and maintenance of U.S.-supplied AT-28 Trojan ground-attack aircraft. This training was conducted by Detachment 6, 1st Air Commando Wing personnel at Udon Thani. The first mission in support of Vang Pao's forces took place on 25 May. Eventually, the Royal Laotian Air Force would consist of five wings of ten aircraft each. Water Pump could never produce enough pilots, however, since graduation rates barely exceeded the death rate of graduates, who simply flew until they died. The American "civilian pilots" program was phased out in 1966 and Detachment 6 (which continued its training program) was absorbed by the 606th Air Commando Squadron in the same year. In 1967 the 606th was integrated into the 56th Special Operations Wing. The air program did, however, create the world's only guerrilla army with air superiority.
Field Marshal
According to Kennedy's "Country Team" directive of 29 May 1961, all U.S. government agencies operating in a foreign nation were to be placed under the direct supervision of the ambassador. Within Laos that meant the U.S. military was under civilian control, since according to the neutralization agreement, there could never be a senior U.S. military commander within the country. The covert war was, therefore, going to be planned and directed by a civilian within the walls of the embassy.
The American official most associated with the conflict in Laos was Ambassador William H. Sullivan, who served from December 1964 until June 1969. He was also one of the most controversial. Considered brilliant by most and tyrannical by many, Sullivan was despised by the American high command (both Army and Air Force) in Saigon, Sullivan's demand that he alone maintain complete control over every aspect of American military operations in Laos and the stringent restrictions that he imposed upon those operations, earned him few friends among the military. General William C. Westmoreland, overall commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam sarcastically referred to Sullivan as the "Field Marshal." Few of his detractors, however, considered the difficulties of the ambassador's position. He had to balance the competing interests of the CIA, the Seventh Air Force, MACV and the Thais, and this had to be done without alienating Souvanna, an ally in all but name who acquiesced to almost every U.S. action within his country, short of outright invasion.
The most senior military officer in-country was the AIRA, the ambassador's air attaché, an Air Force colonel. The air attaché office originally consisted of that officer and six other personnel. The burgeoning air programs in Laos however, dictated the dispatch of 117 more Air Force personnel during 1966. The USAF conducted its operations under the aegis of Project 404, whose mission was to support the Royal Laotian military, the clandestine Hmong army, and to support project personnel, who coordinated the operational end of covert activities in Laos. Eventually, five air operations centers were created in Laos – at Vientiane, Pakse, Savannakhet, Long Tieng, and Luang Prabang. These centers supported the ambassador with intelligence, administrative services, and communications as well as the actual air operations under a program called Palace Dog.
After the initiation of Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained aerial campaign against North Vietnam that had begun on 5 March 1965, the Barrel Roll area of operations was divided on 3 April. Barrel Roll was to continue in the northeast while the southern portion of the area, where interdiction missions against the Ho Chi Minh trail were paramount, was redesignated Tiger Hound. Command and control of that area was handed over to MACV in Saigon.
At a 29 March 1965 Southeast Asia Coordinating Committee meeting at Udon Thani, attended by Sullivan, representatives from the 2nd Air Division, MACV, and Air America, responsibilities within the Barrel Roll operational area were ironed out. Command and control of the air program would remain in the ambassador's hands. Operational control of U.S. air assets devolved from the commander-in-chief, Pacific Forces (CINCPAC) in Honolulu through his air deputy at Pacific Air Forces or PACAF, to the 2nd Air Division (after 1 April 1966, the Seventh Air Force). Targets could be requested by the Royal Lao government, the CIA or by MACV.