Operation MENU

Operation MENU was the code name of a secret air offensive on positions of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (Viet Cong) on Cambodian territory during the Vietnam War . The air offensive was carried out by the US Strategic Air Command in the period from March 18, 1969 to May 26, 1970. The aim was to prevent enemy troop transports and destroy enemy bases.

The mission was intended to signal to the North Vietnamese leadership that the new government under President Richard Nixon would also fully support South Vietnam . At the same time, however, the operation served as backing for the gradual withdrawal of US troops from South Vietnam.

The operation was carried out in secret, as a bombing of Cambodia in the USA would have led to even more massive protests against the war. However, details of the operation were later revealed, which led to consequences for the Nixon government.

background

Since the beginning of the fighting in Vietnam and Laos in the early 1960s, the Cambodian prince Norodom Sihanouk had tried to keep his country neutral. In the middle of the decade, however, a Communist victory seemed inevitable to him and he turned politically increasingly left.

In 1966 he signed a treaty that allowed both the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam and the Vietnamese People's Army to set up military bases in Cambodia and to use the port of Sihanoukville logistically. The US was obliged by the peace treaty of 1954 to maintain Cambodia's neutrality. Nevertheless, from 1967 onwards , President Johnson authorized the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, in Cambodia. These were mainly used to obtain information with which Prince Sihanouk should be changed.

At a meeting in Beijing, he announced that his country would now seek "normal" relations with the United States. The new US President Richard Nixon , who was looking for relief for the US troops, saw the possibility of weakening the enemy and began planning operations in Cambodia. Among other things, a sea blockade and an invasion were considered.

On January 30, 1969, it was decided to bomb the region in eastern Cambodia, in which the headquarters of the Viet Cong was suspected. The decision was influenced by repeated attacks by the Viet Cong on Saigon. Over the next few weeks, detailed operational plans were drawn up, and after renewed heavy attacks in March, Nixon gave the order to start the operation.

bombing

The attacks began on March 18 and were flown by B-52 bombers from Andersen AFB in Guam . 60 bombers flew in the direction of South Vietnam, the crews were not told the actual target. However, the majority of the bombers were soon diverted to Cambodian territory. 2,400 tons of bombs fell that day on an area known as Base Area 353.

Due to the great success of the bombing, the generals drew up further lists of targets that were attacked in the following 14 months. Since the individual operations all had codenames from the catering industry , the entire operation was codenamed MENU . For reasons of confidentiality, however, the US Air Force did not undertake the search for hits itself; instead, this was carried out by Forward Air Controllers from the MACV-SOG special unit . A total of 3,800 attacks were flown in which 108,823 tons of bombs were dropped.

revelation

Although the Cambodian prince had not been informed, he tacitly tolerated the attacks, which was taken as a sign that he no longer wanted the Viet Cong troops in his country. Nixon later claimed the prince gave his consent, but this was exposed as a lie.

On May 9, 1969, an inaccurate article about the deployment appeared in the New York Times . The author cited a government source as the basis for the report. President Nixon was furious and asked the FBI to find the leak. The telephone of one of Henry Kissinger's assistants was tapped over a period of 21 months. This was the first of several illegal surveillance orders ordered by President Nixon. However, with no further reports leaked, the situation quickly calmed down.

By the summer of 1969, only five members of Congress were informed of the operation, all of whom were involved in the Vietnam War. It was very surprising to them that Hanoi did not comment on the attacks or used them for propaganda . This can be explained by the fact that North Vietnam did not want to publicly admit its troop presence in Cambodia.

In mid-May 1973, further details of the operation came to light by the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh , who was informed of the event by his informant Hal M. Knight. As a result, a committee of inquiry was set up. It was more than worrying that the public and large parts of politics were unaware of the operation. The military had almost completely escaped civilian control, and even the commander-in-chief of the air force was not informed.

consequences

The successes of the mission are assessed differently by historians to this day. The attacks failed to break the Ho Chi Minh Trail and operations out of Cambodia continued. However, the attacks caused severe staff failures and property damage. Among other things, this induced President Nixon to intervene in the Cambodian civil war in 1970 with his own and South Vietnamese troops .

In addition to Laos , the USA sacrificed Cambodia, one of the last stable countries in Southeast Asia, to briefly give its allied South Vietnam more air. As an indirect consequence of the attacks on Cambodia, the communist Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 . Until the forced end of their rule in 1978, they committed an unprecedented mass murder of around 1.7 to 2.2 million of their compatriots in an attempt to transform the country into a kind of agrarian communism.

Trivia

The song " Cambodia " (eng .: Cambodscha ) by Kim Wilde from 1981 was inspired by Operation MENU. The text is about the wife of a military pilot who does not return from a mission in Cambodia (probably as part of Operation MENU).

Web links

• Nixon: Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia, April 30, 1970

swell

Unpublished government documents

• Military Assistance Command, Vietnam: Command History 1967. Annex F, Saigon 1968.
• Military Assistance Command, Vietnam: Command History 1968. Annex F, Saigon 1969.

Published government documents

• Bernard C. Nalty: Air War over South Vietnam, 1968–1975. Air Force Museums and History Program, Washington DC 2000.
• Earl H. Tilford: Setup: What the Air Force Did in Vietnam and Why. Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force base AL 1991.

memoirs

• William C. Westmoreland: A Soldier Reports . Doubleday, New York 1976.

Secondary sources

• Arnold Issacs, Gordon Hardy, MacAlister Brown and others: Pawns of War: Cambodia and Laos. Boston Publishing Company, Boston 1987.
• John Morocco: Operation Menu. In: War in the Shadows. Boston Publishing Company, Boston 1988.
• John Morocco: Rain of Fire: Air War, 1969-1973. Boston Publishing Company, Boston 1985.
• John M. Shaw: The Cambodian Campaign: The 1970 Offensive and America's Vietnam War. University of Kansas Press, Lawrence KS 2005.
• William Shawcross: Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia. Washington Square Books, New York 1979.
• Lewis Sorley: A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. Harvest Books, New York 1999.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Robert Miraldi: Seymour Hersh . Scoop Artist. First edition. Potomac Books, University of Nebraska, Nebraska 2013, ISBN 978-1-61234-475-1 , pp. 161 (English).