Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

AIR SUPERIORITY
On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson limited the interdiction
effort to the portion of North Vietnam below the 20th parallel. U.S. aircraft
patrolling that area also were authorized to attack confirmed SAM sites;
U.S. air commanders wanted to keep the North Vietnamese from constructing
the same kind of air defense in the area of the Demilitarized Zone
that already existed around Hanoi and Haiphong. After November 1, U.S.
interdiction in North Vietnam ceased. However, USAF and USN air units
continued to conduct numerous armed reconnaissance flights over North
Vietnam for over three more years, and U.S. aviation carried on air operations
in Laos that had been initiated to support the Royal Laotian Government
or to sever the Ho Chi Minh trail in central and southern Laos. These
actions of reconnaissance and interdiction did not have an air superiority
side, however, so they fall beyond the scope of this paper.
At the beginning of April 1972, the North Vietnamese Army invaded
South Vietnam across the Demilitarized Zone that separated the two countries,
through South Vietnam’s Central Highlands, and toward Saigon, from
512
A Soviet-supplied North Vietnamese
SA-2 Guideline
surface-to-air missile
(SAM).