The Son Tay Raid: Understanding the Political Calculus
Abstract
In November of 1970, a small U.S. special operations force executed an intricately planned raid into a small compound next to the village of Son Tay, North Vietnam. The mission proceeded quickly and the landing force suffered no significant casualties despite encountering and defeating an enemy element twice their number. The raiders were on orders to recover U.S. POWs reportedly housed in the compound. To their utter surprise and disappointment, however, the camp held no prisoners. The Son Tay Raid has been a much discussed military operation every since. One the one hand it has been examined as an important example of joint force operations, since the team suffered no significant setbacks on the ground (one helicopter did accidentally land short of the objective, however built-in contingency plans quickly mitigated this error). On the other hand the fact that no POWs were present has led to much criticism of the intelligence behind the raid as well as the handling of that intelligence by the raids military and political sponsors in Washington. But this criticism is in fact not supported by the evidence. Indeed, an examination of the major literature on the raid suggests that this criticism is wholly unwarranted. It reveals (1) gross mischaracterizations of the role of intelligence in the final days leading up to the operation (2) gross mischaracterizations of the larger decision making process this intelligence tried to support. These two points will be explored in the following paragraphs. A third portion of this paper will offer a brief rebuttal to a 2005 Parameters essay on the SonTay raid that unfortunately exemplifies much of the faulty analysis at issue here.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2010
- Accession Number
- AD1020092
Entities
People
- Stringer
Organizations
- Air Command and Staff College