Project CHECO Southeast Asia Report. The Battle for An Loc 5 April - 26 June 1972

The battle for An Loc may well prove to be a classic study in the use of tactical airpower in the years to come. It was an interlude in the Vietnam War where COSVN, confident in its own strength, introduced a true conventional strategy for the first time, employing armor, artillery, and infantry. The Seventh Air Force entered the battle basing its strategy and tactics on the assumption that a relatively permissive environment would exist for aircraft operation. Both were mislead. That the Seventh Air Force was able to adjust to the unexpected, and succeed, clearly demonstrates the need for flexible ideas and varied weaponry in both conventional and unconventional war. The immediate impact of the battle was to end the VCNVA invasion thrust into Military Region III by decimating the enemy units participating in the struggle for An Loc. In the view of General John W. Vogt, Commander of Seventh Air Force, the VCNVA inability to make up for losses sustained there resulted in COSVNs failure to take or to even seriously threaten Saigon. Thus the VCNVA loss involved more than the failure to take a provincial capital that had far more psychological than military significance. The effective loss of three crack divisions, however, signaled the end of the possibility for any serious inroads into Military Region III during the Spring and Summer offensive of 1972.