The JCS 94-Target List - U.S. air warfare strategy in Vietnam War

Aerospace Power Journal, Spring, 2001 by Charles Tustin Kamps

A Vietnam Myth That Still Distorts Military Thought

Editorial Abstract: One of the great debates about the Vietnam conflict is whether it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Johnson administration who misapplied airpower. Critics have alluded to the infamous JCS 94-Target List as the example of how unimaginative air campaign planners used World War II-vintage strategic bombing inappropriately against a nonindustrial North Vietnam. Professor Kamps unveils and analyzes the actual list, arguing that a professionally derived and potentially effective air campaign was never utilized due to the politics of the time.

THE FLEXIBILITY OF airpower provides decision makers with many options for using or abusing the military instrument of power, as seen in conflicts from Vietnam to Kosovo. Some writers have used the bombing of North Vietnam during 1965-68 as a case to denigrate the ability of airpower to contribute effectively in Southeast Asia by claiming that the Vietnam-era generals simply dusted off the strategic bombing plans from World War II and inappropriately applied them to North Vietnam. One of the proofs offered for this view has been the often-mentioned, but never revealed, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) 94-Target List. The list is published here and is a far cry from being a substantiation of the critics claims. Quite the opposite, it reveals professionalism and shows how airpower was intended to be applied in an effective way in Vietnam.

The Claims

A generation of Air Force officers and others have now read essays claiming that the JCS and other high-ranking US military leaders of the early 1960s erroneously wanted to bomb North Vietnam's alleged industrial heartland in order to achieve victory in South Vietnam. Of course, North Vietnam did not have anything like an industrial heartland, and the critics have had to resort to the theory that unimaginative generals simply fell back on pre-1940 doctrine. Crucial to this misrepresentation is the mysterious 94-Target List, which supposedly enumerated the nonexistent industrial targets. It is worth quoting a few examples of how the list has been invoked by writers to criticize US military leaders.

Earl H. Tilford's 1991 book, Setup: What the Air Force Did in Vietnam and Why, makes the following claims:

They [the Air Force] devised a set of targets--the 94-targets list--designed to destroy North Vietnam's industries and wreck its transportation system, thereby preventing North Vietnam from supporting the insurgency in South Vietnam....

The Joint Chiefs, particularly the Air Force, had advocated bombing North Vietnam's industrial base from the beginning. Had the Air Force had its way North Vietnam's Thai Nguyen steel mill, its only cement plant, its single explosives plant, and most of its thermal power plants would have been destroyed by the end of the first few weeks of the campaign outlined in the original 94-targets list....

Instead of operating within parameters of a limited war, air power leaders sought to refight World War II--a conflict for which the doctrine of strategic bombardment was better suited. [1]

Raymond W. Leonard's article "Learning from History: Linebacker II and U.S. Air Force Doctrine," which appeared in the April 1994 issue of The Journal of Military History, asserts: "It [the 1964 JCS plan] was in many ways a classic replay of the offensive against Japan: it called for the concentrated and rapid destruction of ninety-four industrial, transportation, and infrastructure targets in North Vietnam." [2]

Writing for the Airpower Research Institute in 1986, Dennis M. Drew stated:

The criteria for selecting targets on the 94 Targets List and the JCS plan for striking those targets clearly indicate that the JCS desired to wage a classic strategic bombing campaign and a complementary interdiction campaign against North Vietnam ... and finally the progressive destruction of the enemy's industrial Wed.... In essence, the JCS planned to take the World War II bombing campaign in Europe and transplant it 20 years later in North Vietnam. [3]

Finally, perhaps the most articulate of the critics, Mark Clodfelter, writes in his highly touted 1989 work The Limits of Air Power that "LeMay's 'Stone Age' was exactly what its name implied--the absence of the perceived technological essentials of modern life. In equating economic well-being to industrial strength, the ninety-four-target scheme embodied the essence of American strategic bombing doctrine." [4]

Needless to say, without an examination of the JCS Target List, all of the above claims lack substantiation--but they are often taken at face value by the uncritical reader and have even found their way into lesson plans at Air Force professional military education schools. Were the generals really one-dimensional? Did they really think that North Vietnam was like Germany in World War II? Did they really believe that an industrial web existed and that bombing it would win the war?

The Background

US involvement in South Vietnam intensified in August 1964 after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, during which US destroyers skirmished with North Vietnamese patrol boats of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) navy. Within days, Congress passed the so-called Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which allowed President Lyndon Baines Johnson nearly carte blanche to apply military force in the region. US Navy carrier aviation was quickly ordered to strike back at DRV coastal targets in Operation Pierce Arrow, a purely retaliatory action. [5] This tit-for-tat pattern was repeated in February 1965 when Vietcong (VC) attacks on the US military installations at Pleiku and Qui Nhon prompted the Flaming Dart operations. [6]