Air Power and the Fight for Khe Sanh

Washington DC: United States Air Force, Office of Air Force History, 1986. New Imprint. Trade paperback. Good. x, 134 pages. Folding chart. Illustrations. Maps and Charts. Chronology. Notes. Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations. Index. Cover has some wear and soiling. Bernard Charles Nalty was born and educated in Omaha, Nebraska and graduated from Creighton University. He lived in the Washington and Baltimore areas as an adult, having located there to pursue graduate work at Catholic University. Mr. Nalty was a senior historian in the Office of Air Force History until 1994. In his professional career he was well known for his historical research and non-fiction publications on the military, particularly his writing on black Americans in the military. Along with Morris J. MacGregor, Jr. he edited the thirteen-volume Blacks in the United States Armed Forces and he wrote, Strength for the Fight: A History of Black Americans in the Military. Mr. Nalty believed the history of black Americans in the U. S. military was not adequately researched and his passion was to correct that oversight. The 1968 fight for Khe Sanh pitted some 6,000 U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese Rangers against an enemy force roughly three times as large. For more than 70 days North Vietnamese troops maintained pressure on Khe Sanh's defenders, who had dug in around the base's airstrip. The original purpose for deploying the Marines and South Vietnamese into the northwest corner of South Vietnam was to block Communist troop movements along Highway 9. When U.S. intelligence detected large enemy forces assembling near Khe Sanh, the senior American commander in Vietnam, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, ordered the Marines to hold the base. During the siege, U.S. aircraft rained nearly 100,000 tons of munitions down upon the North Vietnamese while other planes flew in supplies of food, ammunition, and other necessities to Khe Sanh's defenders. . Finally, the relief of Khe Sanh—spearheaded by the Army—also involved Marines and soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.