The War Against Trucks: Aerial Interdiction in Southern Laos, 1968-1972

I really liked this book, but it might be a hard read for others. My preference is books with facts, details, and official reasoning. That is what this book is. There's no story, just an official report that is very well written, but highly technical. If you like to know the "facts" I do, then purchase this book.

The US Air Force has finally completed its official two-volume history of its aerial interdiction effort in southeastern Laos against the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail (the first work was Jacob Van Staaveren's "Interdiction in Southern Laos, 1960-1968"). This volume picks up the story in the post-Tet period of 1968, when the Air Force combined its anti-infiltration efforts into Operation Commando Hunt. The close-out of Operation Rolling Thunder freed hundreds of aircraft for interdiction missions and the number of sorties flown and ordnance dropped on southern Laos reached astronomical levels. The US ran this effort from the highly secret Task Force Aplha in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, which controlled an elaborate system of airdropped electronic sensors ( which detected supply movements) and computers (to predict the locations of convoys). The task force then launched attacks by aircraft. Unfortunately, after thousands of sorties and 2.75 million tons of bombs, it was all for naught. As far as anti-personnel interdiction efforts were concerned, the system failed completely. Although the Air Force fielded a new generation of aerial platforms (especially the AC-130 Spectre gunship), they only managed to hamper the North Vietnamese effort (supplies on the Trail only suffered a 2-3 percent loss rate). Nalty follows Van Staaveren and Earl Tilford ("Setup") in reassessing the Air Force's overblown claims both during and after the Vietnam Conflict and setting the record straight. What really comes across (although not specifically stated) was the courage, tenacity, and sheer ingenuity of the North Vietnamese, who not only survived under a rain of fire, but extended and improved their logistical network and launched two conventional offensive and a counteroffensive in Laos while undergoing the most intense bombardment in military history.