Document created: 1 December 2007
Air & Space Power Journal - Winter 2007
Vietnam Diary: From inside Air Force Headquarters by Dr. Herman L. Gilster. RoseDog Books (http://rosedogbooks-store.stores.yahoo.net/index.html), 701 Smithfield Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222, 2005, 370 pages, $30.00 (softcover).
Herman Gilster was a lieutenant colonel with a Harvard PhD in economics when he left the faculty at the Air Force Academy for Vietnam. He arrived at Headquarters Seventh Air Force outside Saigon in November 1970. The air war had been raging for over six years by that point; the cataclysmic Tet offensive that broke American political will was two years past; and the bulk of US attack sorties were directed against enemy supply lines—the Ho Chi Minh Trail—stretching through Laos and into South Vietnam. The bombing of North Vietnam had halted in November 1968. Gilster served on the headquarters staff for one year, attempting to analyze the effects of those thousands of interdiction sorties. Clearly, it was a frustrating experience, and this book reproduces his diary of that year.
Like many Americans, by 1970 Gilster had begun to lose faith in the utility and perhaps even the morality of the Vietnam War. The first impression of his new home was not favorable: “This base is one of the ugliest, filthiest, dirtiest places I have seen. . . . Sandy was also right about it smelling so bad over here” (p. 11). As for our South Vietnamese allies: “This is really a good-for-nothing lazy bunch of people and it makes me mad to be over here away from my family defending them and they won’t do a thing for themselves” (p. 73). Remember, however, that Gilster saw very little of Vietnam or its people beyond the confines of the air base at Tan Son Nhut.
This is a rather numbing account of each of the 365 days Gilster spent in Vietnam, attempting to understand air operations, analyze them, and pass on useful advice to his superiors. In truth, there are few insights here into how the air war was planned and conducted. It appears that Gilster spent the bulk of his time preparing briefings and slides for his boss, who in turn briefed the Seventh Air Force operations chief and the commander. His boss, a colonel referred to here simply as D1, is portrayed as a bit of dunderhead, seldom taking Gilster’s advice or sharing his insights. Consequently, the war continued to lurch along with little purpose and even less positive effect: “The trouble is no one thinks. Everyone is just stewing around with numbers trying to justify their existence” (p. 162).
Surprisingly, Gilster provides almost no statistics in this book dealing with statistical analysis. He mentions econometric concepts and regression analysis, complaining that most commanders and high-ranking staff officers did not understand such things. But he never makes a case as to why such methodologies should have been used or explains that they would have produced different air-campaign plans—and, more importantly, different results. Nonetheless, he raises some useful thoughts. What was the meaning and importance of the reams of statistics generated by intelligence agencies during the war? Reading Gilster’s account, one is forced to conclude that the majority of such statistical analyses were grossly in error—various offices and agencies could not even agree on the most basic numbers, such as the number of sorties flown and the types of ordnance dropped. Yet entire books have based their arguments on these tainted numbers. I might add that Gilster’s account does not indicate whether the numbers were slanted either deliberately or in a particular direction (i.e., it does not appear that the books were cooked to make US air operations appear more or less successful than they actually were). They were simply wrong.
One must also say that the people generating the statistics were not fools; nor were they limited to counting on their fingers—computers were available both in-country and in Washington. Yet, argues Gilster, the data amassed were generally of the wrong type, erroneously crunched, and improperly analyzed. How could the most powerful and most technically advanced nation in the world make such amateurish blunders?
Gilster provides no clear answers, but the question remains a vital one. The United States is now engaged in a global war on terror, and the enemy is ubiquitous, clever, and adept at using the most modern information technology. Are our present analytical tools and methods any better today than they were during the Vietnam War? Let us hope so.
Col Phillip S. Meilinger, USAF, Retired
West Chicago, Illinois
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