Map 23 of Maps of SEA in the 1960s

Summer Interdiction Campaign of 1968

In the summer of 1968, the US Air Force focused on the roads into Laos and on the Ban Laboy Ford.  The campaign, known as the Summer Interdiction Campaign of 1968, demonstrated how far the Air Force had come in applying interdiction tactics and doctrine in the 2 1/2 years since the Crickets moved to NKP.  The campaign also offers a point of comparison of how much more effective the upcoming Commando Hunt operations could have been if North Vietnam had not been placed totally off limits at the end of October 1968.

In January 1968, Seventh Air Force began developing the 1968 Southwest Monsoon Plan.  Ready by the end of March, the plan called for a 30 day campaign.  The planners allocated sorties every day to each of five separate objectives: SAM/AAA suppression, B-52 ARC LIGHT strikes, interdiction, armed reconnaissance, and reconnaissance.

The flak suppression missions were mainly to support the ARC LIGHT missions, reducing the threat to the bombers. 

The B-52s were scheduled each day against target boxes, thought by the planners to contain North Vietnamese targets. Initially, the B-52s were to be targeted against only major base and assembly areas in the vicinity of the DMZ.

Interdiction sorties were aimed at disrupting the traffic as had been done previously at GOLF.  Initial attacks would concentrate on seven vulnerable points of the key mountain roads linking North Vietnam and Laos .  The American objective was to limit the capability of the North Vietnamese to move supplies into Laos and thereby force the Communists to reroute traffic out into the wide-open coastal plain above the DMZ.  Since all traffic moving down the coast had to pass over four main rivers, those river crossings also became important interdiction targets.

Armed reconnaissance sorties were included to exploit the targets driven into the open by the disruptions to the North Vietnamese logistics network.

Photo, visual, and radar reconnaissance aircraft were scheduled to assess the results of each day's strikes and to gather data to help identify new targets.^[1]

However, the Southwest Monsoon Plan had to be modified almost as soon as the planners had it down on paper.  On March 31, 1968 , President Johnson announced new restrictions on the bombing campaign against North Vietnam .  The initial announcement limited bombing to the area of the North Vietnamese panhandle below 20 degrees North latitude.  As shown in the accompanying map, the actual limit was at 19 degrees, ^[1] giving the truck drivers an additional 60 miles of sanctuary on their journey south.