Last year in a small theater in Vietnam's Bas'tang Cheu Thang B52—B-52 Museum—I watched a re-creation of the last U.S. bombing campaign of the Vietnam War, staged on three video screens and a large lighted terrain map of 1972 Hanoi. As a soundtrack of martial music accompanied by the noise of explosions and anti-aircraft fire filled the theater, the screens showed surface-to-air missiles blasting off into night skies and B-52s falling in flames. Flashing lights on the terrain map indicated where bombs hit and B-52s crashed. The video, interspersed with pictures of North Vietnamese leaders touring bombed-out buildings and giving encouragement to anti-aircraft crews, ended with a voiceover, translated for me by my Vietnamese guide: "The Dien Bien Phu in the skies, the 12 days and nights victory over the B-52s…is always the pride and spiritual strength of the good-willed and wise Vietnamese people…."
I had come to Hanoi to research my second book about the air war over North Vietnam: the story of the December 1972 B-52 bombing of Hanoi, known as Linebacker II. I had arrived with the standard U.S. understanding of the raids. In early December 1972, President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, faced a political defeat. The North Vietnamese had broken off negotiations in Paris. It was clear that they were waiting for an anti-war U.S. Congress to return in January, cut off funds for the war, and give them a victory.
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