Fighting to Leave

The Final Years of America's War in Vietnam, 1972-1973

Robert Stoffey

• Publisher: Zenith Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780760333105
• eBook ISBN:
  9781616732356
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Vietnam War
• Index: History

Perhaps more vexing than any part of the Vietnam War--Americas longest--was getting out. This book offers a chronicle of those last difficult years, 1972 and 1973, that is at once a detailed and thorough overview and at the same time a vividly personal account. The year 1972 found Marine Corps pilot Robert E. Stoffey beginning his third combat tour in Vietnam.

After flying 440 combat missions out of Da Nang and Marble Mountain Airfields in South Vietnam (and being shot down twice) between 1965 and 1970, Stoffey was in a unique position to judge the United States changed strategy. From the vantage point of the USS Oklahoma City, he fought--and observed--the critical and complex last two years of the war as Marine Air Officer and Assistant Amphibious Warfare Officer on the staff of the Commander, Seventh Fleet. As the South Vietnamese battled for survival against the onslaught from the Communist North Vietnamese Army, the U.S. Seventh Fleet, afloat in the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea, was a significant supporting force.

With the U.S. Navys mining of North Vietnams waterways, concentrated shore bombardments, and air attacks, this sea power was instrumental in leading to the negotiated end of the war and return of our POWs. This is the story that Robert Stoffey tells in his firsthand account of how the Vietnam War finally ended and what it took to get our POWs home.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Afloat with the Seventh Fleet
• Chapter 2: The NVA Invades
• Chapter 3: The Fall of Quang Tri City
• Chapter 4: Bat 21
• Chapter 5: The Seventh Fleet Counterattacks
• Chapter 6: B-52s Return to the North
• Chapter 7: MiGs and the Redeye Missile
• Chapter 8: Mining Haiphong Harbor
• Chapter 9: Operation Linebacker
• Chapter 10: The Defense of Hue City
• Chapter 11: Lam Son 72
• Chapter 12: Retaking Quang Tri City
• Chapter 13: Stranglehold on North Vietnam
• Chapter 14: Marine Hunter Killers
• Chapter 15: Preparing for End Sweep
• Chapter 16: Linebacker II
• Chapter 17: The End Nears
• Chapter 18: Ceasefire
• Chapter 19: Operation End Sweep
• Chapter 20: Operation Homecoming
• Chapter 21: Back to the Real World
• Epilogue
• Appendix A: Maps
• Appendix B: Organizational Charts
• Appendix C: Where Some of Them Are Now
• Appendix D: Amphibious Squadron Ships of the Seventh Fleet, 1972–1973
• Appendix E: Task Force 76 and 9th MAB Chronology, 1972–1973
• Appendix F: U.S. Aircraft and Aircrew Losses in the Vietnam War
• Appendix G: Navy and Marine Corps F-4 MiG Kills, 1972–1973
• Appendix H: Vietnam War Facts
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Index
• Copyright Page