Operation Lea
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The military operation codenamed Lèa was an attempt by French colonial forces in Indochina to capture the Communist leaders of the Vietnamese movement for independence (Viet Minh), which started on October 7th, 1947 and unsuccessfully finished at December 22, 1947.
| First Indochina War |
|---|
| Lèa – RC4 – Vinh Yen – Mao Khe –Hoa Binh –Lorraine – Dien Bien Phu |
[edit] Background
After the full outbreak of the First Indochina War in December 1946 French colonial forces had made significant progress by capturing the major cities Haiphong, Hanoi, Lang Son, Cao Bang as well as nearly the complete western and southern region of Tonkin, which was the stronghold of the Viet Minh movement. The reasons for the fast advance were the superior firepower, naval and air support of the French forces. The major forces of the Viet Minh were nearly surrounded by the French in the eastern part of Tonkin. There remained only a greater gap between the towns Cao Bang in the north and Yên Bái in the south. During April 1947 Ho Chi Minh made a last attempt to achieve a ceasefire and to continue the negotiations with the French government about Vietnamese independence from 1946. But the French only demanded his surrender, because the position of the Vietnamese forces seemed to be desperate. But he refused on April 26 the French, offering: "In the French Union is no place for cowards. I would be one, if I would accept." During the rest of the spring and the summer the French made assaults to the bases of the Viet Minh troops in Tonkin but could not arrange a conventional battle. Instead the Viet Minh returned after the French had marched out.
The French supreme command in Indochina under General Jean-Etienne Valluy realized that the recent tactics of minor assaults to locate the headquarters of the Viet Minh would not lead to an end of the war. From their intelligence department they received some information that the location of the headquarters of the Viet Minh was in the city Bac Can. They planned to capture Ho Chi Minh and the staff of the Viet Minh and to get complete victory over the Vietnamese independence movement.
[edit] Operation Lèa
The operation started on October 7th with the airborne landing of 1,100 paratroopers at the city of Bac Can. The paratroopers took over the control of the city swiftly, but could not capture Ho Chi Minh or any other of the Vietnamese leaders.
At the same time other French troops (strength est. 15,000 men) started moving from the city Cao Bang in the north of Tonkin to Yên Bái to the south. The primary target of this action was to cut off the Vietnamese forces from any supplies which could probably reach them from China. The second objective was to surround the Vietnamese forces completely and destroy them during a battle. Despite the French reaching the designated town of Yên Bái, they were not able to destroy the forces of the Viet Minh. The greatest part of the 40,000 Vietnamese guerrilla troopers slipped through gaps in the French lines. Among them were the leader Ho Chi Minh and his staff with General Võ Nguyên Giáp. At the end of the operation the Vietnamese forces had suffered a loss of 9,000 men.
After the failure of Operation Lèa the French supreme command changed tactics again. Because of financial and economic reasons France was not able to send more troops to Indochina. The foreign legion began to establish outposts on every important road (Route Coloniale 4, Route Coloniale 3) to hold up the surrounding of the Viet Minh in the eastern part of Tonkin. But the Vietnamese forces could easily slip through these lines and reinforce themselves from supplies which came from the Chinese border or from their own manufacturing. This led to the turnaround of the war from the now established stalemate into the first Vietnamese victories in 1949/1950.
