Townsend W. Hoopes, 82; Outlined Problems With Vietnam War

Townsend W. Hoopes, 82, a former undersecretary of the Air Force during the 1960s who wrote one of the first accounts of President Johnson’s decision to de-escalate the war in Vietnam, died Sept. 20 of complications from melanoma at a hospital in Baja, Calif.

Hoopes had served as a senior advisor in the Defense Department before becoming Air Force undersecretary. After the 1968 Tet offensive by the North Vietnamese, Hoopes became convinced of the impossibility of winning the war.

In his 1969 book “The Limits of Intervention,” Hoopes wrote, “This event destroyed most remaining illusions about what a campaign of firepower from the air and ‘search and destroy’ missions on the ground might accomplish.”

The book startled Washington and pressured the incoming Nixon administration to seek a way out of the conflict.

Born in Duluth, Minn., Hoopes graduated from Yale. He served in the Marine Corps in the Pacific during World War II.

A prolific writer, Hoopes was coauthor with Douglas Brinkley of “Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal” and “FDR and the Creation of the U.N.”