You hit upon one good reason for guys writing memoirs. Too quickly we
wind up with the participants and on-scene observers passing away and
only the historians interpreting stacks of OPREP-4s and cryptic
correspondence then interpreting the runes in the politically correct
light of the day.

Well, it goes both ways Ed. Michel absolutely destroys some of the material
published by actual participants, whose "facts" were quite questionable. Hell
Ed, I can pick up a book called "The View From the Rock" where I can read about
how great the SAC-13th Air Force relationship was. This book was written by
either the Group or Wing Commander at Andersen during LB II.

As a participant in LB I and II, I would have to debate the
conclusions of the course you took.

Don't blame the course, these were my own conclusions. My final paper was on
B-52 targeting effectiveness during LB II. Just a bit of what I discovered;
"They dropped over 4,000 bombs on the Kinh No rail yard and vehicle repair
facility. Impressive, however the Kinh No rail yard had already been disabled
during Linebacker I". 4000 750 pound bombs on an already damaged (and certainly
by the 2000th M-117, destroyed) railyard! I won't even go in to the targeting
of Hanoi Radio, ok...yes I will. Four B-52s were shot down the first week
trying to knock it off the air permanently, over 36 sorties and 2000 bombs to
hit a small building and an antenna. On day number 9 two F-4s dropped three
GBU-10s and knocked it off the air permenantly. If it wasn't the damage being
inflicted by the BUFFs, how can we credit them with forcing the NV back to the
table in Paris?

Linebacker started to get the NVN and
VC back to the table.

Because their conventional offensive had stalled and ARVN units had actually
begun to re-take some of the lost ground.

As it progressed they observed the typical
gradualism that had characterized each previous bombing cycle.

Linebacker I didn't suffer from any of Johnson's "graduated response". The only
mistake Nixon made was to restrict bombing below 20-North when the communists
agreed to resume peace talks.

By
October, Kissinger announced the "light at the end of the tunnel" and
we paused again, only to see the resolve of the NVN and VC return.

The "pause" was not Nixon's fault, or Kissenger's. The agreement reached in
October was reached between the US and North Vietnam, with no input from South
Vietnam. Nixon demanded that Nguyen Van Thieu, South Vietnam's President
approve the deal. The North Vietnamese never admitted its forces were involved
inside the border of South Vietnam, as such, there was nothing in the agreement
about removing them. Thieu refused to "ok" the deal because of this issue.
So...the US and NVN had an agreement in principle, but needed to convince *our
ally South Vietnam* to approve the deal. Bombing never halted, but interdiction
sorties south of the DMZ were reduced to show NVN we were serious about the
deal.

When they didn't follow through, Nixon unleased LB II, which raised
the stakes considerably.

Nixon unleashed LB II after several political catastrophies had occured. First,
in late November several democrats from both the House and Senate *publically*
called for a vote on the suspension of funding for the military operation in SE
Asia. These idiots made this request public on every national TV and newspaper
media outlet and said the issue would be brought for a vote following the
Christmas holiday break. As this was happening, Kissenger was attempting to add
verbage to the Paris agreement stating regular NVN military forces would be
withdrawn from South Vietnamese territory (Thieu wanted the statement to
include all NVN supported forces such as the VC). Kissenger presented this to
Le Duc Tho. The NVN were pretty savy on US internal political issues, they were
well aware of the threat to withdraw funding and they seized this opportunity
to claim we were changing an agreement already agreed upon (we were!) and left
the conferance on 13 December 1972. The NVN were gambling that the House and
Senates resolve to end the war would "hamstring" Nixon who would be unable to
take any bold action, additionally if US funds were withdrawn, this would allow
NVN to get *everything* and a cost of *nothing*. What ended up happening was;
Nixon took strong action, and few members of congress spoke out against it.
The bombing continued for 9 days (Le Duc Tho agreed to return to Paris and sign
the *orginal* agreement on the 27th, bombing continued for two more days.)
without a huge public or congressional outcry. The NVN decided that those in
congress opposed to the war were such a minority that it would be highly
doubtful they would vote to suspend funding. Kissenger literally told South
Vietnamese President Thieu that he was signing the Paris Peace Accord, with or
without Thieu's blessing, so reluctantly Thieu agreed and nothing in the final
Paris Peace Accord mentions the withdrawl of NVN military forces. Basically a
long way of saying that the NVN didn't sign anything more or less than they had
already agreed upon in late October. What they didn't get was the "whole
enchillada" with the complete withdrawl of US forces *and* the suspension of
aid to South Vietnam that they thought they may get should congress vote to
suspend funding. The overall silence from American politicians during LB II
was every bit as powerful as the 750-pound bombs raining down on Hanoi and
Haiphong.

The intensity of night one where the original frag was for 150 BUFF
sorties. Do the math, even if all of them weren't "big belly" D's.
That's a lot of bombs falling in an area the size of Connecticutt. The
24 hour a day campaign of LB II was unprecedented.

Yet most residents refused to leave or even send thier children away.

I know Marshall quite well. You'll find my name mentioned on page 82
of his book.

I finished it in September, but don't recall seeing your name. I've lent the
book to someone, I'll have to check it out when I get it back.

While I have great respect for Marshall's efforts in gaining the NVN
perspective of LB II, let us not forget that he was interviewing
functionaries of a Communist government and their statements "might"
reflect typical revisionism.

Possibly, but this is true for any person.

You might also look at
Wayne Thompson's "To Hanoi and Back"

Not only have I read it, but I've discussed this issue with Dr. Thompson who
attends our staff meetings every Tuesday and Thursday mornings. While I think I
can catagorize his opinion accurately I won't try in case I am misunderstanding
his position. What I can say is; Dr. Thompson did not flat out disagree with
me.

or Karl Eschmann's "Linebacker."

I've read that as well.

Probably most critical (and the major contribution of Marshall's
"Eleven Days" is the acknowledgement that the LeMay elitism of the
strategic bomber force as a "specified" command and not eligible to be
CHOPped to the theater operational commanders is gone.

While I agree whole heartedly with Michel's position (dysfunctional command
chain with bombers), he loses some credibility to make an unbiased judgement in
this area. In the opening chapter he states that for a fighter pilot, a tour in
SAC was like a tour in hell (paraphrasing). If you then read the book cover
jacket, you find Michel was a TAC-born F-4 guy during the 60s and 70s, one of
those guys who though SAC was hell on earth. Bottom line; Michel was correct,
but his position looks awful biased instead of factual based.


BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"