My nominee would be early illuminators flying stabilized circles
around heavily defended targets, hand-aiming a grease pencil mark on
the canopy to keep a Zot spot on the target long enough for the bomb
dropper to dump an LGB.

You might also want to go back and check loss rates in the early days
of the war before ECM pods, chaff support and RWR gear.

Funny I was going to mention that but didn't

My put was pretty subjective Ed but you may well be right. My first stint
there was in Constant Guard out of Holloman, one of the "summer help" in F-4Ds.
We flew mostly bombing missions in line abreast four ships, four flights in
trail. Like the WWII bomber formations, it was "hold your position nomatter
what". On one of my first Linebackers, I got up close and personal with a
couple of optically guided SA-2s that were flying through the formation close
enough for me to realize the Mach 3 sonic boom could really rattle the F-4.
Hated that mission. The Korat Hunter-Killer and escort missions felt a lot
better than those dumb bomb truck sorties..

Did have a friend out of Ubon tell me, stats aside, that the chaff mission was
a lot worse in his opinion, having flown both.

I escorted a flight of LGB droppers during Linebacker II in Gen Merkling's back
seat - one of those double bang "to hell with crew rest" Linebacker sorties.
We sat in orbit over the lake in the middle of Hanoi for 15 minutes waiting for
a small cloud to move off the coal fired electrical plant there. It moved,
they got it. we all went home. Only had about 8 rounds of 57mm shot at us the
whole time. Guess they were Winchester from the night before. I think that
was the second or third night of LBII

Steve