Friendly Fire Notebook

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 07:48:39 GMT, Guy Alcala
wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote:

On 17 Apr 2004 13:42:06 GMT, (BUFDRVR) wrote:

That same "historical record" says the 8th Air Force bombing missions into
Germany destroyed the Germans war making capability. That "fact" has been
disproven countless times.

There is history and there is history. A lot of history is
interpretive and some is even revisionist. You might say the 8th
didn't destroy German industry, but you could just as easily suggest
that lack of petroleum products, lack of precision machine tooling,
lack of ball-bearings, lack of a viable transportation network, etc.
won the war.

You could say that. You could also say that the loss of their petroleum source
(Ploesti) to the Soviets on August 31st,1944, as well as the loss of the coke
supplies of France (Western allies, August-September; can't make steel without coke)
had more than a little to do with it. Oh, and the several million German military
casualties suffered on the Eastern Front might be due a little credit too, don't you
think? ;-)

Which, I think, makes my point. The victory comes from a complex
intermix of events. To discount the impact of the 8th AF on Germany's
capability to continue is to grossly over-simplify.

It may be a return to the cliches of AF vs Army dialog in which the
regular repitition of "boots on the ground" or "a tank on the front
lawn of their O'club" is refuted by anecdotes of the rapid termination
of hostilities after Aug 6 & 9, 1945, or Dec 29, 1972, or or Desert
Storm's 100 day air/100 hour ground war.

They had a choice: return
to the Paris talks with a fortright attitude toward peace,
or return completely to the stone age at home.

You sound like LeMay. You do realize they already were in the stone age right?
Tell me, what critical infastructure did we destroy during LB II that wasn't
already operating at less than 25%?

For a stone age country, the seemed to generate an incredible number
of electronic emissions, starting with the early warning radar that
would ping us on the tankers through the command/control that
integrated the MiGs, SAMs and AAA fire.

Precisely how much of this did they make themselves, so that we could target the
production facilities? Zero.

Or maybe the transportation
that managed to ship arms and materiel to sustain the combat
operations in the south.

They did build bicycles themselves, I'll give you that. All other road/rail
vehicles came in from outside the country.

So, how did it get into the country and to the point of application if
as BUFFDRVR contends there was no critical infrastructre left for LB
II to attack? Can you say harbors, marshalling areas, roads, rail,
bridges, cranes, etc?


Academics can revise history as much as they want

There's no doubt that this does occur, but not in this case. You could prove
your point simply by providing some sort of proof that the bombing during LB II
was causing such damage that the NVN government feared they would be defeated
if it did not stop.

I think the simple cause/effect relationship of recalcitrance in
Nov-Dec, then in just eleven days an agreement is signed and within
six weeks C-141s are flying in and out of Gia Lam bringing the POWs
home is all the proof required.

Ed, the only problem is that you ignore all that had gone before and was still going
on throughout, none of which you were aware of at the time. See my other post.

Ahh, what a cruel accusation after all these years. Do you really
consider that I ignore all the history or that my perspective is so
narrow?


Far too many direct
participants (and individuals extremely interested in
then-current events) survive to permit them to push their
"inspired by a true story" fiction on an unsuspecting public.

While I was only 4 at the time, you can consider me one of your; "individuals
extremely interested in then-current events". In fact, nearly every one in the
USAF should be interested in getting the real scoop on LB II, because learning
the wrong lesson is often worse then not learning a lesson at all....

Absolutely true, Santayna. The lesson of LB II taken in the context of
an eight year war against NVN is that the Powell/Bush doctrine is
correct---don't enter a war without a clear objective.

Once committed,
win quickly with overwhelming force. When victory is achieved have a
defined exit strategy.

And hope like hell that the other side's definition of losing is the opposite of
your definition of winning, and that they will accept and conform to your exit
strategy. Neither may be the case, especially in limited wars.

If you think the lesson of LB II is something different, you're in the
wrong business.

Actually, LB II did have a clear strategy, but it wasn't the one you state. It was
more "By bombing NVN before Congress comes back into session and cuts off all funds,
I can convince Thieu that we will continue to back him should the DRVN violate the
accords, while also convincing the DRVN that it's not worth it for them to hold out
for the whole loaf but accept the same offer they'd previously agreed to before
Thieu queered the deal, so we can get our PoWs back and get the hell out of there
with as much dignity as we can muster."

Nixon was successful on the first three counts, and the fourth was arguable.
"Winning the war" was never his goal with LB II; he knew that the war could only be
won in South Vietnam, unless we were prepared to obliterate North Vietnam and risk a
direct confrontation with the PRC and/or the USSR.

You've said a mouthful, but unfortunately even those of us with the
largest orifice sometimes can't get the whole thing in. You might also
put it into the context of presidential politics. The Nixon policy of
Vietnamization that started in '68 had already been nearly completely
implemented. It was acknowledged at all levels that all we wanted was
a "withdrawal with honor" and release of the POWs.

Let's also acknowledge that the Oct termination of LB was just prior
to election and that both the Nixon administration and the NV/VC were
using it to their advantage. Once elected, and prior to inauguration
for his second term, with four years ahead of him, Nixon felt free to
flex our muscle to wrap things up quickly. He did.

The final point you make is a good one. The clear differences in ROE
between Rolling Thunder when we were decidedly tentative without a
clear knowledge that it was possible to keep the nuclear genie in the
bottle and the wider latitude for action in LB and finally LB II is
evidence. After eight years we had developed a much better picture of
the relationship between Vietnam and China, as well as the split
between the Soviets and Chinese. And, we knew that the Viets were
Soviet clients rather than Sino-proxies. Neither of the big players
were going to get confrontational and both benefited from our
political unrest.


Politically (and morally), that
wasn't an option, unless you feel that Nixon was willing and able to order the
AF/Navy to destroy the Chinese and Soviet factories that were producing virtually
all the north's war needs, along with the Eastern Bloc cargo ships that brought much
of it there, and the north's own food supplies? Or how about just nuking Hanoi,
Haiphong, and the Red River Delta in general?

Ahh, now there's a picture to contemplate.

Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8