Friendly Fire Notebook

I don't recall saying or implying that Ed and I were at odds over the two
books. You are really splitting hairs here.

We were discussing conclusions not documented fact. For the record I agree
in the main with both books. I enjoyed Michael's book immensely. I don't know
the man but those who do have indicated to me that he is an objective author.
As Ed has said Karl's grasp of the facts was also excellent but we both have
some differences with his conclusions. There are places where the authors have
drawn subjective conclusions based on their observations that I disagree with.
Their conclusions were honestly drawn from what they perceived as fact. .Your
arguments seem to tend towards wanting to call those subjective conclusions as
fact and you and I split ways at that juncture.

For example, Michael seems to say that out of operationally ready missiles but
with plenty of missile parts doesn't equate to being out of missiles. Try
telling that to an infantryman on the front line when his ammo pouch is empty
that he really isn't out of ammo because there is plenty of ammo in the rear
even thought it can't be delivered. He will probably use the butt of his rifle
on you. The simple fact is that the NVN in LBII after a few days didn't shoot
much of anything at us period while we continued to attack their
infrastructure. This is as opposed to LB1 and Rolling Thunder when there was
so much metal and smoke in the air that you might as well have been inside a
steel mill. That in my opinion is out of ammo, AAA and missiles and I
consider Michael's attempt at "myth busting" as off base. When you don't have
one in the chamber or more in the clip, and the full clips and boxes are back
home, you are aout of ammo.

Ditto with trucks, and BUFFs and political employment. Your statements at face
value come across as pretty absolute when they are made but when they are
challenged, you throwing in qualifications. With all due respect, I don't mean
to turn this into a personal attack but I have to say that some of your
pronouncements are misleading whether they were intended that way or not. If
you had said that 1) the NVN were out of opeartional missiles and AAA ammo, 2)
there probably weren't many more than 100 trucks operating on the southern
trails at any one time and 3) the BUFFs were sent north on a military mission
to satisfy a political objective or that Nixon elected to up the military ops
intensity to expedite a political objective, I would have agreed. The facts
are that the NVN ran out of stuff they could shoot at us, they had lots of
trucks, some were newer Russian and Chinese models, and the BUFFs were sent
north to blow up stuff.

Respectfully,

Steve





What makes this more interesting Ed is that you and Steve have exact opposite
views on the accuracy of two books on the same subject. Steve feels
Eschmann's
book is spot on and Michel's fails the accuracy test. What's that you were
saying about eyewitness accounts


BUFDRVR

The more emotional the situation, the less likely for memory accuracy....at
least according to psychologists.

If that is the case, then that tends to negate all the firsthand interviews in
all the books on the war.

Conversely, my Linebacker recollections are among the most vivid in my life.
Some of the exact details are a little fuzzy but it diesn't take much to recall
them. As far as Ed goes. he is one of those guys with a steel trap memory the
rest of us wish we had. I'd take anything he said to the bank.

Ed, you can send payment for my endorsement to my bank account, # to be sent in
a privagte email.

Steve

Date: 4/22/2004 8:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id:

I have known Karl for a long time. .We were stationed at Tinker and Korat
together. I have always known him to be a man of high integrity.

Please don't get me wrong, I enjoyed both Eschmann's and Michel's book and I
don't believe Eschmann intentionally mislead anyone in his book, he conducted
very detailed interviews of participants and used official USAF documents.
Michel went a step further. He confirmed through both Soviet and Vietnamese
sources that they had no LOW BLOWs in country before 1975, thus dispelling the
"hybrid radar" myth. As far as dispelling the MiG shootdown, Michel again went
one step further and inteviewed Vietnamese Air Force officers and was allowed
access to their official documents. Michel concluded there were no MiG-21s in
the area of the BUFFs on either night. Michel also concluded they were probably
shooting at F-4s who dived away, but Ed questions that aspect. I believe the
exact circumstances of those two incidents will never be known.



************************************

I agree with Ed. Trying to get an F-4 that highand to keep up with the bombers
in the configurations we had was not much more than a pipe dream So far as
official records are concerned, I can tell you that I have read some of the
accounts if operations I was involved in, in Korea and SEA, in the 70s and what
happened are not always one and the same.

We had a debate here sometime back about a plane that I flew in Korea and later
went to SEA to shoot down a couple of MiGs. Supposedly that plane wasn't even
at the base I was at but my official flight records show that I did indeed fly
it.

Having been involved with a couple of accident boards as well, I can tell you
that if the official record, for the USAF at least, is 90% accurate, it is a
wonder.

The process we are centering our debates around starts out with personal
recollections, partially inaccurate records, subjective conclusions then a ll
that suddenly becomes fact. Like saying that I heard Dan Blather say it on TV,
so it must be true.

I'd personally believe personal accounts given first hand, than anything else.

On 23 Apr 2004 02:21:58 GMT, (BUFDRVR) wrote:


MiG trapped at six hosing your
brains out with his 37MM the memories are very explicit.

The more emotional the situation, the less likely for memory accuracy....at
least according to psychologists.

I think if you review your psych books you'll find that traumatic
experiences (near-death events) can either result in partial
amnesia--blanking of the unpleasantness; or at the opposite extreme,
near photographic recollection. To this day I can recall voices,
phrases, images of my F-105 tour, but six years later during my F-4
combat experience I have much less vivid recollections of the tour.
Quite often I can't recall the members of a flight or even who was in
my back-seat on a given day. Some of the missions are very clear
(particularly the LB II,) but other droners into Laos, lower Route
Packs or SVN just didn't register with the same intensity.

Since it was me engaged with the MiG and not the flight lead, I'll
lean heavily toward my perceptions as correct.

Unless coroborated by other eyewitnesses, you may have the edge in accuracy,
but not good enough to be used as a factual reference.

That's a leap in logic. Let's say I'm a witness to a murder. I'm the
only one. I report my facts during the trial. While I may not be
supported, the accuracy of my observations is not diminished. If no
one else sees the event, does it somehow lose factuality?

Buying your book this weekend.


BUFDRVR

'Bout damn time! Your book report will be due in ten days.



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

On 23 Apr 2004 01:51:09 GMT, (BUFDRVR) wrote:

We're beginning to get really convoluted here. Now, your statement
regarding 100 trucks is caveated with some as yet undisclosed location
within the country criteria.

From my original post I had explained the "hundred or so trucks" were dealing
with vehicles stationed and operated on the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. I have never
wavered on that criteria and have know reiterated it once more.

As early as Rolling Thunder ops in 1966, I encountered large truck
convoys in areas of the panhandle (Pack II and III) consisting of at
least 100 trucks. During one mission when we were allowed into Navy
territory in RP III, we discovered a two mile stretch of road just
along the foothills about forty miles inland--apparently further than
the Navy armed recce missions routinely probed. Our flight of four
dropped 19 mk-83 (1000 lb LDGP) bombs and strafed to Winchester. I
remember it particularly well because I had a bomb hang up on the left
outboard station and had to ask the flight lead to work in a tight
hand wheel for the strafing so I didn't have to keep turning into the
heavy wing. (That's why 19 and not 20 bombs dropped.)

In May of '66 when Dick Hackford was shot down in the Steel Tiger area
of Laos (very much Ho Chi Minh trail country), he reported that during
his 90 minutes on the ground he was forced to cross a wide,
well-graded dirt road--almost three lanes wide and with a white center
stripe of small reflectors, totally shielded from aerial view by an
interlaced canopy of tree branches built overhead. The road was,
according to his on-the-ground description, "wide enough for a pair of
deuce-and-a-halfs, side-by-side."


If so, and there were only a 100 or so going down the trail,
there there should have been massive storage areas and trans-shipment
points.

Define "massive". There were trans-shipment points and troop rest areas every 9
miles. According to Lt. Gen. Harold Moore; "Each camp, which could shelter a
company of troops, consisted of a series of crude bamboo huts dispersed along a
half-mile of trail to make a smaller target for warplanes."

You must always remember that the war was on-going for more than eight
years. During that time the impressions can be correct for the period,
but change drastically one, two or five years later. Hal Moore, of Ia
Drang fame, was on the ground in '65. The NVA presence he encountered
was an intel surprise and much larger than estimated. It increased
drastically in the next year and by '67 was massive. That amount of
manpower consumes a lot more in the field than 100 trucks could
deliver.

So, the "hundred or so trucks" hauled supplies to VC

Yes. And their NVA cohorts operating south of the DMZ.

and the three
division offensive had thousands of other trucks?

Yes.

Here's the breakdown--is it a hundred or so, or is it thousands?


Check out this web site: http://www.hdart.com/powmia.html

It gives a very good synopsis, here's just one part; "During the North
Vietnamese spring offensive in 1972, Allied air power was called on to turn the
tide. The U.S. Air Force response to the invasion was immediate as B-52 Arc
Light missions and tactical air attacks intensified during brief respites in
the weather. The invasion was checked, but the lessons learned lead to
Operation Freedom Train against targets south of the 20th Parallel, and later
to Freedom Porch Bravo against targets in the Hanoi/Haiphong area.
The first wave of Freedom Porch Bravo strikes began on April 16,1972, and
achieved respectable success over the highest threat areas within North
Vietnam. The first wave consisted of B-52 strikes supported by Navy and Air
Force tactical air."

OK, I was surprised when I found out about the B-52 raids into NVN in
April of '72. They did, indeed strike near Hiaphong, but that was
about it. It was a short incursion, limited number of sorties and
didn't continue for very long at all. In November, December, they were
striking below 20 North, near Vinh, Quanh Khe and Dong Hoi, but these
areas are hardly "the highest threat areas within NVN."


They were JCS directed. Don't know where you got the idea
that "the military took the order and turned it into as sound a
military operation as they could."

Uhh, the Joint Chiefs of Staff *are* military or am I misunderstanding you
here?

No, I'm misunderstanding you. The implication of your earlier
statement was that LB II was lemons out of Washington that the
military (theater commanders and operators) turned into lemonade.


The problem is, by DEC 72, there were very little "critical targets" left
and
by Day #6 there were nearly zero. The only critical targets remaining were
SAMs, radars

On day #6, I orbited Bullseye for 25 minutes at six thousand feet over
a solid undercast. Not a single defensive reaction was observed.

Both the standing order on SAM engagements and the undercast made that
possible. I'm confused are you trying to say that we had destroyed *all*
"critical" targets after night #5? If so, you would be helping make my point.

The point I was challenging was not the quality of targets, but your
statement that the "only critical targets remaining were SAMs, radars,
etc." You then cited the day 11 raid on a SAM storage area. I was
saying that defensive reaction throughout RP VI had become minimal by
day 6.


(added for clarity:--moving/replacing SAMs) it was accomplished from 1965 through the end of the war with
remarkably little visibility.

Not according to Chuck Horner who points out several times in "Every Man a
Tiger" that the construction of SAM sites was nearly always detected, but off
limits to bombing till it was complete. I've heard that dozens of times from
F-105 crews on nearly every documentary on the Vietnam War.

Again you must consider the time of the statement. Horner is talking
about the introduction of the SA-2 into NVN in 1965. At that time, the
first sites were classic Star-of-David installations constructed using
the fixed air defense Soviet doctrine of the time. The dozen or so
sites were clearly visible and the ROE clearly prohibited striking
them so as to avoid killing Soviet technicians which were assume to be
there. By '66, the sites were mobile, random and proliferating at an
incredible rate. Some sites were known and numbered, but whether they
would be occupied or visible on any given day was unknown. SAMs were
much more likely to pop up from new locations than old.

SAM battalions relocated regularly and
were resupplied consistently. They seemed to be well supplied with
missiles throughout.

I'd imagine resupplying Guideline Missiles in the middle of the jungle is much
easier than in more suburban areas. In Michel's book the SA-2 commander spelled
it out pretty clearly. I guess you don't believe him. What reason would he have
to lie?

Resupply might be easier in the jungle because of concealment by the
canopy, but it is considerably more difficult because of lack of
navigable roads. The SA-2 is a large missile and the TEL is a big
piece of equipment for a jungle trail.

The difficulty in moving the missile battalion into remote areas is a
reason why Thud Ridge remained a sanctuary and why the mountainous
region along the Laos border and into RP V was not SAM country.

If, as Steve and I contend, the NVN ran out of missiles or was
constrained in their reaction by day 6 of LB II, it was because of the
destruction of roads, bridges, railroads, marshalling areas, etc.

Not according to the guys commanding and operating the SAM sites.

Keep in mind that even today the folks that Marsh was talking to in
Hanoi are living in a strictly regimented Communist society. While
they can provide insight, they must also consider the "company line"
in their responses.

As I previously mentioned, Michel replied to my request for a picture
of the SAM site on the lake in downtown Hanoi with the denial by the
NVN that a SAM site was ever in that location.

And, what is the distinction between a "Guideline and tactical
varients (sic)"?

Guideline would be a Strategic SAM, so would a Goa or a Gammon. A Gainful or
Gecco would be tactical SAMs. Was this not common lexicon in the 70s and 80s?

A Guideline is a Guideline. The Goa never showed up, although we
thought it arrived in '73 at Khe Sanh. We saw an unusual "black SAM"
in the summer of '72, but 7th AF intel denied that it could be an
SA-4, claiming rather that is was either a Chinese produced Guideline
or a defective missile.

Your phrase "Guideline and tactical variants" led me to understand you
were referring to some type of variation of the SA-2.


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

I'd personally believe personal accounts given first hand, than anything
else.


Well, often first hand accounts are wrong, or at best conflicting. For example
Ed doesn't believe the BUFF-MiG-21 shootdowns, but you and both B-52 aircrews
involved do. I find first hand accounts good for supporting data, personally I
prefer records, although as you pointed out these are often incorrect too.


BUFDRVR

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

The road was,
according to his on-the-ground description, "wide enough for a pair of
deuce-and-a-halfs, side-by-side."

I fail to see how this refutes the position that only 100 (or so) trucks were
stationed and operated on the Ho Chi Mihn Trail?

It increased
drastically in the next year and by '67 was massive. That amount of
manpower consumes a lot more in the field than 100 trucks could
deliver.

Nope. I realize you're not a Clodfelter fan, but throughout Rolling Thunder the
supply requirement in SVN remained consistant and Clodefelter's data comes from
Vietnamese sources including captured documents as well as NSC estimates. On
page 134-135 in his book Clodefelter states; "Hanoi had only 55,000 North
Vietnamese Army troops in the South by August 1967; the remaining 245,000
Communist soliders were Viet Cong. None of these forces engaged in frequent
combat, and the Viet Cong intermingled with the southern populace. As a
result, Communist supply needs were minimal. Enemy battalions fought an
average of one day in thirty and had a total daily supply requirement of
roughly 380 tons. Of this amount, the Communists needed only 34 tons a day
from sources outside the South. Seven 2 1/2 ton trucks could transport the
requirement, which was less than 1 percent of the daily tonnage imported into
North Vietnam."

Here's the breakdown--is it a hundred or so, or is it thousands?

Are you intentionally doing this? OK...lets call it 1,100 trucks. 1,000 trucks
operating north of the 20th parallel and 100 trucks working the Ho Chi Mihn
Trail. By the way, I have no friggin' idea how many truck were working north of
20-degrees, I only offer it to make my point as clear as I can!

The implication of your earlier
statement was that LB II was lemons out of Washington that the
military (theater commanders and operators) turned into lemonade.

Well, I wouldn't call Nixon's order a Lemon, just vague on details. The JCS
took the vague order and put it into a militarily executeable plan.

You then cited the day 11 raid on a SAM storage area. I was
saying that defensive reaction throughout RP VI had become minimal by
day 6.

Minimal for whom? When BUFFs returned to Hanoi on night 8, two were hit by
SA-2's and 4 more would be shot down or damage by the time the whole thing
ended three nights later. I hardly call that minimal.

Resupply might be easier in the jungle because of concealment by the
canopy, but it is considerably more difficult because of lack of
navigable roads.

I agree, but we're not taking about speedy transportation of Guidelines from
Haiphong, we're talking about resupply operations at the site. Much more
visable near Hanoi then points south.

The SA-2 is a large missile and the TEL is a big
piece of equipment for a jungle trail.

I'm sure it was a bitch to get it out there, but I bet those guys had far less
attacks on them then the guys working Hanoi in DEC '72.

Keep in mind that even today the folks that Marsh was talking to in
Hanoi are living in a strictly regimented Communist society.

He was allowed access to records as well. Doesn't sound to me like they were
hiding anything.


BUFDRVR

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

I think if you review your psych books you'll find that traumatic
experiences (near-death events) can either result in partial
amnesia--blanking of the unpleasantness; or at the opposite extreme,
near photographic recollection.

However, according to numerous psychologists (highlighted recently), chances
are much greater that you will not accurately recall information that occured
under stress. This has been highlighted recently in light of eyewitnesses to
crimes who have been used to put the wrong person in jail. I'm not a big psyche
guy, but I do watch Dateline

To this day I can recall voices,
phrases, images of my F-105 tour

And I can close my eyes and see and hear my first strike against Belgrade, but
according to some shrinks, what I remember may be far less accurate then what
really happened.

Let's say I'm a witness to a murder. I'm the
only one. I report my facts during the trial. While I may not be
supported, the accuracy of my observations is not diminished.

If you were watching from the safety of your bed room window into an alley,
according to shrinks, you're right. However if the murder you witnessed was of
the guy right next to you, odds are your description of the assailant and the
circumstances and details will be inaccurate.

'Bout damn time! Your book report will be due in ten days.

How many pages?


BUFDRVR

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

I don't recall saying or implying that Ed and I were at odds over the two
books.

You commented that you found Eschmann's book very accurate, but had issues with
some of Michel's facts. Ed said nearly the same exact thing except he prefered
Michel's book and had issues with Eschmann's.

Their conclusions were honestly drawn from what they perceived as fact.

Absolutely and I never stated otherwise.

For example, Michael seems to say that out of operationally ready missiles
but
with plenty of missile parts doesn't equate to being out of missiles.

They were more than parts, they were intact Guideline missiles sitting in
warehouses in Hanoi. When you have warehouses full of Guidelines, you're not
out of missiles. What they had was a supply problem. Michel highlights this
issue because it dispels not only the "we ran them out of missiles" myth, but
puts realistic numbers on the quantity of SA-2s actually launched by the North
Vietnamese.

The simple fact is that the NVN in LBII after a few days didn't shoot
much of anything at us period while we continued to attack their
infrastructure.

Because it became much more difficult due to a.)improved U.S. tactics and b.)
the absence of B-52s from Hanoi for 3 consecutive nights(providing less targets
for the NVN to shoot at). Once BUFF missions to Hanoi resumed, the number of
firings increased, but not nearly compareable to the first several nights and
this was due to the increasing difficulty of engaging targets due to U.S.
tactics and an increase in SEAD success.

Ditto with trucks, and BUFFs and political employment. Your statements at
face
value come across as pretty absolute when they are made but when they are
challenged, you throwing in qualifications.

The only "qualification" I made was a simple clarification to you on the truck
issue....and I "qualified" my comment twice.

If
you had said that 1) the NVN were out of opeartional missiles and AAA ammo

I would have been wrong.

2)
there probably weren't many more than 100 trucks operating on the southern
trails at any one time

That's almost exactly what I said. Here, let me lay it out for you and then
will end this:

On 17 APR Ed responded to my statement about NVN already being in the "stone
age" prior to LB II with:

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

I responded on 18 APR with the following:

"Ed, that transportation network consisted of a hundred or so WW II era French
trucks and a few hundred bicycles. Hardly "hi-tech"."

Dweezil Dwarftosser then misunderstood that I was saying NVN had "a hundered or
so trucks" total and said on APR 18:

"Damn! I had no idea that the hundreds of NVN trucks
we destroyed in Laos during 1970/71 had left them with
so few vehicles at home, just a year or so later."

To which I replied on 19 APR:

"First, the "hundred or so trucks" I referred to were the ones in use on the Ho
Chi Mihn trail, not delivering goods in downtown Hanoi." I then went on to talk
about over inflated truck attrition reports.

So please, show me where I have ever wavered from my initial statement, the
info of which I picked up on a Discovery channel program on the Ho Chi Mihn
Trail.

3) the BUFFs were sent north on a military mission
to satisfy a political objective

Since I figured you knew the BUFFs weren't performing a "Good Will Tour" over
Hanoi, I never felt the need to state they were flying military missions.

or that Nixon elected to up the military ops
intensity to expedite a political objective

I nearly said that exactly as well....but I'm not hacking through old posts to
prove it again...

The facts
are that the NVN ran out of stuff they could shoot at us

No.

they had lots of trucks

In North Vietnam, yes. In Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam, no.

and the BUFFs were sent north to blow up stuff.

I never even hinted guys died to drop confetti and balloons.


BUFDRVR

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

On 23 Apr 2004 21:57:13 GMT, (BUFDRVR) wrote:

I think if you review your psych books you'll find that traumatic
experiences (near-death events) can either result in partial
amnesia--blanking of the unpleasantness; or at the opposite extreme,
near photographic recollection.

However, according to numerous psychologists (highlighted recently), chances
are much greater that you will not accurately recall information that occured
under stress. This has been highlighted recently in light of eyewitnesses to
crimes who have been used to put the wrong person in jail. I'm not a big psyche
guy, but I do watch Dateline

And, I stayed last night in a Holiday Inn Express. Seriously, the
eyewitnesses to crimes comparison isn't relevant with regard to the
recollection of details by an experienced combat operator. Certainly
on the first trip or so there might be some elements of "buck fever"
but the level of efficiency goes up and the tendency for tunnel
vision goes down over multiple exposures.

If you go to the woods on day one, there's a good chance you won't see
a lot of the deer that are there. By day four of the hunt, you spot
the flick of an ear, the tip of an antler and suddenly realize they've
got you surrounded.

Part of what makes a survivor in aerial combat is much the same as
what air traffic controllers have---situational awareness or the "big
picture" view. Your mind integrates the plan, the clock, the view, the
radio calls, etc. into a three dimensional structure. You know your
position and the relationship of your flight to the others relative to
the ground and the mission timeline. You integrate MiG calls from
Disco or Teaball with location, direction and even intention. You know
from the RWR which radar is looking at who and when missiles are in
flight you know whether they are a threat or not.

To this day I can recall voices,
phrases, images of my F-105 tour

And I can close my eyes and see and hear my first strike against Belgrade, but
according to some shrinks, what I remember may be far less accurate then what
really happened.

What you remember, if your "big picture" was as well developed as
mine, is probably a whole lot more accurate than what some ACSC
plastic-shoed slick-pocketed staff puke gleans from reading the Op-Rep
4s and the frag order.

Let's say I'm a witness to a murder. I'm the
only one. I report my facts during the trial. While I may not be
supported, the accuracy of my observations is not diminished.

If you were watching from the safety of your bed room window into an alley,
according to shrinks, you're right. However if the murder you witnessed was of
the guy right next to you, odds are your description of the assailant and the
circumstances and details will be inaccurate.

If you'd logged a dozen or so witnessings, your ability to recall the
details will be pretty darn good.

'Bout damn time! Your book report will be due in ten days.

How many pages?

Pages? My gawd, I've been working with community college students for
so long, my expectations are down to words not pages.

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