Friendly Fire Notebook

Well, perhaps my definition of truck is too narrow. My "understatement" comes
from Robert Pape's "Bombing To Win" (I think, I'm moving and can't find my
copy), IIRC Pape states there was "a hundred or so 2 1/2 Ton trucks" (I'm
paraphrasing). Perhaps there were smaller trucks in use that account for your
personal experience?

I frankly don't care what he states, he and/or his sources are wrong. I
personally saw hundreds of trucks that our intel said were similar to our own 2
1/2 T to 5 T trucks, parked in a marshalling yard just inside the PRC buffer
zone that we were fragged against in LB I. I am pretty sure tht in most cases
the trucks came south in convoys of less than 100 but not always. Dependedoin
where they were, under the junglecanopy or in the open where the trails were
exposed. Specter could "see" through the jungle foliage and that is why it
became a great truck killer. Evidence that the truck convoys moved a lot of
supplies is the passes through hills west of the DMZ, such as Ban Karai and Mu
Gia, and river fords were heavily attacked and defended throughout the war.

There were tanks and SAMs in the south during the April 72 offensive. 100
"duece and a halfs" certainly couldn't haul them south. My flight got targeted
by a slow FAC (c/s Nail IIRC) against a SAM transporter with two missiles on
the trailer that apparently had gotten stuck in a river crossing near the DMZ.
Apparently was real as there were some impressive secondaries. There were
hulks of tanks in that area as well though I never caught any in the open. An
offensive of this scale needed lots and lots of trucks to haul fuel, ammo, and
parts, not to mention halling the tanks themselves..




If it made
little difference then why were the bombers targeted against them in the
first
place?

Because Nixon wanted B-52s over Hanoi. B-52 targeting in Hanoi was sometimes
ridiculous. BUFFs were targeted against Radio Hanoi which consisted of a
small
building and a couple of antenna. 12 B-52s dropped weapons near Radio Hanoi
without ever knocking it off the air. 4 were lost.

Yeah, the nearest bomb missed by 800'. We got it the next day with four LGBs.
I'grant you this one. I always wondered why the bombers even bothered with
that one.



You seem to be building a case that the the only thing that mattered
was having the bombers scatter bombs all over the country side whether they
hit
anything or not

As far as Nixon was concerned, that was true, as long as the civilian
casulties
were kept to a minimum.

The order from the President to just scatter bombs at random away from
inhabited areas sure never made it down to the working level! There were a
lot of energy, lives and materiel expended in actually trying to hit critical
targets. I have a little trouble with the insinuation that it didn't matter if
targets wre hit or not. That might have been true for the bombers; I can't
speak for that. Certainly not for the tactical forces. My three daytime
Linebackers against targets that the bombers missed certainly weren't just to
scatter bombs. That may have been the situation in Cambodia near the bombing
halt, but not in LB.



My own opinion is that the bombers failed miserably until HQ
SAC got its collective head out of its ass, paid some attention to what the
TAC
guys had learned the hard way

True, although I think "failed miserably" is a little too harsh. Night #2 saw
no BUFFs lost and about average bombing accuracy.

Giving the North Vietnamese no rest was an integral part of the plan.

So was blowing away their infrastructure.

That had already been accomplished for the most part by LB I.

You are overlooking the difficulty in blowing away infrastructure in a thrid
world country that has been bombed for years. The NVN were able to
reconstitute pretty quickly. You allude to references that say the materiel
was there in LBII but the NVN weren't able to get it where it was needed to
rearm and reload. That infrastructure was somewhat rebuilt after LBI and hit
again in LB II. The bridges had been partially reopened and the intell was
that they had built up in the interim to greater than LB i levels. Damage from
LB had destroyed much of the LOC infrastructure in the Panhandle but not in the
Red River Delta area. It got hit again and you stated that was the reason why
fewer and fewer missiles were fired on later LB II nights. I Personally don't
buy the argument that the NVN really didn't run out of missiles but if in fact
we did destroy their missile assembly and tranportation infrastructure, then
you are arguing against yourself.



You are making my pointwhen you say the bombers got all the publicity.

And you are making half of mine.

Depends what effect you were looking for...


As in the very first Arc Light in VN, that splintered 400 acres of jungle
killed four monkeys and was hailed as a great psychological victory?

No; as in it doesn't really matter if the Kihn No Vehicle repair yard get
hits
tonight or not, as long as bombs land somewhere near it and the NVN
government
gets a personal, up close viewing.

but you are
making my point that history downplays the role of the fighters in LB II

Like I said, you're making half of mine. All you have to do is admit that the
accuracy of the weapons you dropped wasn't nearly as important as dropping
them
and you and I will be in agreement.


You have got to be kidding! Never having been in SAC I can't speak to the
bomber employment philosophy and that might explain why the bombers missed a
lot of targets. However, for the tactical forces that certainly wasn't the
case by a long shot. I find your statement very startling. I can see how you
can say that the bomber raids were purely political if you in fact feel that
way. It certainly doesn't explain away the use of the laser guided bombs
against critical targets. You paint is as more of a case of the bombers being
sent to Hanoi just to keep the people awake while the tactical forces did the
real work.





BUFDRVR

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

On 21 Apr 2004 10:39:02 GMT, (BUFDRVR) wrote:

You're hedging. You indicated that personal observation was a poor
source of historical fact; that on-scene observers were unreliable and
only imperfectly viewed the metaphorical "lower right-hand corner of
the big picture."

Taken by itself, yes, personal observations are not adequate historical
sources. When backed up by other personal sources they get more credibility,
but when backed up by documents, they become factual. The munition, food and
POL shortages experienced by the NVA in the summer of '72 are well documented
by NV government records and by dozens of NV officers and enlisted who were
obsessive diary keepers. Ed, you're arguing against a very solid historic fact.

My challenge has never been that historical compilation is inaccurate.
I've been contending that as long as we have first person accounts
available, we can integrate the "official" record with the live
on-scene experiences to get a considerably more accurate account. In
many instances, availability of first-person recollections will result
in correction of the historic records.

The real issue here is that on the one hand you are eager to discount
first person US recollections on intensity of the fighting and
simultaneously accept the NVN statements. And, do you really mean to
say that the NVA operating from the tunnels and jungle caves deep into
SVN, short of "munition, food and POL" were devoting their time to
meticulous record keeping? This while the massive US bureaucracy of
MAC-V was simply doodling away on French cuisine and Eurasian whores?


As you know, an airfield is a very difficult target to disable.

Not with 108 bombs its not! Come on Ed, I split the runways at Batajanica with
a B-52 two-ship with a grand total of 90 weapons. 2 more two-ships followed
until we quartered the runway making it useless for anything except a
Cessna-172. This was all done with unguided Mk-82s. Its not really that
difficult to cut runways, even with unguided weapons.

Gimme a break. I'll accept your well-earned pride in your system and
capabilities, but if you've really done that in-depth research of the
LB II BUFF strikes, you've seen the same B&W BDA photos I have from
the period. Long bomb trains walking up to and over discrete targets
with one, two or three bombs out of the string possibly hitting the
target---or in some instances ending before the target, starting after
the target or paralleling the target but missing cleanly.

And, I'm sure you've been briefed and maybe even personally observed
"rapid runway repair" teams in action. That technology has been around
for a lot of years. And, you can trust me, the NV were quite good at
it. Maybe Serbs hadn't finished the correspondence course yet.


I suspect that they were shooting at
shadows--no airplanes at all.

However, this whole issue gets at the heart of your argument. Here you have
reports from guys who were actually there and compared to studies done by guys
who weren't actually there (sitting in the back of a library as you put it) we
find the "library guys" more historically accurate. Why? Because the infameous
"fog and friction" tends to distort reality. There's no fog and little friction
from the back of a library. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the study
Checkmate did in the 80s of a supposed F-4 to F-4 blue on blue kill in Vietnam,
but several guys who were not old enough to drive when the incident occured,
accurately figured out that a supposed blue-on-blue kill in 1971 (I think?)
over NVN was, in fact, an enemy MiG-21 that shot down the F-4. As far as I'm
concerned personal eyewitness accounts are good historical sources, but like
all other sources, must be supported by other documentation.

Ahhh, Checkmate..."John Warden? I knew John Warden. John Warden was a
friend of mine. And, frankly, Senator, you're no John Warden...."
(Sorry, I digress.)

Read about Chuck Horner's dismissal of John Warden when setting up the
offensive team for Desert Storm in Clancy's collaboration, "Every Man
a Tiger."

"blue-on-blue kill in 1971"? Sounds like some of that great
history---no ops going in in MiG country in '71. LB didn't start until
May of '72, and the various "protective reaction" incursions were down
in the panhandle.

Recently, Howard Plunkett sent me an extract from the Pentagon study
(Red Baron) that gathered all the MiG engagement data of the SEA war.
It covered an encounter that I had with a MiG-17 that is detailed in
When Thunder Rolled in the chapter titled "MiGs and Moustaches". The
positions in the illustrations are wrong. The sequence of events is
wrong. The ranges between aircraft are wrong. Even the location
relative to the target and other flights is wrong. The only interview
conducted to establish the definitive historic account was done eight
months after the event with the flight lead in Wichita KS. No other
participants were interviewed and the flight lead was not in a
position to witness the entire engagement. Yet, that becomes the
historic record.

For several years after LB II, Carl Jeffcoat who I mentioned earlier
as being downed by a MiG 21 near Kep, believed that he was shot down
by a member of the Hunter/Killer flight rather than an enemy aircraft.
Talking to several participants who were airborne that day, we
confirmed that no H/K aircraft were carrying Sidewinders. No H/K
aircraft fired a Sparrow.

If you read the history of LB II, twenty years from now, you'll know
that two BUFF tail gunners killed MiG 21s. Today, while some of the
participants are still around, we'll tell you that while it is
remotely possible it is extremely unlikely.

YMMV.



A SAM site without SAMs or radar in residence isn't really a SAM site
is it?

LOL...nope, not at all. I was trying to point out that had there been an SA-2
site located in those areas (which there wasn't), they would have certainly
been destroyed, so the fact that no SAMs were attacked by B-52s is a matter of
good NVN luck.


BUFDRVR

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

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

If you read the history of LB II, twenty years from now, you'll know
that two BUFF tail gunners killed MiG 21s. Today, while some of the
participants are still around, we'll tell you that while it is
remotely possible it is extremely unlikely.

Well put Ed, as usual, far better than I ever could. Had my interview with Ray
Sullivan today at the AF Museum for the LB II documentary. Interesting
session. He told me that his dad was the Gen Sullivan mentioned in the
accounts as the SAC senior officer who signed the SAC LB II impelementing order
and was later "fired" into Air Rescue Service for opposing the LB II initial
tactics as documented by Mitchell. My copy is loaned out and I don't recall
the exact circumstances. He spoke very highly of you and has your bio and
picture in a list of major contributors to the production..

Thus far he has 16 hours of interviews and Discovery Channel and Hstory Channel
are going to pick it up but the date is still not nailed down..

He has talked at length to Karl Eschmann and Mike Mitchell. He will use
Eschmann as a major source and probably as the lead in. Mitchell was involved
from the start and the "11 Days" book was the seed for the documentary but he
and Mitchell went their separate ways over disagreement on content and level of
detail. He is well versed on all the controversy surrounding LB II but wants
to tell the story from the viewpoints of the guys who were directly involved.

This should a great documentary from the sound of it. The story will be told
through filmed intereviews from the production cast and crew of Linebacker II
rather than secondhand through the eyes of an author his own interpretations as
we are debating here. . .

I
personally saw hundreds of trucks that our intel said were similar to our own
2
1/2 T to 5 T trucks, parked in a marshalling yard just inside the PRC buffer
zone that we were fragged against in LB I.

Trucks parked near the PRC buffer zone were not the trucks in use along the Ho
Chi Mihn trail in SVN, Laos and Cambodia.

There were tanks and SAMs in the south during the April 72 offensive. 100
"duece and a halfs" certainly couldn't haul them south.

Now you're mixing apples and oranges. The easter offensive in '72 was a true
conventional offensive and as such, was supplied like one. The "hundred or so
trucks" I referred to were the ones used to haul supplies to VC forces in SVN.
The logistics pipeline for the Easter offensive was what you would expect for
any nation supporting a 3 division offensive, that's what made it such an easy
target and why the Freedom Porch missions were so successful.

The order from the President to just scatter bombs at random away from
inhabited areas sure never made it down to the working level!

Obviously the EXORD wasn't for "random bomb scattering", it was for round the
clock maximum effort bombing against any legal target in NVN, including
previously restricted targets in Hanoi. The military did what they were
supposed to and went after what they determined to be critical targets. The
fact the military took the CJCS order and turned it into as sound a military
operation as they could, doesn't change the fact that Nixon didn't really care
what damage was inflicted, his purpose was political, not military.

There were a
lot of energy, lives and materiel expended in actually trying to hit
critical
targets.

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 and dikes and dams and the legality of striking them is
debateable.

I have a little trouble with the insinuation that it didn't matter if
targets wre hit or not.

Then tell me, what critical targets were hit and what problems was it causing
for the NVN that forced them to return to Paris (to sign an agreement they were
ready to sign in OCT 72)?

That might have been true for the bombers; I can't
speak for that. Certainly not for the tactical forces.

I'm sorry, but testimony from nearly all major players on both sides attest to
the fact that; the NVN were not experiencing any drastic effects (not already
experienced from LB I) of *any* bombing and that Nixon ordered LBII, not to
disrupt any specific NVN infrastructure, but to show resolve and convince the
NVN that the U.S. was capable of unrestricted bombing.

My three daytime
Linebackers against targets that the bombers missed certainly weren't just to
scatter bombs.

Militarily, you're right, but the ultimate objective was political not
military.

You are overlooking the difficulty in blowing away infrastructure in a thrid
world country that has been bombed for years.

Yes, keep going with that thought and you'll realize that the damage inflicted
during LB II caused little additional hardships on the NVN government or
people. The B-52 bombings were quite a psychological shock (as POWs and NVN
attest to), but never to such a degree that anyone in Hanoi pressured the
government to go back to Paris.

The NVN were able to
reconstitute pretty quickly.

What they were able to reconstitute from LB I made little difference in regards
to the offensive in the south or in the lives of anyone up north.

You allude to references that say the materiel
was there in LBII but the NVN weren't able to get it where it was needed to
rearm and reload. That infrastructure was somewhat rebuilt after LBI and hit
again in LB II.

It wasn't the infrastructure damage that kept them from resupplying their SAM
batterys, it was you in an F-4 and the fact that resupplying Guideline missiles
is a fairly slow and highly visable process.

I Personally don't
buy the argument that the NVN really didn't run out of missiles but if in
fact
we did destroy their missile assembly and tranportation infrastructure, then
you are arguing against yourself.

The only damage to the NVN Air Defense system was on the SAM batterys and
associated radars themselves. Michel wonders out loud in his book, why a
concerted effort wasn't made from the beginning of LBII to find the SAM storage
areas. Obviously someone *thought* they knew where they were, as several B-52
sorties targeted "SAM storage areas", but none of those targets up till night
#11 stored anything related to NVN Air Defense. On night # 11 when a 3-ship of
B-52D models attacked the Trai Ca SAM storage area, we hit pay dirt. According
to NVN reports "hundreds" of surface-to-air missiles, both Guideline and
tactical varients were destroyed. Most people would say; "see, when Trai Ca got
hit that's when the NVN decided to return to Paris". This would be incorrect,
Le Duc Tho had already informed the State department on Day #9 that they were
willing to return to Paris to sign the original agreement. Nixon continued the
bombing for another 2 days and nights to insure Le Duc Tho kept his word.

You have got to be kidding! Never having been in SAC I can't speak to the
bomber employment philosophy and that might explain why the bombers missed a
lot of targets.

First, I would question that B-52s "missed *a lot* of their targets. Prior to
night #3 they missed several due to the already mentioned wind problem, but
besides that their accuracy was within advertised unguided CEP, with the
exception being the guys who were fighting for their lives with Guideline
missiles.

However, for the tactical forces that certainly wasn't the
case by a long shot.

I'll have to disagree, the ultimate objective was political, not military and
as such, any damage you did was secondary to the fact you just did damage.

It certainly doesn't explain away the use of the laser guided bombs
against critical targets.

Sure it does, the military took purely political objectives (actually not
transmitted to the forces, but they took the vague Presidential guidance)
converted them to military objectives and executed the mission. You can argue
against this all you want, but all you have to do is pick up Nixon's memoirs
and read for yourself.

You paint is as more of a case of the bombers being
sent to Hanoi just to keep the people awake while the tactical forces did the
real work.

The bombers were a bold political statement, used to make the strongest point
Nixon could, the fighters were also a political statement, allowing 24 hour ops
and debilitating the NVN efforts to defend themselves after the sun went down.


BUFDRVR

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

My challenge has never been that historical compilation is inaccurate.
I've been contending that as long as we have first person accounts
available, we can integrate the "official" record with the live
on-scene experiences to get a considerably more accurate account.

Not in all cases however. If I were to interview the two B-52D tail gunners
credited for the two MiG kills, I would conclude that they actually shot down
the two jets. If I expand my research and interview you and other F-4 MiGCAP
guys, I would get a completely different version. If I then go to the the
Vietnamese themselves, ask them to show me their records and discover that not
only were no MiGs reported lost in the area in question, but that there were no
MiGs airborn in that area during the time in question, I can reasonably
conclude that no MiGs were shot down by B-52s.

In
many instances, availability of first-person recollections will result
in correction of the historic records.


As you can see above, as many times as it can set the facts straight, it can
distort them.

The real issue here is that on the one hand you are eager to discount
first person US recollections on intensity of the fighting and
simultaneously accept the NVN statements.

Because the U.S. Marine is not really in a poistion to make an accurate
statement regading NVN supplies, the NVN officer, and the NVN documented record
is. Conversly, I would disregard NVN speculation about U.S. force issues and
rely on the U.S. accounts and records.

And, do you really mean to
say that the NVA operating from the tunnels and jungle caves deep into
SVN, short of "munition, food and POL" were devoting their time to
meticulous record keeping?

Not only did they keep good and accurate records, but nearly every solider kept
a personal diary. If you've ever read Hal Moore's "We Were Soliders Once and
Young", he can attest to the fact that nearly every enemy body recovered in LZ
X-Ray had a personal diary on it.

This while the massive US bureaucracy of
MAC-V was simply doodling away on French cuisine and Eurasian whores?

Maybe if the VC and NVA units had French food and whores their records would
not be as meticulous as they are

Long bomb trains walking up to and over discrete targets
with one, two or three bombs out of the string possibly hitting the
target---or in some instances ending before the target, starting after
the target or paralleling the target but missing cleanly.

I didn't mean to infer it was as easy in 1972 as it was in 1999, many
improvements had been made to the BUFF release system that allowed us to drop
very tight trains today, but it also wasn't so difficult that an airfield
needed to be attacked by over 25 jets of all types. The runway at Bac Mai was
unuseable after night #4 but BUFFs went back there the next night and the
runway also received attention during the day. Perhaps it was "maintenance"
bombing Ed, but that excuse doesn't hold true for the non-airfield targets.
Khin No Railyard and vehicle repair complex was a total loss after night #2,
but BUFFs went back there at least 4 more times. Khin No received over 4,000
weapons from B-52s alone and IIRC A-7s also visited there...and this was after
LB I when it had also been hit...several times!

Ahhh, Checkmate..."John Warden? I knew John Warden. John Warden was a
friend of mine. And, frankly, Senator, you're no John Warden...."

Nothing personal to your friend Ed, but I take that as a compliment.

Read about Chuck Horner's dismissal of John Warden when setting up the
offensive team for Desert Storm in Clancy's collaboration, "Every Man
a Tiger."

I have, great stuff, go Chuck!

"blue-on-blue kill in 1971"? Sounds like some of that great
history---no ops going in in MiG country in '71.

Than it must have been '72, I'm reciting this from memory.

The
positions in the illustrations are wrong. The sequence of events is
wrong. The ranges between aircraft are wrong. Even the location
relative to the target and other flights is wrong.

Now define; "wrong"...is it possible Ed, that you recalled it incorrectly. I'm
not choosing sides in this one, just pointing out, as in the case of our
fameous B-52 tail gunners, sometimes the participant is wrong.

The only interview
conducted to establish the definitive historic account was done eight
months after the event with the flight lead in Wichita KS.

Than I would conclude that unless one of you wrote it down immediately after
the fact and verified it with other potential witnesses, that there is no way
of knowing for sure what happened. You may be right...or he may be right, but
as someone who was 4 years old at the time I can not accept either account as
fact.

No other
participants were interviewed and the flight lead was not in a
position to witness the entire engagement. Yet, that becomes the
historic record.

I believe much of the Air Force historical record is like that. A few months
after ALLIED FORCE ended I got to read in the "Lessons Learned" about how B-52s
required air refueling in order to provide a 2-hour XINT presence. Interesting
since only one crew ever even saw a tanker during the entire operation, and
that was so he could extend his *3-hour* XINT orbit to 5 hours. Whoever wrote
that section confused B-1s and B-52s, but now that is documented Air Force
history. By the way, the participants at the Lessons Learned conferance were
all OAF participants as well....

For several years after LB II, Carl Jeffcoat who I mentioned earlier
as being downed by a MiG 21 near Kep, believed that he was shot down
by a member of the Hunter/Killer flight rather than an enemy aircraft.

Maybe this was the case Checkmate looked at in the 80s? I know that the
official Air Force history held it as fratricide until Checkmate concluded
their study. Another F-4 driver, "Lucky" Anderreg led the study, but I don't
think he was in LBII.


BUFDRVR

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

Had my interview with Ray
Sullivan today at the AF Museum for the LB II documentary. Interesting
session. He told me that his dad was the Gen Sullivan mentioned in the
accounts as the SAC senior officer who signed the SAC LB II impelementing
order
and was later "fired" into Air Rescue Service for opposing the LB II initial
tactics as documented by Mitchell. My copy is loaned out and I don't recall
the exact circumstances. He spoke very highly of you and has your bio and
picture in a list of major contributors to the production..

Thus far he has 16 hours of interviews and Discovery Channel and Hstory
Channel
are going to pick it up but the date is still not nailed down..

He has talked at length to Karl Eschmann and Mike Mitchell. He will use
Eschmann as a major source and probably as the lead in. Mitchell was
involved
from the start and the "11 Days" book was the seed for the documentary but he
and Mitchell went their separate ways over disagreement on content and level
of
detail. He is well versed on all the controversy surrounding LB II but wants
to tell the story from the viewpoints of the guys who were directly involved.

This should a great documentary from the sound of it. The story will be told
through filmed intereviews from the production cast and crew of Linebacker II
rather than secondhand through the eyes of an author his own interpretations
as
we are debating here. . .


Sounds like a great show, I can't wait. Although I am concerned that Michel
left over a disagreement. Out of him and Eschmann, I find Michel's book much
better documented and supported. Eschmann's book contains both the myth about
the BUFF-MiG shoot downs and the "hybrid" FAN SONG-LOW BLOW radar. Michel gets
the word right from the horses mouth on both those issues.


BUFDRVR

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

On 21 Apr 2004 22:20:34 GMT, (BUFDRVR) wrote:

I
personally saw hundreds of trucks that our intel said were similar to our own
2
1/2 T to 5 T trucks, parked in a marshalling yard just inside the PRC buffer
zone that we were fragged against in LB I.

Trucks parked near the PRC buffer zone were not the trucks in use along the Ho
Chi Mihn trail in SVN, Laos and Cambodia.

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. A truck delivering war material in the
PRC buffer isn't a truck? Or it isn't war material? Or they had to
unload it and then put it on a different truck for the rest of the
trip? 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.

There were tanks and SAMs in the south during the April 72 offensive. 100
"duece and a halfs" certainly couldn't haul them south.

Now you're mixing apples and oranges. The easter offensive in '72 was a true
conventional offensive and as such, was supplied like one. The "hundred or so
trucks" I referred to were the ones used to haul supplies to VC forces in SVN.
The logistics pipeline for the Easter offensive was what you would expect for
any nation supporting a 3 division offensive, that's what made it such an easy
target and why the Freedom Porch missions were so successful.

So, the "hundred or so trucks" hauled supplies to VC, and the three
division offensive had thousands of other trucks? Or, they three
divisions carried their logistic goodies in their rice bags?

And, I just Googled Freedom Porch, since I'd never heard of it. No
hits. I then checked Hobson's "Vietnam Air Losses" where he has a list
of names of operations. No hit. Then I pulled Thompson's "To Hanoi and
Back". No hit. Got Freedom Train, but no Porch.

The order from the President to just scatter bombs at random away from
inhabited areas sure never made it down to the working level!

Obviously the EXORD wasn't for "random bomb scattering", it was for round the
clock maximum effort bombing against any legal target in NVN, including
previously restricted targets in Hanoi. The military did what they were
supposed to and went after what they determined to be critical targets. The
fact the military took the CJCS order and turned it into as sound a military
operation as they could, doesn't change the fact that Nixon didn't really care
what damage was inflicted, his purpose was political, not military.

Throughout the war, targets in Route Pack VI weren't selected in
theater. 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." Since SAC wasn't chopped to 7th AF,
where below the JCS did this selection of critical targets get done?

There were a
lot of energy, lives and materiel expended in actually trying to hit
critical
targets.

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 and dikes and dams and the legality of striking them is
debateable.

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

My three daytime
Linebackers against targets that the bombers missed certainly weren't just to
scatter bombs.

Militarily, you're right, but the ultimate objective was political not
military.

Ahh, at last, grounds for agreement. All military operations have
political strategic objectives. They also have military tactical
objectives.

What they were able to reconstitute from LB I made little difference in regards
to the offensive in the south or in the lives of anyone up north.

You allude to references that say the materiel
was there in LBII but the NVN weren't able to get it where it was needed to
rearm and reload. That infrastructure was somewhat rebuilt after LBI and hit
again in LB II.

It wasn't the infrastructure damage that kept them from resupplying their SAM
batterys, it was you in an F-4 and the fact that resupplying Guideline missiles
is a fairly slow and highly visable process.

It was accomplished from 1965 through the end of the war with
remarkably little visibility. SAM battalions relocated regularly and
were resupplied consistently. They seemed to be well supplied with
missiles throughout.

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. It
was because any time they emitted, we slapped them down again. It was
because the intensity of the air campaign was so great that the
deliveries couldn't be made safely through the no longer proscribed
port facilities.

I Personally don't
buy the argument that the NVN really didn't run out of missiles but if in
fact
we did destroy their missile assembly and tranportation infrastructure, then
you are arguing against yourself.

The only damage to the NVN Air Defense system was on the SAM batterys and
associated radars themselves. Michel wonders out loud in his book, why a
concerted effort wasn't made from the beginning of LBII to find the SAM storage
areas. Obviously someone *thought* they knew where they were, as several B-52
sorties targeted "SAM storage areas", but none of those targets up till night
#11 stored anything related to NVN Air Defense. On night # 11 when a 3-ship of
B-52D models attacked the Trai Ca SAM storage area, we hit pay dirt. According
to NVN reports "hundreds" of surface-to-air missiles, both Guideline and
tactical varients were destroyed. Most people would say; "see, when Trai Ca got
hit that's when the NVN decided to return to Paris". This would be incorrect,
Le Duc Tho had already informed the State department on Day #9 that they were
willing to return to Paris to sign the original agreement. Nixon continued the
bombing for another 2 days and nights to insure Le Duc Tho kept his word.

Michel's account of the night 11 attack on Trai Ca is different than
you list here. He mentions the target and states that the A/C reported
eight SAMs fired, but doesn't indicate damage. As the mission was
going on, it had already been announced that operations would end at
dawn. If the crew provided Michel a detailed enough recounting that
there were 8 missiles fired at them, how could he have failed to
report the "hundreds" of missiles destroyed? Seems like a crucial and
significant fact.

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

You have got to be kidding! Never having been in SAC I can't speak to the
bomber employment philosophy and that might explain why the bombers missed a
lot of targets.

First, I would question that B-52s "missed *a lot* of their targets. Prior to
night #3 they missed several due to the already mentioned wind problem, but
besides that their accuracy was within advertised unguided CEP, with the
exception being the guys who were fighting for their lives with Guideline
missiles.

However, for the tactical forces that certainly wasn't the
case by a long shot.

I'll have to disagree, the ultimate objective was political, not military and
as such, any damage you did was secondary to the fact you just did damage.

Let's keep in mind that the tactical crews (and after the first three
nights with 9 BUFFs lost the SAC crews as well) had several hundred
associates on the ground in captivity. Locations of damage wasn't
random and precise targeting was essential if we weren't going to kill
the POWs as well.


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

Subject: Friendly Fire Notebook
From: (BUFDRVR)
Date: 4/21/04 3:39 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

As you know, an airfield is a very difficult target to disable.

Not with 108 bombs its not! Come on Ed, I split the runways at Batajanica
with
a B-52 two-ship with a grand total of 90 weapons. 2 more two-ships followed

Piece of cake with 56 Marauders dropping a total of 448 500 pounders on it.
Runways unuseable, hanger wrecked, machine shops and ordnance facilites in
flames, barracks gone, bomb dumps all exploded and fuel dumps throwing flames
up to our alltitude.Planes on the ground all burning. It was what we
bombardiers live for. But that was a different war at a different time.


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

I have always respected your inputs to this group but it seems you are You are
putting a lot of energy into trying to convince me of something and I am not
sure of exactly what. You made earlier statements that I challenged that NVN
only had 100 old French trucks left over from WW II. You also stated that the
BUFFS were sent north for political reasons. You have contradicted yourself
several times on that 100 truck statement including below. Most of the rest of
what you wrote is telling me about how the BUFFS went after military targets,
not politcal targets, once they figured out how to operate in a tactical
environment. Your logic seems very circular to me and has totally lost me.

Dikes and dams are legit military targets but with political implications.
Hospitals are not, just to differentiate between what is legit and what is not.
We certainly did enough dam busting in WWII and Korea. They were not struck in
NVN because of those political implications..

I am trying not to be emotional here but it seems to me that under your logic,
every flight in VN was ultimately for political reasons starting long before
Rolling Thunder. Jphnson and Kennedy sent planes out with ordnance to impress
on the NVN and VC that they were serious. I just can't separate out the BUFFS
in my own mind as going north for different reasons other than the same ones
we are all going north for as you are implying.

Relative to the "experts" I guess people like Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter
Jennings are experts with the true facts because they have interviewed people
like Saddam Hussain. You;ve quoted many people who have synthesized first and
second hand information into "facts" that many participants don't agree with.
I am not sure that leaves much of a basis for discussion.


..

Subject: Friendly Fire Notebook
From: (BUFDRVR)
Date: 4/21/2004 6:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id:

I
personally saw hundreds of trucks that our intel said were similar to our
own
2
1/2 T to 5 T trucks, parked in a marshalling yard just inside the PRC buffer
zone that we were fragged against in LB I.

Trucks parked near the PRC buffer zone were not the trucks in use along the
Ho
Chi Mihn trail in SVN, Laos and Cambodia.

There were tanks and SAMs in the south during the April 72 offensive. 100
"duece and a halfs" certainly couldn't haul them south.

Now you're mixing apples and oranges. The easter offensive in '72 was a true
conventional offensive and as such, was supplied like one. The "hundred or so
trucks" I referred to were the ones used to haul supplies to VC forces in
SVN.
The logistics pipeline for the Easter offensive was what you would expect for
any nation supporting a 3 division offensive, that's what made it such an
easy
target and why the Freedom Porch missions were so successful.

The order from the President to just scatter bombs at random away from
inhabited areas sure never made it down to the working level!

Obviously the EXORD wasn't for "random bomb scattering", it was for round the
clock maximum effort bombing against any legal target in NVN, including
previously restricted targets in Hanoi. The military did what they were
supposed to and went after what they determined to be critical targets. The
fact the military took the CJCS order and turned it into as sound a military
operation as they could, doesn't change the fact that Nixon didn't really
care
what damage was inflicted, his purpose was political, not military.

There were a
lot of energy, lives and materiel expended in actually trying to hit
critical
targets.

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 and dikes and dams and the legality of striking them is
debateable.

I have a little trouble with the insinuation that it didn't matter if
targets wre hit or not.

Then tell me, what critical targets were hit and what problems was it causing
for the NVN that forced them to return to Paris (to sign an agreement they
were
ready to sign in OCT 72)?

That might have been true for the bombers; I can't
speak for that. Certainly not for the tactical forces.

I'm sorry, but testimony from nearly all major players on both sides attest
to
the fact that; the NVN were not experiencing any drastic effects (not already
experienced from LB I) of *any* bombing and that Nixon ordered LBII, not to
disrupt any specific NVN infrastructure, but to show resolve and convince the
NVN that the U.S. was capable of unrestricted bombing.

My three daytime
Linebackers against targets that the bombers missed certainly weren't just
to
scatter bombs.

Militarily, you're right, but the ultimate objective was political not
military.

You are overlooking the difficulty in blowing away infrastructure in a thrid
world country that has been bombed for years.

Yes, keep going with that thought and you'll realize that the damage
inflicted
during LB II caused little additional hardships on the NVN government or
people. The B-52 bombings were quite a psychological shock (as POWs and NVN
attest to), but never to such a degree that anyone in Hanoi pressured the
government to go back to Paris.

The NVN were able to
reconstitute pretty quickly.

What they were able to reconstitute from LB I made little difference in
regards
to the offensive in the south or in the lives of anyone up north.

You allude to references that say the materiel
was there in LBII but the NVN weren't able to get it where it was needed to
rearm and reload. That infrastructure was somewhat rebuilt after LBI and
hit
again in LB II.

It wasn't the infrastructure damage that kept them from resupplying their SAM
batterys, it was you in an F-4 and the fact that resupplying Guideline
missiles
is a fairly slow and highly visable process.

I Personally don't
buy the argument that the NVN really didn't run out of missiles but if in
fact
we did destroy their missile assembly and tranportation infrastructure, then
you are arguing against yourself.

The only damage to the NVN Air Defense system was on the SAM batterys and
associated radars themselves. Michel wonders out loud in his book, why a
concerted effort wasn't made from the beginning of LBII to find the SAM
storage
areas. Obviously someone *thought* they knew where they were, as several B-52
sorties targeted "SAM storage areas", but none of those targets up till night
#11 stored anything related to NVN Air Defense. On night # 11 when a 3-ship
of
B-52D models attacked the Trai Ca SAM storage area, we hit pay dirt.
According
to NVN reports "hundreds" of surface-to-air missiles, both Guideline and
tactical varients were destroyed. Most people would say; "see, when Trai Ca
got
hit that's when the NVN decided to return to Paris". This would be incorrect,
Le Duc Tho had already informed the State department on Day #9 that they were
willing to return to Paris to sign the original agreement. Nixon continued
the
bombing for another 2 days and nights to insure Le Duc Tho kept his word.

You have got to be kidding! Never having been in SAC I can't speak to the
bomber employment philosophy and that might explain why the bombers missed a
lot of targets.

First, I would question that B-52s "missed *a lot* of their targets. Prior to
night #3 they missed several due to the already mentioned wind problem, but
besides that their accuracy was within advertised unguided CEP, with the
exception being the guys who were fighting for their lives with Guideline
missiles.

However, for the tactical forces that certainly wasn't the
case by a long shot.

I'll have to disagree, the ultimate objective was political, not military and
as such, any damage you did was secondary to the fact you just did damage.

It certainly doesn't explain away the use of the laser guided bombs
against critical targets.

Sure it does, the military took purely political objectives (actually not
transmitted to the forces, but they took the vague Presidential guidance)
converted them to military objectives and executed the mission. You can argue
against this all you want, but all you have to do is pick up Nixon's memoirs
and read for yourself.

You paint is as more of a case of the bombers being
sent to Hanoi just to keep the people awake while the tactical forces did
the
real work.

The bombers were a bold political statement, used to make the strongest point
Nixon could, the fighters were also a political statement, allowing 24 hour
ops
and debilitating the NVN efforts to defend themselves after the sun went
down.


BUFDRVR

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

.. .

Sounds like a great show, I can't wait. Although I am concerned that Michel
left over a disagreement. Out of him and Eschmann, I find Michel's book much
better documented and supported. Eschmann's book contains both the myth about
the BUFF-MiG shoot downs and the "hybrid" FAN SONG-LOW BLOW radar. Michel
gets
the word right from the horses mouth on both those issues.


Checkout the web page.

http://www.teleproductiongroup.com/12_72-main.html

Lots of extracts from the interviews. Ed's mug is there and I suppose mine
will there there eventually. Karl is there as well. Ray really bit on some of
my wildass tales, oops, I meant accounts.

The outcome will truly be interesting.

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. I don't know
Michael. I am not in a position to say who is right or wrong here but I know
the accounts of the MiG shootdowns and the hybrid radar were pretty convincing
to me when I heard them at Korat. Michael's book contains other information
that desn't pass the logic test to me so I guess we each have to judge for
ourselves. Karl's original manuscript reads like a medical examiners report and
everything else in the book seems quite precise and acurate almost to a fault.

MIchael apparently was a lot more into nitty gtitty details of LB II than Ray
wanted to go. This isn't meant to be a definitive history just an account from
the eyes and ears of the people who particpated including the maintainers,
rescuers, and POWs.

Steve.