Authors: Terence T. Finn
Tags: #History, #Asia, #Afghanistan, #Military, #United States, #eBook
President Johnson’s decision to attack the North Vietnamese naval facilities at Vinh served his political agenda. In the midst of the 1964 presidential election, LBJ could use the attack as proof that he was capable of being firm when necessary. This was particularly useful to his reputation as his Republican opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a hard-liner, was projecting Johnson as a timid liberal, unwilling to employ America’s military might.
Not satisfied with the attacks on Vinh, Lyndon Johnson sought specific authority to take whatever steps he deemed necessary to repel further aggression against the United States. If he, as president of the United States, were to place America’s armed forces in harm’s way, he wanted the U.S. Congress alongside, sharing the responsibility. So Johnson went to the legislature and got what he sought. Known as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, it gave the president a blank check for military action. The House of Representatives passed the resolution 116–0. In the Senate the vote was 80–2. That Lyndon Johnson withheld information regarding the South Vietnamese raids and the American surveillance missions made gaining approval of the resolution easier than it might have been.
Three months after the North Vietnamese fired on the
Maddox
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Americans again were attacked, this time on land and in South Vietnam. On November 1, 1964, the Viet Cong struck a small American air base at Bien Hoa, just north of Saigon. Four Americans were killed, twenty-six wounded. Four airplanes were destroyed. Then, in December, the VC blew up an officer’s billet in the South Vietnamese capital, causing additional casualties. In February 1965, the VC struck again, with deadly results. They hit a U.S. Army helicopter base at Pleiku in the Central Highlands. Eight soldiers died. Seventy-six were wounded and several helicopters were disabled. Three days later the Viet Cong blew up a building in Qui Nhon, killing twenty-three Americans. Clearly, the VC were challenging America’s presence in Vietnam.
Lyndon Johnson felt he had to respond. And he did. The president ordered U.S. marines to Da Nang in order to secure the airfield there. They arrived, in battle gear, on March 8, 1965. Soon thereafter, they were directed to undertake offensive operations against the Viet Cong. For all practical purposes, the United States had gone to war.
To this war the president fully committed the United States Air Force. Responding to the attacks by the VC, particularly at Pleiku, Johnson ordered American warplanes to strike targets in North Vietnam. Thus began the aerial campaign known as Rolling Thunder. A signature feature of the war in Vietnam, the effort continued, interrupted by several pauses, until the end of October 1968. In the long history of American arms, few operations, whether by land, in the air, or at sea, aroused such controversy as Rolling Thunder.
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A typical mission of the Rolling Thunder campaign would involve sixteen or more attack aircraft. These would fly from bases in Thailand and, once airborne, would rendezvous with fighter escorts. Heading north, the aerial armada would refuel from air force tankers (military jets were and are gas guzzlers), receive guidance from nearby electronic warfare planes, and proceed into enemy airspace.
For much of Rolling Thunder the principal strike aircraft was the Republic F-105 Thunderchief. This was a large, single-seat fighter-bomber. The plane was fast (1,372 mph at 36,000 feet) and would carry 14,000 pounds of bombs plus several Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, the latter of which would be useful were enemy aircraft to be engaged (as was the 29 mm cannon carried within the plane’s fuselage). Based at Korat and Takhli, the Thunderchiefs flew thousands of sorties. But the cost was high. During the war the U.S. Air Force lost 397 F-105s, nearly half the number built.
Also participating in Rolling Thunder, indeed perhaps the airplane most widely employed by the United States in Vietnam, was the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom. This too was big and fast. But, unlike the F-105, it had a crew of two, a pilot and a weapons-radar officer. In Vietnam, the Phantom was used as both a fighter and as a bomber, as well as a reconnaissance aircraft. Early versions of the F-4 carried no guns. They were armed only with missiles. This turned out to be a mistake and soon was rectified. With its powerful radar and impressive rate of climb, plus the capability to carry tons of bombs, the Phantom was a formidable machine. That its General Electric jet engines emitted lengthy trails of black smoke, making the plane easily visible, was cause for concern. Yet the F-4 did well in combat, especially when crewed by men who knew their trade.
Although the Phantom equipped numerous air force squadrons, the plane was designed and manufactured for the United States Navy, which deployed the F-4 aboard its aircraft carriers (no doubt air force generals winced when ordering a plane its sister service had developed). America’s naval air arm played an important part in Rolling Thunder. The navy placed three and sometimes four carriers off the coast of North Vietnam (“Yankee Station”) as well as ships farther south (“Dixie Station”). These latter vessels provided air support to friendly troops on the ground in South Vietnam. The aircraft carriers to the north would spend three or four days conducting air strikes, then withdraw to replenish at sea, having depleted onboard supplies of food, ammunition, and the hundred or so odd things necessary to keep a large ship operating.
Both the navy and the air force pilots flying over North Vietnam during Rolling Thunder operated under strict rules of engagement. These specified what could and could not be attacked. Targets in and around Hanoi and Haiphong were off-limits. At first so were enemy airfields. When antiaircraft missile sites were being constructed north of the DMZ, the Thunderchiefs and Phantoms were not allowed to hit them, for fear of killing Russian technicians who were advising the North Vietnamese on how to operate the weapon. Further, the American planes were not to fly inside a twenty-five-mile buffer zone extending from Vietnam’s border with China.
Needless to say such restrictions made Rolling Thunder less effective than it might have been. Pilots, in particular, objected to the rules. One F-105 pilot called them “extensive, unbelievable and decidedly illogical.” Author Stephen Coonts said they ensured that the United States would not win the war.
Why were the Rules of Engagement put in place? The answer is that Lyndon Baines Johnson, not trusting America’s senior military leaders, wanted to make sure that the conflict would not escalate, which it might if the North Vietnamese were to be hit extremely hard. He also wanted to minimize civilian casualties which, were they to occur in large numbers, would pose political problems for the president both at home and abroad.
U.S. generals and admirals chafed at the restrictions. Intent on winning the war, they wanted to bomb Hanoi (a city that, because of the rules air force historian Wayne Thompson described as “one of the safest places in Vietnam”), mine the harbor of Haiphong, cut North Vietnam in half by an amphibious invasion, and generally conduct the war in a manner guaranteed to bring the north, if not to its knees, at least to the bargaining table. If young Americans were to die in Vietnam, these commanders reasoned, did their country not owe them the goal of victory?
But President Johnson was so determined to keep control that he and his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, instituted a targeting procedure unlike any that had ever been seen. Targets for warplanes striking North Vietnam had to be approved by the White House. Air force and navy leaders would submit proposed targets to the defense secretary, who would massage the list and forward his recommendations to the president. Johnson and a few civilian advisors then would choose what could be struck and what could not. Sometimes, they even decided what size of bomb could be used and what routes the aircraft would take going in and out of Vietnam.
Many targets made military sense. Bridges, rail junctions, and truck convoys were all permitted to be hit. But often, too often to the men who had to do the bombing, the targets seemed hardly worth the effort, or the risk. One F-105 pilot, Ed Rasimus, in a fine book recounting his experiences flying in Vietnam, wrote the following:
The target itself was described as “approximately fifty barrels of suspected [petroleum].” The pilots had all agreed in the planning room that we must have indeed been winning the war if we were sending sixteen bombers, five SAM-suppression aircraft, eight MiG-CAP, two stand-off jammers, and eight tankers for fifty barrels of something buried at a jungle intersection. The briefing officer seemed a bit embarrassed by the target. . . . It wasn’t his fault, so we didn’t harass him. Credit for targeting rightly belonged in Washington.
To say this targeting procedure was unusual would be an understatement. To say it made no sense would be more to the point. Surely, the president of the United States had more important tasks than selecting targets for Rolling Thunder. Lyndon Johnson didn’t think so. He wanted to be sure control did not pass to the military. His purpose was to limit the war in Vietnam, and he thought target selection was one way to do so.
Johnson’s strategy for Rolling Thunder was to increase gradually the aerial violence. He believed that such an approach would induce the North Vietnamese, who, realizing that even further destruction would be forthcoming, to come to their senses and agree to a negotiated settlement. Johnson believed he was acting rationally and responsibly. He was avoiding overkill and, by ordering a number of bombing pauses, was giving the regime in Hanoi an opportunity to act in a similar manner. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advised the president that this approach would not work. The agency pointed out that the North Vietnamese Communists were interested only in victory, which for them meant the removal of the regime in Saigon, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, and the unification of the two Vietnams under one rule, theirs. Lyndon Johnson, a master of political compromise, thought differently. He believed the North Vietnamese would act as he might act. They would see what he saw and realize their interests would be served by agreeing to a settlement, thus avoiding further destruction from American warplanes. But Lyndon Johnson was wrong, his strategy flawed. The North Vietnamese had no intention of agreeing to any settlement that deprived them of victory.
Ed Rasimus survived his tour flying F-105s, completing one hundred missions over North Vietnam. Other pilots were less fortunate. They were shot down, and either killed or taken captive. In 1966 and 1967 alone 776 U.S. airmen lost their lives. In total, the United States saw 992 aircraft destroyed during Rolling Thunder. There were wrecks of Thunderchiefs and Phantoms all over North Vietnam.
One of those F-4s went down on July 24, 1965, early in Rolling Thunder. What makes the event noteworthy was the cause of the plane’s destruction. The Phantom was hit by a Russian-built SA-2 surface-to-air missile (SAM).
Deployed in great numbers throughout North Vietnam, the SA-2 was a modern air defense missile supplied in large numbers by the Soviet Union. With a warhead containing 420 pounds of explosives, the missile could bring down an aircraft at altitudes up to eighty thousand feet. However, the missile was susceptible to electronic jamming, a tool at which the Americans became extremely proficient. Both the U.S. Air Force and Navy produced specialized aircraft and tactics to jam the missile’s guidance system. The air force called these planes “Wild Weasles.” They were all two-seater warplanes that locked onto SA-2 transmissions and then fired a missile of their own at the launch site. While not always successful, the Wild Weasles put a major dent in the north’s missile defense system.
During the war, according to SA-2 historian Steven Zaloga, a total of 5,804 missiles were fired at American aircraft. In the eight years of conflict, SAMs destroyed 205 U.S. planes. However, the impact of the missile was greater than this tally might indicate. That’s because the SA-2s caused many of the attacking aircraft to jettison their bombs before reaching their target. Moreover, they forced American planes to dive to lower altitudes, bringing them within range of antiaircraft guns the North Vietnamese had placed all across their country.
The antiaircraft guns and the SA-2s were parts of a triad that together constituted a formidable air defense system. The third element of North Vietnam’s air defenses was the MiGs. These were Russian-built jet fighters, and they constituted the core of the small but determined Vietnamese People’s Air Force.
While the two air forces met in combat over North Vietnam, aerial battles were not frequent. Nevertheless, the Americans did shoot down 196 MiGs during the war. However, the primary objective of U.S. airpower was not the downing of MiGs. The principal goal was putting bombs on target.
Despite the extensive bombing campaign against North Vietnam, Rolling Thunder was not a success. Why? Because the campaign, though military in character, was essentially an exercise in international politics. The purpose of Rolling Thunder was to convince the regime in Hanoi that the price it would have to pay to overthrow the government in Saigon was too high and that it should stop the infiltration of men and matériel into South Vietnam (these flowed south through Laos and Cambodia, along a series of trails nicknamed the Ho Chi Minh Trail). Notwithstanding the pounding by American aircraft, neither of these objectives was achieved.
However, Rolling Thunder did accomplish one secondary goal Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara had set for the campaign. The goal was to boost morale in the south and buy time for the government there to improve its effectiveness. Rolling Thunder sent a message to leaders in Saigon that, in the fight against the Communists, they were not alone.
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More visible evidence of the American commitment was the increasing number of U.S. troops on the ground in Vietnam. After the initial landings at Da Nang in March of 1965, the number of soldiers steadily increased. By the end of that year, the army had 184,000 men “in country.” Twelve months later the number stood at 385,000. By April of 1969 there were 543,400 American soldiers stationed in Vietnam. This represented the peak of the army’s troop deployment. Afterward, that number declined. By December 1971, only 156,800 soldiers were in Vietnam. By the end of 1972, the number had been reduced to 24,200.