Air Campaign 006 - Operation Linebacker II 1972. The B-52s Are Sent To Hanoi (2018) OCR.pdf

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C A M P A I G N

A I R

OPERATION

LINEBACKER II

1972

The B-52s are sent to Hanoi

MARSHALL L. MICHEL III

I L LU S T R AT E D B Y J I M L AU R I E R

A I R C A M PA I G N

OPERATION

LINEBACKER II

1972

The B-52s are sent to Hanoi

MARSHALL L. MICHEL III |

ILLU S TR ATED BY J IM LAUR IE R

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHRONOLOGY

ATTACKERS’ CAPABILITIES

DEFENDERS’ CAPABILITIES

CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES

THE CAMPAIGN

AFTERMATH AND ANALYSIS

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

Probably the most vital

USAF aircraft in the

Vietnam War were the

KC-135 “Young Tiger”

tankers. Here a KC-135

refuels a B-52D. (National

Museum of the USAF)

I flew these missions. I was a young captain flying F-4s out of Udorn Royal Thai Air Base,

Thailand in December 1972 when we stood down on December 17. We knew something

was up, but most of us expected that we would be going back to Hanoi again with tactical

strikes. Late that afternoon we were standing by the operations desk waiting for the schedule

to be posted when Jon Baker, one of the pilots who worked in the wing headquarters, walked

in with his eyes as big as saucers. He said, “It’s a giant f***ing BUFF

escort.” We all knew

that the United States was going all-out for the win, and we knew we were going to be a

part of history being made.

So off we went for 11 nights on an operation called

Linebacker II.

For the first four nights

we watched the B-52s get shot to pieces executing a stupid, inflexible plan that we later

learned had been made by planners at the Strategic Air Command (SAC) headquarters in

Omaha, Nebraska, planners who had never seen a surface-to-air missile. It was only the night

after Christmas that the B-52 crews were able to make their own plan, a plan that quickly

overwhelmed the North Vietnamese missile crews and fulfilled the statement that Kissinger

had made two months before: “peace is at hand.”

I knew some of the B-52 crews, and over the next few years in Officers’ Club bars met

many others, and over drinks I slowly learned the real story of how badly SAC had planned

the missions and why it happened. Thus I, and many others who were involved with the

operation, were appalled when the Office of Air Force History published a monograph,

Linebacker II: A View From the Rock,

an inaccurate and self-aggrandizing memoir written

by the Andersen B-52 wing commander, Brigadier General James R. McCarthy, and his

administrative assistant during the operation, Lieutenant Colonel George B. Allison.

The monograph exonerated the SAC staff from their egregious decisions – decisions that

even infuriated President Nixon – and it was clear that Brigadier General McCarthy was

Big Ugly Fat F***er – the B-52’s affectionate nickname

simply trying to stay in the SAC leadership’s good graces in hopes of further promotion –

which, justly, he did not receive.

When the Air Force in its wisdom sent me to Harvard in 1989, I took as my project the

task of finding out what really happened during

Linebacker II,

and I continued the project

a few years later when I was selected as the Verville Fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Air

and Space Museum. The project took six interesting years to complete and included a trip

to Hanoi funded by the Museum, several very interesting sessions with General Alexander

Haig, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s assistant, and interviews, written and

oral, with participants in the missions. The result was my second book,

The Eleven Days of

Christmas: America’s Last Vietnam Battle.

Thanks to General Haig and the participants in the operation, the book told the real

story behind the planning failures and how the U-Tapao B-52 wing commander, Brigadier

General Glenn Sullivan, went directly to the SAC commander and insisted that SAC allow

the wings to change their tactics. His intervention probably saved the operation but cost

him his career.

While

The Eleven Days

was well received, I was not completely satisfied, for two reasons.

First, although I was able to gather a good deal of information from my trip to Hanoi and

incorporate it into the book, this comprised mainly written translations from government

sources. What I really needed to describe the operation properly was a series of meetings

with a translator to interview the North Vietnamese missile crews who fought the battle.

Secondly,

The Eleven Days

dealt with operations which were very complex on both sides;

and when Walter Carroll, a friend of formidable intelligence and some military background

(as well as being a regular lunch partner at the Boston Club), mentioned to me that he had

found the book “a bit confusing,” I realized that I needed to consider that in future works.

Fortunately, in the fall of 2017 two things happened that led to the work you are about to

read. First was the exciting offer from Osprey Publishing for me to write two books about the

Linebacker

campaigns. The second was a unique conference, “Dogfight to Detente,” in San

Diego, CA. It was a meeting of Vietnam War fighter pilots, both American and Vietnamese,

and I was able to attend. There I met two younger Vietnamese pilots, Nguyen Sy Hung and

Nguyen Nam Lien, who were also historians. Both had read

The Eleven Days

and another

earlier book that they particularly liked,

Clashes: Air Combat Over North Vietnam 1965‑1972.

They were interested in collaborating on a book written from both sides about Vietnam War

air-to-air combat and invited me to come over to Vietnam and discuss it. I agreed and asked

them if, at the same time, I could meet with some of the missile crews and talk about the

Christmas bombing for my

Linebacker II

Osprey book.

That is how the book started. I spent two weeks in Hanoi and Saigon researching the

project and Mr Sy Hung provided me with one of the few English translations of the

wonderful book by Luu Trong Lan,

Christmas Bombing: Dien Bien Phu in the Air.

That book

inspired me to return to the B-52 Victory Museum in Hanoi. I had visited this museum

several times before but mainly to look at the aircraft and missiles; after reading Luu Trong

Lan’s book I realized that the most important objects in the museum were in fact the books

that were preserved in glass cases. These books described the long process the Vietnamese

missile crews went through to learn how to defeat the B-52s’ powerful electronic warfare suite

that was intended to jam the most advanced Soviet Cold War missile systems. Luu Trong Lan

described how early in the war officers from the North Vietnamese Air Defense headquarters

went south where the B-52s operated regularly and painstakingly drew images of the B-52

jamming patterns as well as learning what the B-52 tactics were, the altitudes and speeds they

flew, and any other relevant information. The B-52s had never been to Hanoi, so when these

trips were made they probably seemed almost academic, though the North Vietnamese were

able to shoot a few missiles at B-52s in Laos or in the very south of North Vietnam – missile

Air Campaign 006 - Operation Linebacker II 1972. The B-52s Are Sent To Hanoi (2018) OCR.pdf

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