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Operation Rolling Thunder

The North Vietnamese survived eight years of almost constant bombing. What is more remarkable, they did so against the most modern aircraft and the best-trained pilots in the world. During those eight years, a million tons of bombs, more than had been dropped on Europe in all of World War II, rained down on a country no bigger than the state of Missouri.

Different kinds of bombs were designed for different targets. They were delivered by aircraft built especially for various missions, whether it was blowing up a bridge or destroying a line of trucks. Looking back, the U.S. air raids on North Vietnam proved both the strong and weak points of using aircraft in a modern war.

President Lyndon Johnson started the bombing in 1964 for several reasons. The enemy had attacked U.S. bases in South Vietnam, killing American soldiers. They also chased U.S. warships in the South China Sea. The President decided to bomb the North to punish them for supporting the Viet Cong in the South and for waging war against South Vietnam. Once the bombing started, it escalated, or increased. Each time U.S. planes hammered the North, the Viet Cong retaliated by attacking Americans or by setting off powerful bombs on bases and in the cities that killed or injured soldiers and civilians. By 1965, the bombing of North Vietnam was constant. It was given a name, "Operation Rolling Thunder."

Anyone who has ever been on the ground in a bombing raid will tell you that rolling thunder is a good description. Even though people can hide in protected areas, there is little they can do as they hear and feel the bombs move toward them. The explosions hit faster than heartbeats and shake the ground violently.

After a raid, people wander around with terrible headaches. They cannot focus their eyes, and they may be temporarily or permanently deafened from the blasts. They often bleed from the nose, mouth, or ears. A person can be in a sheltered place and still be hurt badly by the bombs' shock waves, or concussions. Some bombs create a powerful concussion. Others, such as phosphorus or napalm, generate heat fierce enough to melt metal. Napalm sticks to the skin as it burns, causing horrible, painful injuries. Cluster bombs open in midair, spilling hundreds of smaller bombs over a wide area. Other kinds of explosives with delayed fuses were also used. Landing harmlessly on the ground, these bombs blow up hours or even days after an air raid.

President Johnson and his advisers wanted the bombing to break the will of the North Vietnamese. Instead, it did just the opposite. People came together determined to fight and survive. Those too old or too young to join the army eagerly learned how to fire antiaircraft guns and how to shoot SAM (surface-to-air) missiles at attacking planes. The country became completely mobilized to fight a long battle.

In addition to guns and missiles on the ground, the North had MiG jet fighters. These Russian-made jets, first seen during the Korean War, were slower and lighter than most U.S. aircraft. The enemy pilots, although well trained, were outnumbered. For every U.S. plane shot down by a MiG, about seven MiGs were lost. Dogfights - aerial combat between jets - took place throughout 1966. Early in 1967, the North Vietnamese lost seven planes in a single day. Later in the year, President Johnson permitted U.S. aircraft to attack MiG bases. Those attacks, combined with 137 total MiG losses in dogfights, made enemy aircraft less of a f$ hazard than ground fire.

The U.S. was also constantly losing planes and pilots. Yet whenever a multimillion-dollar craft was shot down, it could be quickly replaced. These airplanes were truly modern wonders. They could travel at speeds in excess of 1,000 miles an hour and had after-burners that gave them sudden boosts of power to outrun the enemy. Their electronic equipment was a marvel. The pilots who flew them had hundreds of hours of training and were older and more experienced than were American ground forces.

The pilots often played deadly electronic warfare with the North Vietnamese. The enemy had thousands of SAM missiles pointed at the skies. Whenever their radar "locked" on a U.S. plane, the missiles were fired. Once in the air, they were kept on course by a radio transmitter. A missile chased the aircraft until it either hit the plane or lost it and ran out of fuel. At first, American pilots flew in low over the targets so SAM radar had no time to lock onto their planes. In response, the enemy increased its antiaircraft fire, which hit many low-flying U.S. planes.

Returning to higher altitudes to escape ground fire, the Americans used a radar-jamming trick first tried in World War II. They dropped thousands of small bits of aluminum foil to fool the SAM radar. They also used a new missile that turned the tables on the surface-to-air missiles. Flying into North Vietnam, a U.S. plane picked up SAM radar beams with special electronic gear that pinpointed its base. The pilot fired a small missile that "rode" the radar beam back down to the SAM base, blowing up the missile and its radar. The enemy, in turn, began to play tricks with its radar that sometimes fooled the pilot armed with the anti-SAM missiles.

A skilled pilot had a good chance of dodging a SAM. Once his plane was targeted by SAM radar, warning lights went off in his cockpit. The pilot knew the missile was aiming for him. At times he could see it clearly on a sunny day. One pilot recalled that some of the later SAMs were "the size of telephone poles." As the missile neared, the pilot made a sudden, sharp turn or roll with his plane. The SAM went past him and could not turn around. SAMs were often fired in groups, however, so that if a pilot dodged one missile he would be hit by a SAM fired a few seconds later.

Although in times of danger a pilot could feel very alone in the sky, many other planes and pilots were in the air to assist him. Some flew special planes equipped with radar and jamming devices. These unarmed planes could warn jets on bombing runs of missiles and of enemy planes heading toward them. Huge tankers could be called in to refuel aircraft in the air. Refueling often took place before and after a raid, because planes carried little fuel in order to pack in more bombs. Several rescue planes and helicopters also waited off North Vietnamese shores. These craft could move in quickly to look for - and possibly rescue - pilots who were shot down. Even today, the list of more than 2,400 men missing in action from the war shows that many pilots were lost over South Vietnam and Laos.

Helicopters turned out to be the backbone of aerial operations in South Vietnam. The most common helicopter was the Bell UH or Huey. Capable of carrying up to 14 men (or serving as an ambulance, a gunship, or a command craft), the turbine-powered helicopter was the first vehicle to set down in a combat landing zone. Large troop carriers, such as the buslike Chinooks, were able to carry artillery in slings beneath them. Other commonly used helipcopters were the cargo-hauling Tarhe Sky Crane and the Bell Kiowa observation chopper. Tiny, unarmed, two-man observation or "bubble" helicopters were used to spot enemy positions and to call in artillery or air strikes.

Two propeller-driven planes also played major roles in South Vietnam. One was the C-47, a cargo plane used in World War II. It was equipped with machine guns fired out of the plane's side door and windows. The plane was soon nicknamed "Puff the Magic Dragon" or "Spooky" by the troops because it could pour out 6,000 red tracer bullets a minute. At that rate, in 60 seconds it could riddle every square foot of an area the size of a football field. The amount of firepower it delivered was simply unbelievable. Seen at night, the bullets looked like a waterfall of red fire pouring down on an enemy position.

The other propeller plane was the A-1 Skyraider, a fighter-bomber that carried large quantities of bombs, rockets, and cannon shells. It flew much slower than a jet and for that reason was very accurate in hitting enemy ground positions. It could stay in the air for a long time and could move back and forth over a target without taking miles to turn around. Its engines thumped rhythmically, unlike the highpitched scream of the jets. A 9th Infantry Division soldier remembers the difference between a jet and a Skyraider. "The first time I heard a Skyraider, I thought it was a Chevrolet."

Two more modern planes were enlisted in the air war - the F-4 Phantom and the B-52 Stratofortress bomber. The Phantom was used by Air Force, Marine, and Navy flyers for raids over North and South Vietnam and later over Cambodia and Laos. The plane had one pilot and a second flyer who sat directly behind him to run the radar. Fast, heavy, and large, these planes could be seen over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, streaking across the Delta, or diving toward a North Vietnamese bridge. They were often radar-directed, which meant that bad weather could not prevent them from finding their targets.

In contrast to the Phantoms, which attacked high or low, B-52 Stratofortress bombers flew miles above a target. They hit carefully selected areas, sometimes as close as one-quarter mile from friendly forces. B-52s were occasionally shot down by SAM missiles over Vietnam, which meant that a crew of six had to survive a crash and then probable capture. These awkward but reliable bombers at first flew out of Pacific island bases. As the war continued and the bombing escalated, most B-52s were moved to Thailand, only a few hours from any possible target. Designed originally to carry nuclear weapons, these planes dropped non-nuclear bombs on South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia for nearly eight years.

Vietnam was truly an air war in many ways. Soldiers just arriving in the country were flown to assignments in transport planes, which were used everywhere. The 173rd Airborne Division jumped from these aircraft in 1967 during Operation Junction City. Soldiers going to or returning from R and R leave used transport planes as if they were commercial shuttle buses. Marines, surrounded in Khe Sanh in the highlands by thousands of North Vietnamese Army soldiers, got supplies and ammunition from the planes. While these slow, propeller-driven aircraft were not fancy, they could shrug off ground fire and land safely on rough airfields.

Anyone seeing how many aircraft and bombs the Americans brought with them had good reason to think the war would be over soon. Yet the North Vietnamese continued to fight. To Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the failure of the bombing raids was an ominous sign for the U.S. and its allies.

David K. Wright. Air War over Vietnam. War in Vietnam. Regensteiner Publishing Enterprises, Inc., Chicago. 1989.

100 Missions North A Fighter Pilot's Story of the Vietnam War. Bell. The author recounts the Vietnam sorties that he and his fellow USAF pilots flew in F-105 Thunderchiefs - the famous "Thud" - at a time when these pilots faced a 50 percent loss rate. How could they face these odds? You'll learn that men sustained by faith in each other and joined by the bonds of combat can overcome anxiety, fear, and even terror to achieve common goals.

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