Vietnam II: A War Novel Episode 3 (V2) (6 page)

THE AIR CAMPAIGN

Senior Airman Bobby Sherman

Airborne Radio Operator

Command Solo

“We will be bombing military targets across the country starting within the hour.  If you are a civilian who lives near a military station stay away.  Evacuate now.  If you are a soldier in the People’s Army desert while you can.  Your family will forgive you.”  Barber told the country of Vietnam.

We were not messing around anymore.  We were jamming their major radio and television signals and sending out our own stuff.  Every step possible was being taken to avoid civilian casualties.  There was no chance that anyone would not understand what was about to happen.

“It’s not too late to give up.  Give us our POWs and we will leave peacefully.  It’s not too late to do the right thing.”

Unfortunately, it was way too late.  Hundreds of coalition aircraft were headed for Vietnam that night and nothing could stop them now.

Captain Mason Lincoln

F-117 Stealth Fighter

BLACK ACE

Hanoi

Night

It was like something out of a dream.

We broke out of the cloud deck and there it was lit up like the sun.  Every light must have been on.  You could feel the energy coming off of it.  Hanoi was a beast.  It had an almost mythical reputation among pilots.  At one time it had the best air defense system in the world.  America lost a frightening thousand aircraft in V1 trying to break its back.

There was a pounding in my head like two Taiko drums fighting it out.  I don’t know if it was nerves or just the pressure from the altitude.  My mind was racing.  We were here.  This was really going to happen.

Much of the air defense structure that had protected Hanoi had been disassembled after the first Vietnam War.  That combined with the advancements in American weapon systems put the Vietnamese capital in a bad spot.  However there was enough of it still standing to cause us a lot of hurt.  The general said we would have a lot of casualties.

The attack group we were a part of consisted of ten F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighters protected by a three ship formation of EF-111s approaching the city from the east. 

I was in position at 0300.

H-Hour.

Without a radio call I pulled the trigger and released a laser guided bomb.

Bombs proceeded from my bay to Hanoi’s sector operations headquarters, which directed all of the PAV air defense fighter aircraft.  There was a flash and I could not get the thought that they might be using POWs as human shields.  For all I knew I just took some of our own guys, but I had to put that out of my head and stay focused.  My attack left the headquarters a burning crater.  Nothing in those building survived.

They had no idea that it was coming.

The city lit up like a Christmas tree with AAA fire.  Following the plan I cut and ran. 

The Air Coalition Commander told us that only half of us would survive this mission and I know those words were on my mind and everyone else’s.

Seeing all the AAA erupt all over the city after the first explosions made me think the general might have been right.              

Some 4000 guns pounded away trying to get a piece of us.  With the exception of the squadron commander none of us had ever been in combat before.  The first time I saw AAA, I wasn't quite sure what it was. It looked like the city was on fire. 

The AAA fire was random.  It came from all directions lighting up the sky.  Some of it came in streams which you avoided if you wanted to live.  They couldn’t see us, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get lucky.  A Golden BB, which was basically a term for a random, lucky AAA round, had taken down planes before. Avoiding the ground fire I made my way to the rally point.  On the way out of the city I hit a secondary target, a radio relay station, which was along my flight path.  The station lit up like a firecracker and collapsed from the explosion.

We flew over the city with sixty laser guided bombs between the ten of us.  We only released forty of them due to negative target identification.

Minimizing collateral damage was a priority with this war.  We had to be sure every time we pulled the trigger.

I was all nerves listening to the other Nighthawks check in with AWACs.  To my surprise and relief everyone checked in with their call sign.  I found out later that all the other 10 Nighthawks struck their targets as well.

As we regrouped on our way out of the city Hanoi’s lights went out.  They would not come on again.

What can I say about dropping participating in the first strike and dropping the first bombs in the war?

It was the greatest honor of my life.

The second Vietnam War had begun.

Lieutenant Colonel Carol Madison

U.S. Air Force Intelligence Officer

Pacific Command Operations Center

Command and control were our primary targets for the first strike.  The four fighter bases around Hanoi were our secondary targets.  We wanted to knock out their ability to conduct air operations and first establish air superiority and then air dominance.

Stealth fighters would take the first strikes against the enemy air defense network clearing the way for the fast attack fighters from the Navy and Air Force.  That would take up the first night.

The following morning B-52s and B-1s from Guam would do high altitude bombing of Vietnamese air fields.

Air superiority was everything.  Without it everything else would be in constant jeopardy.

We had planned everything so well that it was actually a little boring once things kicked off.  We had gone from planning mode to reactive mode.

We were reviewing Vietnam’s integrated air defense system.  It featured hardened, redundant and buried communications links with over 16,000 surface to air missiles and 7000 antiaircraft guns.  Estimates put the most critical PAV targets as more heavily defended than any in Eastern Europe during the worst days of the Cold War.

The plan was to use a large force employment with over 80 strike aircraft to paralyze Vietnam strategically in the opening minutes of the war with undue civilian casualties or collateral damage.

The ultimate goal was the effective neutralization of Vietnam’s command and control within 24 hours of the beginning of combat operations.

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Dallas

Aircraft Commander

EF-111 Ravens

The crew was working hard.  The two electronic warfare guys in back were getting all their gear ready to go.  The copilot was in the seat beside me eating a Snickers bar while looking for enemy fighters or ground fire.

Two was in formation with me and we were using terrain following radar to cross from Thailand into Vietnam.  Behind the two of us were twenty two F-15E Strike Eagles.  They were all armed to the teeth ready to strike every airfield in Old South Vietnam.

“Party in five,” I called out over the common letting everyone know to get ready.

We were five minutes from the border.  Two and I were going clear a path for the F-15s to get to their objectives.  High value assets were the Eagle’s targets tonight and the surface to air sites that would try to kill them were ours.

Lieutenant Lance Shepard

F/A-18 Hornet Naval Aviator

Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton, began life as a French prison during the colonial era called the Maison Centrale.  Built to hold Vietnamese prisoners, particularly political prisoners pushing for Vietnamese independence, the Hanoi Hilton had been used from the beginning for torture and abuse.  Many future communists’ leaders spent time in the French run prison during the 1940’s.  The prison saw continued to see use throughout the North Vietnamese eras, most of the time overcrowded under both administrations.  It was used to house American POWs during V1 and had become a punchline for inhumane treatment.  Once President Nixon was able to get our guys out of there, the Vietnamese continued to use the prison after the war up until 1985 when the last prisoner was released.

The Hanoi Hilton was at the top of the targeting list on Night One.  It was not a strategic or tactical target.  It held no military value.  It was symbolic though.  Blowing up that complex was all about hearts and minds and not the Vietnamese.  This was for the hearts and minds of the American public.

Also I couldn’t prove it, but I suspected this one was personal.  And I mean not just for the President.

There were no prisoners there.  Satellites and U-2 overflies showed that.  In fact the building was in ruins.  Intel had it that the Vietnamese were tearing it down in the next couple of years and in the ultimate irony, building an actual hotel on the site.  We were going to save them the trouble.  It was more in ruins when we got through with it.

“Batman Flight Box Three,” The formation leader Pitt called out.

“Two,” I responded.

Pitt dropped an MK-80 unguided iron bomb into what was left of the structure.  Seconds later I did the same.

What had been there was gone.  I was certain we cratered it.  The satellites would have to give us the good news.  We had to get out of there.  Pitt and I were out of bombs and missiles and running on empty.

There was nothing left of that shithole except debris and bad memories.

LCDR Frank Day

USS Louisville

Ohio Class Submarine

When the extension order came over the radio we all knew we could be in for a long cruise.  There was no need to resupply.  The reactor had twenty years of nuclear fuel in it and the air processors could produce oxygen forever.  The Louisville was only limited by her crew and we had an extra six months of food on board so we could go for a year without rationing.

Of course food and oxygen aren’t the only things in life.  The first thing the crew did was to dump out all of the butt cans.  Using razors men worked double shifts to cut open the remnants of every cigarette smoked since the beginning of the cruise and retrieve whatever tobacco was left inside.  The tobacco was then rerolled and new cigarettes were produced.  These were then rationed out to the smokers, the majority of the crew, giving them a few extra smokes.

All this was happening while the USS Louisville made naval history by conducting an 8000 mile submerged high speed transit of the Pacific Ocean in order to position the boat within firing range of the Vietnamese capital.

Tomahawk missiles can be launched from a Los Angeles class submarine via her standard 21-inch torpedo tube.

“Fire!  Fire!  Fire!”

With the press of a button the missile was shot out of the torpedo tube.  Once it was clear of the submarine, a 7-second burst from its rocket boost motor blasted it out of the water.   After it got airborne, its turbojet engine starts up, its wings spread, and then it would nose over to hug the surface at about 500 miles (800 km) per hour toward its target.

We would not know immediately if the missile hit the intended targets.  The after action reports in the coming days and weeks would let us know if our mission was a success.  Until then all we could do was silently move the boat to a new position and await further orders.

Most of the submarines that were sent to Vietnam were already at sea and diverted from previously scheduled deployments.  In some cases, these boats had to extend their time at sea by as much as three months.  For example the USS Louisville departed Pearl Harbor in late July 1991 for what was expected to be a six-month deployment.  Ordered into the Gulf of Tonkin prior to the conflict as part of the USS Kennedy strike group, Louisville had the distinction of not only firing the first submarine launched Tomahawk missiles in Operation Jungle Storm, but also the first eve
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submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missile ever fired in wartime.  By the time we got back home to Hawaii, we had been gone for nine months.

The crew responded superbly when they were called on to go to war.

At the time, we had no idea what to expect.  We did not know we’d be the first submarine to launch a Tomahawk.  We just knew we had to execute our mission.  The crew reacted magnificently and morale was high.  There were a lot of U.S. forces involved.  A lot of boat crews would have loved to be in our situation.  I’m glad to know the USS Louisville was able to support the effort to liberate our POWs.

Everyone was always upbeat and positive.  The energy was high because everyone knew how important our mission was.  This was not unique to the Louisville.  It’s nothing that any submarine couldn’t have done we just happened to be out there at the time. It’s what we’ve all trained for and worked up to, and it was exciting to do it all for real.  We were ready. We were very proud to have been part of the operation.

Major Leonard Armstrong

KC-135 Aircraft Commander

Kadena Air Force Base, Okinawa

“LAUNCH THE FLEET!”  The wing commander called out over the base big voice system.  You could hear that all the way in downtown Okinawa. 

So much for the element of surprise.

So another day.  Another airplane.

The maintenance guys were saying that we may have sent 00314, the tail we flew into the storm, to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona.  There it would find a new life being cannibalized.  They would pick every useable part off of it for repairing other tankers, building simulators and selling to commercial carriers.  That had turned out to be an expensive mission.

So now things had started and we were part of the main assault force.  The way this is going down is the tankers are taking off first.  There will be eight for the first package.  The fleet can withstand a two ship degrade.  If we don’t get at least six tankers then the package either has to be adjusted or cancelled.

If the tankers come through in the green then the next to be launched is the AWACS.  She gets off the ground and her crew gets her systems up.  If they are in the red then the spare AWACs is launched.  If neither of the AWACs are in the green then the package is adjusted or cancelled.

Once both the Tankers and the AWACS are in the green then the fighters are launched.

The tankers get to their orbits and the fighters refuel first because of their tiny tanks and then the big AWACs get their gas.  Then the fights on.

God help the PAVs.