Air War Vietnam

By Martin W Bowman

"Showcasing specific aircraft and highlighting significant missions illuminates the skills and emotions of the men who flew the machines. Bowman does an excellent job recounting stories about battles in the air and decision-making on the ground." — The VVA Veteran

Martin Bowman’s revealing narrative of the aerial conflict in South-East Asia, 1965-1972, which had its beginnings in 1 November 1955, engulfed Viêtnam, Laos, and Cambodia and only ended with the fall of Sàigòn on 30 April 1975 has resulted from decades of painstaking fact-finding as well as detailed correspondence with surviving aircrew incorporating a wealth of first-hand accounts, some never told before, supported by dozens of rare and unusual photographs. Together they describe in adrenalin-pumping accuracy the furious aerial battles of a long suffering and bitter war in South-East Asia and in particular the frontline action in the skies over Vietnam that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

They too will find a new and useful perspective on a conflict that cost the Americans 58,022 dead and brought the USA worldwide condemnation for its role in Southeast Asia. Nearly 2,500 Americans remained ‘missing’.

This work serves as a tribute to the courageous pilots who flew the F-104 Starfighter in the ‘Widowmakers’ war and B-52 bomber crews on ‘Arc Light’ ‘Linebacker II’ strikes and the eleven days of Christmas which ultimately ended the aerial campaign against North Viêtnam. And as well, strike aircraft such as the USAF F-4 Phantom and the F-105 ‘Thud’ and the US Navy carrier-borne jet and propeller-driven strike aircraft and the Americans’ sworn enemy, the North Việtnamese MiG fighters, feature large, from ‘Rolling Thunder’ onwards. Equally, the Hueys and Chinooks and other notable work horses that participated on combat assaults or Ash & Trash missions and transports like the C-130 ‘Herky-Bird’, C-123 Provider, Caribou and Viêtnamese C-47 - the ‘Haulers On Call’ - that performed sterling service during the gruelling air campaign are not forgotten either.

Here, at first hand, are their stories which also include some of the less publicised American forces like the pilots and crewmen who flew the Bird Dogs and all manner of helicopters as well as the largely forgotten Australian and New Zealand Air Force units and the Anzac Battalions whose valuable contributions are too often overlooked. So too is the cost in human misery, death and destruction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Sep 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781526746283

Martin W Bowman

Martin Bowman is one of Britain's leading aviation authors and has written a great deal of books focussing on aspects of Second World War aviation history. He lives in Norwich in Norfolk. He is the author of many Pen and Sword Aviation titles, including all releases in the exhaustive Air War D-Day and Air War Market Garden series.

Book preview

Chapter 1

‘Rolling Thunder’

The rules of engagement were changed frequently to fit President Johnson’s political strategies. Notwithstanding the reasoning behind them, they seemed designed to impede our success. We had them written on the bulletin board: ‘Don’t bomb or attack active military airfields, harbours or port facilities, coastal shipping, surface to air missile sites, MiGs – unless you are attacked first and agricultural dams or dykes’. There was one more, the one that irked everyone the most: ‘Thou shall not bomb a village, even if they’re shooting at you from it.’

Colonel George Laven,

615th Tactical Fighter Squadron.

The name ‘Việtnam’ means ‘The Far-South’ and derives from a time in the country’s early history when for almost a thousand years it was ruled by China and was marked by severe oppression and extremely bitter resistance. The French, who had conquered Indo-China in 1883 and been thrown out by the Japanese in the Second World War, attempted to regain their former position in 1945, but the end of that year found them under attack by Hồ Chi Minh’s revolutionary forces known as the Việt Minh (‘League for the Independence of Việtnam). The war that followed was to cost a million lives and ended in 1954 with a pitched battle at Điện Biên Phú, where the Việt Minh man-handled their 75mm and 105mm artillery to heights overlooking the French positions, pounding them into submission and out of Indo-China. Việtnam split into two countries in July 1954 using the 17th Parallel to form the Republic of South Việtnam and the Communist North. In 1955 Ngô Đình Diệm deposed the head of state Bảo Đại in a fraudulent referendum and declared himself resident of the newly proclaimed Republic of Việtnam. He then refused to take part in the elections, claiming that the Communist north would engage in election fraud and that as a result they would win because they had more people. After the election deadline passed, the military commanders in the North began preparing an invasion of the South. The Communist Việt Minh forces led by General Võ Nguyên Giáp, planned to take over control of the South using a new Communist guerrilla force called the National Liberation Front for the Liberation of South Việtnam (NFLSV), more familiarly known as the Việt Công. The VC campaign increased in intensity in 1957 after the Communists decided that a new revolutionary strategy was needed to overthrow the US-backed Sàigòn regime.

Finally, in 1960, Prime Minister Diệm appealed to the United States for help. In 1961 Hồ Chi Minh openly declared his country’s support for the struggle to ‘liberate the South’. Faced with the prospect of this critical area falling under Communist control, the US first sent in a small number of advisers for the South Việtnamese army (ARVN). On 18 October 1961 four McDonnell RF-101A Voodoos of the 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing arrived at Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base, Sàigòn to become the first USAF unit to operate from Việtnam.¹ On 26 December, the first USAF bombing mission of the Việtnam War was flown by two T-28s of the ‘Farm Gate’ Detachment – 4400th Combat Crew Training Squadron at Tân Sơn Nhứt – in support of two Việtnamese AD-6 Skyraiders and attacked Việt Công facilities north of Sàigòn. By early 1964 the South Việtnamese had a reconnaissance squadron of their own that flew T-28s from the base.

Although intended as a bomber and never before deployed by the USAF to a combat zone, the first version of the Martin B-57 to be deployed to South Việtnam, on 15 April 1963, was the RB-57E all-weather high-altitude strategic reconnaissance aircraft which had been developed under Project ‘Patricia Lynn’ at General Dynamics to meet the urgent need for more reconnaissance capability, especially at night.² On 7 May two RB-57Es flew the first infrared reconnaissance mission to identify Việt Công locations in South Việtnam and the results were sensational. The night-time imagery showed VC training and base camps; small, hidden factories and storage dumps that RF-101 Voodoo crews had flown over during the day and had been unable to locate from the air. The existing RF-101s in 1963 could only photograph a few kilometres (they had to fly very low) per flight with their cameras. The RB-57Es could image the whole border with Cambodia in 2½ flights at 16,000 to 17,000ft with superior results.³ In October 1966 the RB-57Es were transferred to Phan Rang where they supported operations in the ‘Iron Triangle’ (Hảiphòng, Hànôi and Thành Hóa) along with Australianbuilt Canberra B-20s of No.2 Squadron RAAF.⁴ ‘Patricia Lynn’ crews flew both night and day missions over South Việtnam, Laos, Cambodia and areas of North Việtnam until mid-1971, when the four surviving aircraft returned to the United States.

On 2 August 1964, against the background of open warfare in Laos and increasing infiltration across the North/South Việtnamese border, three North Việtnamese torpedo boats attacked the destroyer USS Maddox in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. The destroyer was cruising along a patrol line in the northern region of the Gulf in order to gather intelligence as part of Operation ‘Plan 34A’. This was a covert campaign that started in February 1964 and it was intended to deter the North Việtnamese from infiltrating the South. A flight of four F-8E Crusaders led by 41-year-old Commander James Bond Stockdale of VF-51 ‘Screaming Eagles’ from the Ticonderoga attacked the torpedo boats with their unguided Zuni rockets and 20mm cannon. None of the rockets found their targets but hits were scored on the torpedo boats by 20mm cannon fire.

During the night of 4/5 August Maddox, now reinforced by USS Turner Joy, returned to its station off the North Việtnamese coast to listen for radio traffic and monitor Communist naval activity. Shortly after a covert South Việtnamese attack on a coastal radar station near Cửa Rim, the two destroyers tracked on radar what they took to be enemy torpedo boats. Debate still rages whether there really was any North Việtnamese boats in the vicinity of the two destroyers. Apparently no attack developed and no boats were seen by the pilots of the aircraft launched to provide air cover. In the early 1990s James Stockdale recounted that he ‘had the best seat in the house to watch that event and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets – there were no PT boats there. … There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.’ However, the incident was enough to force President Johnson into ordering Operation ‘Pierce Arrow’, a limited retaliatory raid on military facilities in North Việtnam. When Stockdale was awoken in the early morning and was told he was to lead these attacks he responded: ‘Retaliation for what?’ Later, while a prisoner of war, he was concerned that he would be forced to reveal this secret about the Việtnam War.

On 10 August the US Congress passed what came to be known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which was as close as the US ever came to declaring war on North Việtnam but which actually fell far short of that. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident also resulted in a major increase in US air strength in the Southeast Asia theatre and saw US involvement change from an advisory role to a more operational role, even though US aircraft and airmen had been participating in operations ever since they first arrived in the region.

Senior USAF commanders believed that the use of tactical fighterbombers would be sufficient to keep the Communists in check but General William C. Westmoreland, Commander, US Military Assistance Command Việtnam (ComUSMACV) was unhappy with the air support his ground forces were getting and difficult objectives such as enemy base camps, extensive underground networks and supply dumps had to be taken by ground troops at some cost. Westmoreland had tried and failed to destroy the guerrilla strongholds in the jungles of South Việtnam using large numbers of tactical fighter-bombers in-theatre. A ‘big stick’ was needed and only a force of B-52 nuclear bombers carrying conventional 750lb and 1,000lb ‘iron bombs’ in support of the ground forces could provide it. Using the B-52s in a strategic role would certainly be considered an escalation of the war, but on 1 November 1964 the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) verbally recommended to Secretary of Defence Robert S. McNamara that within sixty to seventy-two hours the air force commence the systematic bombing of ninety-four ‘vital centres’ in Hànôi and Hảiphòng that would form the basis of a twelve-week sustained air offensive. But McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, fearful that widening the conflict would bring Communist China into the war as in Korea, rejected the scenario and advised a policy of restraint so President Johnson decided not to launch the air strikes. Instead he opted for a much more restrained and limited air campaign called ‘Barrel Roll’.

In February 1965 the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) had begun attacks on US Army installations at Pleiku and Quý Nhơn. The Việt Công stepped up its guerrilla war and the first American casualties in Việtnam occurred when the VC attacked US installations in the South. As part of a larger build-up, in 1965 the United States began expanding the number of F-100 ‘Super Sabre’ squadrons in Southeast Asia with a third of its 600 aircraft made up of F-100D/F tactical fighters. First combat for the F-100 was a 9 June 1964 strike on Pathet Lao forces in Laos mounted from Đà Nẵng by the 35th Tactical Fighter Wing under Colonel George Laven in the 615th Tactical Fighter Squadron, after a last-minute change in the ordnance he was instructed to carry. Laven, who had not been scheduled to fly the mission and had been slotted-in at the last minute, complained later that he felt that ‘his squadron commander was ‘LBJ’ (President Lyndon B. Johnson) and his operations officer, Secretary of Defence Robert S. McNamara.’

Developed as an air-to-air fighter with enormous effort, the F-100 was a formidable adversary in an air-to-air fight. As one ‘Hun’ pilot once said, ‘Everybody wanted to get a MiG. But it was rapidly becoming clear that our F-100 was a valuable tool to support friendly troops on the ground.’

After a few missions into North Việtnam in 1965, F-100s spent the remainder of the war south of the 17th Parallel and would-be air aces were switched to hauling napalm, bombs and rockets on air-to-ground missions. The ‘Hun’ was extremely accurate when delivering bombs to enemy forces on the ground, but was never a particularly good strafing platform. Close air support missions flown by F-100C and F-100D models were perilous. The 510th Tactical Fighter Squadron alone lost eight aircraft in three months.

The engine was not powerful enough to evade anti-aircraft artillery nor for the climb manoeuvres required to deliver marking rockets. Pilots frequently were forced to boost their speed by using afterburners. Coupled with a very high use rate of eighty hours a month, this resulted in high maintenance and out-of-commission rates. Combat operations for the F-100 in Southeast Asia came to a close on 31 July 1971, by which time the versatile F-4 had completely replaced the ‘Hun’ in the close air support role.

Various aircraft flew aerial surveillance of South Việtnam’s coastal waters. On 17 December 1964 A-1H Skyraiders, escorted by F-4B Phantoms and followed by RF-8A photo reconnaissance aircraft from Ranger, conducted the Navy’s first armed reconnaissance mission over eastern Laos. In this joint Navy/Air Force programme, named ‘Barrel Roll’, American aircraft flew over likely infiltration routes and attacked Communist supply vehicles or other targets of opportunity. If none were sighted, the flight was authorised to strike preselected storage buildings, anti-aircraft emplacements, and related facilities of a military nature. The military objective, however, was considered secondary to the political one of sending Hànôi a message of US determination to prevail in Southeast Asia.

For a brief time in 1965 A-l Skyraiders operating from carriers at ‘Dixie’ Station covered the central Việtnam coast. This mission was shared and then taken over by a patrol squadron equipped with the advanced P-3 Orion aircraft at Sangley Point in the Philippines. Throughout this period, five to seven P-2 Neptunes stationed at Tân Sơn Nhứt ranged up and down the South Việtnamese littoral along designated patrol tracks. In addition, from May 1965 to April 1967, Martin P-5 Marlin seaplanes operated from two seaplane tenders, periodically anchored at Côn Sơn and Cham Islands and at Cam Ranh Bay.

To compensate for withdrawal of the older seaplanes in early 1967, the Navy stationed a squadron of twelve P-2s ashore at Cam Ranh Bay and a detachment of P-3s at U-Tapao in Thailand. The P-3s patrolled the Gulf of Siam. On an intermittent basis, US Army Cessna O-1 Bird Dog liaison and observation aircraft and South Việtnamese Douglas C-47s watched over several critical coastal sectors.

Except for the twenty-three O-1 Bird Dogs of the 19th Tactical Air Support Squadron (TASS), the Air Force had owned none since first seeing combat in the Korean War. The Army gave the Air Force 106 of them and made them ready for combat. They were fitted with communication and navigation equipment, bomb shackles, adapters for launching rockets and anti-ground loop gear. The main weapons were four wing-mounted 2.75-inch-diameter rockets that shot out a bright white phosphorous smoke cloud to clearly mark enemy targets for bomb-laden jets arriving on scene. The rockets had explosive power similar to a 105mm howitzer shell and the phosphorus would stick to whatever it contacted, including bodies, which could be severely burned. The Air Force had asked the Army to fit the Bird Dogs with constant-speed propellers, but the engines to handle these propellers were not available and the propellers could not be installed on the existing engines. Lightweight and able to turn on a dime, the Bird Dog proved ideal for front-line service. Pilots joked about wearing it on their backs instead of controlling it.

Flying slow, unarmed, single-engine FAC (Forward Air Control) aircraft such as the Bird Dog over VC-infested areas was dangerous. Major William W. McAllister had distinguished himself on 9/10 March 1965 when, despite intense ground fire and with complete disregard for his own safety, he sought out targets for A-1Es near Quý Nhơn AFB, at times taking on the VC with just an M16 automatic rifle. ‘Mac’s actions enabled two American casualties to be evacuated. Later that night, he returned to assist US positions in darkness and under extremely bad weather conditions in mountainous terrain. His actions earned him the AFC. A few weeks later, ‘Mac’ was killed when his O-1F stalled on take-off from Phú Cát, just north of Quý Nhơn.

Because of the loss of the two aircraft and the discovery of troops and gun emplacements, F-4 Phantoms (call sign ‘Oxwood 95’) and A-IE Skyraiders were called in and the ensuing battle raged for about five hours. Next day, a search and rescue team flew to the crash site of David Holmes’ O-IE and found his plane empty. URC-10 emergency radio signals were heard four times in the next six days but it was thought that the signals were initiated by the enemy as voice contact was never made. Holmes, Nash and McElroy all had URC-10 radios. The fates of all three are unknown. None of the 600 Americans missing in Laos have ever been released.

A FAC needed a fighter pilot’s mentality but was obliged to fly slow and low in such unarmed and vulnerable aircraft as the 105 mph O-1 Bird Dog and the Cessna O-2. These two types of aircraft were used in the ‘secret war’ in Laos as part of the ‘Steve Canyon’ programme, a highly classified Forward Air Control operation covering the country’s military regions. US military actions inside Laos were severely restricted during the Việtnam War because the country had been declared neutral by the Geneva Accords. The non-Communist forces in Laos, however, had a critical need for military support in order to defend territory used by Lao and North Việtnamese Communist forces. The US, in conjunction with non-Communist forces in Laos, devised a system whereby US military personnel could be ‘in the black’ or ‘sheep dipped’ (clandestine vernacular for mustered out of the military to perform military duties as a civilian), to operate in Laos under supervision of the US Ambassador to Laos.

‘Raven’ was the radio call-sign which identified the flyers of the ‘Steve Canyon’ programme. Men recruited for the programme were rated Air Force officers with at least six months experience in Việtnam. They tended to be the very best of pilots, but by definition this meant that they were also mavericks and considered a bit wild by the mainstream military establishment.

The ‘Ravens’ came under the formal command of CINPAC and the 7/13th AF 56th Special Operations Wing at Nakhon Phanom, but their pay records were maintained at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base (RTAFB) with Detachment 1. Officially, they were on loan to the US Air Attaché at Vientiane. Unofficially, they were sent to outposts like Lòng Tiếng Laotian military base in Xaisomboun Province (Military Region II) where their field commanders were the CIA, the Meo Generals and the US Ambassador. Once on duty, they flew FAC missions which controlled all US air strikes over Laos.

All tactical strike aircraft had to be under the control of a FAC who was familiar with the locale, the populous, and the tactical situation. The FAC would find the target, order up US fighter-bombers from an airborne command and control centre, mark the target accurately with white phosphorus (‘Willy Pete’) rockets, and control the operation throughout the time the planes remained on station. After the fighters had departed, the FAC stayed over the target to make a bomb-damage assessment (BDA).

The FAC also had to ensure that there were no attacks on civilians, a complex problem in a war where there were no front lines and any hamlet could suddenly become part of the combat zone. ‘Ravens’ were hopelessly overworked by the war. The need for secrecy kept their numbers low (never more than twenty-two at one time) and the critical need of the Meo sometimes demanded each pilot fly ten-and twelve-hour days. Some ‘Ravens’ completed a tour of approximately six months with a total of over 500 combat missions and they were continually peppered with ground fire.

At about 1300 hours on 15 March 1966, a USAF O-IE Bird Dog, piloted by David Holmes, was shot down on the east side of the Se Nam Kok River valley eleven miles north-west of Tchepone, Laos. There was a large number of NVA in the area maintaining a vehicle park along the Hồ Chí Minh Trail, as well as six gun emplacements. Another O-IE, call sign ‘Hound Dog 50’, was dispatched immediately. He observed Holmes, apparently unconscious, sitting in the cockpit of his Bird Dog. At about 1435 hours, ‘Hound Dog 50’ also observed an OV-1A Mohawk flown by Major Glenn McElroy and Captain Mike Nash of the 20th Aviation Detachment, US Army on a ‘Tiger Hound’ photo run along Route 91 on the west side of the Se Nam Kok River valley. The OV-1A was hit by AAA fire and crashed. One parachute was seen and it is believed that it was Nash, because the pilot ejected from the right side of the damaged aircraft.

On 24 February 1967, Captain Hilliard Wilbanks, an O-1 pilot and veteran of 487 combat missions, deliberately drew intense VC fire to divert attention from an outnumbered Ranger battalion and made strafing runs at 100ft armed only with an M16 rifle before being shot down. Wilbanks was picked up by a rescue helicopter but died of his wounds en route to hospital. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor to go with his DFC and seventeen air medals.

During Operation ‘Junction City’ from 22 February to 18 April 1967 Bird Dogs proved invaluable. On three occasions the enemy chose to stand and fight, and three times the combination of air strikes and artillery repulsed him. Just after midnight on 20 March a 1,000-man Việt Công regiment opened up a mortar attack against a US company of 160 men guarding an artillery fire support base five miles north of Lai Khê. The tanks and armoured personnel carriers were formed in a circle with their guns pointed outward; and from the hatch of a carrier, the commander radioed for a flare ship and armed helicopters. Guns from the armoured vehicles and artillery broke the enemy’s first assault, driving them back into a nearby rubber plantation. The fighting remained heavy, and at two in the morning, the commander called for air support. An O-1E from Lai Khê appeared within five minutes and two F-100s were quickly scrambled from the alert pad at Biên Hòa. When the enemy attacked the second time, the ground commander played his tanks’ searchlights on the soldiers to point out the target to the FAC. The two Super Sabres caught the Việt Công in the open with napalm and CBUs. They again withdrew into the plantation and began directing heavy fire against the perimeter and the attacking planes. Four more flights arrived at intervals, strafing and bombing the enemy until the battle subsided. At daybreak, 227 enemy bodies were strewn around the perimeter, while three US soldiers and the O-1E had been shot down by automatic weapons fire. Major P.T. Jones survived.

During the five-hour battle, seventeen F-100s and two F-4s were involved, flareships worked through the night, and three FAC sorties were flown. On the following day, a spectacular battle erupted near Suối Tre, a cluster of huts nineteen miles north of Tây Ninh, at a US fire support base carved out two days earlier to support the second phase of ‘Junction City’. Twenty-five hundred Việt Công soldiers opened up a mortar attack on the base and its 450 men at 0630 on the morning of the 21st. Then they attacked. The seventeen artillery pieces slowed down but did not stop the enemy, who broke through the south-eastern side of the perimeter. An O-1G Bird Dog piloted by First Lieutenant Walter Henry Forbes with Captain Tonie Lee England arrived from Dầu Tiếng at 0700. Within minutes he was directing a flight of Northrop F-5C Freedom Fighters or ‘Skoshi’ (little) ‘Tigers’ that dropped bombs and napalm on the tree line opposite the perimeter.⁵ When the F-5Cs were finished, Forbes and England came down to estimate the results. As it descended, the Bird Dog flew into a hail of machine gun bullets, its left wing disintegrated and the plane plummeted to the ground, killing both the pilot and his passenger.

When an overwhelming enemy artillery and rocket attack damaged several parked aircraft at Đông Hà, the Marines’ 220th Reconnaissance Company’s headquarters moved south to Phû Bái. Bird Dog crews still flew up north, however, with an average of three O-1s operating out of Đông Hà during the day and one overnight. On missions over North Việtnam to hunt for artillery or search for downed aircrews, the ‘Catkillers’ as they were nicknamed flew in pairs. One Bird Dog would stay low, sometimes just 300ft above the jungle treetops. The other would fly at an altitude of 2,000 to 5,000ft and keep the lower plane in sight in case it went down. If a Marine unit was hit at night or enemy artillery fired on Đông Hà itself, the on-duty ‘Catkillers’ would scramble into the air, sometimes without time to call for proper clearance from air traffic control and look for muzzle flashes. The pilot and his back-seater were usually armed with 5.56mm CAR-15 assault rifles.45-calibre pistols, the Second World War-vintage M3 submachine guns and hand grenades which were used against ground troops while turning the plane in a tight bank. When shooting their rifles, they held them outside the cockpit to keep the hot brass casings from falling inside the plane and potentially jamming the controls. If the enemy was spotted, the Bird Dog crews would radio for Army or Marine Corps artillery, rockets from Navy barges just offshore or even shells from the battleship USS New Jersey in the South China Sea. About three-quarters of the time airstrikes were made by carrier-based Navy and Marine F-4 Phantoms, A-4 Skyhawks and A-1 Skyraiders. Air Force jets based in Thailand also made occasional strikes.

Captain Charles ‘Larry’ Deibert flew seventy-three such missions, code-named ‘Banjo,’ but most of his 570 sorties took place just south of the DMZ (demilitarised zone), where Marines were always in trouble. The son of a logger and a mother who grew up on a homestead, he was logging and working on Columbia River tugboats when he and a buddy drove to Kelso to join the Army. They were dazzled by a Marine recruiter in dress blues. In 1966 Deibert volunteered for Việtnam, even though his mother objected and being a member of the National Guard he didn’t have to go. While his Guard friends became pilots for Pan Am and TWA, he left his wife and three children in Northeast Portland for Việtnam. In the Guard, they had called him ‘Captain Hair’ because of his wild, dark mane. In the Army, they called the 31-year-old, ‘Pops’. He became a platoon leader, piloting his Bird Dog 100ft in the air with a back-seater behind, hunting for the enemy and relaying the information to the ground commander and then calling in air and naval strikes, a situation Deibert and Marine First Lieutenant John Haaland his back-seater found themselves in early in September 1967.

On 7 September the NVA launched a heavy artillery and mortar barrage at a place called ‘Ambush Valley’ at Côn Thiên. This beleaguered outpost was situated on a barren 525-foot hill about two miles south of the demilitarised zone and eight miles west of the South Việtnamese coast. Every thirty days a new Marine battalion would take its place on the ‘hill of angels’ as it was known to the NVA but nicknamed ‘the Meat Grinder’ and ‘Our Turn in the Barrel’ by the Marines. More than 800 men of the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment were outnumbered 6-to-1 and over 400 Marines, or more than four in ten, were killed or wounded when the enemy unleashed ‘human waves’ who fought at point blank range. Air support was desperately needed, and soon. On 10 September Deibert and Haaland his back-seater flew into machine gun and anti-aircraft fire so intense that medical and supply helicopters could not land. Deibert ignored warnings to leave and for seven hours flew low passes through a curtain of fire, calling in air support and identifying enemy locations. He marked targets for the strike planes as he fired white phosphorus rockets and hit three machine gun positions squarely, killing the crews. He discovered a route to the landing zones and redirected helicopters to safe landings.

After landing at the Đông Hà to drop off Haaland, Deibert nursed his bullet-riddled Bird Dog home to Phû Bái airfield in the early hours of 11 September. Staring at the lit instruments in front of him over blacked-out South Việtnam, Deibert felt fatigue setting in. His eyelids grew heavy and he fought to keep his head from nodding down to rest on the two steel rods connecting the wings above him to the top of the instrument panel. As he blinked, a rat appeared, perched on one of the rods and staring at him. In a flash Deibert grabbed the intruder and flung it outside. His heart racing as he guided the plane to land, the pilot wondered if that rodent – which must have been scrambling around inside the plane through a night of jinking, shuddering and combat noise – was a ‘friendly’ or a North Việtnamese Army rat.

During the battle at Côn Thiên, 38 Marines were killed and 192 wounded. Approximately 150 Americans on the ground survived unhurt. The NVA suffered 241 confirmed dead, with an additional 450 probable. Deibert received credit for 88 confirmed and 150 probable kills. The ground crew counted 23 bullet holes in his Bird Dog. For his heroics at Côn Thiên, Deibert was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest combat honour. Haaland received the Silver Star, the third-highest valour medal.⁶

Ultimately the slow flying Bird Dog (and the Cessna O-2A Skymaster; a ‘push-puller’ with propellers front and back) proved unsuitable for a dense automatic-weapons environment. They were replaced by ‘fast FAC’ two-seat F-100F aircraft to detect enemy targets, mark them with smoke-dispensing rockets and guide strike aircraft in for bombing runs. Over a three-year period from June 1967 to May 1970, only 157 men served as pilots. Those new to the unit – call sign ‘Misty’ – were assigned to the back seat for their first five or ten flights’ orientation. After that, they alternated front- and backseat duties.⁷ ‘Misty’ was so-named by Major George Everette ‘Bud’ Day the first commander of the ‘Commando Sabre’ Project at Phú Cát Air Base after his favourite song recorded by pianist Erroll Garner.⁸ The rear crewman became known as the ‘GIB’, guy in back. ‘The GIB was along for the ride,’ says former ‘Misty’ James Piner. ‘He’d call in the coordinates, hoping the dumb son of a bitch up front wouldn’t get him killed.’⁹

By January 1965 the US Air Force had a sprinkling of jet aircraft in South Việtnam and neighbouring Thailand, the remnants of the force that had arrived the preceding August. Of the four tactical fighter squadrons that arrived in April 1965 as the first part of the ‘Two Buck’ deployment, three went to Thailand and the fourth to Đà Nẵng. By an understanding with the Bangkok government, the Thai-based F-105s and F-4Cs would not be used in South Việtnam. The squadron of F-104s that went to Đà Nẵng joined the two F-100 squadrons already there in attacks over the North and in Laos. A squadron of air defence Convair F-102A Delta Daggers was divided between Tân Sơn Nhứt and Don Mueang and a squadron of F-100 Super Sabres was stationed temporarily at Đà Nẵng.¹⁰ Another squadron of F-100s was located temporarily at Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base and a squadron of F-105 Thunderchiefs was based at Korat RTAFB, which were to become the eventual homes of the F-105 Thunderchief wings that were later deployed to Southeast Asia.

The Thunderchief or ‘Thud’ (a name inspired by ‘Chief Thunderthud’, a character in the Howdy Doody TV series), the largest single-seat, singleengine combat aircraft in history, had been designed as a successor to the F-84F with the primary role of nuclear attack and flew for the first time on 22 October 1955. The Thud was destined to become the USAF’s primary tactical bomber in the war against North Việtnam because other types, such as the F-104 and F-5C did not have the range or payload to be effective and the F-105 could carry more than twice the bomb load farther and faster than the F-100, which was used mostly in South Việtnam.

When the conflict in Việtnam had escalated in late 1964 there were twenty-four Thunderchief squadrons operational in the USA, Europe and Japan having largely replaced the F-100 Super Sabre as the Air Force’s primary front-line fighter-bomber. On 9 August eight Thunderchiefs of the 36th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 6441st Tactical Fighter Wing had left Yokota Air Base in Japan for a spell of temporary duty at Takhli and Korat. For some considerable time the US refused to acknowledge that they were based in Thailand where the Thunderchiefs were restricted to supporting the CIA’s secret war in Laos. The first F-105D combat mission of the war was flown on 14 August 1964 with an attack on the anti-aircraft artillery site on Plaine des Jarres. The first F-105 strike-mission took place on 13 January 1965 with the destruction of the Ben Ken Bridge in Laos.

The political and physical restrictions on the basing of US aircraft in South Việtnam was to some extent solved by the permanent stationing of US aircraft carriers in the South China Sea. When in 1964 two US Navy F-8E Crusaders were shot down during a reconnaissance mission over Laos, the USAF flew a retaliatory strike on 9 June against AAA (Anti-Aircraft Artillery or ‘Triple A’) sites. The Crusader was used exclusively by the Navy and Marine air wings (although one US Air Force pilot was reported shot down on an F-8) and represented half or more of the carrier fighters in the Gulf of Tonkin during the first four years of the war. Crusaders were credited with nearly 53 per cent of MiG kills; the highest kill ratio of any fighter engaged in the Việtnam air war.

From 1961 to 1964 relatively few US Air Force losses were suffered on ‘Barrel Roll’ missions during the civil war in Laos and on the early operations in South Việtnam but with the escalation of the war in Southeast Asia in 1965 US Air Force and US Navy losses began to mount rapidly and the Johnson administration decided that the time had come to put an end to the fighting and the order was given for ‘Rolling Thunder’, as the air offensive against North Việtnam was named, to begin. It called for an eight-week air campaign but instead of an all-out air offensive the intention was for air strikes to start in the southern provinces of North Việtnam and gradually move north, slowly approaching Hànôi and Haiphòng by which time it was hoped that the North Việtnamese would have given up the fight. They however showed no such signs of capitulation.

Neither the military nor the political leadership had much experience with the concept of a ‘limited war’ in Việtnam. Until late 1965, the Navy and the Air Force were authorised to carry out operations every three hours on an alternating basis. For the fleet’s part, each day one carrier launched strikes in the twelve hours before 1200 and another one in the twelve hours afterward. This complicated system was altered in November when the Navy and Air Force designated six geographical areas, or route packages, in which each service alternated strikes on a weekly basis. Strikes were conducted in an intermittent and highly selective fashion, constrained by ‘rules of engagement (ROEs)’ that told the pilots what they could and could not attack. Johnson and McNamara, not wanting to fight an all-out war, imposed restrictions on its air operations and industry, ports and even the North’s airfields, which, should have been hit first in the campaign were also off limits. Only lines of communication including rail and road bridges and moving traffic were permitted. ‘Targeting’ wrote US Air Force historian Earl Tilford ‘bore little resemblance to reality in that the sequence of attacks was uncoordinated and the targets were approved randomly – even illogically.’ One Air Force pilot, Captain Bill Jenkins, later commented: ‘The rules of engagement were such that I sometimes felt I needed a lawyer in the back seat instead of a WSO.’

Early in the morning of 2 March 1965 a Rolling Thunder strike by 111 US Air Force aircraft was carried out against the Xóm Biang ammunition dump only seventeen miles north of the DMZ and the Quảng Khê naval base at the mouth of the Sou Giáng (Perfume River). The mission was originally planned for 20 February but was postponed twice due firstly to an attempted coup in Sàigòn and secondly due to bad weather and Soviet attempts to revive the Geneva Accords. Forty-four F-105D Thunderchiefs, forty F-100D Super Sabres, twenty RB-57Bs and seven RF-101C Voodoos, were involved in the operation.

F-105Ds in the 18th Tactical Fighter Wing at Kadena AB, Okinawa led by Lieutenant Colonel Robinson ‘Robbie’ Risner, a Korean War ace, were tasked with flak suppression, dropping CBU-2 ‘cluster bombs’ from extremely low altitude. In August 1964 Risner had taken command of the 67th Tactical Fighter Squadron and the following January he led a detachment of seven aircraft to Đà Nẵng Air Base to fly combat strikes which included a mission in Laos on 13 January where he and his pilots were later on decorated for destroying a bridge, but Risner was also verbally reprimanded for losing an aircraft while bombing a second bridge not authorised by his orders.

In the congested airspace, heavy ‘Triple A’ (anti-aircraft artillery) seriously disrupted coordination and radio communications and all five aircraft – three F-105 Thunderchiefs and two F-100Ds – that were lost were hit while attacking AAA sites, three of them while making their second pass at the target. Lieutenant J.A. Cullen in the 428th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 474th Tactical Fighter Wing at Takhli flying an F-100D on the Quảng Khê strike was hit and came down in the sea just offshore from the target. He was safely picked up by an HU-16 Albatross rescue helicopter. First Lieutenant Hayden James Lockhart, the pilot of the other F-100D that was lost, ejected safely from his Super Sabre and he evaded for a week until he was eventually captured on 9 March. Lockhart thus gained the dubious distinction of becoming the first member of the USAF to be captured in North Việtnam.

Risner’s wingman Captain Robert V. ‘Boris’ Baird was shot down on the opening pass. With the mission in danger of collapsing, Risner took charge. After the last strike had been delivered, he and the two surviving members of his flight remained in the area, directing the search and rescue mission for Baird until their fuel ran low. He was picked up by a USAF HH-43 rescue helicopter, the first combat rescue in North Việtnam. Captain Kenneth L. Spagnola managed to fly his badly damaged Thunderchief across the border into Thailand before he eventually had to eject near the town of Roi Et, one of the north-eastern provinces of Thailand. Major George W. Panas made it into Laos before he had to eject and he too was soon rescued by a HH-43 helicopter. Risner, in a battle damaged aircraft, diverted to Đà Nẵng air base for landing. On 22 March, while leading two flights of F-105s attacking a radar site near Vĩnh Sơn, North Việtnam, Lieutenant Colonel Risner was hit by ground fire when he circled back over the target. He manoeuvred his aircraft over the Gulf of Tonkin, ejected a mile offshore, and was rescued after fifteen minutes in the water.

The US Navy was to play a major role in the Rolling Thunder campaign and flew most of its strikes against targets to the east of Hànôi or close to the coast. Generally, before August 1966, two or three carriers operated in Task Force 77 and after that date the number was often three or four. On each ship a carrier air wing controlled seventy to one hundred aircraft, usually grouped in two fighter and three attack squadrons and smaller detachments. The Navy’s first Rolling Thunder strike came on 15 March when an attack was carried out on an ammunition dump at Phú Quý. Lieutenant (jg) Charles Frederick Clydesdale of VA-95 ‘Green Lizards’ flying an A-1H Skyraider from the USS Ranger was killed when he flew into the sea while returning to his carrier. By the end of Rolling Thunder on 1 November 1968, naval aviators had destroyed twenty-three MiG-17s and eight MiG-21s.

Following the decision in March to interdict the North Việtnamese rail system south of the 20th parallel, in the first week of April two Rolling Thunder raids were carried out on the giant 540ft by 56ft Chinese-engineered Thành Hóa road and rail bridge which stands 50ft above the Sông Mã River, three miles north of Thành Hóa, the capital of Annam Province, in North Việtnam’s bloody ‘Iron Triangle’. The bridge, known to the Việtnamese as the ‘Hàm Rồng’ (‘Dragon’s Jaw’) was a replacement for the original French-built bridge destroyed by the Việt Minh in 1945, blown up by simply loading two locomotives with explosives and running them together in the middle of the structure. Now a major line of communication from Hànôi seventy miles to the north and Haiphòng to the southern provinces of North Việtnam and from there to the DMZ and South Việtnam, it was heavily defended by a ring of 37mm AAA sites that were supplemented by several 57mm sites following these initial raids.

‘Robbie’ Risner was designated overall mission coordinator for ‘Mission 9-Alpha’ on 3 April. His strike force totalled seventy-nine aircraft – forty-six F-105s, twenty-one F-100s, two RF-101Cs tasked with pre and post-strike photographic reconnaissance runs over the target and ten KC-135 tankers to refuel the aircraft before they crossed the Thai border. The F-100s came from bases in South Việtnam, while the rest of the aircraft were from squadrons TDY (temporary duty) at various Thailand bases. Sixteen of the forty-six F-105D Thunderchiefs were loaded with pairs of Bullpup missiles. Each of the remaining thirty carried eight 750lb GP bombs. The aircraft that carried the missiles and half of the bombers were scheduled to strike the bridge; the remaining fifteen (and seven F-100s) would provide flak suppression. The plan called for individual flights of four F-105Ds from Korat and Takhli which would be air refuelled over the Mekong River before tracking across Laos to an initial point (IP) three minutes south of the bridge. After weapon release, all aircraft were to continue east until over the Gulf of Tonkin where rejoin would take place and a Navy destroyer would be available to recover anyone who had to eject due to battle damage or other causes. After rejoin, all aircraft would return to their bases, hopefully to the tune of The Ham Rong Bridge is falling down.

Shortly after noon on 3 April, the Rolling Thunder aircraft on Mission 9-Alpha, climbed into the Southeast Asian skies on their journey to the Thành Hóa Bridge. The sun glinting through the haze, made the target a little difficult to acquire, but Risner led the way ‘down the chute’ and 250lb missiles were soon exploding on the target. Since only one Bullpup missile could be fired at a time, each pilot had to make two firing passes. On his second pass, Lieutenant Colonel Risner’s aircraft took a hit just as the Bullpup hit the bridge. Fighting a serious fuel leak and a smoke-filled cockpit in addition to AAA fire from the enemy, he nursed his crippled aircraft to Đà Nẵng and to safety.

The first two flights had already left the target when Captain Bill Meyerholt, number three man in the third flight, rolled his Thunderchief into a dive and squeezed off a Bullpup. The missile streaked toward the bridge and as smoke cleared from the previous attacks, Meyerholt was shocked to see no visible damage to the bridge. The Bullpups were merely charring the heavy steel and concrete structure. The remaining missile attacks confirmed that firing Bullpups at the ‘Dragon’ was about as effective as shooting BB pellets at a Sherman tank. The bombers, undaunted, came in for their attack, only to see their payload drift to the far bank because of a very strong southwest wind. First Lieutenant George C. Smith’s F-100D was shot down near the target point as he suppressed flak. The anti-aircraft resistance was much stronger than anticipated. No radio contact could be made with Smith, nor could other aircraft locate him. Smith was listed MIA and no further word has been heard of him.

The last flight of the day, led by Captain Carlyle S. ‘Smitty’ Harris, adjusted their aiming points and scored several good hits on the roadway and super structure. ‘Smitty’ tried to assess bomb damage, but could not because of the smoke coming from the ‘Dragon’s Jaw’. The smoke would prove to be an ominous warning of things to come.

Captain Herschel S. Morgan’s RF-101 was hit and went down seventy-five miles southwest of the target area, seriously injuring the pilot. Morgan was captured and held in and around Hànôi until his release in February 1973.

When the smoke cleared, observer aircraft found that the two steel through-truss spans which rested in the centre on a massive reinforced-concrete pier 16ft in diameter were still standing. Numerous hits from the thirty-two Bullpups and ten dozen 750lb bombs aimed at it had charred the structure, yet it showed no sign of going down.

The raids were the first occasion when the Việtnamese People’s Air Force employed its MiG-17 fighters, thus marking a significant escalation of the air war in Southeast Asia. During this raid three MiG-17s attacked and damaged a Crusader when four of the F-8Es tried to bomb the bridge. The F-8E pilot was forced to divert to Đà Nẵng. This was the