Dragon's Jaw Read online

  Then-Major James R. Bassett of the 388th Wing put it this way: “We were taught to avoid a SAM by putting it in your two o’clock position in order to judge the closure rate, then dive toward it. Hold your trajectory until you couldn’t stand it any longer, wait just a bit more, then abruptly roll over the top. The missile couldn’t turn with you and would continue ballistically. It worked quite well with one missile, but the gomers got smart and started sending up clusters. SAMs were everywhere it seemed.… Soon they were coming in bunches like bananas. I recall one time… at debriefing we totaled twenty-two sent against my flight alone (but I guess there were multiple counts of same SAMs—it’s hard to accurately count when you’re twisting and rolling).… You just wriggle pathetically knowing that the ‘ten and two’ counter could run you right into one of a bunch coming your way.”2

  Both Air Force and Navy brass understood they had a problem that needed to be solved. The Air Force response was the “Wild Weasel”—modifying a two-seat fighter with radar detection equipment and arming it with a specifically designed missile to destroy SA-2 batteries. Yet until the missiles were available, planes targeted against SAM sites tackled them with cluster bombs and 20-millimeter cannon shells. With far less room aboard aircraft carriers, the Navy could not afford squadrons dedicated to SAM suppression; instead, they modified some existing attack planes in deploying squadrons—first some A-4s, then A-7s and A-6Bs—to perform the “Iron Hand” mission of detecting and attacking SAM radars, NATO code name “Fansong.”

  The AGM-45 Shrike was a Navy anti-radiation missile developed in 1963 and available to carrier and Air Force squadrons two years later. Throughout the war Shrike and the AGM-78 Standard Anti-Radiation Missiles (Standard ARM), also developed by the Navy and deployed in 1968, were used by Navy Iron Hand and Air Force Wild Weasels to deter SAM launches and destroy the batteries if they did launch. A see-saw battle of electronic wizards ensued, with the advantage shifting occasionally much as the British and Germans had dueled with measure and countermeasure during World War II. Eventually the Americans gained the upper hand in Vietnam, but the knowledge acquired was paid for in blood and torn metal.

  Shrike allegedly had a fifteen-mile range; tactical aviators preferred to shoot inside ten. Standard ARM could hit at fifty miles with a more lethal warhead, yet it was a larger missile with a computer inside that allowed it to memorize the location of the target radar and fly to that location even if the radar went off the air. Shrike had no such capability, and the North Vietnamese learned to defend themselves from Shrike by turning off their radar as soon as a Shrike launch was detected. If they didn’t, they risked eating a missile. Shutting down, of course, caused any SA-2s in the air being guided by that radar to go “stupid,” or ballistic.

  Shutting down the controlling radar might or might not work with the Standard ARM, depending on the launch distance and at what intervals during the missile’s flight the target radar was emitting. If either missile scored a hit on the target radar, it didn’t just knock out the radar; the shrapnel from the warhead destroyed the control van on which the radar was positioned and usually killed everyone in the van regardless of their nationality. The shrapnel might even cook off a SAM or two if the launchers were close enough to the control van.

  Anti-radiation missiles were expensive. Rumor at the time had it that a Shrike cost Uncle Sam $7,000 to acquire, and a Standard ARM $100,000. Regardless of the actual cost, the price of war was escalating drastically. If anyone cared to notice, the United States had taken another tentative step away from free-fall weapons on a path that would ultimately revolutionize war in the air.

  The first Wild Weasels flew two-seat F-100F Super Sabres with a “bear” handling the electronics in the backseat. The bear appellation began as pilot humor, referring to the weapons system operators as “trained bears.” Yet very quickly bear became a term of heartfelt respect as the WSOs mastered the electronic gear that was the heart of the mission.

  Weasels arrived in Thailand in November 1965, with F-105Fs replacing the Huns in July 1966.

  Wild Weasels wrote a blazing record in the Southeast Asian skies. At war’s end Captain Merlyn Dethlefsen and Major Leo Thorsness received Medals of Honor, while fifteen other weasels received the Air Force Cross. A Navy Iron Hand, Lieutenant Commander Mike Estocin, was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor for 1967 combat.

  A senior Thud pilot, Colonel Jack Broughton, described the pulse-pounding experience of witnessing a SAM launch. “The first stage booster that launches the SAM creates a good-sized dust storm on the ground, so if you happen to be looking in the right direction when it blasts off, you know that SAM is airborne and on the prowl. After the booster has done its job, it drops off and falls back to earth, leaving the propulsion to SAM’s internal rocket power. If you can see SAM, you can usually escape. It has little stubby wings and is going like hell, so it can’t turn very well. You can take it on just like another aircraft, and if you force it into a commit position and outturn it, it will stall out and auger in.”3

  Navy Commander John Nichols, a three Vietnam-tour carrier pilot, wrote of the SAM threat: “Surviving a SAM launch became an exercise in sweaty-palm patience and pulse-pounding judgment. Articulate aviators have spoken of the soul-searing experience of dueling with an inanimate object that pursued its prey with almost human intelligence.”4

  Weasels and Iron Hands made their presence known. Combined with Air Force EB-66 Destroyers and Navy EA-3 Skywarriors jamming enemy radar and communications, the Shrike shooters put a dent in Vietnamese SAM effectiveness. The best measure was evident in the SA-2’s declining success ratio: from a high in 1965, with eleven Yankee air pirates downed by nearly two hundred missiles, the 5.7 percent effectiveness rate dropped dramatically. Though more than three times as many American planes fell to SAMs in 1966, the kill percentage was cut in half among more than a thousand SAMs fired.

  At the time of Johnson’s bombing halt in 1968, SAM effectiveness was miniscule: less than 1 percent, with just three shoot-downs. When the air war ended in early 1973 the overall figures showed sixty SA-2s were required to knock down a targeted aircraft.

  However, SAMs continued affecting US air tactics. Inevitably a maneuver to defeat a missile forced a pilot to shove his nose down to gain the additional airspeed required when he pulled hard into the threat, forcing the missile to overshoot. Yet the altitude loss often placed the fighter-bomber pilots within the range of Vietnamese antiaircraft guns, which posed by far the greatest peril throughout the war.

  By May 1965 five Thunderchief squadrons were based at Takhli and Korat, Thailand. Representing three wings, they were an eclectic bunch, typifying the increasingly helter-skelter Air Force pilot assignments on an as-needed basis. The orderly peacetime wing organization began falling apart under the growing press of operations, as always occurred in aerial combat.

  Additionally, some F-105 squadrons briefly flew from DaNang, alternating between Thai and Okinawa bases. For example, the 23rd Tactical Fighter Wing—home-based at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas—rotated squadrons between Yokota, Japan, and Takhli between April and December 1965. The 563rd Squadron flew from Thailand from early April to mid-August.5

  With more planes available, strikes against the Thanh Hoa Bridge continued, lasting through May. And the strike aircraft incurred losses.

  On May 7 the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing contributed heavily to a strike against the bridge. Major Charles Watry of the wing’s 354th Squadron led the base element—twenty-eight Thuds supported by three dozen other aircraft. The Thuds were loaded for the Dragon with some 350 750-pound bombs and more than 300 2.75-inch rockets.

  While the bombers hammered the bridge, the flak gunners returned fire—and they scored. Watry’s plane took hits that began siphoning fuel, but he remained overhead, directing each flight in turn. His dedication to the mission earned him a Silver Star.6

  The gun crews also hit Major Robert A. Lambert’s right wing, so he turned eastward for th
e relative safety of the ocean. Lambert’s Thud carried him ten miles, where he made a “feet wet” ejection.7

  The timing could not have been better. Approaching the splash coordinates, HU-16 Albatross pilot Captain Richard Reichardt spotted Lambert’s descending parachute. But as usual, Vietnamese coastal traffic was dense, with dozens of fishing and commercial junks in sight. Any one of them could scoop up the American and deliver him into years of torturous captivity.

  Reichardt told his radioman to contact the circling fighters and direct them to clear a path to Lambert’s splashdown position. The Thud pilot hit the water just as the HU-16 turned upwind to land in the water amid a flotilla of Vietnamese small craft.

  F-105s used their 20-millimeter cannon to herd junks out of the way or to shred the closest to Lambert. Other jets, out of ammo, screeched overhead in what a later generation would term “nonkinetic measures” to dissuade would-be captors.

  Meanwhile Reichardt maneuvered his ungainly amphibian around or through the junk fleet, applying throttle when necessary, to beat the Communists to the downed flier. Once alongside Lambert, the Albatross lurched to a stop; the crew opened the side hatch and hauled an immensely relieved Thud pilot inside.

  Fighters with remaining ammunition shot a path for the Albatross to accelerate onto the “step” of the hull and, after a long run, take off. Bob Lambert was delivered from captivity, only slightly injured from his adventure.

  Thailand-based Thuds hammered the bridge twice more during the day, with little to show for their efforts. Ordnance experts determined that the standard M117 750-pound bombs could not penetrate the Dragon’s Jaw sufficiently to destroy it, although more damage might be inflicted with better fusing. Pending the arrival of modern fuses that permitted bomb detonation inside the bridge structure, operational planners also anticipated receiving the new AGM-12C Bullpup missiles.

  The C-model Bullpup was a serious weapon, far more potent than the B-models used in early bridge attacks. Weighing almost 1,800 pounds, its 970-pound warhead packed nearly four times the explosives of the earlier version. Its rocket engine boosted speed to nearly Mach 1.8, with an advertised range of ten miles. But, the drill still required the shooting airplane to follow the missile down, and the requirement for a clear view of the target meant that the pilots had to attack one by one. Clearly, they needed something better than Bullpup.8

  However, three days earlier Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a five-day halt in Rolling Thunder, the campaign against North Vietnam south of the 20th parallel. McNamara proposed the halt, naively hoping it would somehow induce the Communists to negotiate. Predictably, the military opposed it, worried that any progress toward interdicting supplies into South Vietnam would be frittered away. Yet Johnson bought McNamara’s recommendation. McNamara states, “Criticism of Johnson’s Vietnam policy among liberal intellectuals and members of Congress had grown markedly in recent weeks, and, irked, Johnson sought to answer and still it if possible. It was this—rather than any personal faith that a pause at this stage would spark negotiations—that led him to accept my proposal.”9

  During the halt Washington directed that F-105s drop leaflets over North Vietnam on the theory that the leaflets might help convince the North Vietnamese population to end the struggle. Plainly, the big pooh-bahs in Washington were living in la-la land. North Vietnam was an absolute dictatorship—the Communists in the Politburo gave not a damn what the peasants thought. The Air Force swallowed its objections and the leaflets were dropped.

  Because the Dragon’s Jaw was the northernmost significant span in the permitted operating area, less than ten miles south of the 20th parallel, it remained on the hit list when the bombing resumed. A postwar survey concluded, “It was the final bridge to safety in the bomb-free upper latitudes, and despite the fact that its strategic importance had seriously diminished with the effective interdiction of the rail line to Vinh, it remained a valuable target.”10

  Despite the Americans’ inability to destroy the bridge, its temporary closure yielded military benefits. In combination with other bridges they had dropped, Vietnamese supplies often were stranded north of the 20th parallel, where Johnson had prohibited bombing. South of the bomb line, locomotives and truck convoys became rare sights during daytime, as the Vietnamese avoided air attacks by moving at night. Often trucks exposed during the day were parked in towns or obviously populated areas to render them immune to attack. Those Americans… they didn’t want to hurt anybody.

  For a few days that spring the Communists could not move all the stalled southern rail traffic to safety north of the 20th parallel. Caught in the open, three locomotives and 144 railcars were claimed destroyed by fighter-bombers trolling permitted areas. Yet the Dragon’s Jaw, with a full-time repair crew, always returned to business.11

  When Washington finally realized that the bombing halt hadn’t moved Hanoi’s determination to resist one solitary inch and granted approval once more, F-105s launched against the Thanh Hoa Bridge for the fourth time on May 30—but with a difference.

  During the bombing pause operations officers and strike leaders had taken stock, examining the first three Thanh Hoa Bridge missions and seeking better ways to conduct future strikes. One of the problems, they thought, was that there had been too many strike aircraft over the bridge. Although counterintuitive—especially considering the Clausewitzian concept of Mass—large numbers of attackers complicate the tactical problem enormously. Heavy smoke and dust from the first bombs and rockets obscured the target, forcing following flights to attack partially blind or circle until visibility improved and they could once again see the target. That requirement burned more fuel, allowed the Vietnamese antiaircraft crews to reload, and left following attackers more exposed to increasingly capable defenses.

  Therefore, instead of four dozen Thuds “fragged” in the first two missions and twenty-eight on the third, only four bombers were slated for the next Thanh Hoa attack.

  The fourth strike on the Dragon’s Jaw was flown out of Takhli on May 31. The 563rd Tactical Fighter Squadron sent four Thuds of Buick Flight with thirty-two 750-pounders. They were in and out fast and got some hits on the bridge.

  One Buick Flight pilot was First Lieutenant Robert D. Peel, a twenty-six-year-old second-generation flier from Memphis, Tennessee. Aviation was in his genes: his father flew with the British during the Great War, and his brothers were Fred, a bomber pilot in Korea, and Dudley, an Air Force security officer.

  Peel had graduated from Castle Heights Military Academy, where he had been a regional swimming champion. He attended the University of the Old South in Sewanee, Tennessee, but transferred to Ole Miss to pursue an engineering degree. He left in his junior year to become an Air Force flying cadet. Upon completion of pilot training at Vance Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, he received the Outstanding Flying Award for his class.

  His first assignment was flying the F-102 Delta Dagger at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. Upon completing that tour in 1964, he transitioned to the F-105 at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina and then did a deployment to Incirik, Turkey. Following that NATO tour, Peel went to the 333rd Tactical Fighter Squadron and deployed on temporary duty to Takhli.

  “I was assigned to the command post at Takhli, but I volunteered to fly missions,” Peel said. “I had a good relationship with Major Hank Buttelman, who ran the CP, and with Lieutenant Colonel Peters of the 563rd, so I flew with them.” All of which proves that if you want it bad enough, there is always a way. Buttelman was on his second war: he had been one of the youngest aces in Korea.

  On his fifteenth combat mission—his sixth over North Vietnam—Peel flew a rarity, a 105 with a name painted on the side of its nose: Give ’Em ’L.12

  During the May 31 attack Peel’s jet was hit hard just south of the bridge, forcing him to eject into captivity. He was the eighteenth F-105 pilot downed in Southeast Asia and the twelfth to survive.13

  A poststrike bomb damage assessment (BDA) showed that the
Dragon’s Jaw had sustained “only moderate damage, although the bridge was briefly closed to road and rail traffic.” The Vietnamese were nothing if not persistent, and their increasingly expert repair crews reopened the vital artery in a few days.14

  The first four missions against the bridge had expended nearly eight hundred bombs and missiles, totaling more than three hundred tons of high explosive, to no significant effect.

  The need for heavy ordnance against hard targets like the Thanh Hoa Bridge led to requests for M118 bombs in Thailand. Of early 1950s vintage, the M118 was three thousand pounds of smashing potential. The typical bomb actually weighed 3,049 pounds and contained nearly two thousand pounds of Tritonal, an amalgam of 80 percent TNT and 20 percent aluminum powder. Ordnance engineers rated Tritonal as 18 percent more powerful than unboosted TNT due to the aluminum’s greater heat production. What the weapon lacked was a casing sufficiently rigid to allow it to penetrate deeply into a target before exploding.15

  The 18th Wing’s 12th Tactical Fighter Squadron introduced the M118 to Vietnam combat. The 12th was an old-line outfit with combat in World War II and Korea, flying almost every fighter in the inventory in those years. Its emblem was a stylized eagle bearing a sword above the motto, In omnia paratus—Ready for Anything.