Dragon's Jaw

by Stephen Coonts

  Being a tough anti-Communist was one thing, but embroiling the United States in another war in Asia against Red China would be an absolute disaster. The Johnson administration set out to walk a tightrope: fight the war in such a way that China would never feel that North Vietnam was threatened with national obliteration, yet apply enough military and diplomatic pressure to force Hanoi to stop trying to conquer the South.

  Many have argued that the Johnson administration grossly misread the Vietnamese Communists, who had absolutely no intention of inviting the Chinese into their country under any circumstances. The Chinese were ancient enemies, and having gotten rid of the French, the Vietnamese didn’t want to risk becoming a satellite state or province of China either. And Beijing had its own problems, including the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962, which caused widespread famine and starvation, followed by the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Nor were conditions stable in the Soviet Union. In fact, the Soviets and Chinese feuded over territorial, political, and ideological differences throughout the Vietnam War. They even exchanged gunfire along disputed border areas, notably Demansky Island for six months in 1969, with fatalities on both sides.

  The feuding and instability in both Communist giants was evident to the Washington elite and anyone who read newspapers during the first four years of the Vietnam War. Still, Lyndon Johnson and his advisers took counsel of their fears, not the true situation of potential enemies. That Johnson and his advisers permitted the thin, nearly nonexistent threat of a wider war with Beijing or Moscow to restrict US efforts and goals in Vietnam—at unnecessary risk to American personnel—was unforgivable. Baldly, the Johnson administration had no intention of trying to win the war but intended to use “limited” force to induce the other side to bow to America’s political will.

  Be that as it may, in 1965 America had a war to fight. As the Viet Cong, supplied by the North Vietnamese, continued to wreak havoc on South Vietnam, the Johnson administration decided to unleash the tactical bombers upon North Vietnam. The air campaign was to be limited to the area south of the 20th parallel, about two hundred statute miles above the 17th parallel’s Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, that the Geneva Convention of 1954 had established to separate North from South Vietnam. The operation was called Rolling Thunder—and the Dragon’s Jaw was one of its targets.

  The operation was fatally flawed from the start. The objective was to make it difficult or impossible for Hanoi to keep supplying the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. It could not have possibly succeeded, as any second lieutenant or sergeant could have told the arrogant secretary of defense when Rolling Thunder was in the planning stages. The Johnson administration allowed North Vietnam to continue receiving supplies via the port of Haiphong while forbidding bombing within thirty miles of the Chinese border, thus preserving most of the Northeast Railway to China, which ran largely uninterrupted. The North’s fighter bases were also situated mostly around Hanoi and were off-limits to American fighter-bombers for years. MiGs could only be shot down if they attacked American aircraft, which of course they were going to do as often as they could. And there was the little matter of the porous, nonexistent western borders of both Vietnams, with roads and trails in Laos and Cambodia that allowed troops and trucks to move south mostly free of American harassment. Be that as it may, and lacking any other options, Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara decided to give limited bombing south of the 20th parallel of latitude a try.

  The storm of steel and high explosives that Ho Chi Minh and his colleagues knew was inevitable had arrived.

  Rolling Thunder began in March 1965. In April three important bridges were targeted: Dong Phuong Thuong, Hong Hoi, and Thanh Hoa—the Dragon’s Jaw. As a sop to the professional airmen, for the first time the politicians allowed the pilots to drop unexpended ordnance on locomotives and vehicles in designated areas.

  The sustained air campaign targeting the bridges began when Air Force fighter-bombers struck ordnance depots about thirty miles south of Thanh Hoa and forty miles north of Vinh on the coast. The defending gunners claimed they downed five American planes but, apparently, got none.1

  Mission Nine Alpha was the name given to the first assault against the Dragon’s Jaw. The 67th Fighter Squadron at Korat, Thailand, did most of its planning. The squadron CO was Lieutenant Colonel Robinson Risner, a forty-year-old fighter pilot at the peak of his profession. He had earned his wings in the final days of World War II, gunned eight MiGs in Korea, and enjoyed a superior reputation as a pilot and leader.

  Robbie Risner thrived on combat. He had been shot down on March 22 while attacking a coastal radar site when he violated a basic rule: never make a second pass at an alerted target. His Thud rolled out of control, and he ejected while inverted and landed in the water. Rescued by an amphibian aircraft, he was back flying a few days later. His survival and rescue were sufficiently dramatic to cause Time magazine to place him on the cover a few weeks later.

  Risner believed in thorough planning and assigned the ordnance portion of the mission to his assistant weapons officer, Captain Wesley Schierman. Because the squadron’s senior weaponeer was on Okinawa, Schierman worked up a plan for the Korat strikers while those at Takhli with the 355th Fighter Wing did their own. Schierman was concerned about the lightweight Bullpup missile. He recalled, “The first thing I found was that we had been directed to use sixteen aircraft (I think it was eight from Korat and eight from Takhli) firing two Bullpup air-to-ground missiles each. The rest would carry eight 750-pound bombs. I advised Colonel Risner that the Bullpup with its 250-pound warhead was totally inappropriate for such a heavy target… and ours only had instant fusing available. I also suggested that multiple passes over a heavily defended area would be unnecessarily hazardous.”2

  The AGM-12 Bullpup was America’s first mass-produced, air-to-surface command-guided missile. It was the tentative first step on the road to guided weapons. Almost fourteen feet long and eighteen inches in diameter, the missile weighed 1,785 pounds, was powered by a rocket engine, and had a range of ten miles. After firing it, the pilot or weapons officer of the attacking aircraft had to watch the Bullpup, which had a flare on the back to make it easier to track visually, and to use a control joystick to send radio signals to steer it toward the target. Stooging around after shooting the missile while trying to guide it to the target kept the attacking aircraft in the defenders’ cone of antiaircraft fire—not a situation conducive to long life. The best way to get a hit was to superimpose the missile upon the target and keep it there, which meant the pilot of the shooting aircraft had to follow the missile down, surrendering his ability to jink and evade enemy antiaircraft fire. Certainly, given the tiny 250-pound warhead and instantaneous fusing, choosing the Bullpup against a well-built, heavily defended bridge seemed not only ridiculous but something that foolishly endangered the launching aircraft… and, incidentally, the man in the cockpit.

  Risner knew all about the Bullpup and kicked the subject up the ladder. Apparently it went all the way to the Joint Chiefs in Washington—an early indication of the micromanagement that would plague the entire nine-year Vietnam debacle. When he got his answer, Risner told Schierman that the pilots were required to “stick with the plan.”

  That was not all. Fusing for the 750-pound bombs was a concern. Schierman recalled, “We only had old World War II–style bomb fuses, which only gave the option of instant or .25 second delay.” The instant setting would cause the bombs to go off in the superstructure over the bridge, and the quarter-second delay would allow the bombs to pass through the bridge deck and go off in the water. “What we needed was a .025 setting, but the newer fuses were not available because they wanted us to use up the old ones first! In essence, we were going on a mission in which sixteen aircraft, each exposed twice, had no chance of destroying the target, and the other thirty or thirty-two had a very low probability, due to using the wrong fusing.”3

  The US Air Force generals appeared to have completely forgotten the lessons learned in World War II and
Korea. Welcome to the Vietnam War, a wholly owned subsidiary of the US government.

  Wes Schierman proceeded as best he could. He chose a 45-degree dive angle, descending from about twenty-two thousand feet and firing each Bullpup at around twelve thousand feet—giving a twenty-second time of flight to impact. A strong pull after impact would bring the jet level at eight thousand feet or more, well above light-caliber antiaircraft fire. Because the pilots needed a good view of the target to steer the missiles, the Bullpup shooters would attack first, before the free-fall bombs were dropped: smoke from bomb bursts and spray from hits in the river would obscure the target.

  Risner briefed his men on all aspects of the mission, using reconnaissance photos of the bridge, defenses, and the surrounding area. He also addressed the onerous subject of rules of engagement (ROE) that would handicap American airmen throughout the war. Schierman added, “The ROE prohibited us from hitting any target, other than the bridge, for any reason!”4

  Like most Air Force strikes, the overall plan was huge, involving nearly eighty aircraft coordinated over a large area, merging in time and space. Originally the strike was slated for April 2, but not enough aerial tankers were available. However, tankers and weather cooperated the next day, so the mission was a go. The Thailand-based aircraft were forty-six F-105s and ten KC-135 Stratotankers. The tankers—developed from the Boeing 707 airliner airframe—were positioned to support the Thuds in flight along four refueling tracks over Thailand. The attack element from Korat and Takhli approached Thanh Hoa from the southwest, overflying Laos into North Vietnam.

  Thirty F-105s carried eight 750-pound bombs, but only half of them were targeted against the bridge; the other half were flak suppressors, assigned to hit enemy antiaircraft guns. If the suppressors could time their dives correctly, they would allow the attackers to do their work over the bridge relatively unhindered.

  And there was more. From bases in South Vietnam came twenty-one F-100 Super Sabres, including two weather scouts, seven more flak suppressors, four on combat air patrol, and two flights (eight aircraft total), as a contingency to cover any rescue operations. Additionally, two RF-101 Voodoo reconnaissance jets would provide pre- and post-strike damage assessment photos.

  Although it was showing its age, the transonic, single-engine-with-afterburner Super Sabre was a capable second-generation fighter. An outgrowth of North America’s fabled F-86 Sabre, it had entered service in 1954, a contemporary of the MiG-17 flown by North Vietnam. On the first Thanh Hoa mission the “Huns,” as they were called—short for “Hundreds”—were armed with their standard four 20-millimeter cannon plus Sidewinder air-to-air missiles or bombs and Zuni rocket pods.

  The F-105s plugged into their Boeing tankers before entering Laotian airspace so they would have ample fuel for the attack phase of the mission. Once topped off, the four-plane flights proceeded to the initial point (IP) three minutes south of the bridge. Timing was critical so as to avoid an aerial traffic jam in the target area—precise navigation and airspeed management were the mark of professional airmen.

  “Time on target” was 2:00 P.M.—1400 hours military time. The sky was clear, but ground haze reflected some of the early afternoon sun, obscuring the target for some of the pilots.

  The Super Sabres were precisely on time, diving on identified AAA positions, dropping bombs, and firing Zuni rockets. The five-inch Zunis had a rocket motor that boosted their speed to sixteen hundred miles per hour and burned for 1.5 seconds. For antiaircraft suppression the warhead’s proximity fuse was set to detonate above the ground, spraying shrapnel across the enemy gun positions like a giant shotgun blast. After the Huns attacked, the Thud suppressors rolled in, adding their ordnance to keep the gunners ducking, even if they missed the antiaircraft sites.

  Despite the flak-suppression flights, the Vietnamese gunners scored. In the explosive-speckled sky, First Lieutenant George C. Smith from St. Louis disappeared in his F-100D. His squadron mates thought he’d been hit by a 57-millimeter shell, but they could not make radio contact. He had just turned twenty-five.5

  Among the attackers the four Bullpup flights rolled in first, one airplane at a time, as they needed a clear view of the bridge to guide their radio-controlled ordnance. Each Thud launched its first missile from about twelve thousand feet altitude; then after guiding in the weapon, the pilot added power, pulled up, and wheeled around to position himself for his second pass in the aerial daisy chain. It was an unavoidable requirement of having to shoot two missiles. Some pilots thought the process resembled an exercise in the Nevada desert more than a genuine combat mission. Flak filled the sky.

  Air Force doctrine was to blame: the gunners on the ground had only one attacking airplane at a time to shoot at. Although antiaircraft artillery had improved tremendously since World War II and Korea due to the nearly universal adoption of the proximity fuse, and there was a lot more of it, Air Force doctrine hadn’t changed. We’ll fight this war like the last one, boys.

  Robbie Risner’s Thud was tagged by flak. Just as his second Bullpup scored on the bridge, a 57-millimeter shell exploded nearby. Losing fuel and with smoke wafting into the cockpit, he was forced to divert southward to DaNang, 220 nautical miles away in South Vietnam.

  Other missile shooters had grave doubts about their ordnance. Flying in the third Bullpup flight, Captain William H. Meyerholt waited for the smoke to dissipate before firing his first missile. As he wheeled around for his second pass, the West Pointer, class of 1957, could see no damage to the structure—merely blackened steel from previous hits.

  Flying north from the IP at seventeen thousand feet, the F-105 bombers could see the bridge’s east-west span across the Song Ma. From there they rolled into a right-hand “wagon wheel” descending circular approach, winding up on a northeasterly attack heading, outbound for the gulf. They were angled about 45 degrees from the bridge’s axis—tactical wisdom dating from as long ago as 1918.

  In dive-bombing deflection errors nearly always exceed range errors. Deflection errors are caused by the wind, unperceived or not properly accounted for, or aircraft skid, which meant the aircraft’s rudder was not properly trimmed for the release speed or properly positioned by the pilot. A straight approach to an exceedingly narrow target, only fifty-six feet wide, meant that, absent a perfect run, the entire bomb string would go into the water on one side of the bridge or the other. Diving across the span at an angle gave less chance of a left-right error and raised the probability that at least one bomb in the string would hit the bridge.

  One of the strikers was Captain Ivy McCoy of the 67th Fighter Squadron, and he had a grandstand view of the strike. The Louisianan recalled, “When I rolled in the bridge was still standing and I felt, ‘Here is your chance.’ I put a perfect stick of eight 750s across the bridge. As I circled around, climbing out, all I could see was water and smoke. But as it cleared, the damn bridge was still standing.”6

  Elsewhere that day American and Vietnamese fighters tangled for the first time. While attacking Dong Phong Thuong Bridge ten miles north of Thanh Hoa (seventy miles south of Hanoi), a USS Hancock F-8 Crusader was damaged by MiG-17 cannon fire. Though the Viets joyously announced a kill, Lieutenant Commander Spence J. Thomas landed his damaged fighter at DaNang in South Vietnam. The People’s Air Force would come to know the Crusader as their worst enemy in the next two years. However, a Hancock A-4C Skyhawk did fall to antiaircraft fire, and Lieutenant Commander Raymond A. Vohden became the third US Navy prisoner of war (POW).

  Over the Dragon’s Jaw AAA flashed and spewed smoke as shells tore at the sky. Amid it all the missile shooters and bombers dove at the bridge one at a time and laid in their ordnance. Billowing clouds of smoke and water raised by bombs in the river obscured the bridge; the attackers were long gone by the time the smoke and mist cleared. Now it was time for the reconnaissance planes to photograph the damage so specialists could assess it. The North Vietnamese knew the drill, of course, and they reloaded their antiaircraft weapons and waited.
When they appeared, the photo jocks would be welcomed appropriately.

  Two RF-101 Voodoos flew out of Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon. One was piloted by Captain Hershel S. Morgan, who had flown more than ninety sorties in the previous six months. After his pass over the bridge through the flak storm, he proceeded south to his second photo objective, a radar site near the coast. There he ran flat out of luck. Antiaircraft fire crippled his jet, and he limped away, running out of altitude. Scotty Morgan ejected near Vinh, a provincial capital seventy-five miles south of Thanh Hoa, and spent the next seven years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.

  When the reconnaissance photos from the surviving Voodoo were developed hours later, it was found that 32 Bullpups and 120 750-pound bombs had barely dented the Dragon’s Jaw.

  The other two bridges targeted that day were down, but the Dragon’s Jaw was a much tougher target. In the military, which is apt to keep repeating a failed experiment, the saying goes, “If the first hammer blow fails, hit it again, and again and again…”

  More hammer blows were coming. A second mission led by Robbie Risner was immediately laid on for the following day.

  CHAPTER 4

  “HE DID NOT WANT ANY MORE MIGS SHOT DOWN”

  The next day’s attack had a few new twists. Forty-eight F-105 bombers supported by twenty combat air patrol fighters and weather report F-100s arrived at the Dragon’s Jaw shortly before 11 A.M. on April 4. No flak suppressors accompanied the bombers. One possible reason was that damage assessment photos showed the previous day’s efforts had caused minimal damage to the flak sites guarding the bridge. A more likely reason was that the decision was made to use every available plane to attack the bridge. In any event, this day there would be no flak suppressors.