After bomb release the Corsair pilots rammed on full power, sucked up the speed brakes, jinked madly, and headed for the ocean. At least five bombs struck the bridge, impacting along the length of the western span: ten thousand pounds of ordnance, concentrated around the aim point where the bridge had visibly sagged from Air Force Paveways.
Circling out of range of the North Vietnamese defenders, the Marauders awaited events. After a few minutes Don Sumner announced that he wanted to check results and was returning for a poststrike inspection. Smith had reservations but responded that he would wait for the CO to rejoin.
Sumner headed westward, inbound at about fourteen thousand feet. He found the bridge still obscured in smoke. As Smith related, “There was so much smoke and crap down there, we really didn’t know how much damage we’d done.”9
All the Corsairs returned to America; broke into the racetrack pattern; dropped hooks, wheels, and flaps; and trapped aboard. The pilots thought they had struck the Dragon a heavy blow but had to await confirmation from reconnaissance photos. After their debrief in IOIC, Sumner, Smith, and company adjourned to the ready room to have their approaches critiqued by the LSOs and to relive the mission.
That evening Snuffy got a call from IOIC. He hurried to the intelligence center, where a staffer showed him a freshly developed photograph. Smith noted the time over target—17:02—which was barely two hours previous.
As Smith recalled, “The photo was taken by a Viggie pilot (Lieutenant Wes Rutledge of RVAH-6—Reconnaissance Heavy Attack Squadron Six) whose primary mission that day was in Hanoi. He knew we had gone after the bridge again so decided to swing by the bridge to get a photo.”
The entire western span of the Thanh Hoa Bridge was clearly in the river.
Smith was pumped. He told the intelligence officer, “The section that is in the water was hit pretty much simultaneously with a two-thousand-pound Walleye and four two-thousand-pound bombs.”
Years later Smith recounted, “I called our skipper, Don Sumner, and shouted, ‘You ain’t gonna believe this, but we got that mother-fucking bridge!’
“Shortly thereafter we were called to Rear Admiral Jack ‘Big Coolie’ Christiansen’s cabin. When we came in he said, ‘I’ve been waiting for seven fucking years to see this. If we weren’t on a Navy ship, I’d buy you guys a drink.’ Then, without pausing, he said, ‘What the hell, I’ll buy you one anyway.’ He ordered a pitcher of grapefruit juice and we all had vodka and grapefruit juice in his cabin.”10
The Vigilantes of “Heavy Six” were busy that day. Another RA-5C pilot who shot the bridge was Lieutenant Commander Joseph Satrapa, covering a strike on the Thanh Hoa railyard. Known as “Hoser” for his love of 20-millimeter cannon, Satrapa was a legendary F-8 pilot who had been pulled from his beloved Crusaders against his will and sent to Viggies. But with his navigator, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Robert Rinder, he reveled in the Viggies’ power and grace. He recalled, “Seems like the gomers usually shot two or three thousand feet behind us ’cause we were going at the speed of heat. How fast is that? Well… that’s classified… except, it’s really cookin’!
“I got hit about five times over the beach in F-8s—one aircraft was a ‘strike’ that couldn’t be repaired. Only got a single hit in a RA-5C down at Chu Lai.”
Satrapa’s photo of the bridge showed that the North Vietnamese had activated a smoke screen to foil laser or electro-optical guidance weapons, yet the image clearly showed the entire western span was down in the river.11
The VA-82 Marauders of USS America had completed the execution begun by the Wolfpack from Ubon back in May. It was a bittersweet moment, capping hundreds of missions by hundreds of Air Force and Navy pilots and flight officers who had written their own stories in blood in the long saga of the most prestigious target of the Vietnam War.
Although October 6 had been America’s last day of the line period, Smith monitored message traffic while the ship was en route to Singapore for a port call. The next day he was surprised to see the bridge on the target list for October 8, which made no sense—the Vigilantes’ photographs clearly showed the western span in the Song Ma. The naval aviators attributed the message to a mix-up at Seventh Air Force, which usually controlled targeting. No matter. Upon arrival in Singapore Snuffy Smith met his wife, Dottie, with, “I’m glad to see you—we dropped the bridge.”12
Smith’s Distinguished Flying Cross citation—it should have been a Silver Star—summarized the action:
Lieutenant Commander Smith brilliantly planned and led a section of Walleye-equipped aircraft against the heavily defended Thanh Hoa railroad and highway bridge.… Due to critical requirements of the weapons, he was required to make a low-angle, gliding delivery over numerous firing antiaircraft artillery guns which were using both barrage and radar tracking in their attempts to thwart his attack. Disregarding enemy fire, he steadfastly continued his run, concentrating entirely on obtaining the most optimum release parameters.
Lieutenant Commander Smith’s exceptional timing and perfect delivery in the face of heavy enemy fire resulted in his section’s weapons impacting almost directly on the pre-briefed aim points. Post-strike photography confirmed that this vital link and frequently struck target had at last been completely severed and rendered useless to the enemy. Lieutenant Commander Smith’s perfectly planned, superbly executed attack, courage and devotion to duty reflected great credit upon himself and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
The citation was signed by Admiral B. A. Carey, Commander in Chief, US Pacific Fleet.*13
At last, after seven years the Thanh Hoa Bridge, the Dragon’s Jaw, was destroyed, with one of its spans in the river, beyond repair.
* Leighton W. Smith Jr. went on to a distinguished naval career. As a four-star admiral, he became commander in chief of US Naval Forces Europe and concurrent NATO commander in chief, Allied Forces Southern Europe (1992–1996) at the height of the Yugoslavian conflict. In December 1995 he assumed, at the same time, command of the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia, a position he held until August 1996. He was made a Grand Officer of the National Order of Merit by the French government and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
CHAPTER 21
THE VIOLENT CRESCENDO
The Vietnam War didn’t end when the Dragon fell, of course. Yet American air power had slammed all the doors shut on the North Vietnamese. Haiphong Harbor was mined, and ships could no longer enter or leave. The bridges on the two major railways to China were down. The Dragon’s Jaw was down. The raw materials of war donated by the two Communist powers, the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union, could no longer reach the North Vietnamese in sufficient quantity to fuel their conquest of South Vietnam, nor could they defend themselves from American bombing. North Vietnam was out of options and sooner or later would be forced to the negotiating table.
Richard Nixon went to China in July 1972 and began the process of normalizing American diplomatic relations with the most populous nation on earth. That initiative, and the SALT I treaty with the Soviet Union that followed, greatly lessened the danger of nuclear war between these two powers and the West, which was precisely the reason John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson gave in the 1960s that America had to stand firm in South Vietnam. Nuclear war now looked more and more remote.
Those two masters of realpolitik, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, finally had the game going their way. That summer the Republican Party nominated Richard Nixon to run for another term as president. Thinking they might get a better deal before Nixon was reelected than after, the North Vietnamese finally went to the bargaining table in Paris and began serious negotiations. Kissinger met with them there on October 8, 1972.
The North Vietnamese position had changed dramatically. Hanoi no longer demanded that South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu be removed from office. The North proposed a ceasefire and an exchange of POWs. Interestingly,
the North also wanted all three Vietnamese combatant governments—the South, the North, and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG), which was the Viet Cong—to remain in place. Both Washington and Hanoi could continue to resupply their allies or forces on a parity basis, yet no new North Vietnamese forces were to be infiltrated from the North. The United States agreed to extend postwar construction assistance to the Communists in Hanoi. In addition, there was to be a loosely defined National Council that was to work toward local elections and general elections in South Vietnam, but not the North.
When the two sides met again on October 17 there were only two sticking points: periodic replacement of South Vietnam’s weaponry and the release of political prisoners held by the South. The North seemed willing to compromise, so Kissinger notified the president that he was satisfied. Nixon approved.
The following day, October 18, Kissinger flew from Paris to Saigon. There the deal fell apart. President Thieu was not happy with the terms of the agreement or with Kissinger, whom he thought had betrayed him. The real problem, as Kissinger saw it, was that “after eight years of American tutelage, the South Vietnamese simply did not feel ready to confront Hanoi without direct American involvement. Their nightmare was not this or that clause but the fear of being left alone. Saigon’s leaders could not believe that Hanoi would abandon its implacable quest for the domination of Indochina. In a very real sense, they were being left to shape their own future; deep down, they were panicked by the thought and too proud to admit it. And they were not wrong.”1
Thieu had 129 textual changes he wanted made to the agreement, but the big one was that he wanted the DMZ recognized as an international border and South Vietnam as a sovereign state. This demand put the United States in a tight spot. Seven years earlier, on April 7, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson said, “Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Vietnam. We have helped to build, and we have helped to defend. Thus, over many years, we have made a national pledge to help South Vietnam defend its independence.… To dishonor that pledge, to abandon this small and brave nation to its enemies, and to the terror that must follow, would be an unforgivable wrong.”2
Unforgivable or not, the American public now wanted out, and South Vietnamese independence was the price it was willing to pay to fund the journey home. In his elegant English, Dr. Kissinger remarked, “It was not Thieu’s fault that America had simply come to the end of the road—largely as a result of its domestic divisions.”3
While Kissinger hurried off to Washington, completing his aerial circumnavigation of the globe, both North and South took to the airwaves with altered versions of the agreement. Trying to reassure North and South of American sincerity, Kissinger now made a mistake. In his first White House press conference before television cameras on October 26, 1972, he used the unfortunate words, “We believe peace is at hand,” unintentionally echoing Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on his return to London after signing the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938.
Well, it wasn’t. South and North wanted changes to the agreement, and diplomatic wrangling continued in Paris. Now North Vietnamese concessions previously granted were taken back. The talks broke down, with Hanoi refusing to set a date for their resumption.
Polls showed that 60 percent of the American voters were heartily sick of the Vietnam War and wanted the United States out. Kissinger’s phrase “peace is at hand” had raised the public’s expectations and given the administration’s political enemies more ammunition, which they were quick to fire at President Nixon. Kissinger said, “Two main lines of attack developed: that the whole thing was a fraud to help Nixon win the election, which, on the evidence of the polls was nonsense; and that the same terms had been attainable four years earlier, which was untrue.”4
The American election came right on schedule in early November. President Nixon won handily by 62 percent of the vote, yet Democrats gained solid majorities in both houses of Congress. The North Vietnamese must have realized that the American electorate had handed them a partial victory.
Hanoi agreed to a date of November 20 for further negotiations in Paris. The talks stalemated again, partially because President Thieu was postponing the evil day when South Vietnam had to face the Communists alone. Whipsawed between Hanoi and Saigon and a divided America, the US government could not force a reasonable settlement. The talks broke down on December 14 because the North Vietnam politburo believed the political winds were blowing their way.
Although the new Congress wouldn’t meet until January 3, 1973, President Nixon wanted the Vietnam mess solved before the Democrats legislated an end to the war. Dollars were also involved. The massive augmentation of US air forces for Linebacker had cost $14 billion by mid-autumn, so the military needed more money. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird wanted a new appropriation from Congress, one the administration was unlikely to get. All of this was covered at great length in the American press and was undoubtedly known by the politburo gamblers in Hanoi.
Kissinger’s take was that the North Vietnamese had overplayed their hand: “The North Vietnamese committed a cardinal error in dealing with Nixon: They cornered him. Nixon was never more dangerous than when he seemed to have run out of options.”5
President Nixon decided to shove everything into the pot and try to bomb the North Vietnamese back to the Paris negotiating table before Congress met. The winter monsoon in Vietnam limited the use of LGBs to rare clear days, and American fighter-bombers with an all-weather capability, A-6s and F-111s, could carry only limited amounts of dumb bombs. Nixon called for the B-52s.
Boeing Stratofortresses had been used before to bomb Viet Cong staging areas in South Vietnam and Laos, the “Arc Light” strikes, with overall good results. Designed to deliver nuclear weapons from great altitudes above any weather, these huge, eight-engine strategic bombers were equipped with radar navigation and bombing systems. If they weren’t carrying nukes, they could carry massive amounts of dumb bombs that they laid down in “carpets,” obliterating everything and everyone in the target area.
The new bombing campaign was called Linebacker II, which the press quickly dubbed “The Christmas Bombing.” The targets were the industrial heartlands of Hanoi and Haiphong. In his 1968 third-party campaign for vice president, with Alabama’s prosegregation Governor George Wallace at the top of the ticket, retired Air Force chief of staff General Curtis LeMay had bluntly advocated bombing North Vietnam “back into the stone age” and was castigated for it. Without any other cards to play, now Nixon and the Air Force were going to give it a try.
The B-52 is designed to fly as high as 50,000 feet. With eight engines arranged in four pods, two pods beneath each wing, the B-52 is huge, 159 feet, 4 inches long, with a wingspan of 185 feet. Officially the Stratofortress, the plane is known everywhere except in Air Force PR offices as the Buff, for big ugly fat fucker. The B-52 entered service in June 1955, and its final version, the B-52H, is still operational at this writing, sixty-three years later. The Air Force currently plans to retire the last of the B-52Hs in 2045, ninety years after the airframe entered service.
The B-52D was the most common model used during the Vietnam War. Modified to carry as much as thirty tons of ordnance loaded both internally and externally, the Buff could still fly eight thousand or so nautical miles unrefueled. During Linebacker II, the Christmas Bombing, B-52Gs, with a lesser ordnance capacity, were also used. The Buffs were staged from Andersen AFB on the island of Guam and from U Tapao Airfield in Thailand. The planes from Guam had to be aerial refueled once to complete their missions and return to base; the Thailand Buffs could make it to North Vietnam and home unrefueled.
On the night of December 18, 1972, the B-52s launched against the Hanoi-Haiphong industrial heartland of North Vietnam. The first night forty-two Stratoforts bombed. Among the hard targets were rail facilities, bridges, ferries, POL and storage depots, SAM sites, and previously off-limits MiG bases. On subsequent nights as ma
ny as twice that number of the huge, high-flying planes formed the bomber stream. Navy Iron Hand and Air Force Wild Weasels were in the air to suppress SAM radars, and Air Force F-111 Aardvarks and Navy A-6 Intruders ran in low to find and knock out SAM sites just moments before they could fire at the Buffs flying high in the stratosphere. The big black bombers came in waves for twelve consecutive nights.
The urban hearts of Hanoi and Haiphong were not targeted. Still, the carpet bombing caused stupendous damage in the areas that were targeted. It was not in Hanoi’s interest then to confirm how badly the B-52s had hurt them, nor was it in America’s interest to publicly suggest how bloody the Christmas Bombing might have been.
Long after the war an official Communist history claimed that in the Hanoi area 2,380 people were killed and 1,355 were wounded. The North Vietnamese took full credit for keeping the bombers from pulverizing the hearts of the two cities and falsely claimed, “The American imperialists were still not able to pressure our Government into making concessions.” These were the same people who claimed that eight hundred American airplanes had been shot down over Haiphong during the war, a massive inflation of the true number.6
In what may ultimately prove to be the last great air battle America will ever fight, the heavy bombers flew into North Vietnamese airspace invisible in the night sky. The SAM sites that were still operational launched their SA-2 Guideline missiles, which rose on pillars of fire into the heavens. Shrikes and Standard ARMs streaked earthward. Bombs marched across SAM sites, and high in the sky missiles missed or exploded against the bombers.
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