A discussion of Gen LeMay morphed into a discussion of bombing tactics, which turned into a discussion of whether SAC planning of Linebacker missions was silly...
Can you add anything to the below, or refute any of it? https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/Curtis-LeMay/5-2208854/?page=2#i78220777 Originally Posted By couchlord: And yet when SAC got the go ahead in December 1972, Omaha FUBAR'd it bad. After about a dozen losses they finally let the local commanders take over and get it done. Zoinks replied: True enough at first. Mission Planning didn't rely on any sort of deception, and the North Vietnamese could guess at the routes from where the tankers were orbiting. But, that was also true of most of the air attacks in the North. On the other hand, there was also a belief that the little black boxes would be magical, and to an extent they were. But in the end, Mission Planning really under estimated that amount of missile shots that the North was capable of making. Then the North ran out of missiles. Literally. And there were still plenty of Buffs. Bigger Hammer replied with link from Wikipedia: The SAC H.Q. botched those missions BADLY due to Lazy - stupid planning. Each night the mission was IDENTICAL - each "cell" of three B-52s flew the EXACT same altitude, exact same speed, exact same route, exact same turning point, exact same exit path. To make matters worse, the mission template called for a severe turn out after bomb drop which turned the jammers antenna away from the ground at a time the B-52 was most vulnerable, (bomb doors wide open, steep turn, most radar visible with least amount of E.C.M. That is when the majority of losses occurred. The N.V.A. were no dummies. It was like shooting skeet. If you know exactly where the targets will be, speed, altitude, course, where they will turn out and reduce their defense capability, ... even B-52s become easy targets, especially for the SAMs that were designed & built specifically to shoot them down and having the Soviet Air Defense experts there to assist ... The Crews basically mutinied and said, "change up the damn attack plan or find some other idiots to be your clay pigeons"... SAC figured out that unsustainable losses were a "Bad Thing" and changed up the attack plans (no stupid tight post target turnouts wrecking the E.C.M. coverage, varied courses, speeds, altitudes & routes, ect... The mixed in a B-52 D into each cell of three B-52 (usually with two "G" models as the "D" had more powerful E.C.M. Jamming better equipped for providing E.C.M. jamming in Vietnam against the SAM-2 threat so the "D" model E.C.M. coverage helped protect its newer, yet weaker, "G" model brothers. Operation Linebacker II - B-52s over North Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker_II Couchlord responded: Indeed. It was even worse than that. The turn out took them into the jet stream and an instant -100mph ground speed hit, increasing their SAM exposure time accordingly. The turn out was not necessary, they were dropping iron bombs from 40K' not 10MT nukes. The cells were split into 3 groups of attacks each night split by exactly 3 hours. Each attack, as mentioned above, flew the exact same routes to the exact same targets. The 3 hour gap allowed the NVA to reload their SAM sites. The same targets were attacked on consecutive nights with the exact same timing and routes, as mentioned above. The SAM depots were not attacked. The B-52's were ordered not to jink. Splitting each nights attack into 3 waves separated by 3 hours diluted the Wild Weasel and CAP support. The chaff corridor was poorly timed and placed. There was a captured SA2 radar van located in Florida, I forget where. SAC never bothered to fly a B-52 at it. When all the B-52's were getting hit at the turn out, SAC finally had a go at the captured van and then saw the effect the turn out had. SAC staff knew it was FUBAR but they were all too scared to object. It's an excellent lesson in inept top down management. Some of this must be a legacy of Lemay. SAC caught a few breaks. NVA had relocated about half their SA-2 sites to the south to cover the Ho Chi Min trail. The campaign against Hanoi took them by surprise. SA-2 preparation was labor intensive, they could only prepare about 50 missiles each night. It took the NVA a few days to relocated their Sams and ramp up the missile prep. Oh, and one night a B-52d laid a spread of bombs across the Hanoi International Airport terminal. It was not on the target list. Accident? _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
