Operation Linebacker

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Operation Linebacker
Part of Vietnam Conflict
Two B-52s of a three aircraft cell over the DRV
Date 9 May - 23 October 1972 Location Democratic Republic of Vietnam Result Tactical U.S. victory
Combatants
United States (U.S.)	Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV)

Operation Linebacker was the title of a U.S. 7th Air Force and U.S. Navy aerial interdiction campaign conducted against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 9 May to 23 October 1972, during the Vietnam Conflict. Its purpose was to halt or slow the transportation of supplies and materiel for the Nguyen Hue Offensive, (known in the West as the Easter Offensive) an invasion of the Republic of Vietnam, by forces of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) that had been launched on 30 March. Linebacker was the first continuous bombing effort conducted against North Vietnam since the bombing halt instituted by President Lyndon B. Johnson in November, 1968.

[edit] The Nguyen Hue Offensive

Main article: Easter Offensive

At noon on 30 March 1972, 30,000 PAVN troops, supported by regiments of tanks and artillery, rolled over the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separated the two Vietnams. This three-division force caught the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and their American allies unprepared.^[1] The PAVN force struck the defensive positions of the Third ARVN Division and threw it into disarray. South Vietnamese forces then fell back, and a race began between both antagonists to the bridges at Dong Ha and Cam Lo. By 4 April, ARVN officers had patched together a defensive line that held PAVN at bay, but it was only a temporary respite. Although the conventional attack by the North Vietnamese riveted the attention of the allies on the northern provinces, it was only the first of three such operations that were launched that spring. On 5 April, PAVN forces crossed the border from Cambodia in a another three-division, combined arms force to attack Binh Long Province, north of Saigon. They quickly siezed the town of Loc Ninh and surrounded the town of An Loc, cutting the road to the capital. On 12 April, PAVN struck again, this time moving in from Laos and siezing a series of border outposts around Dak To in Kontum Province in the Central Highlands. The North Vietnamese then proceeded east toward the provencial seat of Kontum. Hanoi had initiated the offensive to coincide with the winter monsoon, when continuous rain and low cloud cover made air support difficult.

The Nguyen Hue offensive

The initial U.S. response to the offensive was lakadasical and confused.^[2] The Pentagon was not unduly alarmed and the U.S. Ambassador and General Creighton W. Abrams, commander of U.S. forces, were out of the country. Both President Richard M. Nixon and his national security advisor, Dr. Henry Kissinger considered the American military's assessments of the situation both unimaginative and lacking in aggressiveness.^[3] On 4 April, Nixon authorized bombing within the DRV (which had been limited to reprisal raids just above the DMZ) up to the 18th parallel. In order to prevent a total ARVN collapse and to protect American prestige during a coming summit meeting with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, Nixon decided to risk a massive escalation of force.

Due to the continuous withdrawal of American forces and the ongoing policy of Vietnamization, at the time of the invasion fewer than 100,000 U.S. troops remained in South Vietnam, and most of them were support troops scheduled to leave within the next six months. The number of combat aircraft stationed in Southeast Asia was less than half that of its peak strength in 1968-69. Approximately 75 fighter aircraft were stationed in the RVN, and 180 fighters and 50 B-52 bombers were at U Tapao RTAFB, Thailand. The U.S. Navy's Task Force 77 (stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin), had four aircraft carriers assigned to it, but only two were available at any one time to conduct operations. Their air wings totaled approximately 140 aircraft.

[edit] Build-up and Response

U.S Air strikes against the Nguyen Hue Offensive were authorized on 2 April under the codename Freedom Train. These strikes were conducted in support of ARVN forces, and included those of the air wings of the carriers USS Coral Sea (CV-43) and USS Hancock (CV-19). The continuing bad weather, however, limited the ability of the U.S. aircraft to assist in the defense. By 6 April, at naval and air bases around the globe, American forces were put on alert and ships and aircraft squadrons began moving toward Southeast Asia.

DRV anti-aircraft defense weapons

The U.S. immediately began a rapid build-up of airpower. The Air Force deployed 176 F-4 Phantoms and 12 F-105s from bases in the Republic of Korea and the U.S. to Thailand between 1 April and 11 May in Operation Constant Guard. Between 4 April and 23 May, during Operation Bullet Shot, the Strategic Air Command (SAC) dispatched 124 of its stateside B-52s to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam bringing the total B-52 strength available for operations to 209. The Navy cut short its in-port period for the carriers USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) and USS Constellation (CV-64) and ordered the USS Midway (CV-41) and USS Saratoga (CV-60) to augment the fleet so that four or more carrier wings could conduct missions simultaneously. The 7th Fleet was thereby increased from 84 to 138 ships.^[4]

The first large-scale raid directed against the DRV was conducted on 10 April by 15 B-52s against railway yards and oil storage facilities at the DRV transportation hub of Vinh. This was the first use of B-52s against targets in North Vietnam (other than the passes into Laos) by the U.S. By the 12th, Nixon had informed Kissinger that he had decided on a more comprehensive bombing campaign that would include strikes against Hanoi and the port of Haiphong.^[5] Three days later, the airfields at Bai Thuong were attacked. On the weekend of 15-16 April, targets near Hanoi and Haiphong were struck. By mid-month, nearly all of North Vietnam had been cleared for bombing raids for the first time in over three years. Air Force and Navy commanders and pilots were relieved that Nixon (unlike President Johnson) left the operational planning to the local commanders and loosened targeting restrictions that had plagued Operation Rolling Thunder.

On 20 April, Kissinger met secretly with Brezhnev in Moscow. Wary of Washington's growing relationship with Beijing, Brezhnev agreed to pressure apply on Hanoi to end the offensive and negotiate seriously. He arranged for another a secret meeting, this time to be held on 2 May in Paris and to be attended by the DRV's lead negotiator, Le Duc Tho. Kissinger informed Hanoi, through Brezhnev, that the U.S. would not bomb Hanoi or Haiphong before the meeting. On the assigned day, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho met for a meeting that Kissinger called "brutal and insulting."^[6] As a result of this meeting and the fall of Quang Tri, Nixon was prepared to up the ante.

[edit] The Fall of Quang Tri and Duck Hook

On 27 April, ARVN defenses in Quang Tri Province began to collapse. Due to conflicting orders from the high command, South Vietnamese units joined an exodus of refugees heading southward, abandoning Quang Tri City. PAVN forces entered the city on the same day of the meeting between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. The PAVN offensive had become a massive conventional military operation that was being conducted on three fronts simultaneously, involving the equivalent of 20 divisions and 600 tanks. As PAVN continued to gain ground in three of South Vietnam's four military regions, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff updated their contingency plans (drawn up before the bombing halt of 1968) for the resumption of bombing in the DRV and recommended it to the president, who approved it on 8 May.

The docks at Haiphong harbor

Back in 1969, Nixon had ordered the preparation of a "maximum effort" contingency plan that would bring the Vietnam Conflict to an end. Operation Duck Hook was to include an invasion of the DRV itself and included a proposal to mine the major harbors of North Vietnam. The plan had been shelved at the time as too extreme, but it was not forgotten. The U.S. Navy had also been updating its contingency plans for just such a mining operation since 1965. On 5 May, the president ordered the JCS to prepare to execute the aerial mining portion of Duck Hook within three days.

At precisely 0900 on 8 May six Navy A-7 Corsair IIs and three A-6 Intruders of the Coral Sea entered Haiphong harbor and dropped 36, 1,000-pound, Mark-52 and Mark-55 mines into the water. They were protected from attack by North Vietnamese MiG fighters by the guided-missile cruisers [[U.S.S. Chicago]] and [[U.S.S. Long Beach]] and by flights of F-4 Phantoms. The reason for the timing of the strike became apparent when President Nixon delivered a televised speech explaining the escalation to the American people: "the only way to stop the killing is to take the weapons of war out of the hands of the international outlaws of North Vietnam."^[7] The mines were activated five days after their delivery in order to allow any vessels then in port to escape without damage. Over the next three days other carrier aircraft laid 11,000 more mines into DRV secondary harbors, effectively blockading all maritime commerce.^[8] The response from both the Soviets and Chinese was cool toward Hanoi. Nixon and Kissinger's diplomacy had triumphed and the U.S. was free to react as it pleased.

[edit] Going North

Operation Linebacker, the designation for the new interdiction campaign, would have three goals: to isolate the DRV from its outside sources of supply by destroying harbors, railroads, and bridges; to destroy stockpiles of supplies and food; and to strike supplies and materiel moving toward the southern battlefields. The administration and the Pentagon believed that a large-scale interdiction campaign would cripple the DRV, since it depended heavily on its socialist allies to sustain both it's domestic economy and the war in the south. Nearly 85 percent of its imports, however, came in by sea from the Soviet Union and Eastern European nations. The People's Republic of China shipped an average of 22,000 tons of supplies a month over two rail lines and eight major roads that linked it with North Vietnam.^[9]

Two days after Duck Hook, Linebacker began with large-scale bombing operations against the DRV by the tactical fighter aircraft of the Seventh Air Force and Task Force 77. Their targets included the railroad switching yards at Yen Vien and the Paul Doumer Bridge, on the northern outskirts of Hanoi. A total of 414 sorties were flown on the first day of Linebacker, 120 by the Air Force and 294 by the Navy, and they encountered the heaviest single day of air-to-air combat during the Vietnam Conflict, with 11 North Vietnamese MiGs and two U.S. fighters shot down. Anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) and over 100 surface-to-air missile firings brought down two more U.S. aircraft.

F-4 Phantoms loaded with laser-guided bombs

By the end of the month, American aircraft had destroyed 13 bridges along the rail lines running from Hanoi to the Chinese frontier. Another four were destroyed between the capital and Haiphong, including the notroious "Dragon's Jaw" that spanned the Song Ma River near Thanh Hoa. Several more bridges were brought down along the rail line leading to the south toward the DMZ. Targets were then switched to POL storage and transportation networks and DRV airfields. There was an immediate impact on the battlefield in South Vietnam. Shelling by PAVN artillery dropped off by on-half between 9 May and 1 June. This slowdown was not due to an immediate shortage of artillery shells, but rather to a desire to conserve ammunition. U.S. intelligence analysts believed that PAVN had enough supplies stockpiled to sustain their campaigns throught the autumn.^[10]

The intensity of the bombing campaign was reflected by the sharp increase in the number of monthly strike sorties flown in Southeast Asia as a whole: from 4,237 for all services, including the South Vietnamese Air Force, in the month preceding the invasion to 18,444 in the first month of Linebacker (7,239 of them flown by the Navy). 15,951 more missions were launched during in June.

The missions included the first widespread use of precision-guided munitions, including electro-optical and laser-guided bombs. In addition to interdicting the road and rail system of the DRV, Linebacker also systematically attacked it's air defense system. The North Vietnamese Air Force, with approximately 200 interceptors, strongly contested the attacks throughout the campaign. Navy pilots enjoyed a 4:1 advantage in their kill-to-loss ratio during May and June, after which the North Vietnamese rarely engaged them. The Air Force, opposed by MiG-21s and F-6s (the Chinese version of the MiG-19), experienced a virtual 1:1 ratio through the first three months of the campaign. During August, however, the introduction of real-time early warning systems reversed that trend to a favorable 4:1 for the remainder of the conflict.

Captains Steve Ritchie and Charles DeBellevue, the first Air Force aces of the Vietnam Conflict

Linebacker saw several other "firsts". On the opening day of the operation, Navy Lieutenant Randy Cunningham and his radar intercept officer, Lieutenant (j.g.) Willie Driscoll (in an F-4J based on the carrier Constellation) became the first U.S. air aces of the Vietnam Conflict when they shot down their fifth MiG. On 28 August, the Air Force gained it's first aces when Captain Richard S. Ritchie downed his fifth enemy aircraft. Twelve days later, Captain Charles B. DeBellevue (who had been Ritchie's backseater during four of his five victories) downed two more MiGs, bringing his total to six.

[edit] Paris and Conclusion

The stalled offensive in the south and the devastation in the DRV forced Hanoi back to the negotiating table in August. Nixon ordered a halt to all bombing above the 20th parallel on 23 October, one week before the formal peace agreement was to be signed in Paris. This once again placed Hanoi and Haiphong off-limits, and halted Operation Linebacker. American aircraft losses from 1 April to 23 October were 80 for the Air Force and 58 for the Navy. 63 North Vietnamese aircraft were shot down during the same time period. Of the 138 U.S. losses, 31 were shot down by aircraft, 44 by missles, and 63 by AAA.

Operation Linebacker had played a crucial role in blunting the PAVN offensive by drying up it's vital sources of supply. PAVN had evolved into a conventional military force, and such a force depended upon a complex logistical system, which made it vulnerable to aerial attack. Air Force General Robert N. Ginsburgh, of the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, summed up the attitudes of U.S. avaitors by remarking that Linebacker had "a greater impact in its first four months of operation that Rolling Thunder had in three and one-half years."^[11] It was not the end, however. Henry Kissinger may have announced that "peace is at hand", but it was not going to come easy. American bombers would have return once again to the skys of the North Vietnam in Operation Linebacker II before the conflict would end.

Diplomatic triumph: Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev (l), Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin (c), and President Richard Nixon (r)

[edit] U.S. Air Order of Battle

• Task Force 77

USS Constellation, Carrier Air Wing 9 (F-4, A-6, A-7)

USS Coral Sea, Carrier Air Wing 15 (F-4, A-6, A-7)

USS Hancock, Carrier Air Wing 21 (F-4, A-4)

USS Kitty Hawk, Carrier Air Wing 11 (F-4, A-6, A-7)

USS Midway, Carrier Air Wing 5 (F-4, A-6, A-7)

USS Saratoga, Carrier Air Wing 3 (F-4, A-6, A-7)

• Seventh Air Force

8th Tactical Fighter Wing, Ubon RTAFB, Thailand (F-4)

+ two Constant Guard squadrons from 4th TFW, Seymour-Johnson AFB. North Carolina

49th Tactical Fighter Wing, Takhli RTAFB, Thailand (F-4)

56th Special Operations Wing, Nakhon Phanom RTAFB, Thailand (A-1, HH-53)

366th Tactical Fighter Wing, Danang AB, RVN (F-4)

+ one Constant Guard squadron from 3rd TFW, Osan AB, Korea

388th Tactical Fighter Wing, Korat RTAFB, Thailand (F-4, F-105G)

+ one Constant Guard squadron from 23d TFW, McConnell AFB, Kansas

432d Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, Udon RTAFB, Thailand (F-4, RF-4)

+three Constant Guard squadrons

--one squadron from 405th TFW, Clark AB, Philippnes

--one squadron from 31st TFW, Homestead AFB, Florida

--one squadron from 33d TFW, Eglin AFB, Florida

43d Strategic Wing, Andersen AFB, Guam (B-52)

72d Strategic Wing (Provisional), Anderson AFB, Guam (B-52)

307th Strategic Wing, U Tapao RTAFB, Thailand (B-52)

[edit] Notes

1. ^ David Fulghum & Terrance Maitland, et al, South Vietnam on Trial. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1984, p. 138.
2. ^ Fulghum & Maitland, pps. 141-142.
3. ^ Fulghum & Maitland, p. 142.
4. ^ Fulghum & Maitland, p. 142.
5. ^ Fulghaum & Maitland, p. 142.
6. ^ Fulghum & Maitland, p. 179.
7. ^ Morocco, p. 131.
8. ^ Andrade, p. 518.
9. ^ John Morocco, Rain of Fire: Air War, 1969-1973. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1985, p. 130.
10. ^ Dale Andrade, Trial By Fire. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1995, p. 519.
11. ^ Morocco, p. 136.

[edit] References

• Andrade, Dale, Trial by Fire: the 1972 Easter Offensive, America's Last Vietnam Battle. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1995.
• Drendel, Lou, Air War over Southeast Asia: Vol. 3, 1971-1975. Carrollton TX: Squadron/Signal Publications, 1984.
• Fulghum, David and Terrence Maitland, et al, South Vietnam on Trail: Mid-1970-1972. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1984.
• Karnow, Stanley, Vietnam: A History. New York: Viking Books, 1983.
• Littauer, Raphael and Norman Uphoff, The Air War in Indochina. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972.
• Morocco, John, Rain of Fire: Air War, 1969-1973. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1985.