One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power (64 page)

The most important result of the Gulf of Tonkin incident(s), of course, was the Southeast Asia Resolution (commonly called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) of 10 August 1964 in which the U.S. Congress granted President Johnson broad authority to assist South Vietnam and other U.S. allies in Southeast Asia.
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After the 5 August attack on the North Vietnam naval facilities, President Johnson fell back into the pattern of inaction, declining to react even to direct and intentional attacks against American personnel and aircraft in South Vietnam. To some extent, the upcoming November 1964 election, in which Johnson was running for president of the United States as a peace candidate, may have influenced his decisions.
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His opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater, was widely viewed as a dangerous hawk who would embroil the United States in a war in Southeast Asia if elected. Regardless of the reason, this lack of American action gave heart to Communist leaders, and the situation in South Vietnam continued to deteriorate.
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In late 1964 and early 1965, the North Vietnamese government began moving main force North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units into the South for a war-winning push.
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Communist guerrilla activity increased, including attacks against American personnel and facilities. The administration finally reacted to Viet Cong provocations in February 1965 (after Johnson's re-election and inauguration) when Communists attacked the U.S. base complex at Pleiku, South Vietnam, killing nine Americans, wounding one hundred, and inflicting heavy damage on U.S. aircraft and structures.
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In response, some eighty-three planes from
Coral Sea, Hancock
, and
Ranger
, along with an element of the South Vietnamese Air Force struck back in an operation named Flaming Dart I. This action included strikes on the North Vietnamese barracks at Dong Hoi and Vit Thu Lu as well as targets in Vinh, all at the cost of one A-4 Skyhawk. Critics consider these objectives relatively insignificant, selected by civilian leaders back in Washington and not military commanders who sought a stronger response against more legitimate and vital targets.
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Shortly after Flaming Dart I, the Viet Cong struck the U.S. barracks at Qui Nhon, killing twenty-three Americas and wounding many more. Ninety-nine planes from
Coral Sea, Hancock
, and
Ranger
immediately responded with Flaming Dart II, which attacked the Chanh Hoa barracks just north of the DMZ. Weather problems unique to this area, particularly during the winter months, minimized the effectiveness of this strike. Additionally, ground fire brought down three Navy planes while
damaging several others. These were the first of the Alpha Strikes, which utilized all available elements of a carrier wing.
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Alpha strikes could put a very heavy weight of ordnance on targets in a very short period of time, “either for shock effect or to penetrate very heavy defenses.”
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Despite the quantity of firepower used, the Flaming Dart operations proved ineffective in reducing attacks on American personnel and installations. Therefore, President Johnson initiated an air campaign against North Vietnam on 13 February 1965 named Operation Rolling Thunder, which purported to increase gradually the pain of war to the point that North Vietnamese leaders would give up their effort.
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The execution of Operation Rolling Thunder involved carrier aircraft from Task Force 77 along with land-based Marine Corps and Air Force planes flying from South Vietnam and Thailand.
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There were many problems with Rolling Thunder, including the fact that the first attacks did not launch until 5 March and then mostly against insignificant targets. Additionally, the missions were initially limited in frequency, placing little or no pressure on North Vietnamese leaders and certainly having no effect on their behavior.
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Unlike the aggressive, hard-hitting interdiction and strike packages against North Korea during 1950–1953, Rolling Thunder amounted to an ineffective, highly restricted, low-impact effort entirely wanting in its effect.
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This did not result from the lack of effort by American aviators, but from restrictive targeting. In other words, Rolling Thunder was an intense effort against second-and third-level targets and not a thrust for the enemy's jugular. Of course, none of this kept the operation from being highly dangerous to the pilots flying the missions. Despite the effort expended, Rolling Thunder failed to communicate American determination to the Communist enemy as President Johnson had intended. Hanoi took the gradual and minimalist approach of Rolling Thunder as an indication of lack of will rather than a demonstration of American resolve.
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Additionally, the strategy, tactics, and target selection that underlay Rolling Thunder were inconsistent with the advice of most military commanders, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and eventually even the American ambassador to South Vietnam.
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Ironically, the decision to place inordinate restrictions on the air campaign in North Vietnam occurred simultaneously with the commitment of American ground combat forces into the South. Many commanders considered this disconnect to be a serious mistake. In the words of Admiral U. S. Grant Sharp, Commander in Chief of Pacific Command at the time: “Despite John McCone's (the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency) perceptive warning vis-á-vis the implications of deploying those ground forces without making full use of our air power against the north, Secretary McNamara chose to do just that; i.e., to downgrade the U.S. air effort in North Vietnam and to concentrate on air and ground action in the south. This fateful decision contributed to our ultimate loss of South Vietnam as much as any other single action we took during our involvement.”
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Of course, not everyone
agrees with Admiral Sharp's point of view on the potential of air power to win the Vietnam War; yet when Rolling Thunder ended in October 1968, few would argue that it had been an effective campaign.
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The Rolling Thunder campaign that began so inauspiciously in February 1965 was designed to progress from near the DMZ northward, under the assumption that the Communists would give up the war rather than risk destruction. But the effort never had the conviction necessary to impress North Vietnamese leaders.
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The restrictions placed on the operation ensured it would not be effective, and the policy of gradualism permitted the Communists to adjust to every measure.
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Such requirements as administration approval before every strike, no pre-strike reconnaissance, no follow-up secondary strikes, and positive identification of enemy aircraft before engagement (at closing speeds of up to one thousand miles per hour) incensed commanders and pilots alike. Additionally, prohibiting pilots from attacking surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites before they were fully functional (and not always then) and not allowing pilots to use unexpended ordnance on targets of opportunity were initially frustrating and ultimately deadly. Should it be necessary to cancel a mission for any reason whatsoever, including weather, the flyers could not simply re-schedule it, but had to go through an entirely new planning and approval cycle.
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Additionally, President Johnson ordered periodic bombing halts intended to cause the North Vietnamese to reconsider the situation, all of which had no more impact than the ineffectual bombing itself.
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Eventually, the administration lifted some of the bombing restrictions, at least during certain periods. On 30 June 1966, a forty-six plane strike off
Ranger
hit an oil storage facility in the outskirts of Haiphong. Four days later, planes from
Kitty Hawk
struck an electrical power plant near downtown Haiphong, and in May 1967,
Bon Homme Richard
's planes hit targets near downtown Hanoi. Several months later, Task Force 77 aircraft began bombing bridges between Haiphong and Hanoi. Of course, these and other missions flown constantly by Task Force 77 had their price. Numerous aircraft were lost and serious accidents occurred on board
Oriskany
and
Forrestal
due in part to the high operational tempo. Needless to say, the greatest misfortune in all this involved the loss and injury to pilots, crews, and sailors in support of a strategy that American leaders had not adequately crafted.
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Communist losses were undoubtedly far greater, but to the amazement of American leaders, the North Vietnamese could sustain these losses within their strategic model. It appears that officials in Washington erroneously assumed their counterparts in Hanoi would be the mirror image of their thought processes and cultural values.

Ostensibly, the decision to insert U.S. ground forces into the war resulted from the need to secure America's air base at Da Nang. American leaders doubted the ability of ARVN forces to protect the huge base where the United States had located substantial assets. On 26 February 1965, at the request of General Westmoreland,
President Johnson approved the landing of U.S. Marines to provide security for America personnel, aircraft, and material at Da Nang.
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On 8 March, the lead element of the Ninth Marine Expeditionary Brigade, under command of Brigadier General Frederick J. Karch, landed at Da Nang with the mission to protect its air base from enemy attack.
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During the following weeks, Marine fixed-wing squadrons began landing in quick order and by midyear, much of the 1st Marine Air Wing had arrived in Vietnam. By the end of 1965, all the Wing's squadrons were operating in country as well as a Marine fighter squadron deployed on board USS
Oriskany
, which arrived in Vietnamese waters in May 1965.
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Additionally, Marine ground forces quickly grew to brigade and then division size followed by authorization to conduct offensive operations.
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The first major American ground action of the war, Operation Starlite, occurred in August 1965 with Marines attacking a Viet Cong regiment of some three thousand troops south of Da Nang near Chu Lai.
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Starlite consisted of three Marine infantry battalions, five helicopter squadrons, and two fixed-wing squadrons flying F-4 Phantom and A-4 Skyhawk jets. The operation shattered the Viet Cong regiment, killing over six hundred Communist troops at the cost of fifty Marine dead.
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About the same time the United States initiated Rolling Thunder, the Navy began an important maritime surveillance program entitled Operation Market Time. Consisting of surface and air units of the American and South Vietnamese navies, Market Time attempted to detect Communist waterborne supply and infiltration efforts along the South Vietnamese coastline.
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In addition to some 220 American and South Vietnamese naval surface craft, Market Time utilized P-2 Neptune, P-3 Orion, and P-5 Marlin patrol aircraft.
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These actions could occasionally become very exciting with patrol aircraft exposed and at risk, but mostly they involved long flights of ten to thirteen monotonous hours receiving very little attention outside the units conducting the missions.
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Market Time operations proved to be quite successful in reducing infiltration from coastal waters into South Vietnam, thereby forcing greater reliance on the Ho Chi Minh trail by Communist leaders.
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American air efforts to interdict the Ho Chi Minh trail never enjoyed the success of Market Time, even after October 1968 when the end of Rolling Thunder allowed assets to be shifted to that mission.
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Another naval operation named Game Warden conducted riverine actions in the brown water areas of southern South Vietnam. Consisting of river patrol boats, mine sweepers, and helicopters, the Game Warden operation began in the Mekong River delta and expanded into virtually every river and slough network from Cambodia to the South China Sea.
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Intended to deny these marshy alluvial plains and their associated river networks to the Viet Cong, Operation Game Warden proved relatively successful and occasionally very violent when American or South Vietnamese patrol boats encountered Communist formations.
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Like Operation Market Time, Game
Warden did not receive the same level of attention from correspondents and historians, as did the larger and more dramatic events of the Vietnam War. Yet both operations contributed to the war effort and underscored the value of naval aviation in what were essentially surface operations.

As the air war over North Vietnam wore on, Soviet-supplied air defense system became an ever-increasing problem for American aviators. This threat included both surface anti-aircraft defense systems and airborne fighters, especially the MiG-21. Initially, the greatest surface-based threat came from conventional anti-aircraft artillery, which proved effective even against modern high-speed aircraft. Simply by projecting the route of flight from an attack plane's roll-in point to its target, AAA gunners could fill that kill box with as much flak as possible. This tactic proved particularly lethal when multiple systems fired in barrages accompanied by the small-arms fire available from other defenders. Antiaircraft artillery had proven quite effective in Korea as well as in the early phases of the Vietnam air war. It was one of the lessons we either failed to learn properly, or dropped from our institutional memory. Of course, emergence of the surface-to-air missile (SAM) threat somewhat distracted air power leaders from addressing the dangers of AAA. During Vietnam, 58 percent of naval combat losses, 73 percent of Air Force casualties, and 64 percent of Marine Corps losses are attributable to AAA gunfire. The fact that the Air Force and Marine Corps flew more missions over South Vietnam and Laos where AAA was the only threat helps explain why they had greater losses from these systems.
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Of course, naval aviators developed countermeasures against the AAA fire, which included escort planes that attacked suspected and identified sites with Zuni air-to-ground missiles and 20-mm gunfire just seconds before attack planes made their bombing runs. Although evidence suggests that these suppression efforts took a high toll in enemy gunners and weapons, the North Vietnamese could constantly replace both, and AAA fire remained a threat throughout the war.
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