The F-105`s targets, Rolling Thunder in northeastern

The F-105 Thud, a legend flown by legends
file:///Users/edmarek/Documents/Talking%20Proud/HistoryTh...
The F-105 Thud, a legend flown by
legends
August 30, 2005
Go!
The F-105's targets, Rolling Thunder in northeastern
North Vietnam
Most targets in North Vietnam demanded the Thud pilots
fly1,250 mile round trips from Thailand, so air refueling was
required on the way in and on the way out. This map displays
typical flight routes for the Thud from Korat RTAFB,
Thailand. You can imagine a similar route from Takhli
RTAFB. Note that for practical purposes, same way in, same
way out, day in and day out, for the F-105s , and same kind of
refueling orbits for the tankers, so F-105 attacks on North
Vietnam seldom came as a surprise. Recall from the earlier
map of route packages that the F-105 was heavily tasked in
Route Package 6, the northeast sector of North Vietnam,
which included Hanoi and Haiphong. This is where we are
going to concentrate, because that's where the Thuds did most
of the work.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
F-105 Thunderchief, the
airplane
The F-105's targets,
Rolling Thunder in
northeastern North
Vietnam
Some of the pilots who
flew the Thud
Concluding comments
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F-105 pilots often ran into so many hostile attacks on the way
to and exiting from their targets that our refueling aircraft,
normally the KC-135, a modified Boeing 707, had to take a
high risk and fly over North Vietnam to feed the fuel
exhausted F-105 on his way out. You can see that their
refueling tracks took them over Laos, but they were not
supposed to fly over North Vietnam. But they did. A
warfighter does what a warfighter has to do.
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Two 355TFW Thunderchiefs taking gas from a KC-135 prior to entering
North Vietnam to attack their targets. Photo presented by Thud Ridge Web
Let's now get a better "lay of the land" for Route Pack 6 in
North Vietnam.
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When approaching Hanoi from Thailand, the F-105Ds had
first cross the Red River, then fly over to "Thud Ridge", the
name given by Thunderchief pilots to a series of hills located
between the Red and Black Rivers. They then turned and flew
low level down Thud Ridge directly to Hanoi and its near
environs, or cross over Thud Ridge and strike at targets to the
northeast of Hanoi.
Once over "Thud Ridge," the F-105s would approach their
targets low and fast, an environment in which the F-105D
excelled. Maneuverability and stability during low-level,
high-speed flight were excellent because of the aircraft's high
wing loading. By fast, we're talking in the vicinity of 500-600
knots, often at treetop level, no room for error.
We have read accounts by veteran 105 pilots that if hit over
their targets in this route pack, they would first assess whether
they could get to the Gulf of Tonkin to the east and bail out,
knowing they would be picked up by the Navy, or second, get
back to Thud Ridge where they could bail out and find some
cover. Bail-out over the plains almost surely would lead to
capture, and bail out over the rugged karsts to the northeast
was a dangerous enterprise once their chutes hit the jagged
limestone rocks. Sometimes, they could regain control and
hobble to Udorn RTAFB as described earlier. Some would
even land at or bail out over friendly Laotian dirt strips.
In these days, American fighter operations over Laos and
North Vietnam from Korat and Takhli RTAFBs did not receive
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much publicity. The US and Thailand would not admit the US
was flying combat sorties over North Vietnam from Thailand
until 1966, and even after that neither government wanted to
admit the extent of flight operations from those bases.
Politicians and diplomats in both countries were in a
"worry-warp" that China would enter the war ala Korea
which, in turn, might trigger a nuclear confrontation with the
Soviet Union, so these and many other diplomatic games were
played.
From a USAF perspective, Korat was set up in 1962 with one
officer and 14 airmen assigned on temporary status.
US Army "Camp Friendship" is in the foreground, the cantonment area
where the first Air Force people at Korat RTAFB stayed. The RTAFB can
been seen at the top of the photo. Photo taken in 1964 and presented by
Photo Gallery for the 44th Engineer Group (Construction), Camp Friendship,
Korat, Thailand
They lived at an Army cantonment at Camp Friendship, they
had some vehicles including crash trucks, refueling units,
forklifts, generators and the like. The Army operated their
communications. As you can see from this 1964 photo, the
Army cantonment area was very close to a pretty darn good
airfield, a RTAF field at the time. As early as 1962, perhaps
even earlier, the US government saw a need to get ready at
Korat to fly and fight with USAF aircraft, mainly the Thud.
Following the Gulf of Tonkin battle of August 1964, people
started to arrive at Korat to support tactical fighter operations.
Initially, the group numbered about 500, and they still lived at
the Army cantonment area. The Army started building up
USAF facilities at Korat, adjacent to the RTAF airfield. The
first fighter squadron, the 36th TFS, arrived in August from
Japan on temporary duty. Temporary duty was used as a cover
for Thailand, another diplomatic game to reject the idea that
fighter aircraft were "assigned" to the field.
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The 44th TFS arrived from Japan on a temporary rotation in
December 1964, giving Korat two fighter squadrons.
F-105Ds at Korat RTAFB, 1965. Photo presented by Arlis Kelly
The 13th TFS was set up at Korat in May 1966, largely using
44th TFS aircraft and pilots. But it did not use the 44th TFS
designation, instead taking the 13th designator. The 13th
squadron had four flights of F-105Ds (single-seat) for air-toground attack and one flight of F-105E “Wild Weasel” aircraft
(two seat, pilot and weapons system officer-navigator) which
specialized in hunting down and destroying enemy surfaceto-air missile (SAM) sites. Leetun flew the F-105D.
Thud Row -Takhli RTAFB Flight Line1965. Photo courtesy Jimmy Butler,
presented by Takhli RTAFB Web Page.
Fighter operations at Takhli RTAFB began earlier, in 1962
when F-100s arrived from Cannon and England AFBs in the
States, also on temporary duty. F-100 deployments and
rotations went up and down through 1965, tankers arrived in
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1965, and so did F-105s from the 355th TFW from McConnell
AFB, Kansas.
All F-105 squadrons were extraordinarily busy during
1966-1967, focused on attacking North Vietnam and the Ho
Chi Minh Trail through Laos. They were part of the
controversial Rolling Thunder air campaign against North
Vietnam, begun on March 2, 1965, and terminated in 1968.
Gen. Earle Wheeler, USA, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), meeting
with Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office, March 31, 1965. Photo
credit: Yoichi R. Okamoto, presented by Library and Museum of President
Lyndon B. Johnson.
To this day the mere mention of Rolling Thunder can get a
veteran's dandruff up. One can find a number of different
descriptions for the mission, and, as is the case often in war,
the mission changed and evolved as events dictated.
As a general statement, Rolling Thunder was to be a
systematic bombing of North Vietnam, starting at the
Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South
Vietnam. By slowly advancing the target areas northward
across North Vietnam, it was hoped the will of the North
Vietnamese leaders to fight would be destroyed. The idea was
to destroy industrial bases and air defenses, and stop the flow
of men and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The
underlying core objective was to destroy the enemy's will to
fight and force a truce. The US dropped more bombs during
this campaign than all the bombs dropped during World War
II.
Many issues are associated with this air campaign, too
numerous to outline here. Washington imposed stringent
controls. As indicated earlier, Washington feared Communist
China would send in its forces to fight ala the Korean war,
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which in turn could result in a nuclear confrontation with the
Soviet Union. These fears drove many political decisions at
home, and many American forces were fighting with their
hands tied as a result.
In any event, the thinking in Washington was that a major air
campaign against North Vietnam would force the North
Vietnamese to the bargaining table and the war could be
swiftly brought to an end. Some thought this could happen
within eight weeks. They were wrong. Rolling Thunder lasted,
on and off, for three years and, in response, the North
Vietnamese substantially increased their operations in South
Vietnam.
There were significant differences of opinion about the
Rolling Thunder campaign between military, especially Air
Force, leaders and political and diplomatic leaders, the latter
referred to by this editor as "the suits." These differences
deserve more than passing mention.
President Lyndon B. Johnson meeting with Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)
around a picnic table on LBJ Ranch front lawn, December 22, 1965. The red
arrow points to General Curtis Lemay, Chief of Staff, USAF (CSAF).
Rolling Thunder did not make him a happy camper, and he looks it in this
photo. In December 2004, we prepared a photo gallery of other such photos
in a presentation entitled, "How did so many smart guys make such a mess of
Vietnam?" You may wish to page through it. Photo credit: Yoichi R.
Okamoto
While Rolling Thunder was initially advertised as an
eight-week bombing campaign that would force the North to
give up, it developed into what became known as a strategy of
"gradualism," the complete antithesis of what General Curtis
Lemay, the CSAF and his senior generals saw as the proper
use of airpower. The Air Force at this point in its evolution
was immersed in strategic bombardment, some called Lemay's
"hard-knock." Many knew Lemay as "Bombs away with Curt
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Lemay." He wanted to pulverize North Vietnam's strategic
targets and was not much interested in coaxing them to lose
their will inch by inch.
General William W. Momyer
commanded the 7th Air
Force (7AF) in Vietnam and
became General
Westmoreland's air
component commander for
this theater of warfare. His
idea of employment of air
power was much like
Lemay's "hard-knock,' except
his plan was referred to as
SLAM, a concept for
seeking, locating,
annihilating, and monitoring
the enemy. In a book written
by General Momyer, entitled
Airpower in three wars, published by the Air University Press
in April 2003, General Momeyer makes the following points
about Operation Rolling Thunder:
Senior USAF leadership felt the operation was too
restrictive and that it should target vital North
Vietnamese strategic targets instead of lines of
communication.
The USAF wanted an "air strategy focused upon the
heart of North Vietnam. But neither the President, the
Secretary of State, nor the Secretary of Defense yet
conceived of Rolling Thunder as a strategic air
offensive ... Secretary McNamara still believed that
Rolling Thunder should be a limited application of
Airpower against logistics targets relatively close to the
DMZ. Further, the size and frequency of these strikes, as
well as the targets, should be selected in Washington."
There was no agreed on formal command arrangement
for who would control the strikes into North Vietnam.
As an aside, Momyer took this on as a major task to fix
while commanding 7th AF, and he finally became the
air component commander for all air forces, though
tensions always remained between the USAF and
Navy-Marines.
Instead, a Rolling Thunder Coordinating Committee
controlled air operations during the 1965–1968 bombing
campaign ... "The Rolling Thunder Coordinating
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Committee could not do the job."
This was most surely a recipe for disaster - warfare by
committee.
The F-105 in the early years of the war was flying about 75
percent of the Air Force's attack missions into North Vietnam,
largely because the USAF did not want to risk the B-52
strategic bomber, which had to be protected for the nuclear
strike mission against the Soviet Union. While the Thuds did
enormous damage to the North Vietnamese war machine, they
took a severe beating. The USAF bought about 600 F-105Ds.
As of early 1967, there were only about 300 left. About 350
F-105s were lost to combat. Most of these, 312, were lost to
anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) and surface-to-air missiles
(SAM). Most of these were lost to AAA. North Vietnamese
MiGs claimed 22 F-105 kills. In 1966 alone, the year we lost
Captain Leetun, 126 Thuds were lost, 103 to AAA.
One problem was that the F-105 formations flew every day at
roughly the same time, using roughly the same flight routes,
and the same callsigns. So the enemy was waiting for them. In
December 1966, MiG-21 pilots intercepted a large group of
Thuds and shot down 14 of them. It was calculated that an
F-105 pilot stood only a 75 percent chance of surviving 100
missions over North Vietnam.
In order to give you a sense for the job undertaken by the
F-105 pilot and his machine, we want to present a few USAF
photos of them in combat over North Vietnam. They were
provided courtesy of "Ralph H. via Paul Jarvis," and presented
on a page entitled, "388th TFW F-105 Thunderchiefs over
Vietnam:" Remember, there is an American pilot in those
cockpits!
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June 1968 Hanoi strike.
F-105 over Hanoi.
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Enemy surface-to-air missile (SAM) fired at F-105
F-105 struck by SAM and on fire
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F-105 egress
Ed Rasimus, a lieutenant F-105D pilot at the time, later wrote
a memoir of his F-105 days in Vietnam called, When Thunder
Rolled. We have seen some of his chats on the internet. In one,
he said his roommate at Korat in 1966 kept a log for four
months of Rolling Thunder. That log said they were losing
about a pilot and an aircraft a day. He described it this way:
“During four months of 1966, I briefed each day for
missions into NVN (North Vietnam) with a group that
typically consisted of four or five flights of four
aircraft--a total of around 25 pilots at a time. On average
over the period we lost one of those guys daily. Next
morning, start with 25, that night you have 24. Go in the
following day with 25, finish the day with 24. Over six
months that it took to fly my 100 missions my
roommate kept a diary that listed each time we lost
someone. During the tour we lost 110% of the aircraft
assigned and 60% of the pilots who started the 100
mission tour didn't finish.”
As a result of such high attrition, the 13th TFS was transferred
to Udorn RTAFB as an F-4D Phantom II squadron in October
1967. The F-105 men, machines and mission transferred to the
44th TFS at Korat.
So, the 13th squadron spent about one and one-half years
flying the Thud in the war. The squadron arrived in May 1966,
and Captain Leetun was shot down four months later, in
September. He was on a Rolling Thunder mission.
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Capt. Leetun's mission has been described as targeted against
rail and road bridges near Kep, in what was known as Route
Package 6.
Kep Airfield, North Vietnam. Note bomb craters. Presented by skyhawk.org
Several months prior to his attack mission, a CIA Intelligence
Memorandum provided to President Johnson addressed the
Kep Airfield as part of a growing number of North Vietnamese
air bases that could host the MiG-21 fighter, a major air-to-air
threat to US F-105 strikes in the Hanoi and Haiphong areas. It
appeared at the time that the North Vietnamese were trying to
disperse their fighter force to reduce chances of their being
destroyed on the ground and improve their access to incoming
US fighter formations. The roads and bridges, of course, were
used to bring in the needed equipment and supplies to build up
the air base. The Soviets were mightily involved, assisting the
North Vietnamese in developing their plans for air base
buildups throughout the country.
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As things turned out, the enemy MiG threat was not the major
threat to the F-105, especially early on. So worrying about the
airfield, in retrospect, arguably should not have been the major
concern. More important, Kep was a major distribution point
for transportation of weapons coming from China. It was a
key hub on the North Vietnamese railroad system. Once
weapons arrived at Kep, they were moved by trucks and boats
to designated collection points were porters then carried them
to their final destination points in the war zone. Kep was on
the most important segment of the rail system which was a
single track northeast railroad line that ran some 82 nautical
miles from the Chinese border through Kep into the heart of
Hanoi. There were a large number of important targets along
the length of this railroad, including multiple rail yards and
bridges linking the industrial and military triangle of Hanoi,
Thai Nguyen and Kep. Those who favored strategic bombing
felt that disruption, even total destruction, of transportation
between these areas would greatly reduce the war making
capability of North Vietnam.
However, the suits put on all kinds of restrictions in bombing
these targets. For example, at one point, only 10-22 miles of
its total length, depending on the timeframe, were declared
accessible to US air attack because of self-imposed rules of
engagement. The rest of the railroad line lay within the
30-mile buffer zone south of the North Vietnamese-Chinese
border and the “protected” zones around Hanoi and Haiphong.
This is what drove senior Air Force leaders nuts. They wanted
to take down Hanoi and Haiphong and all the major
distribution points around them; the idea that they would fall
in "protected" zones was unthinkable.
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North Vietnamese gunners manning an anti-aircraft artillery site. This was
photographed by an Air Force reconnaissance pilot. Presented by
secretvietnamwar.com
Returning to that 10-22 mile section of railway, the North
Vietnamese installed AAA batteries every 48 feet and
concentrated SAM sites around the tracks. The buildup of
AAA became the major threat to F-105 operations, and most
Thud losses were due to these guns. You will, in the next
section, learn that our pilots watched the building of SAM
sites in this area, prohibited from attacking them. Only when
the SAM sites were operational and demonstrated hostile
intent could our pilots take them out. For a long time, the suits
did not want to admit that the Soviets and Chinese were
building these sites, once again fearing they would enter the
war with significant combat forces.
You've been exposed to the airplane flown by and the targets
attacked by Captain Leetun and many others. Let's now
expose you to the courageous men who flew the F-105.
Some of the pilots who flew the Thud
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