Roles and Missions: The 366th Wing in the Real World
As we have seen, the power a composite wing like the 366th can bring to bear in a time of war is impressive, possibly even decisive. But how might this power actually be used in a crisis? The question is often on the minds of a number of folks, from the JCS Tank in the Pentagon to the flight line at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho. (Currently, only one of the three USAF composite wings assigned to ACC, the 23rd at Pope AFB, South Carolina, has ever been deployed during a crisis.) The decision when and where to use the 366th, with its unique capabilities, will be a tough judgment call for the national command authorities who will order it deployed and the regional CinCs who will command it during a crisis.
The following scenario is designed to show you some of the possibilities. I hope it will help you understand the capabilities of the 366th Wing and of modern airpower in general. The composite wings of ACC, along with the carrier air wings (CVWs) on our aircraft carriers, are going to be our aerial fire brigades for the next generation or so. If the last few years have been any indication, the coming decades will be violent enough to make the Cold War look no more frightening than an election in Chicago.
OPERATION GOLDEN GATE — VIETNAM, MAY 2000
The inevitability of the event seemed so clear in retrospect, yet this did not mitigate the surprise. South Vietnam, once deluged by American and other Western influences, simply never bought into the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy of the North. And while Hanoi was able to make it stick for a generation, the demise of their governing philosophy everywhere else in the world only encouraged the South to go its own way. The leader was a former chieftain with the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN — the former Viet Cong headquarters) with his own reasons for rebellion. Only 5 feet/1.5 meters tall and thin, even by Vietnamese standards, Duc Oanh had been an earnest and effective foe of the RVN and its American protectors. Wounded twice in combat actions and nearly buried alive by a B-52 Arc Light mission in 1970, he'd carried the banner for his beliefs, only to be shunted to a minor post office job when the North finally overran Saigon in 1975. What began as personal resentment in Duc's mind grew into a dream as he watched the North stagnate while the South fought the ideological reins well enough to begin something akin to genuine national development. He saw the perversion of his people's revolution by the ruling council of the North as final proof of the folly of the old men who ruled this corner of the world. One day, the dream formed into action.
Many former revolutionary soldiers shared Duc's feelings.
The coup that followed was anything but bloodless. In eight violent hours of darkness, combat veterans of the Vietnamese Army systematically assassinated their own senior officers during parties following the twenty-fifth anniversary Liberation Day ceremonies on April 30th. By dawn most of the military formations in the southern half of Vietnam had either been decapitated or had new leadership. And from Radio Saigon (nobody but foreigners had ever called it Ho Chih Minh City) went out a cry of renewed Southern independence that caught every news and intelligence agency in the world by total surprise.
Hanoi's first reaction was predictably intemperate.
The People's Republic of China was the only nation with any inkling of what was happening — Duc had established covert links to that government, whose hatred of Hanoi was every bit as deep as his own — and by noon the first international recognition of the revolutionary government had been announced. As for the Americans, the timing was too close to an American election. The President — himself a veteran of the aerial campaign against Hanoi in the 1970s and one of a generation of former warriors with a personal promise to make that lost war right — had to act.
The Party headquarters in Saigon had originally been built by the French as Saigon's city hall. The wide corridors, arched windows, and high ceilings with slowly rotating fans gave the building an air of faded colonial elegance. But the wiring was almost as bad as the plumbing. The emergency diesel generator in the basement had been delivered from East Germany in the 1970s, and was inoperable for lack of parts. Brownouts and complete power outages in the city had grown more frequent lately, as the arthritic Vietnamese economy and crumbling infrastructure were increasingly unable to meet payments on oil shipments, even at the subsidized 'friendship price' the Chinese comrades offered to help prop up one of the world's three remaining Communist states.
Vu Xuan Linh, Chairman of the city's Party Committee and effective ruler of a metropolitan region of over five million people, was not surprised when the lights went out. That happened often enough. He
The phone lines to the South were down, and the few military posts that had not thrown down their weapons or joined the rebels were getting out only fragmentary reports. The rebels seemed to have some sort of electronic jammers (ham radio gear actually) and knew how to use them. But the CNN news feed on TV in the ready room of the 923rd Fighter Regiment was clear and chilling. Saigon, Danang, Hue, even small provincial towns like Dalat and Ban Me Thuot, all seemed to have broken out in a mad carnival of mutiny, vandalism, looting, and murder of government and party officials. Colonel Nguyen Tri Loc, chief political officer of the Vietnam People's Air Force (VNPAF) Fighter Command, could see that he was facing the greatest challenge of his career. He would have to send his pilots into action against their own people.
'Airmen,' he said quietly to the two dozen pilots in the ready room, 'this is the most serious crisis Vietnam has faced in a generation. Your grandfathers shed their blood to drive out the French imperialists. Your fathers shed their blood to drive out the Americans. If this criminal counterrevolutionary uprising is not crushed swiftly, all their sacrifices will have been for nothing, and your children will become slaves of international monopoly capitalism. Remember your training, and your aim will be true. The Party and the Nation are depending on you.'
The pilots looked straight ahead, stood to attention, and filed out to the flight line. There were no sidelong glances or murmurs of conversation. The colonel had no idea what they were thinking, and that made him uneasy. The 923rd was trained for the ground attack role, operating some 24 Su- 22M-3 Fitters. Twenty were flyable today, an excellent maintenance performance considering the difficulty of keeping the temperamental Tumansky engines running without regular factory overhauls. The range of over 600 miles/983 km. for this mission would limit the ordnance each could deliver on downtown Saigon to either two pods of 57mm rockets, or two napalm canisters. The most urgent target was the secret police headquarters. If the rebels could secure the building and its voluminous records, it would be a disaster. (The Party leaders had learned well the lessons of the overthrow of the German Democratic Republic.) After striking the city hall, the broadcasting stations, the Caravelle Hotel, and other likely centers of the revolt, the planes would recover at Danang, if that airfield was still secure, or alternatively at Cam Ranh Bay, then refuel and return to Tho Xuan to re-arm. There were no target folders, but every pilot was given a large-scale city map. The latest weather satellite pictures indicated that after some morning showers, it would be clear over most of the South. There was no up-to-date reconnaissance beyond what every pilot could see on CNN.
