VI.
In practical terms, defenses in RP I and II were relatively light. In III and IV, defenses were heavier but still moderate (but with one or two real hot spots, such as the Than Hoa Bridge, which resulted in more shoot-downs than any other single target). MiGs flew out of V, which was bad, but it also contained a lot of jungle where there were no SAMs or guns, which was good. VI was the worst, with the Red River Valley, MiG bases at Phuc Yen and Dong Ha, Hanoi and Haiphong, and the northeast railroad.
The reason for Route Packages was to allow the U.S. Navy and the USAF to operate over North Vietnam without coordinating with each other. Each service could operate over its own designated zones, and in that way, each service could keep control of its own aircraft without having to place them under the control of a single air commander. Thus, the USAF got RPs I, II, V (V was farthest from the sea), and VI A, while the Navy got RPs III, IV, and VI B (VI B and IV were near the sea). In other words, the Navy got the midsection and the USAF got the top and bottom.
There were both benefits and drawbacks to Route Packages. The chief benefit was that the Navy and the Air Force kept out of each other’s way and they could plan their operations apart from each other, so there was never a coordination problem. In those days, it was also likely that U.S. forces did not have the command and control that would have allowed Navy and Air Force aircraft to operate with each other in the same airspace. It was likely, too, that Air Force and Navy planes would have been intercepting one another and perhaps even taking shots at one another. The chief drawback, of course, was that U.S. forces were not mutually supportive, which meant that the enemy could easily take advantage of the split in U.S. forces, and contend with two weaker divided air efforts rather than one unified and coordinated force.
It also gave pilots another reason to act contrary to what they saw as stupid, wrong, and lacking in credibility.
For example, when the weather was bad in an Air Force Route Package, Air Force pilots were not allowed to hit an alternative target in the Navy’s Route Packages.
Let’s say that Horner was flying in RP VI A, going after a bridge on the northwest rail line to China, and the weather turned bad — thunderstorms. Logic would say he ought to fly over to the northeast rail line to China and drop on a bridge over there; but since that was in RP VI B, he was expected to weather-abort the mission and bring his bombs home.
Did he do that? No.
What he did was fly to wherever there looked to be a suitable target, drop on it, and then report 100 percent of ordnance in the original target area. He would not report any BDA (Battle Damage Assessment), since he knew that the original target had not been hit, while there was a smoking hole a hundred miles away that they could not correlate with any Frag, so they did not report it, even if photos showed it.
Meanwhile, Chuck Horner came to understand that both he and the enemy ultimately worked for people whose interests did not include either of them; they did not really care if he or they died. Their agenda involved some geopolitical goal, while his was to stay alive.
? None of these realizations came in a flash. For Horner, some didn’t hit him until after he returned to the United States. If, however, there was a Road to Damascus moment for Chuck Horner, it had to be on the July day in 1965 when the Thuds from Korat and Ta Khli made history. On that July 24, sixteen F-105s were sent to destroy a radar-guided SA-2 surface-to-air missile site located at the junction of the Red and Black Rivers in North Vietnam. This was the first-ever attack on a SAM site, and it turned into a ghastly fiasco.
Before that date, the Air Force and civilian authorities responsible for determining the course of the war had further determined that U.S. aircraft should not attack the SA-2 sites then being set up in North Vietnam. In that way, they reasoned, the United States wouldn’t annoy the North Vietnamese enough to provoke them into using the SAMs…
One day in July, the North Vietnamese shot down an RF-4C, an unarmed reconnaissance version of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom jet, with a SAM-2. In other words, the North Vietnamese had missed the subtle reasoning that would have had them install SAMs without actually using them, and now the United States had to teach them a lesson.
On the night of July 23, a warning order went out to Korat and Ta Khli to stand by, a retaliation mission against the North Vietnamese SA-2 site was being planned; Frag to follow. At 11:00 P.M. the Frag arrived. It called for low-level tactics to defeat the SAMs, without thought of the many AAA guns that were defending the sites. To fool the North Vietnamese, the Thuds from Korat would let down in Laos just across the border, fly east down a deep valley in northern Laos that the Communist Pathet Lao used as their stronghold — without thought that the Pathet Lao might see them, or perhaps choose to take some target practice themselves — then turn north at the Black River and hit the target in the delta at the Black and Red Rivers junction. The Thuds from Ta Khli, meanwhile, would let down to the north and fly east until hitting the Red River, then come south — without thought to the midair-collision potential resulting from Korat flying up from the south and Ta Khli coming down from the north. They also Fragged the munitions. Since it was a low-level attack, the F-105s were given napalm and CBU-2s. These last were new munitions — tiny bomblets containing ball bearings carried in tubes under the wing. When you reached the target, you blew the ends of the tubes and the bomblets dropped out and fell to earth. When they exploded, the ball bearings inside were like bullets, scattering in all directions, punching holes in whatever they struck. (The bomblets also had the bad habit of colliding in midair behind the wing, detonating, and punching holes in the dispensing fighter aircraft, setting it on fire or destroying its fuel cells and hydraulic flight control lines.)
In all fairness to those who planned the mission, no one had experience against SAMs (other than the U-2 pilots who’d been shot down by SAMs over Russia and Cuba). There was, in fact, a general feeling that it was hopeless to fly against SAMs; they never missed. Finally, planning for the first-ever raid against SAMs was heady stuff — it was hard to step back and just look at the best way to do it — and so anybody in Saigon or Washington who had an opportunity to add a tweak to the plan did.
Was there a better way? In fact, yes. Higher command could have called down to the Wing and said, “If you can kill those SAM sites at such and such a location, please do so, and let me know what you learn.” In other words, the Wing might well have had a more practical way to accomplish higher command’s goal than higher command did. But that was not likely under the centralized system then in place.
Meanwhile, Horner and Myhrum, who were on duty handling the Frags, noted that the Dash-One pilot’s handbook contained restrictions on using napalm. Specifically, the maximum speed for release of these weapons was 375 knots indicated airspeed.
“Hey, wait a minute.” Horner and Myhrum came running up. “Change in plans. Drop the napalm and CBUs and load up bombs.”
“Okay, can do.”
Then, around 5:00 A.M. the general in Saigon must have arrived at headquarters, because a new message quickly came in: “Load the napalm and the CBUs and go as ordered.” So they went back to the hapless maintenance troops: “Hey, guys, there’s been a change. Reload the napalm and CBUs. Sorry.” It’s because such things happen that maintenance troops have a low opinion of operations.
While all this was going on, the pilots who were about to fly the mission were doing what they could to sleep; but sleep wasn’t likely, because this mission was a major operation. When the sun rose, the pilots assembled; and Horner and Myhrum delivered the mission data for the first-ever attack on a surface-to-air radar- guided-missile site, then prepared to grab breakfast and hit their beds.
As it happened, maintenance had a pair of extra aircraft loaded, in case someone aborted a primary jet.
