Prologue: The Only War We Had

The American air war over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia spanned twenty-five years, and included a wide variety of pilots, planes, missions, and bases. By the war's end in 1975, more than half of the money America spent on it had gone to Air Force, Army, and Navy air operations. The United States dropped over eight million tons of bombs on the Southeast Asian countryside, and lost over 8,500 aircraft, both fixed-wing and helicopters. For all this investment, air power, though occasionally influential, did not enable America to win the war.

Although much has been written about the tactics and strategies of the air war, few books examine the individuals who fought it. Fast Movers will attempt to fill this void by revealing the hidden, personal side of the air war as seen by its primary combatants: the "fast movers," the men who flew jet fighters and attack aircraft. The product of nearly three hundred interviews and extensive documentary research, Fast Movers explores the lives and wartime experiences of some of the most famous men of the air war, pilots such as Colonel Robin Olds and Captain Steve Ritchie, as well as a host of unknown but equally intriguing aviators.

The United States Air Force dates its involvement in Vietnam to the summer of 1950, when it sent advisors to help France maintain and operate U.S.-manufactured aircraft in the war with the Viet Minh. After the Viet Minh victory and the partition of the country into North and South Vietnam in 1954, America continued sending air advisors to South Vietnam. By the end of 1961, six South Vietnamese squadrons were ready for combat, supported by an American combat-training detachment known as Farm Gate. By the end of 1962, more than 3,000 Air Force advisors were serving in Vietnam. American pilots not only flew close air support and reconnaissance missions but also transported South Vietnamese troops around the country and defoliated jungle areas with C-123 "Ranch Hand" aircraft. During the latter program, which lasted over ten years, the Air Force sprayed 19.22 million gallons of herbicides and defoliants over nearly six million acres of South Vietnamese jungle and farmland.

The alleged August 1964 attacks on two American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin ushered in a new phase of the air war in Southeast Asia. Then-president Lyndon Johnson called these incidents "open aggression on the high seas" and received broad authorization from Congress to widen the war in Vietnam, beginning with retaliatory naval air strikes against naval facilities and oil storage facilities in North Vietnam. Near the end of 1964, Johnson initiated Operation Barrel Roll, a series of interdiction missions flown along the Communist supply routes developing in the Laotian panhandle. After the Viet Cong attacked the U.S. air base at Pleiku in February 1965, Johnson retaliated with raids against targets just north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Initially known as Flaming Dart, these reprisal missions evolved into a sustained air campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, beginning in March 1965.

Operation Rolling Thunder was the longest air campaign in American military history. Between 2 March 1965 and 31 October 1968, Navy, Air Force, and Marine aviation flew one million sorties and dropped one-half million tons of bombs on North Vietnam. Rolling Thunder had several objectives. One was to persuade Hanoi to abandon its support of the South's insurgency; another was to raise the morale of the military and political elites in South Vietnam; and a third was interdiction -- strikes against logistics targets such as bridges, roads, and railroads, designed to reduce Hanoi's ability to support the war in the South.

The majority of Rolling Thunder missions were carried out by U.S. Air Force tactical fighters based in Thailand and U.S. Navy fighter and attack squadrons based on carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin (called "Yankee Station"). Pilots and air crew members of these units suffered a disproportionately high share of the armed services' combat losses. Of the 532 prisoners of war (POWs) returned by North Vietnam in 1973, 501 were aviators downed over the North, most of them during Rolling Thunder.

The campaign was marked by a basic dispute between senior American military leaders, who argued for a brief, intense campaign to isolate North Vietnam from external supply sources and destroy its production and transportation systems, and President Johnson and his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, who chose to alternate escalation with bombing halts in the hope of compelling the North Vietnamese to negotiate. During the three years of the campaign, Johnson and McNamara ordered a total of seven such pauses. They also insisted on unprecedented civilian tactical control, dictating the numbers and types of aircraft, kinds of ordnance, and even the flight paths to be flown. Targets were chosen by Johnson, McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and presidential assistant for national security affairs McGeorge Bundy (and his successor Walt Rostow) during Tuesday lunch meetings.

Rolling Thunder strikes were initially limited to southern North Vietnam, just north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The "bomb line," a line just below the city of Vinh, formed the northern boundary of the strike zone, beyond which attacks were forbidden. As the campaign dragged on, the bomb line moved progressively further north, reaching to thirty miles south and west of Hanoi by September 1965, and by July 1966 encompassing all of North Vietnam except the prohibited areas of Hanoi and Haiphong, as well as a buffer zone along North Vietnam's border with the People's Republic of China.

By November of 1965, this system of bomb lines and zones was formalized into six interdiction areas called Route Packages, or "Packs." Most American aircraft losses occurred in Pack 6, the area near Hanoi and Haiphong. Status within the pilot corps became defined by the number of missions one had flown in that zone. Eighth Tactical Wing Commander Robin Olds, for example, boasted of having flown 58 Pack 6 missions -- more than were flown by any other Air Force wing commander in Southeast Asia.

The North Vietnamese used the prohibited areas in and around Hanoi and Haiphong as sanctuaries in which to base surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and Soviet-manufactured MiG fighters. During Rolling Thunder, 919 U.S. aircraft fell victim to SAMs, MiGs, and anti-aircraft guns of various caliber. The North, employing an air-denial strategy, used high-altitude SAMs to compel American aircraft to fly low, thereby bringing them within range of their anti-aircraft guns. MiGs were used very sparingly; usually, they made just one pass at a strike package before retreating home.

Throughout the campaign, American pilots clamored to "go downtown" (i.e., bomb military targets in Hanoi), but President Johnson, his advisors, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff turned down these requests. The Johnson Administration believed that the threat of more intensive destruction implicit in limited, incremental bombing would have a greater impact on Hanoi's willingness to negotiate than would an all-out terror offensive. They also believed that this gradualist approach would forestall possible Chinese intervention.

Rolling Thunder's climax came between August and October 1967 when Johnson, bowing to military pressure, ordered attacks on critical petroleum storage, electrical power generation, and transportation targets in Hanoi and Haiphong. Despite the success of these attacks, Rolling Thunder failed to accomplish its major objectives. The bombing caused an estimated $600 million worth of damage in North Vietnam and killed over 52,000 North Vietnamese civilians, but it did not prevent the Communist forces from launching the Tet offensive early in 1968, nor did it bring North Vietnam's leaders to the negotiating table. It also cost the United States 919 aircraft and over $2 billion. Frustrated by the failure of air power to bring about a peace settlement, President Johnson scaled back the Rolling Thunder campaign after the Tet offensive, and eventually halted all offensive air operations against North Vietnam on 31 October 1968.

Between the fall of 1968 and President Richard Nixon's resumption of offensive air operations against North Vietnam during the spring of 1972, air-strategy planners shifted the focus of the bombing campaign from North Vietnam to the supply traffic moving down the loose network of trails in Laos known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This logistics network eventually became the major target of the post-Rolling Thunder Air Force interdiction strategy known as Commando Hunt. What made Commando Hunt different from earlier efforts was its extensive use of aerial dropped sensors. Commando Hunt covered large stretches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail with acoustical and seismic sensors, with the greatest concentrations being located at the strategic passes into Vietnam: the Nape, Mu Gia, Ban Karai, and Ban Raving passes. The system, code-named Igloo White, consisted of three principal elements: sensors sowed by aircraft along the infiltration routes; the airborne relay aircraft that received and transmitted the signals; and the all-important nerve center of the system, the infiltration surveillance system at Nakhon Phanom, code-named Task Force Alpha. Analysts at Task Force Alpha analyzed sensor data as well as human intelligence from Special Forces teams operating in Laos under the code name Prairie Fire. This voluminous data, in turn, was fed into an IBM mainframe to produce daily interdiction-bombing orders. Each squadron received a fragment of that order, called a "frag." When the system functioned smoothly, the resulting intelligence became part of a targeting process that moved rapidly from an assessment officer manning a scope to another officer who directed the airborne command post and called in strikes on specific targets.

The centerpiece weapon of Commando Hunt was the AC-130 Specter Gunship. Sporting 20-mm Gatling guns and 40-mm Bofors cannons and equipped with low-light television, laser range-finders, and infrared detection systems to seek out hot spots associated with truck systems, the AC-130 boosted the statistical success of Commando Hunt operations. In 1968, for example, the Air Force claimed 7,332 trucks destroyed or damaged, compared to 3,291 the previous year. Another significant weapon in Commando Hunt was the B-52 heavy bomber. B-52 Arc Light strikes cratered road systems and caused landslides in the strategic mountain-pass areas on the border between Laos and Vietnam. Other aircraft (A-1s, F-4s, F-100s, C-130s) laid millions of small gravel mines along roads to hamper the efforts of North Vietnamese repair crews and to disable their vehicles.

For all its technological wizardry, Commando Hunt had little impact upon the Communists' ability to wage war. Every year of the campaign American forces, either alone or with their South Vietnamese allies, had to take drastic action on the ground to prevent them from launching a major offensive. The campaign in the A Shau Valley in 1969 by the U.S. Marines, the Cambodian incursions in the spring of 1970, and the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos in February and March of 1971 all demonstrate that Commando Hunt was not as successful as official Air Force figures led many to believe. But the most serious challenge to the effort was the massive North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam in the spring of 1972.

Linebacker I was President Richard Nixon's response to this invasion, known as the Easter offensive. Linebacker's goals were much clearer than those of Rolling Thunder: to halt the invasion of South Vietnam and force North Vietnam to resume peace negotiations. Consequently, unlike during Rolling Thunder, commanders were given wide latitude to achieve those goals. American air power was employed with full intensity from the outset; U.S. military commanders exercised full control of tactics and targeting within broad White House guidelines; laser-guided bombs (LGBs) were available in quantity; and categories of targets previously off limits were attacked.

During Linebacker I, tactical fighters from Thailand attacked transportation, power-generation, and petroleum targets. In particular, the new laser-guided bomb technology proved highly effective against bridges. By mid-October, with war materiél depleted, the North's transportation net in shambles, and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) forces withdrawing, North Vietnam communicated its willingness to negotiate and Linebacker I was terminated.

Linebacker II, the subsequent Christmas bombings, was Nixon's iron-willed response to the diplomatic unwillingness of the North Vietnamese to come to a peace agreement acceptable to U.S. negotiators. For the first time in the war, B-52s attacked targets near Hanoi. During the first three nights of the campaign, the bombers attacked in three plane formations at evenly spaced intervals using the same altitudes and ground tracks for their approaches. On the first night of the campaign, three B-52s were lost, and on the third night a staggering six planes went down in a 9-hour period. The loss of these aircraft produced discontent among crews stationed in Thailand and Guam, and Strategic Air Command planners in Omaha, Nebraska. For the next four nights the campaign was run at a reduced level while tactics were changed. The strikes on 26 December 1972 decided the entire air war over North Vietnam: 220 air force and navy aircraft hit a variety of targets all within a fifteen minute window. Only two B-52s went down that day, but the North Vietnamese air defense system was shattered. Their largest missile-assembly facility was destroyed, their ground-based radar early warning and intercept system (GCI) was degraded, and their MiG bases were rendered temporarily unusable. North Vietnam was virtually defenseless against further B-52 attacks, and Hanoi quickly proposed a resumption of peace talks in Paris on 8 January 1973. Although the air attacks continued for the next three days and 4 more B-52s went down before the bombing north of the 20th parallel stopped on 29 December, the air battle was essentially won on 26 December. If U.S. losses had proved unacceptable on the 26th, Nixon would have been compelled to cancel the attacks and no negotiated settlement on acceptable terms would have been achieved in Paris.

The general outlines and major difference of the two major strategic air campaigns of the Vietnam War, Rolling Thunder and Linebacker, are well known; less well understood is the fact that beneath the differences between the campaigns lay a common, un-Vietnam-like, fast-mover culture -- a success-oriented culture based on airmanship and membership in an elite group. Far from despising the Vietnam war, most fast movers viewed it as the high point of their careers. The war challenged and affirmed their skills, but more importantly, it united them with a group of like-minded men who shared a common success ethic.

Rolling Thunder was the longest air campaign and the greatest failure of air power in the war. It is this campaign that most aviators think of when they discuss the futility of American air power in Vietnam. During the Gulf war 24 years later, Colonel John Warden, then the Air Force's chief strategist, constantly reminded coalition commander General H. Norman Schwarzkopf during briefings that "This is not your Rolling Thunder. This is real war, and one of the things we want to emphasize right from the beginning is that this is not Vietnam! This is doing it right. This is using airpower!"

The men who flew during Rolling Thunder risked their lives in this futile campaign not because they believed in the cause but because they took pride in their service, their units, and their unique fast-mover culture. By stressing the importance and status of this culture, a World War II veteran named Robin Olds managed to take a unit that had been thoroughly discouraged by the poor management of its previous commander and turn it into one of the Air Force's top MiG-killing outfits. His story, therefore, opens this book.

From there the narrative turns to a very different example, which nonetheless also demonstrates the success of the fast-mover Gemeinschaft or collective culture. Ed Rasimus, a relatively unknown but earnest pilot, joined the Air Force because he loved the idea of flying. He never thought he would end up in Vietnam, however, and when he learned of his assignment to Southeast Asia he became almost paralyzed with dread. What is intriguing about Rasimus's story is that at any point in the process he could have extricated himself from combat status. Unlike members of the other combat arms, pilots are permitted to remove themselves from flight duty and combat at any time and often, after having done so, continue to serve in the military in ground jobs. As one naval aviator aptly put it, "An airman enjoys a luxury which the infantryman never knows. It's the easiest thing in the world to get grounded temporarily or removed from flight status entirely. And it needn't be anything so dramatic as marching into the CO's office and dropping your wings on the desk. All it took was the merest hint that flying had lost some of its appeal, a casual remark at the O Club, or a couple of aborted flights," and you were out.

Like Robin Olds, Ed Rasimus got through the experience of war bolstered by the stimulation of combat and a respect and love for the men with whom he flew. In particular, acceptance within the unit proved to be of paramount importance to Rasimus. To be accepted, a pilot did not have to believe in the war or support the Johnson or Nixon Administrations in a political sense. He did need to be patriotic and love the U.S. military. Even more important, he had to be willing to make his squadron and its well-being his number one priority in life. Careerism and self-interest were the ultimate taboos of this group; the supreme honor was to die for a squadron-mate, or better yet for some poor grunt on the ground. This is what Vietnam-era pilots mean when they refer to themselves as "professionals." "Professional" in their lexicon had nothing to do with their officer status, degrees, or pilot's rating; it had everything to do with their willingness to expose themselves to extreme danger and adversity, even death, to ensure the survival of their comrades and brothers in arms.

To illustrate that this fast-mover culture extended across campaigns and even across services, this narrative next turns to a group of Marine aviators. The collective culture of the Marines who flew off the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea in 1972 was not markedly different from that of the Air Force units who flew similar missions out of Thailand and South Vietnam. Like their Air Force compatriots, the Marines took tremendous pride in their group -- especially after the charismatic naval officer Roger Sheets took command of the Coral Sea's air wing in the middle of its cruise. Different campaigns, a different service branch; yet, again, a charismatic leader made a big difference and inspired a fierce culture of success.

No single event during the war reveals the collective, cross-service nature of the fast-mover Gemeinschaft more vividly than the history of the Fourth Allied POW Wing. When taken prisoner the airmen generally conducted themselves with dignity and heroism. Though often perceived by other arms of the service as spoiled individualists who would fall apart when removed from the creature comforts of their bases and aircraft carriers, these pilots and navigators were as committed to the basic military tenets of organization, leadership, discipline, and unit cohesiveness as any other group of military professionals.

As the POW experience demonstrates, there was a paradoxical quality to the air war that makes its social history very difficult to characterize in general terms. Vietnam War pilots often behaved outrageously in base officers' Clubs but then demonstrated iron discipline while incarcerated or when flying missions. Some of America's best pilots were also notorious drinkers and womanizers. Leadership at the highest levels tended to be inadequate, but wing and squadron leaders often proved to be some of the finest air leaders America has ever sent to war. Pilots hated the war but loved flying individual missions.

No missions were more satisfying to pilots than those they flew against MiGs. MiG engagements allowed a pilot to pit his skill against another aviator just like himself. Admittedly, many kills were straightforward missile shots from the rear quarter, which required very little maneuvering. Nonetheless, some MiG engagements demanded every ounce of a pilot's stick and rudder skills. It also took a profound desire to hunt and kill. Not surprisingly, the war became personal for the MiG killers. Theirs was not simply a tour of duty but a quest for personal excellence. For some, this quest could lead to burnout or -- worse -- death or a bailout. But for the lucky few (like Steve Ritchie from North Carolina, discussed in chapter 6), a quest for personal excellence turned a small-town boy into a world-renowned ace.

But it was the camaraderie more than the killing that kept pilots going. The search-and-rescue missions (SARs) form perhaps the most powerful example of the strength of this bond. As pilot and historian Darrel D. Whitcomb aptly put it, in a "war without end or purpose, there was one mission with which every aircrew member could identify: the rescue of one's own." SAR became a metaphor for the entire air war. The Linebacker II campaign, for example, in the end became nothing but a large-scale SAR effort to secure the release of American POWs in Hanoi -- hence its great popularity with airmen. More than any previous American air war, Vietnam became a war fought for the airmen's buddies. The ultimate irony of the air war in Vietnam was that for all the bitterness and hatred they expressed for the overall war and for campaigns such as Rolling Thunder, these men also loved the war. They loved certain missions and certain unit commanders, but most of all they loved the men they fought beside.