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Operation Homecoming Part 1: The POWs Come Home
The American Prisoners of War in Viet Nam began their first flight from Hanoi to freedom 40 years ago 12 February 1973. The last flight was 29 March 1973. I watched the students and their teacher’s faces closely as Jim began his talk on the Vietnam War to the Rio Mesa High School American History class. I had been the set-up man, talking about the war and being a Naval Aviator. The class was polite, they knew my son as a classmate sitting towards the back, but they were afterall teenagers, and they had all seen TopGun. Jim quickly described getting [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories, Epilogue: Linebacker II and the POWs – Prelude to Coming Home
Note this post includes two videos, the first discussing B-52 tactics and the second finishing with comments from our POWs during the days of the Christmas operations. On the third night of LB II three B-52s were shot down on the first raid. Seventh Air Force Headquarters Headquarters in Saigon and SAC Headquarters in Omaha went into shock. As a result they recalled the six B-52Gs targeted for Hanoi on the second raid, with the result that the North Vietnamese had done something that the Germans, Japanese, Soviets, Chinese, and North Koreans had never been able to to achieve – [...]
Gifts & Reflection – No Better Title: “These Good Men”
by John 'Shylock' Koch I still cherish the time I spent with the air wing. As I look back on it we were warriors and comrades all rolled up together. When one of us called for help, we all came, and we owe our lives to each other. If I got a call from any one of you, even now, that we had a strike to hell, I know Snake and I would be there with our 28 Mk 82’s strapped to our ass ready to deliver the payload, for we are Naval Aviators ! Warrior yes, Warlike no. Scratch [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (Final) Gifts, a Tree, and a Turkey with all the Trimmings
As the story has been told – as I noted previously- the end of the war in Vietnam is considered the result of the Christmas bombing operations of Linebacker II, and so the convention of telling this story. I’ll end the “Christmas Stories” series discussing what I choose to refer to as the gifts of Christmas 1972 – memories beyond price. […]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (8) “A-rab Beeper, come up voice.”
Professional history of war mostly addresses major battles, the dates, the generals, the admirals, tactics and technology, and then analysis of results, all for obvious reasons. But significant detail is invariably lost particularly when one event leads to a most significant occurrence -the end to the conflict. Almost without exception, this thread – the ending of Linebacker II with the agreement by the North Vietnamese to return to the negotiations in Paris on 2 January 1973, leading to President Nixon’s announcement on the 23rd and formal end of the Vietnam war on 27 January, and finally the return of our POWs – constitutes the concluding remarks of the [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (7) A Gentlemen’s Gentleman
Linebacker II was halted on 29 December 1972. The North Vietnamese agreed to come back to the negotiations in Paris. Having enjoyed Christmas, Midway left Singapore and celebrated New Years Eve at sea on the way back to the Gulf of Tonkin to continue combat missions into both North and South Vietnam. Missions were restricted above the 20th Parallel - no flights into Route Pac 6, the Red River Valley, Hanoi or Haiphong. Still it was wartime footing and operations off of a carrier are always problematic. Within days of recommencing we were to learn that lesson twice more. On [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (6) “We had been there too long!”
As I write this post, it is fast approaching 0659 30 December 2012 in Hanoi – 40 years exactly from the end to Linebacker II. President Nixon’s decision – the Linebacker II campaign – in the face of world wide denunciation and in opposition to many in his own cabinet has left NVN militarily “Winchester” – without the SAMs. Indeed Snako noted in Not on My Watch that in his memoirs published in 2007, General Giap, the highly respected leader of the NVA and victor at Dien Bien Phu, included the following quote: “What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (5) What did we know? When did we know it?
Bob ‘Hippo’ Hipps (334 Tactical Fighter Squadron): The night of Dec 17, 1972 our F-4E squadron (the 334TFS had deployed from Seymour Johnson, AFB, NC — which is the only Air Force base named after a Naval Aviator) stood down and we were all in the club asking, “WTFO?” Then, one of our maintenance officers came in and told us we were getting wall-to-wall ALE-38 chaff dispensers loaded on our jets. Since laying chaff corridors in RP-VI had been our primary mission in the previous Linebacker fun and games, this was our first clue that the following day was not going to [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (4) MiG-CAP & Roman Candles
Perspective from John Chesire – VF-151 Switchboxes – flying MiG-CAP around Haiphong. Of my nearly two years combat flying in SEA (Southeast Asia), the most spectacular and memorable sight occurred on December 20, the third and worst night of the of the historic Linebacker II Christmas Raids, designed to end the war. Although we (F-4’s) never flew ‘planned’ night MiG-CAP “feet dry” overland, some of us were now tasked for this major strike to do so. My RO “TA” and I set up our CAP station in the vicinity of Haiphong, and hopefully on the outer ranges of their SAM sites. Fortunately, [...]
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Operation Homecoming Part 1: The POWs Come Home
The American Prisoners of War in Viet Nam began their first flight from Hanoi to freedom 40 years ago 12 February 1973. The last flight was 29 March 1973. I watched the students and their teacher’s faces closely as Jim began his talk on the Vietnam War to the Rio Mesa High School American History class. I had been the set-up man, talking about the war and being a Naval Aviator. The class was polite, they knew my son as a classmate sitting towards the back, but they were afterall teenagers, and they had all seen TopGun. Jim quickly described getting [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories, Epilogue: Linebacker II and the POWs – Prelude to Coming Home
Note this post includes two videos, the first discussing B-52 tactics and the second finishing with comments from our POWs during the days of the Christmas operations. On the third night of LB II three B-52s were shot down on the first raid. Seventh Air Force Headquarters Headquarters in Saigon and SAC Headquarters in Omaha went into shock. As a result they recalled the six B-52Gs targeted for Hanoi on the second raid, with the result that the North Vietnamese had done something that the Germans, Japanese, Soviets, Chinese, and North Koreans had never been able to to achieve – [...]
Gifts & Reflection – No Better Title: “These Good Men”
by John 'Shylock' Koch I still cherish the time I spent with the air wing. As I look back on it we were warriors and comrades all rolled up together. When one of us called for help, we all came, and we owe our lives to each other. If I got a call from any one of you, even now, that we had a strike to hell, I know Snake and I would be there with our 28 Mk 82’s strapped to our ass ready to deliver the payload, for we are Naval Aviators ! Warrior yes, Warlike no. Scratch [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (Final) Gifts, a Tree, and a Turkey with all the Trimmings
As the story has been told – as I noted previously- the end of the war in Vietnam is considered the result of the Christmas bombing operations of Linebacker II, and so the convention of telling this story. I’ll end the “Christmas Stories” series discussing what I choose to refer to as the gifts of Christmas 1972 – memories beyond price. […]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (8) “A-rab Beeper, come up voice.”
Professional history of war mostly addresses major battles, the dates, the generals, the admirals, tactics and technology, and then analysis of results, all for obvious reasons. But significant detail is invariably lost particularly when one event leads to a most significant occurrence -the end to the conflict. Almost without exception, this thread – the ending of Linebacker II with the agreement by the North Vietnamese to return to the negotiations in Paris on 2 January 1973, leading to President Nixon’s announcement on the 23rd and formal end of the Vietnam war on 27 January, and finally the return of our POWs – constitutes the concluding remarks of the [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (7) A Gentlemen’s Gentleman
Linebacker II was halted on 29 December 1972. The North Vietnamese agreed to come back to the negotiations in Paris. Having enjoyed Christmas, Midway left Singapore and celebrated New Years Eve at sea on the way back to the Gulf of Tonkin to continue combat missions into both North and South Vietnam. Missions were restricted above the 20th Parallel - no flights into Route Pac 6, the Red River Valley, Hanoi or Haiphong. Still it was wartime footing and operations off of a carrier are always problematic. Within days of recommencing we were to learn that lesson twice more. On [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (6) “We had been there too long!”
As I write this post, it is fast approaching 0659 30 December 2012 in Hanoi – 40 years exactly from the end to Linebacker II. President Nixon’s decision – the Linebacker II campaign – in the face of world wide denunciation and in opposition to many in his own cabinet has left NVN militarily “Winchester” – without the SAMs. Indeed Snako noted in Not on My Watch that in his memoirs published in 2007, General Giap, the highly respected leader of the NVA and victor at Dien Bien Phu, included the following quote: “What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (5) What did we know? When did we know it?
Bob ‘Hippo’ Hipps (334 Tactical Fighter Squadron): The night of Dec 17, 1972 our F-4E squadron (the 334TFS had deployed from Seymour Johnson, AFB, NC — which is the only Air Force base named after a Naval Aviator) stood down and we were all in the club asking, “WTFO?” Then, one of our maintenance officers came in and told us we were getting wall-to-wall ALE-38 chaff dispensers loaded on our jets. Since laying chaff corridors in RP-VI had been our primary mission in the previous Linebacker fun and games, this was our first clue that the following day was not going to [...]
Christmas ’72 Stories: (4) MiG-CAP & Roman Candles
Perspective from John Chesire – VF-151 Switchboxes – flying MiG-CAP around Haiphong. Of my nearly two years combat flying in SEA (Southeast Asia), the most spectacular and memorable sight occurred on December 20, the third and worst night of the of the historic Linebacker II Christmas Raids, designed to end the war. Although we (F-4’s) never flew ‘planned’ night MiG-CAP “feet dry” overland, some of us were now tasked for this major strike to do so. My RO “TA” and I set up our CAP station in the vicinity of Haiphong, and hopefully on the outer ranges of their SAM sites. Fortunately, [...]