One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power

by Smith, Douglas V.

  Eventually, the administration lifted some of the bombing restrictions, at least during certain periods. On 30 June 1966, a forty-six plane strike off Ranger hit an oil storage facility in the outskirts of Haiphong. Four days later, planes from Kitty Hawk struck an electrical power plant near downtown Haiphong, and in May 1967, Bon Homme Richard’s planes hit targets near downtown Hanoi. Several months later, Task Force 77 aircraft began bombing bridges between Haiphong and Hanoi. Of course, these and other missions flown constantly by Task Force 77 had their price. Numerous aircraft were lost and serious accidents occurred on board Oriskany and Forrestal due in part to the high operational tempo. Needless to say, the greatest misfortune in all this involved the loss and injury to pilots, crews, and sailors in support of a strategy that American leaders had not adequately crafted.156 Communist losses were undoubtedly far greater, but to the amazement of American leaders, the North Vietnamese could sustain these losses within their strategic model. It appears that officials in Washington erroneously assumed their counterparts in Hanoi would be the mirror image of their thought processes and cultural values.

  Ostensibly, the decision to insert U.S. ground forces into the war resulted from the need to secure America’s air base at Da Nang. American leaders doubted the ability of ARVN forces to protect the huge base where the United States had located substantial assets. On 26 February 1965, at the request of General Westmoreland, President Johnson approved the landing of U.S. Marines to provide security for America personnel, aircraft, and material at Da Nang.157 On 8 March, the lead element of the Ninth Marine Expeditionary Brigade, under command of Brigadier General Frederick J. Karch, landed at Da Nang with the mission to protect its air base from enemy attack.158 During the following weeks, Marine fixed-wing squadrons began landing in quick order and by midyear, much of the 1st Marine Air Wing had arrived in Vietnam. By the end of 1965, all the Wing’s squadrons were operating in country as well as a Marine fighter squadron deployed on board USS Oriskany, which arrived in Vietnamese waters in May 1965.159 Additionally, Marine ground forces quickly grew to brigade and then division size followed by authorization to conduct offensive operations.160 The first major American ground action of the war, Operation Starlite, occurred in August 1965 with Marines attacking a Viet Cong regiment of some three thousand troops south of Da Nang near Chu Lai.161 Starlite consisted of three Marine infantry battalions, five helicopter squadrons, and two fixed-wing squadrons flying F-4 Phantom and A-4 Skyhawk jets. The operation shattered the Viet Cong regiment, killing over six hundred Communist troops at the cost of fifty Marine dead.162

  About the same time the United States initiated Rolling Thunder, the Navy began an important maritime surveillance program entitled Operation Market Time. Consisting of surface and air units of the American and South Vietnamese navies, Market Time attempted to detect Communist waterborne supply and infiltration efforts along the South Vietnamese coastline.163 In addition to some 220 American and South Vietnamese naval surface craft, Market Time utilized P-2 Neptune, P-3 Orion, and P-5 Marlin patrol aircraft.164 These actions could occasionally become very exciting with patrol aircraft exposed and at risk, but mostly they involved long flights of ten to thirteen monotonous hours receiving very little attention outside the units conducting the missions.165 Market Time operations proved to be quite successful in reducing infiltration from coastal waters into South Vietnam, thereby forcing greater reliance on the Ho Chi Minh trail by Communist leaders.166 American air efforts to interdict the Ho Chi Minh trail never enjoyed the success of Market Time, even after October 1968 when the end of Rolling Thunder allowed assets to be shifted to that mission.167

  Another naval operation named Game Warden conducted riverine actions in the brown water areas of southern South Vietnam. Consisting of river patrol boats, mine sweepers, and helicopters, the Game Warden operation began in the Mekong River delta and expanded into virtually every river and slough network from Cambodia to the South China Sea.168 Intended to deny these marshy alluvial plains and their associated river networks to the Viet Cong, Operation Game Warden proved relatively successful and occasionally very violent when American or South Vietnamese patrol boats encountered Communist formations.169 Like Operation Market Time, Game Warden did not receive the same level of attention from correspondents and historians, as did the larger and more dramatic events of the Vietnam War. Yet both operations contributed to the war effort and underscored the value of naval aviation in what were essentially surface operations.

  As the air war over North Vietnam wore on, Soviet-supplied air defense system became an ever-increasing problem for American aviators. This threat included both surface anti-aircraft defense systems and airborne fighters, especially the MiG-21. Initially, the greatest surface-based threat came from conventional anti-aircraft artillery, which proved effective even against modern high-speed aircraft. Simply by projecting the route of flight from an attack plane’s roll-in point to its target, AAA gunners could fill that kill box with as much flak as possible. This tactic proved particularly lethal when multiple systems fired in barrages accompanied by the small-arms fire available from other defenders. Antiaircraft artillery had proven quite effective in Korea as well as in the early phases of the Vietnam air war. It was one of the lessons we either failed to learn properly, or dropped from our institutional memory. Of course, emergence of the surface-to-air missile (SAM) threat somewhat distracted air power leaders from addressing the dangers of AAA. During Vietnam, 58 percent of naval combat losses, 73 percent of Air Force casualties, and 64 percent of Marine Corps losses are attributable to AAA gunfire. The fact that the Air Force and Marine Corps flew more missions over South Vietnam and Laos where AAA was the only threat helps explain why they had greater losses from these systems.170 Of course, naval aviators developed countermeasures against the AAA fire, which included escort planes that attacked suspected and identified sites with Zuni air-to-ground missiles and 20-mm gunfire just seconds before attack planes made their bombing runs. Although evidence suggests that these suppression efforts took a high toll in enemy gunners and weapons, the North Vietnamese could constantly replace both, and AAA fire remained a threat throughout the war.171

  In the spring of 1965, Soviet SAMs made their appearance in North Vietnam. Despite photoreconnaissance confirmation of the sites, administration policy did not permit American aviators to attack them before they began taking losses.172 Apparently the administration feared offending the Soviet Union should attacks against the SAM constructions sites kill some of its citizens. Additionally, as naive as it may seem now, several high-level officials in Washington refused to believe the North Vietnamese would actually use SAMs against Americans. In July 1965 the United States lost its first plane to a Communist SAM, an Air Force F-4 Phantom II aircraft.173 By the end of 1967 there were some two hundred SAM sites in North Vietnam with about five hundred missiles available at any one time. By 1972 there were three hundred sites throughout the country, some as far south as the DMZ. Even more astonishing, the North Vietnamese were allowed seven years of uninterrupted re-supply of launchers and missiles from the Soviet Union. Yet despite all the disadvantages the administration placed on its warfighters, American aviators learned to adjust to the SAM threat by developing tactics that could destroy launch sites on the ground and avoid their missiles in the air. The introduction of Shrike antiradiation missiles in March 1966 helped in this regard, providing a means of defeating SAM sites once they activated their radars. SAMs shot down approximately two hundred planes, from their introduction through 1972. Carrier aviation lost twice as many planes to SAMs than did the U.S. Air Force, primarily because they flew more frequently in North Vietnam where the SAM defenses were the strongest.174

  The airborne fighter defense system in North Vietnam consisted of MiG-17, MiG-19, and MiG-21 aircraft.175 Although American pilots occasionally lost engagements with the Communist MiGs, they never really threatened U.S. air superiority in the skies over North Vietnam. Ground-based AAA and SAM capabili
ty remained the major threat to American air power throughout the war. Only 16 of the 473 naval aircraft and 60 of the 618 Air Force planes lost over North Vietnam resulted from MiG interceptors.176 American pilots first drew blood in the air-to-air battle on 17 June 1965 when two F-4 Phantom II jets from Midway shot down two MiGs in an engagement involving closing speeds in excess of one thousand miles per hour. Three days later, two MiG-17s attacked four A-1 Skyraiders that were covering a rescue mission. The Skyraiders tightly maneuvered until one closed behind a MiG and splashed it with 20-mm cannon fire. The second MiG departed the fray following one of the truly unique aerial fights of the war.177 Not all engagements proved this successful, of course, but North Vietnamese fighter-intercept aircraft could never control their airspace. No Navy strike was ever turned back, and no Air Force mission was ever deterred by enemy air actions. Yet even this minimal air threat need not have existed except for misguided policies out of Washington, which kept most of the major MiG bases off-limits until well into 1967. Even then, the authority to crater runways and destroy enemy planes on the ground was intermittent, reflecting the wavering policies of the Johnson administration.178

  Although Marine air flew in support of Rolling Thunder and other missions during the Vietnam War, its primary role involved support of ground combat units, especially Marine forces. This included close air support of troops in contact with enemy forces, and tactical movement of troops by helicopter. The primary aircraft used for Marine close air support during Vietnam included the F-8 Crusader, F-4 Phantom II, A-4 Skyhawk, and A-6 Intruder. At the beginning of the war, the Marine Corps helicopter mix consisted of the UH-34 Seahorse and CH-37 Mojave aircraft and, during the course of the war, transitioned to the CH-46 Sea Knight, CH-53 Sea Stallion, UH-1 Huey, and AH-1 Cobras.179 If support of ground operations was the mainstay of Marine aviation, it was also an important mission for carrier-based naval aviation in Vietnam just as it had been in Korea. For example, during the siege of Khe Sanh in the aftermath of the 1968 Tet offensive, Navy pilots flew some 3,100 sorties in support of the Marine defenders. This was in addition, of course, to the 2,548 sorties conducted by Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bombers that pounded enemy positions surrounding the firebase during the same period.180 The Battle of Khe Sanh would not be the last time naval aviation would team with B-52 bombers in conducting operations during the Vietnam War.

  Upon assumption of the American presidency in January 1969, Richard M. Nixon initiated a new war strategy entitled Vietnamization. It actually constituted one element of the larger approach to security within Asia called the Nixon Doctrine. Vietnamization reflected the reality that support for the controversial war was waning beyond repair within the United States. President Nixon’s concept involved turning over ground combat operations to South Vietnamese forces while providing American air, naval, and logistical support.181 Concurrent with this undertaking, the United States attempted to engage North Vietnamese leaders in negotiating a peace that would leave South Vietnam intact. This effort enjoyed no success until 1972 at which time Nixon ordered renewed bombing of North Vietnam on a massive scale along with the mining of its harbors. This culminated in Operation Linebacker II (also known as the Christmas bombings), in which B-52 bombers, other Air Force planes, and carrier aircraft from Task Force 77 conducted devastating assaults on the Hanoi-Haiphong area.182 Unlike Rolling Thunder, these attacks focused on significant military targets such as transportation and logistics nodes, air bases, electrical power plants, and communications centers. Additionally, they lacked the presidential micromanagement of Rolling Thunder and the restrictive rules of engagement that inhibited militarily sound air tactics.183 The severity of these attacks caused Communist leaders to negotiate in earnest, coming to a cease-fire agreement in January 1973.184

  Ostensively, this accord permitted the United States to end its involvement in Southeast Asia while ensuring the release of American and South Vietnamese prisoners of war.185 The settlement was a sham, of course, merely setting the stage for a North Vietnamese conventional attack against the South in March 1975, leading to a Communist victory.186 By that time, the U.S. Congress and American people opposed the war so completely they would not even support the use of air and naval forces to assist South Vietnamese forces. That formula had proven successful in halting the 1972 Easter Offensive by North Vietnam, and many believed it could work again. But in 1975, the Watergate scandal had weakened the American presidency and forced President Nixon from office. His successor, Gerald R. Ford, could not overcome congressional resistance, and the United States allowed South Vietnam to face the North Vietnamese onslaught alone.187 By 30 April, Saigon fell to Communist forces, and the United States had lost its first war.188

  The Korean and Vietnam wars were actually wars within a war; they were hot wars within a Cold War. Korea had been a conventional war whereas Vietnam was primarily a guerrilla war in the early years and predominately a conventional war in its later phases.189 These wars exhibited the more violent aspects of America’s policy of containment. Had it not been for the superpower competition of that era, the United States would never have engaged in these conflicts. The risk of a superpower clash during Korea and Vietnam somewhat constrained the actions of both sides, of course.190 Although this backdrop of nuclear superpower confrontation does not excuse deficiency in strategic thinking and policy formulation, it does help explain it. American leaders, particularly presidents Truman and Johnson, found themselves beyond their depth in the constrained warfare of the post–World War II era. Although able men in many ways, they proved unable to devise winning solutions for the conflicts that destiny presented to their generation of leadership. These are the first American presidents for whom this is true.

  A general lack of understanding by American leaders regarding the strategic reality of the late 1940s almost resulted in the demise of naval aviation, and perhaps elimination of the Marine Corps. But the harsh reality of the Korean War and the concomitant realization that war could be fought on many levels resulted in the revitalization of these important components of national security. Naval aviation proved crucial to saving allied ground forces in the early weeks of the Korean War and for sustaining the subsequent war effort, thereby denying the Communist aggressors their intended goal. By the time of Vietnam, the capability and flexibility of naval aviation had been reestablished and well accepted. Carrier aviation, like other elements of American military power, performed effectively and efficiently to the extent permitted by U.S. policy and strategy. The credibility established by naval aviation during these two hot wars proved important in the deterrence strategy of the subsequent Cold War years. Additionally, naval aviation served America well during the strategically confusing years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and proved an essential and effective element in the expeditionary era that followed.

  NOTES

  1.T. R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1963, 1994), pp. 1–9.

  2.Ibid., p. 32; David Rees, ed., The Korean War: History and Tactics (New York: Crescent Books, 1984), p. 11; Harry S. Truman, Memoirs by Harry S. Truman, vol. 2 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956), pp. 328, 331.

  3.Richard P. Hallion, The Naval Air War in Korea (Baltimore, MD: Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1986), pp. 27–29; Rees, ed., The Korean War: History and Tactics, p. 13; Craig L. Symonds, Historical Atlas of the U.S. Navy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995), pp. 194–95; Truman, Memoirs, pp. 325–26.

  4.John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 73.

  5.Ibid., p. 74.

  6.Fehrenbach, This Kind of War, p. 33; John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), p. 42; Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), pp. 320–22; Max Hastings, The Korean War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), pp. 48–49.

  7.Fehrenbach, This Kind of War, pp. 32–33; Hastings, The Korean War, p. 51.

  8.Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 75; Hast
ings, The Korean War, p. 52; James L. Holloway III, Aircraft Carriers at War: A Personal Retrospective of Korea, Vietnam, and the Soviet Confrontation (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2007), p. 49; Truman, Memoirs, p. 331.

  9.F. A. Godfrey, “The Attack from the North,” in Rees, ed., The Korean War: History and Tactics, p. 16.

  10.Hastings, The Korean War, p. 45; Rees, ed., The Korean War: History and Tactics, p. 12.

  11.Fehrenbach, This Kind of War, pp. 42–49.

  12.Truman, Memoirs, pp. 333, 336–37.

  13.Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 43; Truman, Memoirs, pp. 334.

  14.Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 767; Hastings, The Korean War, pp. 55–56; Hallion, The Naval Air War in Korea, p. 30.

  15.Symonds, Historical Atlas of the U.S. Navy, p. 196.

  16.Fehrenbach, This Kind of War, pp. 50–52; Truman, Memoirs, p. 336.

  17.Hastings, The Korean War, p. 60.

  18.Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 77; Truman, Memoirs, p. 334.

  19.Bevan R. Alexander, Korea: The First War We Lost (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986), pp. 29–30; Fehrenbach, This Kind of War, pp. 52–53; Hallion, The Naval Air War in Korea, pp. 14, 30; Anthony Robinson and David Rees, “The Air and Sea War,” in Rees, The Korean War: History and Tactics, p. 105.