B-52 Stratofortress

by Bill Yenne

  Meanwhile, in December 1965, SAC’s B-52D fleet began undergoing a $30.6 million High-Density Bombing System modification program nicknamed “Big Belly,” which increased their bomb bay capacity from twenty-seven to eighty-four 500-pound conventional bombs, with provisions for another twenty-four on underwing pylons. This increased the bomb-carrying capacity of the B-52D to up to 60,000 pounds, compared with the 43,500 typically carried by the B-52F. In March and April 1966, these aircraft began arriving in Guam to replace the B-52Fs, which were gradually withdrawn.

  A definite pattern of bomb craters are left after an Arc Light “softening-up raid” in support of Operation Junction City in Tay Ninh Province, South Vietnam on March 10, 1967. USAF

  U.S. Army troops make their way through a forest turned to burnt matchsticks by an Arc Light strike, circa 1967. U.S. Army

  An airman guides a B-52D out of its revetment. The bases in Thailand were no more than an hour or two mission time from most Arc Light targets, while missions out of Guam could last twelve hours. USAF

  The B-52Ds were painted with gloss-black undersides and vertical tail, while their upper sides were painted in the newly standardized Southeast Asia camouflage scheme, consisting of tan plus two shades of green.

  In wartime, it has occasionally been suggested that a sign of having truly “made it” comes with being tarred with an off-color nickname. It was around this time that the B-52 joined this club, receiving one of those monikers of self-deprecating endearment that comes along from time to time with certain airplanes. In the lexicon of the crews that have come to know and love them the F-105 Thunderchief is known universally as “Thud,” the F-111 as the “Aardvark,” and the UH-1 Iroquois helicopter as “Huey.” The A-10 Thunderbolt II will always be the “Warthog.”

  Dubbed Stratofortress by its manufacturer, the B-52 now became the “BUFF,” an acronym for the less-repeatable nickname “Big Ugly Fat Fucker.” In polite company, and in official U.S. Air Force fact sheets, the acronym is deciphered as the milder “Big Ugly Fat Fellow.”

  The first B-52 missions into North Vietnam came on April 12 and 26, 1966, as the Stratofortresses struck Mu Gia Pass. Located about 65 miles south of the North Vietnamese city of Vinh, the pass was an important choke point on the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply route that funneled materiel to the Viet Cong. By 1966, the effectiveness of Arc Light had improved considerably. Because they flew too high to be seen or heard until too late, B-52s were gradually becoming one of the weapons most dreaded by the Viet Cong. According to the official history of the Strategic Air Command, General Westmoreland told Air Force Chief of Staff John McConnell that “we know, from talking to many prisoners and defectors, that the enemy troops fear B-52s, tactical air, artillery, and armor. . . in that order.”

  A B-52D landing at U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield. The field became a B-52 basing location in April 1967, and major operations continued here through the end of the war. USAF

  This assertion was confirmed by Viet Cong documents captured in March 1966 during Operation Silver City II by the 173rd Airborne Battalion. Referencing these, John Schlight writes in A Chronology of Important Airpower Events in Southeast Asia, that “there was some evidence of reluctance [by enemy forces] of performing missions for fear of B-52 aircraft.”

  One of the most colorful first hand Viet Cong accounts of the experience of suffering through Arc Light raids comes from Truong Nhu Tang. The Minister of Justice for the Viet Cong, he wrote vividly about Arc Light in his 1985 book, A Viet Cong Memoir.

  “It seemed, as I strained to press myself into the bunker floor, that I had been caught in the Apocalypse,” Truong remembered. “The terror was complete. One lost control of bodily functions as the mind screamed incomprehensible orders to get out.”

  By June 1966, after a year in the war zone, B-52s, flying both day and night and in all kinds of weather, were dropping 8,000 tons of bombs monthly in Arc Light missions over South Vietnam. More than 5,000 B-52 Arc Light sorties were flown in 1966, and the number nearly doubled to around 9,700 in 1967.

  This increase was made possible by an agreement with the government of Thailand in early 1967 to begin basing American aircraft at Thai military air bases, such as Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base and U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield. The latter became a B-52 basing location in April 1967, and major Stratofortress operations continued here through the end of the war. The trips from Guam to South Vietnam were a 5,200-mile, 12-hour round trip for the BUFFs, but from U-Tapao, it was an hour or so, putting much less strain on aerial refueling assets.

  Typically, B-52 missions would originate at Andersen and recover at U-Tapao. The aircraft would then fly around eight missions in and out of U-Tapao before returning to Guam for scheduled maintenance, which was unavailable in Thailand until after 1970. Other B-52 missions were also flown from Kadena AB on Okinawa, but these were unpublicized because of concerns about civil unrest on the island. Meanwhile, there was no effort made to conceal SAC KC-135 tanker operations, which were ongoing at Kadena throughout the War in Southeast Asia.

  Over South Vietnam, the strike missions were directed by way of ground radar stations located throughout the country, and equipped with the AN/MSQ-77 Skyspot Ground Directed Bombing (GDB) system.

  A notable use of Arc Light B-52s came during the defense of American forces at Khe Sanh in 1968, a battle that developed into the largest and most significant tactical air campaign yet seen in Southeast Asia. The BUFFs operated around the clock, arriving over the target in groups of up to six every few hours, guided by Skyspot, and capable of revising their targets with two hours notice.

  During this operation, code-named Niagara, B-52s dropped 75,631 tons of bombs in 2,707 sorties. Nearly six hundred of these were a mere 300 yards from the American perimeter, but no Americans were hit. The attacks helped break the siege on Khe Sanh and forced the North Vietnamese to withdraw. One captured North Vietnamese officer admitted that 75 percent of his regiment had been wiped one in just one Arc Light attack.

  Touching down in Thailand. Stratofortresses were a familiar sight at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base and U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield. USAF

  A B-52D, recently painted with its gloss black tail and undersurfaces. USAF

  Secretary of State Dean Rusk, President Lyndon Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at a meeting in the White House in February 1968, shortly after North Vietnam and the Viet Cong launched their Tet Offensive in South Vietnam. DoD

  While Westmoreland said that “the thing that broke their back basically was the fire of the B-52s,” Lyndon Johnson effused that it was “the most overwhelming, intelligent, and effective use of air power in the history of warfare.”

  In October 1968, shortly before the presidential election, Johnson terminated the Rolling Thunder campaign against North Vietnam north of the 20th parallel. However, the Arc Light missions in South Vietnam continued, as did B-52 participation in the Commando Hunt interdiction operations, aimed at segments of the North Vietnamese supply pipeline that ran through Laos. Indeed, the United States dropped more bombs on Laos during the war than on North Vietnam and more than half of the tonnage dropped in South Vietnam. Of all the Commando Hunt operations, B-52 operations were most heavily involved in Commando Hunt VII, between November 1971 and March 1972. These missions ranged from Laos, across North Vietnam to the port city of Vinh, and included Mu Gia Pass.

  In 1969, the newly installed administration of Richard Nixon began making plans for American incursions into the North Vietnamese “sanctuaries” in Cambodia. These areas, adjacent to the heart of South Vietnam, had heretofore been off-limits to American attacks.

  Beginning on March 18, B-52s were used against selected targets inside Cambodia. Because operations against the specific target areas were designated with code names such as Breakfast, Lunch, and Supper, the campaign came to be known as Menu. The missions, ordered directly by the president, were kept secret, even from many within the normal U.S. Air Force chain of command, and
were not revealed to Congress until 1973. Arc Light missions were used as the “cover” for the B-52 participation in the covert Menu missions, which continued until May 1970 and accounted for 3,630 sorties dropping around 100,000 tons of ordnance.

  In February and March 1971, BUFFs were used to back the ground incursion into North Vietnamese controlled areas of Laos by South Vietnamese troops—and to cover them during their subsequent retreat. B-52s flew 399 sorties in support of the former and 1,358 sorties in support of the latter.

  Meanwhile, the number of Arc Light missions began a steady decline, based on a desire by the Nixon administration to “de-escalate” the unpopular war and turn the bulk of the ground fighting over to South Vietnam under a policy of “Vietnamization.” In 1969, the number of Arc Light sorties, 19,498, was down slightly from the 1968 peak of 20,568, though still more than double the 1967 total of 9,686. In 1970 they fell to 15,103, and the next year, the number of sorties dropped to 12,552. By 1970, the long B-52 missions from Guam were phased out in favor of using only the bases in Thailand.

  The control panel of a war-weary B-52D. Bill Yenne

  A B-52D Stratofortress banks left to head for home. USAF photo, Senior Airman Eric Baker

  Linebacker

  A turning point in the Southeast Asia air war came On March 30, 1972. Knowing that the United States was turning the conduct of the war over to South Vietnam, the North decided to test its southern neighbor with a robust escalation. The longtime reliance on the Viet Cong guerrillas with minimal North Vietnamese Army participation was superseded by a series of large-scale ground invasions, with regular army units supported by tanks and heavy artillery.

  To meet this challenge, the U.S. Air Force’s Pacific Air Forces command (PACAF) and U.S. Navy tactical airpower stepped up ground support operations, and large numbers of tactical aircraft were redeployed from bases in South Korea and the United States.

  The halt to bombing operations against North Vietnam above the 20th parallel, which had been imposed by Lyndon Johnson more than three years before, was ended, and American air power went north once again under an air offensive designated as Operation Freedom Train. On April 9, as part of this effort, B-52s attacked Vinh, and six days later they struck petroleum and lubricant storage dumps near Haiphong, North Vietnam’s largest port.

  On May 8, Richard Nixon announced an air offensive, code-named Linebacker, against North Vietnam. The principal targets included the classic targets of a strategic air offensive, including seaports, the railroad network, fuel storage facilities, and surface-to-air (SAM) missile sites. Eight years after it was first proposed by Curtis LeMay, North Vietnamese ports would also be mined.

  Many technological advances that had occurred since 1968 made the aerial battlefield of Linebacker different from that of Rolling Thunder. On the American side, laser-guided weapons made it possible to hit targets with more precision. On the other side, however, the enemy had now built—thanks to help from the Soviets—an expanded air defense system that was second only to that of the Soviet Union itself. Advanced radar, together with newer SAMs and MiG-21 interceptors made North Vietnam a formidable foe. American pilots faced some of the most intense air-to-air combat of the war. The only American fighter pilots to achieve “ace” status (five or more aerial victories) over Vietnam, did so during Linebacker.

  Although the Linebacker operations successfully blunted the North Vietnamese offensive by the early fall of 1972, and tactical air operations wound down, negotiations with North Vietnam aimed at bringing the war to an end were going nowhere.

  During Linebacker, as the U.S. Air Force had funneled a large number of tactical aircraft into the theater to augment PACAF assets, SAC undertook a major buildup of its B-52 force. Under Operation Bullet Shot, 161 B-52D and B-52G aircraft were sent out from the United States, thus bringing the total deployment to 210, the highest number of BUFFs that had yet been deployed to Southeast Asia and over half of SAC’s total B-52 fleet.

  To ready them for the air defense environment they would soon encounter, about half of the B-52Gs deployed overseas were brought up to date with the same electronic countermeasures upgrades with which the Arc Light B-52Ds had been retrofitted between 1967 and 1969.

  Under the Phase V ECM Fit, better known as the Rivet Rambler program, these B-52Gs received the AN/ALR-18 automatic radar receiver, the AN/ALR-20 wideband countermeasures receiver, the AN/ALT-16 barrage-jamming system, AN/ALT-32H high-band jammers, AN/ALT-32L low-band jammers, AN/ALT-6B or AN/ALT-22 continuous wave jamming transmitters, and the AN/APR-25 radar homing and warning system. They also were fitted with AN/ALE-20 flare dispensers and AN/ALE-24 chaff dispensers to confuse radar and SAM sensors. The B-52Gs did not, however, have their conventional bomb capacity increased as the B-52Ds had with the Big Belly upgrade back in 1965.

  The urgency of the upgrades was underscored on November 22, 1972, when a B-52D was hit by a North Vietnamese SAM for the first time. Damaged during a raid on Vinh, the BUFF went down, although the pilot managed to maneuver it over nonhostile territory, and the crew successfully escaped.

  The B-52Gs had yet to make their combat debut, and the fact that not all had received Rivet Rambler upgrades would soon present itself as a serious problem.

  Linebacker II

  By December, negotiations at the peace talks in Paris had devolved into bickering, accusations, counter-accusations, and disagreements between the United States and its South Vietnamese allies. Finally, on December 16, the North Vietnamese delegation walked out without setting a date for a resumption of talks. At this juncture, the Nixon administration made the decision to undertake a major strategic air offensive against the industrial and logistical heart of North Vietnam using B-52s. It was essentially the same strategy proposed by Curtis LeMay seven years earlier.

  An “elephant walk” of B-52D Stratofortress aircraft line up on the sway-backed runway at Andersen AFB for takeoff as they prepare for strikes over Hanoi and Haiphong in North Vietnam. USAF

  Operation Linebacker II was conceived as a three-night “maximum effort” using B-52s for a strategic air offensive targeting facilities in and around Hanoi and Haiphong, many of which had been off-limits to American aircraft, even during Rolling Thunder. Scheduled to begin on December 18, 1972, this campaign would be sending the BUFFs into a concentrated air defense environment that had claimed its first B-52 just a few weeks before.

  On December 18, a total of 129 bombers were launched, beginning with 42 veteran B-52Ds flying from U-Tapao, followed by 87 BUFFs from Andersen AFB on Guam, which included 54 newly arrived B-52Gs. They operated in three-plane cells for mutual ECM protection and were supported by a large fleet of KC-135 tankers and by fighter escorts and tactical ECM aircraft that preceded the bombers into the target area.

  The targets for the first night included rail yards and logistical facilities in and around Hanoi, as well as the MiG bases at Kep, Hoa Loc, and Phuc Yen. In retrospect, mission planners should have put more emphasis on SAM sites that first night. The SAMs downed three BUFFs on December 18, but the interceptors claimed none. However, Sgt. Samuel Turner shot down a MiG-21 to become the first B-52 tail gunner to shoot down an enemy aircraft.

  Despite the losses, the results of the bombing were deemed good, with the bombs having struck more than 90 percent of the assigned targets.

  On December 19, a total of ninety-three BUFFs, making the grueling fourteen-hour round trip from Guam, struck rail yards and a power plant, successfully returning to their bases without a loss. The following night, ninety-nine bombers struck Hanoi in three waves, as had the bombers on the previous two nights. Unfortunately, mission planners had chosen not to alter the routing scenario, and the North Vietnamese had been able to concentrate their defenses where they knew the bombers would be.

  A view of Strategic Air Command B-52D and B-52G Stratofortresses, crowded on the ramps at Andersen AFB in December 1972 prior to Linebacker II operations over North Vietnam. USAF

  A B-52D Stratofortress w
aits beside the runway as a B-52G approaches for landing after completing a bombing mission over North Vietnam. USAF

  Trailing smoke from their J57s, B-52Gs take off, one after another, from Andersen AFB for bombing missions over North Vietnam. USAF

  Linebacker II marked the most activity the field at Andersen AFB had seen since it was used by B-29s against Japan in 1945. A B-52G is seen here landing as a B-52D prepares to take off. USAF

  Having used their defenses sparingly on December 19, the enemy turned them on full blast. Over 220 SAMs were launched at the three waves, with aircrews reporting a higher degree of accuracy than on the first two nights. On December 20, SAC lost six B-52s to enemy SAMs, with most being B-52Gs without the improved Rivet Rambler ECM packages. The B-52Gs also proved less capable of absorbing battle damage than the B-52Ds. Their lighter structural weight, which gave them greater range, also contributed to the B-52Gs being more vulnerable to enemy fire.

  It stunned the U.S. Air Force to have lost nine of its biggest bombers in just three nights—but there was no turning back.

  The Nixon administration decided that the three-night maximum effort would now be an effort of indefinite duration, though for the next four nights, the size of the effort would be cut to just thirty bombers. Except for the night of December 23, when a dozen BUFFs flew in from Andersen, all of these thirty-plane missions would originate from U-Tapao.

  With a painful lesson having been learned, mission planners changed the routing for each night’s mission, varied the altitude, employed more extensive ECM, and spread radar-jamming chaff more broadly. In addition to rail yards, petroleum storage, and other logistical facilities, the target lists now included SAM sites.