“Yes, sir, and some of them are good friends. I’m happy we finally did it.”
The boss hung up and Hilton said into his recorder, “Well, love, that was Colonel Dick Horne, who said that we dropped the Thanh Hoa Bridge today.”
With that, Hilton adjourned to “The Inferno,” the squadron’s party hooch, where he indulged in a cherished tradition: he rang the party bell.15
Poststrike photography verified the claim. The western end of the western span was in the river. Seventy-two bombs, both smart and dumb, had accomplished what thousands had previously failed to do.
Consulting their bombing tables, Air Force weaponeers estimated that thirty-three times as many unguided bombs would have been required to achieve the same result. As Hilton reflected, “Twenty-nine tons of LGBs at the west end of the bridge broke it. Plus twelve tons of iron bombs. After all the years of pounding, and the lives lost, we finally broke the Dragon’s Jaw, and did so without the loss of life or airplane.”16
With the recon photos in hand, Seventh Air Force’s General John Vogt said,
It was this sort of precise tactic that enabled us to achieve the success we had against the railroad bridges in those high-threat areas.…
We discovered, for example, that the effectiveness of the laser-guided bomb was much greater than that of the conventional bombs. One day, for example, we went up and knocked out five bridges on the Northwest Rail Line with a laser strike, and when PACAF [Pacific Air Force] ran that through the computers, they determined that where we used twenty-four total bombs, it would have taken 2,400 bombs to do that by the old method. So there was a tremendous breakthrough in technology and applied tactics.
Both the Northeast and Northwest rail lines were interdicted within a few days, cutting to a trickle the amount of supplies coming from Communist China… we had fifteen bridges out on each railroad at any given time—as fast as they would build them, we would knock them out again.17
Somewhere far, far above the contrail level another celebration may have begun. Surely the shades of Giulio Douhet, Boom Trenchard, and Billy Mitchell hefted a heavenly brew to mark the arrival of the airpower prophets’ dream of lightning bolts flung from the sky with unerring aim.
The next day, May 14, Constellation launched a recon flight to assess the Air Force’s claims of damage to the bridge. A standard two-plane sortie was assigned: an RA-5C Vigilante flown by Commander C. R. Jones, skipper of “Heavy Eleven,” escorted by the VF-92 Phantom crew of Lieutenants Russ Ogle and Bart Flaherty.
It was a typical recon flight, an hour and a half: “Short and sweet and back to a ready deck after an Alpha strike,” Ogle recalled.
Flaherty said, “As I recall, this was an ‘add on’ to photo-recce mission on an Alpha strike to some truck park. After the standard intel brief, we (the Viggie crew and Russ and I) were told to remain. It was then we were told that we were to continue as a flight of two to intercept the river and fly downriver to take photos of the bridge. So what we thought would be a trip to a ‘goat farm’ suddenly got very interesting.
“We were blowing down the river at a pretty high rate with us jinking around above the Vig and trying to keep up. As we got close, C. R. went into standard ‘straight and level take pictures mode’ (SLTPM). We didn’t have any indications of SAM activity and, at first, didn’t see any AAA. Then we noticed the winking around the bridge. I don’t remember if it was Russ or me that looked up and saw what looked like a scene from Twelve O’Clock High above us. Nice big black puffs. Lots of 100-millimeter, fortunately quite a ways above us.
“Russ called the Vig and told them about the flak. No reaction—still SLTPM. He called a second time and still nothing. Finally I called and said, ‘C. R., they’re shootin’ the shit outta you!’
“Suddenly the Vig started jinking and must have plugged the burners in. Proof once again that a Phantom with 4+4 [missiles] and a centerline tank was no match for a clean Vigilante. We exited feet wet and RTB [returned to base].
“The pictures were great—proof positive that one span of the bridge was, indeed, partially down.”
Ogle added,
I do remember rolling over to take a look at the bridge and seeing all the twinkling lights and taking a microsecond to realize they were muzzle flashes and thinking that the people on the ground seemed really pissed off.
I also remember having the feeling that we were suspended right over the bridge and not really moving and looking down at the throttles to make sure I had them all the way forward. I did, of course, but I still kept trying to push them forward and wondering why the old girl wasn’t going any faster.
Lastly, I looked behind us to check six and realized that our whole plane, from the intakes back, was enveloped in thick vapor from our shock wave. We must have looked like a supersonic cloud from the ground.
Well, that’s it, just another day at the office in those days. By the way, I always liked escorting C. R.; thought the guy was Mr. Cool personified. And those Viggies were beautiful machines.18
Indeed they were. Originally built as a supersonic nuclear bomber, the bomb bay was between the twin engines, so the bomb was supposed to be ejected out the rear of the plane. The Navy quickly discovered that that method of dropping a bomb, nuclear or otherwise, didn’t work: the bomb tended to be trapped in the airflow around the plane and followed along for a while until sooner or later it fell free in an unpredictable trajectory. So the plane was converted to a photo-reconnaissance bird.
The Vigilantes looked fast just sitting on the deck. A large plane with a needle nose, rakish tail, and swept supersonic wings, Vigilantes were bitches to land aboard ship, inspiring the respect of every pilot in the air wing. In Vietnam their mission of photo recon after a strike meant that they got shot at a lot and shot down too often. That fact raised the respect level of Vigilante crews to extraordinary heights. The nose wheel was behind the cockpit, so watching one being maneuvered about a flight deck at night by the yellow-shirt taxi directors who took the nose wheel to the deck edge, then signaled the pilot to turn as his cockpit hung out over the dark ocean, bred awe. Those guys had brass balls. There, but for the grace of God… pilots of Vigilantes were masters of courage and self-discipline.
Mr. Cool? Every Viggie pilot and NFO was regarded as the best of the best on every ship fortunate enough to have them aboard.
* That there were still MiGs operating from fields around Hanoi is one of the most amazing stupidities of the Vietnam War, a direct result of the Johnson, then Nixon administrations’ refusal to allow American air power to target the airfields. American fighters were still battling MiGs eight years into the Vietnam War. The Americans had willingly forfeited air supremacy over North Vietnam, which was absolute folly. The first airfield attacks were only approved in 1967 and remained erratic thereafter.
CHAPTER 20
“WE DROPPED THE BRIDGE”
Keeping track of bridge repairs was a standard mission for reconnaissance squadrons. Especially after the Air Force strikes in April and May, the Pacific Command wanted to monitor enemy efforts to repair the Thanh Hoa Bridge.
Although the gunners around the Dragon’s Jaw had taken plenty of casualties, they had gotten so much practice that they were still the best in the business. The idea of catching them napping was a fantasy. The North Vietnamese well knew that photo reconnaissance was a strike-planning tool for the Americans.
On June 16, 1972, Lieutenant Paul “Worm” Ringwood drew a photo mission aboard USS Midway. He was on his second combat deployment. He had earned his wings in 1968 and went to F-8s as his fleet assignment. He ejected from an F-8B over Okinawa in January 1969.
The photo birds were sleeker and faster than F-8 fighters. Flying his seventieth combat mission, Worm Ringwood knew the risks. In Vietnamese skies the predictable photo mission was considered the most hazardous, exceeded only by single-plane night bombing missions by A-6 Intruders.1
Ringwood often envisioned “Nguyen the AAA gunner down there, totally relaxed
and smoking a cigarette until the smoke from a strike cleared. He would then calmly put the butt out and rip into us like clockwork.” Ringwood described the gunners around the bridge as “the A team.” He had flown recon sorties over Route One before, and in May he had seen Thanh Hoa’s brand of flak up close. Muzzle flashes lit up the area on both ends of the bridge.
Most recon flights were escorted, and on this June day Ringwood’s RF-8G, “Baby Giant 601,” was joined by a Midway Phantom flown by Lieutenant Victor Kovaleski, who would score the Navy’s last aerial kill of the war.
Recalling June 16, Ringwood said, “My mission that day was a river recce ending just three or four miles south of the bridge. Those gunners were so good that they could aim with accuracy that far away.”
Because recon pilots had to fly straight and level to get their pictures, no evasive action was possible. But once they were “off government time,” aviators tried to complicate the gunners’ problems as much as possible. After he had his photos, Worm broke into a turn at 4,500 feet, making 450 knots or 760 feet per second—a tough target. Then he felt something strike his jet. He had taken a 37-millimeter shell in the tail, setting it afire. He said, “The irony and testament to those gunners is that I got hit with my wings temporarily level and while jinking significantly.”2
Aviation wisdom held that it was undesirable to bail out over people you had just bombed. The Vietnamese were similarly uptight about pilots who took their picture. With his fire warning light illuminated, Worm shoved his throttle through the detent into afterburner and turned seaward toward the blessed sanctuary of the gulf. Kovaleski radioed a terse call, confirming the fire.
Fire or no fire, Worm Ringwood was going for salt water. Apparently the 37-millimeter round had severed afterburner fuel lines. If the fire burned through the controls for the stabilator, he would lose control of his mount. Or maybe the ass end of the plane would blow off. Maybe the whole damn plane would explode, frying him to a crispy cinder.
The beach went under him and Ringwood kept going, climbing. When he reached ten thousand feet, the optimum bailout altitude, and was about ten miles offshore, he decided he had tempted fate long enough. He braced himself in his seat, reached up with both hands, grasped the face curtain handle, and pulled downward, hard.
The Martin-Baker seat fired as advertised, rocketing Ringwood out of “Six Oh One.” The parachute blossomed and the pilot was jerked upright, suspended in the sky. His adrenaline rush at successfully ejecting vanished a moment later. “I was peacefully descending when I noticed a school of sharks below me. The more I pulled on the lanyards to steer away, like they taught us in Pensacola, the faster I descended toward the school of sharks.”
He hefted his survival radio and tried to contact some A-7 Corsairs to strafe the vicious predators before he dropped into the water—to no avail. And strafing sharks would have been a bad idea, perhaps sending the surviving sharks maddened by the smell of blood into a feeding frenzy.
“I landed in the middle of a circle of them and quickly (probably setting a world’s record) got into my raft.”
In a few moments Ringwood realized that the sharks were actually porpoises. He was swept by a tremendous flood of relief, only to have that dissipate in a twinkling as he spotted several small craft headed toward him. Worm instantly went back to oh-shit mode.
Moments later an A-7 came swooping in and dropped a five-hundred-pound bomb amid or in front of the fishing fleet, with the desired result. “They were putt-putting toward me, and after that water geyser shot up a few hundred feet—very impressive—they made a fast 180-degree turn and putt-putted away, never to return.”
The Navy’s dedicated rescue squadron was HC-7, the Sea Devils, and it was spread across several warships at a time. Big Mother 67, a Sikorsky HH-3A Sea King that had taken off from USS Long Beach, a nuclear-powered cruiser, got the call about Baby Giant 601. Flying the chopper was Lieutenant James S. Kelley with copilot Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Early H. “Hank” Frazier and two aircrewmen, Aviation Machinist Mates Richard J. Tinsley and Jimmy C. Keeney.
Big Mother 67 plucked Ringwood from the water and logged him as the squadron’s 105th save. Five months before, in January, the same crew had rescued Lieutenant Vic Kovaleski, who had just directed them to Ringwood. Most of the rescued fliers were undoubtedly spared years of captivity or a slow death on the merciless sea.
After his rescue, Kelly’s crew deposited Ringwood on the northern SAR destroyer, where he imbibed a nonregulation adult beverage. A few hours later he was returned to Midway. He flew another mission the next day.
In the finest traditions of Naval Air, Ringwood endured a couple of days of merciless kidding about his “shark” adventure until another unfortunate captured the attention of the alpha-male pack in the ready room.
When Ringwood was sent back to photograph the Dragon’s Jaw in October, he said, “Needless to say, my speed was greatly increased more than usual since the memory of the previous Thanh Hoa flight was vividly etched on my mind. I think I was at five hundred knots that day.”3
The Americans kept pressure on the Dragon after the May 13 strike. During the summer and fall, before Linebacker ended in October, the Navy flew an additional eleven missions against the Thanh Hoa Bridge and the Air Force another two, ensuring that the Dragon remained dormant.4
Increasing operating tempos required more carriers than the Pacific Fleet could maintain in the Tonkin Gulf. Two East Coast carriers were deployed that fall: USS Saratoga (CV-60) and America (CV-66).
America was on her third Tonkin Gulf deployment. She had alternated with Pacific and Mediterranean cruises since 1968, most recently with Air Wing Eight. She left Norfolk bound for the Tonkin Gulf in June 1972, commanded by Captain Burt Shepherd, younger brother of astronaut Alan Shepherd.
Leading the Marauders of VA-82 was Commander Donald Sumner. During predeployment workups the squadron had briefly trained with small Walleye bombs, TV-guided fire-and-forget weapons. There had been little opportunity to train thoroughly with different variants in the Mark 80 series of dumb bombs.
Sumner’s operations officer was Lieutenant Commander Leighton W. “Snuffy” Smith Jr. Smith had spent two years as a production test pilot flying the A-7 at Vought’s Dallas, Texas, factory. VA-82 deployed with A-7Cs, an older model of the Corsair, even though the ultimate “Echo” version was already flying in the fleet.
After growing up near Mobile in rural Alabama, Snuffy Smith was certain he did not want to be a farmer. He had seen his father work to exhaustion far too often and sought something else. A family member showed a way: his uncle, Page Smith, had graduated from Annapolis in 1924 and retired as a four-star admiral commanding the Atlantic Fleet. Young Smith accumulated five dozen letters of recommendation, enough for a congressional appointment to the Naval Academy. He entered Annapolis in 1958.
Smith’s academic career got off to a rocky start. The commandant of midshipmen, Captain William F. Bringle, turned things around when he invited the lad in for a talk. At first glance Smith found the four-striper “looking every bit the warrior, except for his eyes. There was a gentleness in his eyes.”
“Bush” Bringle was indeed a warrior. He had led one of perhaps four carrier squadrons to fly against both Germany and Japan, earning a stellar reputation for leadership. Bringle spoke to the youngster softly, earnestly—and convincingly. He said, “Midshipman Smith, you can do this.”5
And he did. Smith graduated in 1962, beginning a thirty-four-year naval career.
Leighton Smith was designated a naval aviator in 1964 and entered the war as a VA-22 A-4 pilot flying from Coral Sea in 1966–1967, with a subsequent cruise aboard USS Ranger in 1967–1968. He first bombed the Thanh Hoa Bridge in September 1966.
America arrived off Vietnam in July 1972 and launched hundreds of sorties over the next three months. Then, on October 4, Snuffy Smith got another shot at the Dragon’s Jaw, six years after his first effort. The squadron CO, Don Sumner, was temporarily grounded, so as
operations officer, Smith planned and led the mission. It was probably the first time the Navy used large Walleye bombs.6
Smith explained, “When we rolled in, my weapon came off, but it got hit by a 37-millimeter shell. It disintegrated as soon as it left my airplane, or at least became stupid.” The other bombs missed or inflicted no damage, requiring the attackers to regroup, replan, and restrike.
Two days later, on October 6, America launched a strike against the bridge, with Smith again leading the strike element. Skipper Sumner was back flying but chose to lead the second section because Smith had planned and led the first strike. Smith said, “I had a good relationship with Don, and we always worked well together.” Additionally, Smith had “a gut feeling” that the sixth would be The Day.7
Smith’s division launched with a larger strike targeting a railroad facility. While the other aircraft created a diversion, Smith, Sumner, and their wingmen headed for the Thanh Hoa Bridge.
The Marauders’ load-out was a mixture of smart and dumb bombs. Smith and his wingman, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Marvin Baldwin, each carried two two-thousand-pound Walleyes, while the other two pilots, Commander Don Sumner and Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Jim Brister, carried two two-thousand-pound dumb Mark 84s.
The two elements split for opposite approaches from east and west, forcing the defenders to divide their gunfire. The aviators barely noticed, but the AAA batteries erupted in both barrage and radar-aimed fire, from 37-millimeter on up.
From sixteen thousand feet the A-7s nosed into 30-degree dives toward the bridge.
In the attack Smith was completely focused on the target. He was aware of the black puffs from flak shells but refused to glance at the ground, where muzzle flashes often captured pilots’ attention.
“We rolled in simultaneously,“ Smith recalled. “Pulled the power back, popped the speed brakes, and got our scopes locked on the bridge. I called ‘Lock-on.’ Once Marv confirmed that he had locked on, I counted ‘Three, two, one, launch,” and Marv and I both pickled them at the same time. Then Don and Jim popped up and began their roll-in. They hit the bridge on the west side of the center piling.”8
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