Post by ¡JonesOn Thu, 21 May 2015 11:37:26 -0500, in talk.politics.guns RD Sandman
Post by RD SandmanPost by Jim VanagasIf the American soldiers, Navy, Air Force and Marines had been allowed
to fight the enemy, instead of avoiding sacred targets comprised of
missile batteries, radars and AA guns, Vietnam would still be a
smoking monument to the defeat of communism at this hour.
Lot of truth in that statement.
I don't know. Basically, Hanoi was a *very* well hardened target;
their defensive layers would cost several B-52s on every raid.
Basically, a missile battery is designed for killing aircraft and
theirs were state of the art. I think that stuff about how our air
force couldn't fire on AAA was all straight out of the movies.
Perhaps much of it was. Or you could read a book called Going Downtown,
the War against Hanoi and Washington by Colonel Jack Broughton. He was
my old CO. The following forward to the book was written by Tom Wolfe:
"Going Downtown" was the pilot's term for air raids against Hanoi, and
Colonel Jack Broughton, a veteran of the Korean War and former leader of
the Air Force Thunderbirds, who found himself leading young American
pilots from bases in Thailand into North Vietnam. They flew F-105
Thunderchief fighter bombers against targets more dangerous than any
experienced during WWII.
This is Broughton's story of those missions, of encounters with MIG
fighters, of split-second maneuvering to dodge SAM missiles, of
struggling to avoid radar guided anti-aircraft fire, and of trying to
cope with the worst flying weather in the world. It is also a bitter and
disturbing story of young fighter pilots sacrificed in a war controlled
by politicians ten thousand miles away.
Politically motivated restrictions prevented Broughton's men from
shooting at enemy planes until they had left the ground. Attacking enemy
guns or missile sites was made difficult by a maze of imaginary lines and
forbidden zones drawn in Washington. Missions were planned by non-flying
bureaucrats using the same attack routes day after day, and as a result
many lives were lost unecessarily. Broughton recites a host of sins -
overreliance on rear area battlefield management systems, over
confidence, unshakable faith in our technological superiority - that made
Washington as formidable an enemy as Hanoi. Broughton warns us sharply
against this woeful blindness to the capabilities of our enemies that may
cost us dearly in future conflicts.
Broughton's involvement in the war came to an end with the Turkestan
incident, in which two of his pilots, in the heat of battle,
inadvertently fired on a Soviet ship in Cam Pha harbor. The ritual
courts martial that followed, detailed here with savage irony, convinced
Broughton that his men were being asked to do the impossible in a world
not of military necessity but of political gamesmenship and a true
American hero ended his career on a sour note."
He also wrote another one named Thud Ridge. The Thud was an endearment
from the pilots who flew the F-105 Thunderchief in combat. Another
excellent book, IMHO.
--
Sleep well tonight.......
RD (The Sandman}
In these days and times, there is really only one race on this planet.
It is called "human". It just comes in many colors and sizes.
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