Air Power in Three Wars: World War II, Korea, Vietnam [Illustrated Edition] by General William W. Momyer USAF

Author:General William W. Momyer USAF [Momyer USAF, General William W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2014-09-25T21:00:00+00:00

Smoke billows from secondary explosions caused by the bombing attack of USAF F-105s on the Kep Marshalling/Railroad Yard, 39 miles northeast of Hanoi. This strike took place 20 April 1967.

The B-52s were not used in Route Package VI during the 1965-1968 campaign because of the administration’s concern that the North Vietnamese would view employment of this strategic weapon as an escalation in the conflict. An additional argument for not using the B-52 on these raids was the concern about the effect losing even a single aircraft would have on the image of our strategic deterrent. Airmen have long known that a penalty must be paid to penetrate any defense system, and several of us commanders felt that the loss of some B-52s to a relatively small defense system (as compared to that of the USSR) would not bring into question the ability of our strategic force to perform its mission against the Soviet Union in the event of nuclear war. Nevertheless, officials within the Department of Defense and the State Department maintained that such losses could have a negative impact on the image of our strategic forces. For these reasons, the B-52s were not to go into the Red River delta until 15 April 1972.

RAILROAD SYSTEM

The North Vietnamese railroad system consisted of nine segments, the most important parts of which were north of the 20th parallel. Almost 80% of the major targets were in this area laced together by the rail system. The most important contribution of the system was to move the main fighting weapons from China to redistribution points at Kep, Hanoi, Haiphong, Nam Dinh, and Thanh Hoa. They were then further distributed by truck and watercraft to the in-transit base areas whence porters carried the weapons, food, and ammunition on the final leg into combat.

The northeast rail line, termed RR #2, ran from the southeast border of China to Hanoi. Because it was the most important segment of the system, the North Vietnamese exerted the most effort to keep it open. Eighty-two nautical miles long with a capacity of about 27,000 short tons daily, this line was near almost all the major targets in North Vietnam. If the interdiction were to succeed, it had to embrace systematic attacks on this line from the Chinese border to the heart of downtown Hanoi. Besides the repair effort, the North Vietnamese demonstrated the importance of this segment of the system by concentrating SAMs and AAA along the first 30 miles of the line and then gradually thinning them out nearer the buffer zone. The 25-mile buffer zone was a self-imposed restriction to minimize possible U.S. violation of Chinese territory. The North Vietnamese took advantage of this sanctuary to stage and marshal trains during the day for night runs into Hanoi. They realized that we would strike in the buffer zone only for a particular target; we didn’t permit armed reconnaissance in the buffer zone except for specific limited periods.

The two bottlenecks on RR #2 were the Canal des Rapides and Paul Doumer bridges.

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