Air defense in North Vietnam and bomb damage
From: Balazs Szalontai <aoverl@yahoo.co.uk>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Date: Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 9:15 AM
Dear All,
I wonder whether you may have seen any detailed evaluation about how effective North Vietnamese air defense (surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery) was in reducing the damage caused by U.S. air raids. While I saw many publications about the number of U.S. planes which were shot down over the DRV, and also about the number of missiles that the North Vietnamese air defense needed to launch to hit a plane, I do not really know how much these losses may have hindered the American air offensive. My preliminary impression is that ground fire, even if it is effective enough to shoot down a relatively high number of planes, does not discourage an air offensive to the same extent as the other side's air superiority, but of course I may be mistaken. May you suggest some publications which contain detailed information about the destruction caused by the bombing? If possible, I would prefer publications that cover civilian losses, too. In fact, the issue in which I am most interested is the defense of the civilian population against air raids.
Best regards,
Balazs Szalontai
Mongolia International University
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From: ryan nelson <sociolgst@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 12:38 PM
Dear Balazs
I’ve viewed fascinating and in-depth television interviews of former U.S. “Wild Weasel” pilots talking about, at times with smiles, how organized, capable, and creative SAM sites were when defending themselves and populations from air attacks. Elaboration on how SAM sites impacted missions and tellings of how multiple SAM sites in an area organized strategies to confuse and destroy planes. The SAM sites, from the pilots' stories, proved to be quiet capable of hindering U.S. air offensives. However, the Wild Weasel & Co. pilots just evolved techniques to counter their maneuvers.
On the DVD pilots also converse about frustration from being ordered not to attack SAM sites that were being constructed. The reason being their would most likely be Soviet supervisors on site. Another story told by a pilot details his fright of being hit by B-52 dropped bombs while flying at low altitudes during the 1972 Christmas bombings.
Good news, Balazs, I know a place where you are able to procure the History Channel’s Wild Weasel episode (or countess other hours of Vietnam War documentary footage) for free. It will be a ‘shared’ copy but free none the less. If you (or anyone else) wants to know how to download such things write me off list. If you want to pay the $40 for the Wild Weasels DVD go to http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=72721.
Here’s an interesting occupational statement about the W.W.
“Former Air Force Chief of Staff General J.P. McConnell described the area around Hanoi, North Vietnam as having ‘the greatest concentration of aircraft weapons that has ever been known in the history of defense of any area in the world.’ The job of the wild weasels was to combat these awesome defenses to protect aircraft striking key targets in the north.”
For a chapter devoted to the W.W. which contains the above quote, view Schneider, Major Donald K. Air Force heroes in Vietnam. 1979. USAF Asia Monograph Series. Volume VII. Monograph 9.
http://books.google.com/books?id=oFtBHYVQpOoC&pg=PA22&dq=wild+weasels&sig=0Csua2J8grNdxZ5WrCw9jGcDoyk#PPA22,M1
For an in-depth and cited history of the Wild Weasels view http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/vietnam/airpower/wildweasel.aspx
For an explanation that makes the “revolutionary . . . one-over dialectic” sound simple view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel.
Also search Texas Tech’s Vietnam Archive. Keywords “Project Wild Weasel,” “Captain Bill McGuigan,” “SAMs” and the “Wild Weasels.”
Lastly, I’ve been documenting propaganda art in post 75 Quan Doi magazines (which is begging to be electronically catalogued) the last few weeks. By far one of the most common pictures across years in the magazine are SAM sites and anti-aircraft guns. Definitely an object and weapon that empowered the North Vietnamese.
Peace in Viet Nam
Ryan Nelson
Student, Writer, Researcher
Excuse any typographical errors please
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Bomb damage in Hanoi and air defense in North Vietnam
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From: Balazs Szalontai <aoverl@yahoo.co.uk>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 7:44 PM
Dear Ryan,
thanks a lot for this great amount of information about the Wild Weasels! I was familiar with this program, but I did not know all of these websites. In a sense the Wild Weasel program was indeed a novel technique, because it was much more regularized than previous "flak suppression" methods. For instance, in the Korean War the U.S. Air Force used various means to destroy North Korean anti-aircraft guns, ranging from low-flying B-29 bombers to fighter-bombers to electronic radar jamming.
On the other hand, these websites say little about the extent of damage caused by the bombers protected by Wild Weasels. For instance, the work "Air Force heroes in Vietnam" makes only a few very brief and vague references to the damage caused to the Thai Nguyen steel plant, and (with some malevolence, I may say: predictably) says nothing about the civilian victims of these bombing raids. Thus I wonder whether you or other list members found information about this aspect of the air war in relationship with air defense. For instance, I would like to know whether in Hanoi the destruction caused by bombing was more or less serious around heavy concentrations of AAA and SAMs. On the one hand, more defense is expected to result in less destruction. On the other hand, heavy concentration of air defense usually implied the proximity of some important target, and the presence of such targets usually meant more intense air raids (and more destruction). Thus the test question may be the following: were there districts in Hanoi where, due to the absence of strategically important targets, active air defense (SAMs and AAA) was relatively less substantial than in other districts, and if they were, did they suffer serious damage due to the bombing or not?
In a certain sense, the publications you sent seem to reinforce my preliminary (and still very vague) hypothesis, because no matter how high losses the Wild Weasels suffered from the SAMs and AA guns, neither the WW program nor the bombing offensive was halted. The cause of this persistence may have been, at least partly, the fact that the Americans were encouraged by their continuous air superiority. After all, even a Wild Weasel, which was no match for advanced jet fighters in dogfights, had substantial chance against a MiG interceptor, because its superior speed enabled it to shake off its pursuer.
All the best and thanks again,
Balazs
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From: Maxner, Steve <steve.maxner@ttu.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Sun, Mar 2, 2008 at 7:55 AM
Balazs:
From the US side, we have some of the CHECO reports online that might include information about battle damage. You can find them online in the Virtual Vietnam Archive. For an historical examination, you might also want to check the work Mark Clodfelter, “The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam.”
But for information about civilian losses in North Vietnam, the only detailed source would probably be the SRV. Information in CHECO reports would have been the result of flyovers after missions to determine the extent of damage/success of a mission – not on-the-ground assessments to determine the extent of civilian losses.
Of course, the accuracy and/or veracity of either sides government wartime and postwar reports deserve an historians scrutiny.
Steve
Stephen Maxner, Ph.D.
Director
The Vietnam Center
The Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University
Special Collections Library Room 108
15th and Detroit
Lubbock, TX 79409-1041
Phone: 806-742-9010
Fax: 806-742-0496
Email: steve.maxner@ttu.edu
Website: www.vietnam.ttu.edu
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