The Violent Struggle For Air Superiority In Vietnam | Secrets Of War | Timeline

hi everybody welcome to this timeline documentary my name is dan snow and here i am in a lancaster bomber cockpit one of the few remaining lancasters from the second world war to tell you about my new history channel it's called history hit it's like netflix for history hundreds of history documentaries on there and interviews with many of the world's best historians follow the information below this film or just search online for history hit and make sure you use the code timeline to get a special introductory offer now enjoy this show next on secrets of war american pilots battle the enemy and their own political leaders in the skies over vietnam exclusive interviews with north vietnamese veterans secret american operations in laos and cambodia and the navy's classified program to counter heavy losses against vietnamese pilots or were these pilots from other communist countries alpha strike is next on secrets of war [Music] thank you [Music] the american war in vietnam there were no front lines drawn in the map no neatly marked positions defining enemy territory or safe territory american tactics produced numerous battlefield victories and inflicted heavy military losses on the north vietnamese and vietcong forces but these opportunities were often wasted by the absence of strategic vision the u.s air war in vietnam cost more than half of the hundreds of millions of dollars america spent on the hostilities despite this investment air power while influential was never decisive we had gotten into the war without understanding what the game plan was we had no strategy we had no objective we thought it was going to be another quick and easy fight rush in fill the sky with airplanes and we'd walk away the big winner as we always have had in the past and it didn't work vietnam has a 2 000 year history of resisting foreign invasions they'd been fighting for over a century against the french the japanese and then the french again for the vietnamese time and cost meant little their war against the americans would last as long as it took to win if they did not succeed then their children would or their grandchildren our slogan at that time were to fight we know that as long as the american decided to stay and and get involved with the vietnam war it would be impossible you know to reunify the country like their french predecessors in the first indochina war american leaders and the government of south vietnam never understood that the communists were willing to lose longer than the americans were willing to win we accept the death of millions of people we justify this huge loss because of the belief that the independence for our country will justify the sacrifice we don't put a limit on the number of human lives lost independence is the most precious thing we must have so we would do everything to fight and [Music] discourage the american from getting involved and make life really difficult for them so that they would withdraw from vietnam and leaving the internal affairs of the vietnamese to the vietnamese most historians date the u.s air war from 1962 to 1973. in fact the u.s air force had been quietly sending advisers to south vietnam as early as 1950 to support the french in the first indochina war this assistance continued after ho chi minh led the communist viet minh to victory over the french tien bien fu and the partitioning of vietnam into the north and the south in 1955. essentially the the arab war in vietnam can be broken down into three parts there was rolling thunder from 65 to 68 there was the interdiction in laos from 68 through 72 and then the linebacker campaigns in 72. with the south vietnamese government on the verge of collapse on the 2nd of march 1965 the united states began an aerial bombing campaign against north vietnam from the beginning operation rolling thunder was characterized by a sharp conflict pitting the military against president lyndon johnson and his secretary of defense robert mcnamara at issue were the rules of engagement american pilots were not allowed to go downtown their term for bombing military targets in hanoi in the first three or four years of the war there's no doubt that the white house controlling the air battle the rules of engagement and saying that some targets could and could not be hit trying to delineate where the air effort would go in against the advice of the air planners um i think that that was a major fault president johnson and secretary mcnamara alternated gradual escalation with long bombing halts in a belief that they could lure the north vietnamese and by ho chi minh and general nguyen yap to the negotiating table against the advice of his senior military commanders johnson personally approved and picked each military target johnson's idea was that people would get more and more fearful as the bombs got closer and closer but what it really did is it gave the vietnamese an opportunity to fine-tune their air defense system so that by the time the bombs did get to hanoi they had the most sophisticated air defense system in the world johnson feared that a full-scale bombing campaign might trigger a chinese or russian military response never suspecting the depth of both countries involvement in north vietnam's air defenses the american politicians are very concerned that we'd have a rerun of the korean war where once the north koreans had been started to be pushed back the chinese started to get involved in a big way and almost tip the balance the thought of having a mao's guerrilla army of five million men suddenly available to general giap i think was something which the uh the americans were very concerned about johnson believed in the carrot and stick approach hit your opponent over the head with a stick and then offer him a little piece of carrot he was convinced that limited bombing raids would persuade hanoi to negotiate rather than face an all-out offensive but johnson and mcnamara were making a critical miscalculation they failed to understand their enemy they did not understand communism they certainly did not understand that ho chi minh was an international communist and that was his primary uh mission in life was to advance communism johnson was a texas politician his problem is that he didn't understand the vietnamese world view that this carrot and stick approach was not something that they understood and that's not how they operated the only thing the vietnamese understood was force [Music] the majority of missions for operation rolling thunder were carried out by u.s air force planes based in thailand and by navy squadrons flying from yankee station the code name for carriers based in the south china sea a line just below vin north vietnam formed the northern boundary above which air attacks were initially forbidden most north vietnamese fighter bases and surface-to-wear missiles fell within these restricted areas when the sam sites were first brought in we could see them being calibrated by the russians and the chinese and being readied for action against us yet we were specifically forbidden uh to hit a sam site until that site had been verified as operational and of course it became operational once it started shooting at us and knocking our people down [Music] a newly uncovered classified soviet document encoded telegram number 13987 verifies that it was in fact soviet soldiers who shot down five american planes in the first sam missile attack of the vietnam war in july 1965. encoded telegram 13987 goes on to describe deep often bitter russian chinese and vietnamese political differences the so-called international brotherhood that johnson and mcnamara feared was actually strained by cultural tensions and political disagreements the china card was a big force internally china was going through great great problems they were very unstable they were frightened about the russian attitude the russians and the chinese were at each other's throat the relationship between russia and vietnam during the war was awful it was very belligerent and the vietnamese actually were quite adept of working the lines between china and russia in order to continue their efforts the other thing you have to remember is the historical antipathy between the vietnamese and the chinese people they hate each other and they have fought three wars over the sovereignty of areas in the north of the country in the last 100 years alone these are not people who are natural allies us air crews complained that they had to fly with one eye reading the rule book and one eye looking for the enemy the frustration pilots felt with johnson's approach to the air war its rules of engagement and political legacy of micromanaged control exploded on the 2nd of june 1967. a soviet freighter named the turkistan was strafed in a harbor 40 miles south of haifan technically the soviet union was neutral but american air crews had long suspected that soviet freighters were carrying military supplies to the north the soviet union demanded an apology to protect his men from investigation colonel jack broughton immediately destroyed the gun camera film without seeing it but within a week the us apologized and broughton and his two pilots were court-martialed i was charged with four counts of conspiracy against the united states government as were my my two uh pilots but i got them off and i got the case against me thrown out as a grossest miscarriage of military justice in in history this war was unlike anything the american military had ever experienced the failure of u.s air power to incapacitate north vietnam's overall war effort in the south remains one of the most controversial aspects of a failed american strategy at the end of the day you have to blame the politicians for the air war in the north the bombing not being successful they did not give the air force planners and the intelligence people the free hand to hit the key targets because of the risk of collateral damage and that i think was a was a major failure bowing to military pressure johnson eventually ordered attacks on critical petroleum storage electrical power generation and transportation targets in hanoi and hyphong but every air crew knew that flying conditions for going downtown were getting worse not better by early spring of 1968 the johnson administration was facing several harsh realities concerning the air war over north vietnam the first was that the bombing zones around hanoi and haifang harbor had become wall-to-wall zones the heaviest anti-aircraft defenses ever designed the highest number of losses took place here in an area known as route package six one of six bombing sectors in vietnam [Music] in fighting to defend haifang i'm proud to say that i was the one who shot down the first american airplane there in total i shot down 17 american planes nine of them right in haifang city once i shut down two planes and we captured both pilots i was overjoyed the north used high-altitude surface-to-air missiles or sands to compel american aircraft to fly low thereby bringing them in range of their anti-aircraft guns most of the planes shot down were lost to anti-aircraft artillery or aaa the mathematical odds against a pilot successfully finishing his tour were becoming greater day by day uh the scariest thing was the surface-to-air missile which you knew once one was launched you basically watched it made a couple movers with your airplane and if it was following your airplane it was real obvious there was usually a puff of smoke and a trail and we had ecm gear that would point it would give a tone and if it locked on you then it was a matter between you personally and that missile and that was much scarier even though it was statistically much less dangerous than aaa it was much scarier because it was a lot more personal it was brutal it was brutal it was layered you had high altitude radar controlled big guns big stuff [Music] the top layer of aaa contained 80 millimeter and 100 millimeter cannons that could reach up to 25 000 feet next came the 57-millimeter guns with ranges in the mid-altitudes below 5000 feet was everything else but the kitchen sink you could actually see the people on the ground and the rice paddies just laying on their backs firing rifles and ak-47s at you we figured even the kids were using slingshots against us this multi-layered environment improved very much as the war advanced there was always somebody on good now we used all means necessary to [ __ ] the american aircraft for us to win the air war against the americans we turned hanoi into one gigantic gun ready to shoot the american aircraft at high or low altitude johnson had other problems numerous secret cia briefings now declassified reported that the bombing in the north was not effective their conclusion bitterly resisted by senior military chiefs was that in spite of an estimated 600 million dollars worth of damage to north vietnam the north retained the initiative adjusting the level of combat in the south to their available manpower and munitions there's no doubt at all that key targets in north vietnam were destroyed by bombing missions by the us navy and the u.s air force and that there were some key successes there the problem is that when you have a vast mobilized manpower you may destroy a bridge during the day but it gets put back up again overnight north vietnamese air defenses brought down over 900 american aircraft of the 801 pows eventually accounted for by north vietnam over half were aviators shot down during rolling thunder scenes of wounded pows were becoming propaganda trophies for the north and a domestic nightmare for johnson get up and i basically just sort of addressed the possibilities of the day one of which is i'd get killed another one of which was that i'd make it back okay and the third one was i'd end up as a prisoner war in hanoi they say a missile came out of nowhere unfortunately it didn't explode until just after the cockpit and actually took out the rear end of the airplane the ejection is a rather abrupt event i was in fact injured a broken arm shoulder coming out of there and then ultimately broke a leg flying through a tree the only tree within probably 20 miles as well but it's not one of those things you say oh my goodness yes i better check my uh instruments uh it's it's one of those things that hey this is going to be a long walk home conditions weren't much better for the navy pilots on yankee station the northern area for carrier operations in the south china sea navy pilots flew 20 of all missions in southeast asia but more than half of those missions were over north vietnam as bad as the anti-aircraft fire was the north vietnamese air defenses were not their main problem landing on the ship at night most people dreaded that worse than getting shot at the ship was bad enough in the daytime but at night you were always low on field the primary flight instrument in the navy was the fuel gauge you the f4 would burn 1500 pounds a minute in full burner we were always looking for a tanker or short on fuel [Music] a series of dog fights between the f4 phantom jets and north vietnamese migs drew attention to an alarming fact the fandom part of america's air war against north vietnam was losing dog fights to mig fighters at an alarming rate [Music] the mig-17 that we used was provided by the russians compared to the american f-4 and f-105 it is inferior the speed is much slower but the vietnamese people were good in finding the best avenues to combat the americans they took advantage of the weapons they had and at the same time compensated for the on weaknesses navy and air force phantom air crews were barely holding a 2-1 victory margin this meant that for every two migs shot down in air-to-air combat the supposed peasant north vietnamese air force downed one fandom and its two-man crew compared to american kill ratios of 10 12 even 20 to 1 in world war ii and korea this was a critical problem when it came to combat the north vietnamese pilots often had a fighting spirit and a tactical knowledge which outweighed that of the americans their aircraft didn't perform on paper as well as the f-4s or the f-105s that they were fighting against and yet in combat in gun to gun combats for example once the missiles had been disposed off and in large formations there was actually a very interesting advantage which the north vietnamese seem to press home the mig-17 and mig-21 were menacing when flown by skilled pilots small and hard to see even if the u.s pilots did manage to detect them inbound the migs could usually hit and run before the f4s could respond the strong point of the u.s air force was that they had a great number of modern jet fighters far more advanced compared to ours but somehow the americans could never figure out the strategy we used during this war the majority of techniques we used we called guerilla war even if fandom crews could get a tail shot their missiles didn't work most of the time the sparrow missile for example needed a 3 000 foot range to arm itself otherwise the missile became an expensive dumb flying stick [Music] the the failure rate of missiles over there was astronomical hanging up and not firing not leaving the aircraft not guiding not detonating properly and so forth the air force was real uh reluctant to do anything about it the navy got some fixes and their missiles were far more effective frankly they came out looking real good compared to the air force on weapons and tactics the bottom line was that navy and air force phantom crews had fired over 600 air-to-air missiles in some 360 engagements but didn't know how to dog-fight their fandoms against the quicker and more maneuverable migs the mig-17 we used was much smaller and less powerful compared to the american f-4 and f-105 but the maneuverability was better particularly in tight turns this made it easier to engage in hit and run attacks on the american aircraft rolling thunder came to an end on the 31st of march 1968 and a four-year bombing lull over hanoi began it was during this lull that one of the most classified operations of the entire war was undertaken no one knew if it would succeed the answer would come four years later in the skies over hanoi the air attack in the ho chi minh trail was the largest bombing effort outside vietnam during the war located in eastern laos and cambodia the ho chi minh trail was a series of north vietnamese army supply routes that the american air force had been bombing since 1964. the cia and u.s special forces had also been running small ground and air operations in eastern laos and cambodia for years in a secret war that remains mostly classified laos was a killing ground but stopping the nva movement of men and material to the south had become an american exercise in futility [Music] the thing that one has to realize about the ho chi minh trail is that it wasn't a single road it was a road system and a path system and in many cases equipment was hand carried the ho chi minh trail had it been cut apart in the early part of the war wouldn't have won the war for us but it would have really crippled the enemy and they wouldn't have been able to logistically sustain the number of large units they had in vietnam they would have had to go back to a basic guerrilla war rather than fighting in formations the size of regiments and divisions north vietnam had made a virtual colony out of eastern laos in cambodia these regions were major staging areas to rest and re-equip their troops the ho chi minh trail was the umbilical cord that fed into south vietnam providing replacements needed by the vc and nva to sustain the war thank you if american ground troops had ever attacked the ho chi minh trail they could have destroyed our entire supply infrastructures which were set up along the entire trail when i met dongxi win the overall commander for the ho chi minh trail he shared these same concerns if american ground troops attacked our effort in moving supplies and troops to the south would have suffered greatly however for some reason america chose not to attack on the ground one difficulty for american air power was the terrain huge mountains dense jungles and narrow valleys made targets difficult to locate and despite an improvement in bombing effectiveness north vietnamese supplies to the south were increasing it was very well camouflaged in some places it was uh no bigger than uh a bicycle could could be pushed through and they could put four to five hundred pounds on a bicycle and one man could push it one woman could push it these never-before-seen nba films demonstrate that the journey to the south was an extremely long and dangerous one despite their success in keeping reinforcements moving south the nva endured harsh conditions [Music] their commitment was undeniable you try to survive the malaria hangers and bombardments and other things but the thing that keeps you go on is something in here without that i think it would be impossible to endure the whole vietnam war [Music] the flow of people carrying supplies on their backs was so constant and so well concealed that it remained an insurmountable problem troop replacements traveled in small groups 40 or less to avoid detection most movement happened at night our trucks were repeatedly attacked and bombed by us c-130 aircraft equipped with rockets or 20-millimeter artillery no matter how many times we were attacked we didn't let the enemy keep us from reaching our destination even if some of us were killed [Music] circling the skies above laos and cambodia reconnaissance aircraft scanned the ground using high-resolution photographs and radar for evidence of enemy movement i remember many times the usb 52s chased us and bombed us they also tried to attack our stored up equipment and supplies b-52s chased us everywhere we went every time the convoy went out the u.s airplanes followed us the b-52s were used extensively throughout the war to carpet bomb the ho chi minh trail over widespread areas the b-52 was one of the weapons the nva and vc feared most i don't think people can use words to describe the b52 red it's it's the most horrible thing in the world with the b52 you'll never know when it would come sometime during the night and you just bearing [Music] and smoke and fires and you know dust and everything and then you just won't see anything [Music] and when the smoke cleared you got up you shouted you couldn't hear your own voice and then you grew up around for your friends and and find you know who's who survived and who who had gone and we were under b52 many many times and i lost many friends in laos course of the b-52 in addition to reconnaissance planes dropped special sensors along suspected infiltration routes these devices transmitted their data to airborne relay teams flying in the area the secret devices would impale themselves on tree branches or sink into ground cover they could pick up voices detect seismic vibrations sense heat and identify electrochemical residue this electronic surveillance was called operation igloo white the vietnamese knew very well about it so our engineers remove all these kind of what we call tropical trees and plant them in certain places and they ignite the battery every night you know and they hang trees and you know so that they bang in the winds and and i guess the american lost hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs you know in the place where they shouldn't be [Music] although the trail was vital for bringing troop reinforcements and weapons to the south the nva and vc enjoyed more popular support in the southern countryside than many americans suspected the ho chi minh trail is now estimated to have provided only 10 or less of the supplies needed by the communist forces in the south [Music] they didn't need a lot to come down the trail they needed the men and they needed the sophisticated technology that the russians and the chinese were supplying that they couldn't get in south vietnam they could get the rest while american bombing definitely disrupted the flow of supplies down the ho chi minh trail the nva increased its efforts to maintain the net flow of material to south vietnam air power alone could not stop the communists from reinforcing the south [Music] in may 1972 american planes were again flying over hanoi the u.s military was hoping its success in aerial dogfights with migs would vastly improve from four years earlier when the fandom had struggled against a smaller but well-trained north vietnamese air force i know that the american aircraft were very strong and that their technology was very advanced but we still learned to cope with it and we figured out a better way to fight them as early as 1968 the north vietnamese air force had become a serious threat the u.s air force for whatever reason never changed its fighter training but the navy was concerned the threat of the rising air-to-air mig capability exposed the u.s fleet to a possible air attack we all thought in the 50s that the the day of the manned gun fighter was over that there will be long-range missile engagements and there wouldn't be fighter aircraft involved in in combats the vietnamese didn't have the luxury of that technology they had to have aircraft with limited air-to-air missiles but they were relied upon cannon armament and that was anyway the russian and chinese philosophy something had to be done the solution was the creation of top gun a highly classified navy fighter weapons school which continues in operation today top gun had one sole purpose to give navy f4 pilots advanced training on how to fight and destroy soviet-made aircraft the idea behind top gun is that you would take pilots such as f8 pilots and a4 pilots and you'd have them fly these more maneuverable aircraft against the f4s and you would teach the f4 pilots how to dog fight and it worked on the 10th of may 1972 naval aviators randy cunningham and willie driscoll proved the value of top gun their battlefield this day was 20 000 feet over hanoi and migs were out in force outnumbering the phantoms almost three to one cunningham and driscoll found themselves in the largest air-to-air battle of the war as i reversed like this a mig-17 tracers were coming by my cockpit i went ahead and broke into him he overshot his wingmen went pure vertical like this and the exact thought that went through my mind his nose is high he can't get to me before i get to him so i just rolled underneath like this as he's overshooting reverse squeeze the trigger he blew up that quick in a matter of seconds cunningham and driscoll had scored their first big kill of the day and their third of the war in the next 15 minutes they would live a lifetime we ended up in combat spread again we had all kinds of gas all kinds of weapons we did a cross turn went back up in the vertical and looked back behind us toward the target there were eight mig-17s in the defensive wheel commander dwight tim had a mig-17 here he had a mig-21 here and a mig-17 here well as i came through that circle trying to knock the migs off of his tail the other migs came around behind me so i had four mig-17s behind me so i finally got the xo to reverse the mig turned after him if you look like this as he goes underneath like this the mig reverses his tail and i'm right here i blew up this mig with two migs shot down in less than 15 minutes cunningham and driscoll turned back toward their aircraft carrier and safety they now had four mig kills to their credit more than any other navy crew we decided just to get out of dodge at that time hauling toward the gulf of tonka and you can see the water up ahead of us heading east and that's where i saw a single mig coming at me my exact comment to willie watch this willy i'm going to scare the blank out of this gomer pressing right down the snot locker like this and all of a sudden his wing roots lit up and it's it surprised me so i went pure vertical totally expecting the gomer to make to keep running as i came back over the side like this and looked in the vertical over my ejection seat straining to look behind me i looked up and i saw a little set of gomer goggles a little gomer scarf and we were going canopy to canopy [Music] willie came up one time and says duke maybe we better let this guy go and i said willie no and i remember the anger i remember just just gritting my teeth and going and thinking pulling and i would have rammed him if i had to your emotions go from fear when a guy is shooting at you to fangs out anger where you will kill anything that moves the american pilots were in a fight to the death with an enemy as skilled as they were later the north vietnamese pilot was tentatively identified as a mythological criminal tomb nicknamed by respectful american pilots for his alleged 13 american kills but neither colonel tomb's identity or indeed his actual existence has ever been confirmed [Music] whoever he was he was matching cunningham's every move came over the top like this and he shot out here ahead of me i broke to get out of his tracers unloaded went down and trapped him at my six o'clock which is the wrong place to be unloaded the airplane got 500 knots working back to the horizon and then went pure vertical but four five g's forced the overshoot here with him down below me stood on full right full rudder full right stick which causes the airplane to kind of flow around like this and come around and i remember thinking at this position gomer you just died so i'm starting to bring my weapon system on to bear he wait till my nose is committed and then he put out his benson hedges broke into me forced the overshoot left rudder left stick rolled and this is called a rolling scissors [Music] as they fought for their lives cunningham and driscoll were using the tactics developed and perfected at the top gun school going vertical as it was called was one of the essential tactics taught at top gun it avoided a turning contest with a smaller and quicker mig while maximizing the f4 speed and power each time the phantom went vertical the mig would match it move for move three times they went into a vertical rolling scissors but either could gain an advantage running low on gas cunningham knew that if they lost altitude and speed the mig would gain the advantage this time for some reason i think every time i'd out zoomed him in this vertical pull he pulled his nose up first nice and easy trying to save the g in energy well when he pulled his nose and looked in a place like this i came back to idle put out the speed brakes and dropped my flaps and i just really put on the g here to end up slide in behind him but now i'd misjudged and i ended up about six seven hundred feet behind him i mean i'm looking right up from here to the wall eddie i can't shoot him with a sidewinder missile it's in mid-range at those air speeds he has got the advantage even though he's out in front so i tried to disengage once i saw my mistake stood on the rudder like this trying to keep the f4 from departing and as i rolled this direction his airplane went like this and departed i expect him to really totally pull back in and try and shoot me but instead he started running an average dog fight is over in less than 120 seconds a pilot's lucky if he gets two maybe three chances to destroy the enemy why the mig suddenly broke away is unknown but it was the opening cunningham needed [Music] so i reversed used just rudder unloaded the airplane got a sidewinder tone shot and a little piece came off the airplane when i pulled off of him the relief that came from it it's almost like being reborn [Music] any doubts about the value of top gun training had been answered but in that instant when the vietnamese plane was destroyed and its mystery pilot killed a new question arose the key question though about the air war has always been whether or not these were just vietnamese pilots whether they've been trained in china or north korea or in russia whether in combat other people flew with them and there'd been accusations that russian pilots the chinese pilots and north korean pilots flew ann cuban you left juvenile there were a lot of round blue-eyed individuals involved in the defense of north vietnam to think that uh there was nobody but north vietnamese up there is a fallacy the vietnamese people have a lot of respect and deep appreciation for those comrades who tried to help us prepare for this war yet the vietnamese people did not borrow blood from any communist countries there was a korean team of pilots that volunteered but there was no chinese russian no cuban troops or pilots flying for us during that time there were no chinese russian or cuban pilots in this war but questions linger and the debate continues like the questions surrounding the existence of colonel tomb the truth remains a secret of war [Music] after a four-year hiatus the bombing of north vietnam resumed the north invaded south vietnam with tanks and conventional forces in the easter invasion of 1972 president richard nixon elected in 1968 ordered new bombing raids code-named linebacker linebacker was the final air campaign against north vietnam its goal was to stop the invasion of south vietnam by destroying the north vietnamese army's supply lines and by bombing hanoi there is no doubt uh in my mind that the american rhetoric that came out of the white house at the time from president nixon's office and that they managed to bomb the vietnamese back to the table in in paris uh for peace talks actually has some merit linebacker ii the famous christmas bombing lasted approximately 11 days in december 1972 and was the first time in the war that b-52s were used to attack targets in hanoi and haifang it was president nixon's response to the diplomatic intransigence of the north vietnamese whom he suspected of dragging their feet at the paris peace conference during the first three nights the bombers attacked they flew in formations of three using the same altitudes and ground tracks and evenly spaced intervals on the first night three b-52s were lost and on the third night a staggering six planes went down in a nine-hour period at one o'clock in the morning there was a huge fire in the sky [Music] many people evacuated my parents hid inside a tunnel [Music] the sky was burning people were running everything was in chaos and bang [Music] the earth was shaking back and forth [Music] then the earth was transformed the water was splashing the whole sky was fire the americans had a tactic of maneuvering their aircraft in order to avoid or dodge direct hits from our firepower and flack so when this happened right away we figured out a new way to use the sam two and we shot the pilots down on the night of december 18 1972 in the city of hanoi we shot down three b-52 airplanes in the same spot a story never widely publicized before reveals that frustration with the war was reaching deep into the american air force returning air crews from the raids staged a protest at their base at guam over the serious losses and predictable tactics the air force leadership quietly ordered a christmas day stand down the vietnamese immediately boasted that their air defenses had killed nine bombers and that the americans couldn't endure the losses some historians claim that there was a mutiny or mutinous behavior unwillingness to fly any more missions under these conditions under these strategies i wouldn't define it as a mutiny i would define it as a great amount of frustration expressed on a single day the 26th of december 1972 the air war over north vietnam was decided 120 b-52s and an additional hundred other bombers hit a variety of targets in hanoi all within 15 minutes two b-52s went down that day but the north vietnamese air defense system was shattered the effects of the b-52 strikes combined attacks of the fighters and the bombers when president nixon turned everybody loose in 1972 were very very effective and they accomplished in a matter of days and weeks what was not accomplished in a seven year time period north vietnam was virtually defenseless against further b-52 attacks and hanoi quickly proposed a resumption of peace talks in paris on the 8th of january the americans finally understood that the north reacted only to overwhelming force this was a demonstration of the capabilities of long-range air attacks that the united states could put in and it could have put them in uh to any target in that area and there's no doubt that there was not a stomach for the massive aerial blitz of north vietnam by the north vietnamese themselves so hanoi didn't want that to happen the linebacker strikes were effective but they came too late to offset the rising tide of american public opposition to the war the north ultimately understood that the americans could not sustain the political will necessary to win in the end although american air power played a decisive role in the resumption of the paris peace talks it could not overcome a 2000 year vietnamese history of resistance to one foreign enemy or another

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, vietnam war, vietnam war documentary, vietnam docuemntary, helicopter pilot war, agent orange, vietnam alpha strike, nixon vietnam, timeline, timeline world history, timeline channel, timeline world history documentaries

Id: Vj1pYVuxynA

Length: 51min 16sec (3076 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021