4. Vietnam II (6 page)

Lieutenant Colonel Carol Madison

U.S. Air Force Intelligence Officer

We came in on the evening of the February 1st ready to plan the next day.  When we were having trouble picking targets that night I knew that we had reached an impasse.  We had hit every major military target.  Their air force was destroyed or hiding in China.  We were down to searching the map for more damns, bridges and power plants to hit.

I noticed that there was a path of bridges on the Ho Chi Minh highway heading north from Old Saigon that we had not struck.  When I brought it up I was told by the lead planner to leave them alone.  I knew then and there that was the path the army would take if they hit the ground.  The Vietnamese must know it too. 

We had decreased their war fighting ability by more than fifty percent.  Most of the country was in darkness as we had bombed their grid into pieces.  Their telephone system was down.  Their highways were cratered.

All of that and we still did not have any POWs.  Vincent MacArthur turned out to be a criminal with outstanding warrants for him issued not only in the state of Texas, but also France and Hong Kong.  Turns out there was a reason he did not want to go home.

The Vietnamese government reached out through Moscow with another half assed offer to allow more inspectors in which the President turned down.  With that the air campaign was pretty much over.

I wondered what my role in the command center would be now that it looked like this was about to become a ground war.  When we moved forward it would become the Army and Marine Corps show.  Things would transition to close air support soon and then the AWACs and forward air controllers would be running everything. 

All we would do is make sure they had the hardware on hand to get it done.

Senior Airman Khoa Tran

Special Operations

So someone got it in there head that we actually needed to eat a snake. Or at least I needed to.

“Come on Kevin.  It will put hair on your chest.” Scott told me.

They found this God forsaken thing under a log in a swamp.  It was red and black, thick as an electrical cord and only a foot long.  Judge cut its head off and took a bite out of it and swallowed it raw.  Then he offered it to me.

“Not today.  Not tomorrow.  Not ever.”  I said.

We had left the Montagnards behind two days prior.  We were now working with a combination of sympathizers they put us in contact with as well as Judge’s own informants. 

My feet were as sore as they had ever been in my life.  We had walked the whole way using back roads, old trails Judge knew and sometimes straight through the jungle.  I had the sneaking suspicion Judge had been coming over the border for a while now.

We were deep within Old North Vietnam at that point.  We didn’t have to hear over the radio that the war had started.  There were explosions in the distance day and night.

“You’re never gonna be a real man.”  Todd told me goading me with the dead snake.

“Guess not.”  There was no way I was touching that thing.

Jeff ate the snake.  He downed the half cooked bloody mess in less than four mouthfuls.

He smiled at me with snake blood on his lips and cheeks.

“That’s how it’s done.”  He said smiling through bloody teeth.

Lieutenant Commander Donald Valley

P-3 Orion Aircraft Commander

Our call sign was Outlaw Hunter as we patrolled the Gulf of Tonkin.  This was a holdover from the last ten years when the Orion missions centered on hunting pirates and drug dealers in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Go War on Drugs.

Submarine warfare was actually our primary mission.  As the Vietnamese Navy did not have any submarines worth talking about we spent V2 providing reconnaissance for the fleet.

The Orion carried a powerful radar system along with electronic support measures (ESM) system that could detect and classify radar emissions.  That gave us the best chance of catching anything before it got to the fleet.

Most days were pretty quiet.  Early February was not.

“We’re getting a big signal.”  The radar officer told me.

I turned the controls over to the copilot and slipped to the back to get a look at what he was seeing.  He pointed to a big blob that was our fleet.  Between that blob and the long line that was the coast of Vietnam there was another blog.  That blob was moving toward our fleet blob at a quick pace.

“Hostile?”  I asked.

“Definitely,” He replied.

I ran back up to the cockpit to see if I could get a visual recognition.  There was a lot of fog and I could see nothing.  They were using the weather to their advantage.  Of course so could we.

“Get on the radio.”  I told the radar officer.

The P-3 could carry AGM-65 Maverick and bigger AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles if we needed to.  We were unarmed the day of the boat attack though.  The shooting would have to be left to someone else.  All we could do was drink coffee and watch the show.

Lieutenant Adam Crow

F-14 Tomcat Pilot

Our four ship formation of fighters pierced the cloud deck.  We had been alert launched to deal with an impending threat.  We found it pretty quick.

Below was a naval fleet.

“Looks like they are making a run for Yankee Station.”

“We’re cleared hot.”

“Follow me in.”

“2”

“3”

“4”

Lead released his weapons.  The other three members of our formation including me did the same.  By the time they were done with their first run three vessels were destroyed.  The little PAV fleet kept coming.

We maneuvered around for another strike.

Boatswain’s Mate Ridley Ford

USS Missouri

“What the fuck is that?”  I asked Bella.  We had been drilling that day when shooting started within sight of the ship.

An explosion flashed in the distance.

“I don’t know.  Looks like the Top Gun boys are sorting it out.”  Bella told me.

“Think we should prep the guns?”  I asked.

“That would be quite a show wouldn’t it?  Be sacrilege to waste a shell on ships so small.”  Bella said with a smile.

Major Wesley Clinton

B-52 Aircraft Commander             

The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a different animal than it had been twenty years before.  It was Ho Chi Minh Highway now.  They had paved it sometime in the eighties.  Two lanes of beautiful black top.

Our mission today was to try and put as many holes in it as possible.

The Vietnamese opened up their country to foreign journalists almost immediately.  So there go a bunch of Jane Fondas heading off to Old North Vietnam horny for a big story. 

The communists took them to the strike zones.  It seemed like the B-52s could not hit anything except orphanages, schools, hospitals and weddings if you can believe that.

I guess those smart bombs weren’t as smart as we thought.

Assholes.  Whose side was the press on?

To compound that the only American they had found so far turned out to be a drug dealer the Vietnamese had busted and locked up back in the eighties.  The only reason he hadn’t asked for extradition was he had bigger charges waiting for him back in the states.

Well at least he could do his jail time in the good ole US of A.

Lieutenant Colonel Carol Madison

U.S. Air Force Intelligence Officer

The air campaign had gone well.  Too well.

Around February, when the airstrikes failed to yield any POWs or any real conversations with the Vietnamese government, the press turned against us.  Everyone still ‘supported the troops’ except the nightly news started warning that America would suffer tens of thousands of casualties if we engaged the superior, combat hardened foe of Vietnam.  Much of America's media assumed we were about to repeat the "quagmire" of Vietnam.

The military really didn’t notice.  We just kept pressing on until someone told us to stop.

The Tomahawk Cruise Missile, a weapon everyone had dismissed, would turn out to be the wonder weapon that set the stage for one of the quickest and most one-sided victories in the history of warfare.  History would show that Tomahawks won the war in the opening hour of the first night.

During that first hour, hundreds of Tomahawks were launched, knocking out Vietnam's command and control.  Prior to V2, wars concentrated action along the front lines where the two forces faced off.  The two forces’ headquarters were in the rear and that was where all the commanding and controlling came from.  The winning side was the one that could pierce the defenses and get to the brains of the enemy.  The losing side would be the one hearing the battle getting closer to their headquarters until it was overrun by an advancing enemy.  Or of course they could surrender.

Tomahawk changed that.  Tomahawk had led the start of hostilities and the enemy's headquarters, Vietnam this time, Iraq and Afghanistan later, have been first to experience an attack.  All the forward deployed combat troops with all their rifles, planes and armor were by passed as Tomahawks destroyed their Command and Control assets.

Communications between the north and south of the country and all lines going out of Hanoi were first to be targeted.  Totalitarian regimes are especially vulnerable to communication blackouts.  Their tactical leaders are not trained to make decisions, only carry out orders.

Well over a million troops either fled or surrendered.  The remaining Vietnamese troops suffered huge losses.

As for the ground war, first we had to get there.

There were nasty surprises that could be waiting for the fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin.  The PAV Navy had a substantial mine inventory including some allied ones that they had repurposed from V1.  As much as they did not like it the US Naval command in the gulf was going to have to deal with it. 

“Two more warships have struck mines.”  Dickens told me.

“Who?”  I asked.  As the air war slowed down I was picking up extra duties supporting the Navy until things got busy again.

“The USS Princeton and the USS Tripoli,” Dickens told me.

“I thought they were supposed to stay away from the coast until we were sure they were clear.  What the hell were they thinking?  Where did it happen?”

An ensign named Edwards that worked as Dickens aide pointed at two spots on the chart.

“That’s almost in the shipping lanes.  We thought those places were clear.  Something is very wrong.”  Dickens explained.

“Is our entire reconnaissance concept faulty?”  I asked.

Dickens examined the charts showing the relative positions of our ships.  Then he compared them to the satellite photos

“What are all these other boats doing?”  Dickens asked.

“They’re gunboats, resupply ships, tankers, etc.”  Edwards responded.

“Have we been monitoring them?”  I asked.

“Of course,” Edwards said.

“Have we been monitoring them for minelaying activities?”  Dickens asked.

No one answered that one.

“We fucked up.”  Dickens said.

Vietnam had three specialized minelayers.  They were vintage ex-Soviet T-43 class sweeper/minelayers.  We assumed that they alone would lay the mines, so that by tracking the T-43s the fields could also be charted. 

That was where we made our mistake. 

While the T-43s roamed the northern shores, numerous Vietnamese small craft were also at sea.  Many of them were acting as improvised minelayers.  This also included civilian vessels conscripted into service.  They were laying the fields right under our noses.  It accounted for explosions on two U.S. warships including the Missouri. 

“This is a kick in the balls.”  Dickens said.

We could not even take solace in the minelaying being MILDEC.  It was just standard operating procedure for the PAV Navy.  A world where everything could be nationalized with the swipe of a pen was a foreign concept to Americans.  It never occurred to us that once the fishermen pulled in their catch they would be leaving something behind for us.

It really should not have been a complete surprise.  There were precedents.  During the Iran-Iraq War the Iranians used any ship they could press into service to lay down mines.  It was less motivated by deception and more a move based on quantity.  The conventional minelayers could just not dispense the number of mines required quickly enough.

“What are we going to do?”  I asked.  Navy operations were really out of my depth.

Dickens explained that we had a couple of options available.  Mine hunting with submersibles was one option.  It was possible to spot mines underwater.  The drawback of mine hunting, especially with underwater vehicles, was that high rates of false indications were likely to occur.  The other option, mine clearance, was equally effective and equally undesirable.  Mine clearance would have to be carried out before hostilities, especially beach landings began.  This meant that it would have to be covert.  Anything else would identify U.S. intentions and insertion points to the enemy just as if they sent the Vietnamese Navy a copy of coalition invasion plans.

The best solution seemed to be to avoid potentially mined areas altogether.  After an invasion force had landed and hostilities moved inland then mine clearance could take place.  It would be necessary to clear a wider area for resupply in any case.

The other serious coastal defense weapons the Vietnamese possessed included Chinese Silkworms missiles.  The Chinese and the Soviets had sold many countries a variety of coastal defense missiles.  They were generally mobile in nature, making them difficult to find and neutralize.

The Vietnamese Navy did have fast attack boats.  Mounted in force they could prove formidable.  They had tried this twice already.  The first attack had been brought to a halt by a formation of F-14s.

The second Vietnamese fleet was sunk by helicopters.  Fortunately for coalition forces the fast attack boats were vulnerable to helicopter attack.  Unfortunately the U.S. Navy lacked any attack helicopters so they had to employ Army helicopters aboard destroyers and frigates to deal with them. 

The small PAV fleet had sortied off the northern coast.  U.S. Navy helicopters detected the attack boats, but they were not in a position to attack.  Armed wit
h
the Norwegian Penguin missile, a quite massive and quite expensive anti-ship missile, the U.S. Navy moved to intercept.  Command and Control at Hickam decided the Penguins were too expensive. 

At least for small boats.

The U.S. Army helicopters were called in to destroy the modest fleet much to the Navy’s chagrin.  They moved in from the south and fell on the attack boats like locusts.  The incident led to the Navy adoption of an inexpensive anti-fast attack craft missile, itself a version of the standard Army Hellfire.

The Vietnamese Navy represented many of the threats which the Navy would have to overcome in all future littoral operation.  The Navy caught a few breaks though.  For example, Vietnam had no submarines so Navy ships, if they could avoid mines and fast attack boats, could move unmolested in the Gulf of Tonkin.