You have a few of your facts and explantions wrong.
You made prior reference to a hundred or so WWII French truck as being the
exxtent of the NVN tranportation system. Doesn't explain the 800+ Russian and
Chinese trucks we struck in Sept 22 out ot Takhli with F-4s out the othe 48th
TFW. Or did I misunderstand?.

Not sure you can say that damage was a secondary concern. The F-4s went up in
the daytime to hit targets that the bombers missed. Two of which I flew escort
on were Radio Hanoi and the Hanoi thermal power production plant. Given that
we continued to restrike targets that were missed by the bombers at night,
recce'd in the AM and hit by fighters in the afternoon, I'd say that damage was
a concern. My strong recollection was that we were trying to damage the NVN
supply chain and command structure as much as we could while we had the
opportunity as the war was Viernamized. The NVN didn't recover until 1975.

Steve
Korat RTAFB 72-74
F-4E







The option to extend beyond the original three day effort was
because we still had targets to hit and we were still inflicting heavy
damage.

The bombing was always going to be extended until the NVN delegation returned
to Paris, Nixon's memoirs as well as Kissenger's bear this out. Many of the
first B-52 targets struck weren't even recce'd until the 3rd day. Why?
Because
damage inflicted was a secondary concern.