You're hedging. You indicated that personal observation was a poor
source of historical fact; that on-scene observers were unreliable and
only imperfectly viewed the metaphorical "lower right-hand corner of
the big picture."

Taken by itself, yes, personal observations are not adequate historical
sources. When backed up by other personal sources they get more credibility,
but when backed up by documents, they become factual. The munition, food and
POL shortages experienced by the NVA in the summer of '72 are well documented
by NV government records and by dozens of NV officers and enlisted who were
obsessive diary keepers. Ed, you're arguing against a very solid historic fact.

There were night strikes by the F-111s on the airfields during LB II.

And BUFFs.

As you know, an airfield is a very difficult target to disable.

Not with 108 bombs its not! Come on Ed, I split the runways at Batajanica with
a B-52 two-ship with a grand total of 90 weapons. 2 more two-ships followed
until we quartered the runway making it useless for anything except a
Cessna-172. This was all done with unguided Mk-82s. Its not really that
difficult to cut runways, even with unguided weapons.

And, consider the difference
between unleashing a JDAM from 30 miles away

30 miles ? I wish it were possible....

and the idea of hurling your chubby pink body at the ground amidst a
hail of 23/37/57/85/100 mm flak, SA-2s and other flying metal.

I have seen, up close and personal, SA-2s, SA-3's and SA-6s. Operating in the
"menopause" is not as safe as you seem to think.

I suspect that they were shooting at
shadows--no airplanes at all.

However, this whole issue gets at the heart of your argument. Here you have
reports from guys who were actually there and compared to studies done by guys
who weren't actually there (sitting in the back of a library as you put it) we
find the "library guys" more historically accurate. Why? Because the infameous
"fog and friction" tends to distort reality. There's no fog and little friction
from the back of a library. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the study
Checkmate did in the 80s of a supposed F-4 to F-4 blue on blue kill in Vietnam,
but several guys who were not old enough to drive when the incident occured,
accurately figured out that a supposed blue-on-blue kill in 1971 (I think?)
over NVN was, in fact, an enemy MiG-21 that shot down the F-4. As far as I'm
concerned personal eyewitness accounts are good historical sources, but like
all other sources, must be supported by other documentation.

A SAM site without SAMs or radar in residence isn't really a SAM site
is it?

LOL...nope, not at all. I was trying to point out that had there been an SA-2
site located in those areas (which there wasn't), they would have certainly
been destroyed, so the fact that no SAMs were attacked by B-52s is a matter of
good NVN luck.


BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"