I have always respected your inputs to this group but it seems you are You are
putting a lot of energy into trying to convince me of something and I am not
sure of exactly what. You made earlier statements that I challenged that NVN
only had 100 old French trucks left over from WW II. You also stated that the
BUFFS were sent north for political reasons. You have contradicted yourself
several times on that 100 truck statement including below. Most of the rest of
what you wrote is telling me about how the BUFFS went after military targets,
not politcal targets, once they figured out how to operate in a tactical
environment. Your logic seems very circular to me and has totally lost me.

Dikes and dams are legit military targets but with political implications.
Hospitals are not, just to differentiate between what is legit and what is not.
We certainly did enough dam busting in WWII and Korea. They were not struck in
NVN because of those political implications..

I am trying not to be emotional here but it seems to me that under your logic,
every flight in VN was ultimately for political reasons starting long before
Rolling Thunder. Jphnson and Kennedy sent planes out with ordnance to impress
on the NVN and VC that they were serious. I just can't separate out the BUFFS
in my own mind as going north for different reasons other than the same ones
we are all going north for as you are implying.

Relative to the "experts" I guess people like Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter
Jennings are experts with the true facts because they have interviewed people
like Saddam Hussain. You;ve quoted many people who have synthesized first and
second hand information into "facts" that many participants don't agree with.
I am not sure that leaves much of a basis for discussion.


..

Subject: Friendly Fire Notebook
From: (BUFDRVR)
Date: 4/21/2004 6:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id:

I
personally saw hundreds of trucks that our intel said were similar to our
own
2
1/2 T to 5 T trucks, parked in a marshalling yard just inside the PRC buffer
zone that we were fragged against in LB I.

Trucks parked near the PRC buffer zone were not the trucks in use along the
Ho
Chi Mihn trail in SVN, Laos and Cambodia.

There were tanks and SAMs in the south during the April 72 offensive. 100
"duece and a halfs" certainly couldn't haul them south.

Now you're mixing apples and oranges. The easter offensive in '72 was a true
conventional offensive and as such, was supplied like one. The "hundred or so
trucks" I referred to were the ones used to haul supplies to VC forces in
SVN.
The logistics pipeline for the Easter offensive was what you would expect for
any nation supporting a 3 division offensive, that's what made it such an
easy
target and why the Freedom Porch missions were so successful.

The order from the President to just scatter bombs at random away from
inhabited areas sure never made it down to the working level!

Obviously the EXORD wasn't for "random bomb scattering", it was for round the
clock maximum effort bombing against any legal target in NVN, including
previously restricted targets in Hanoi. The military did what they were
supposed to and went after what they determined to be critical targets. The
fact the military took the CJCS order and turned it into as sound a military
operation as they could, doesn't change the fact that Nixon didn't really
care
what damage was inflicted, his purpose was political, not military.

There were a
lot of energy, lives and materiel expended in actually trying to hit
critical
targets.

The problem is, by DEC 72, there were very little "critical targets" left and
by Day #6 there were nearly zero. The only critical targets remaining were
SAMs, radars and dikes and dams and the legality of striking them is
debateable.

I have a little trouble with the insinuation that it didn't matter if
targets wre hit or not.

Then tell me, what critical targets were hit and what problems was it causing
for the NVN that forced them to return to Paris (to sign an agreement they
were
ready to sign in OCT 72)?

That might have been true for the bombers; I can't
speak for that. Certainly not for the tactical forces.

I'm sorry, but testimony from nearly all major players on both sides attest
to
the fact that; the NVN were not experiencing any drastic effects (not already
experienced from LB I) of *any* bombing and that Nixon ordered LBII, not to
disrupt any specific NVN infrastructure, but to show resolve and convince the
NVN that the U.S. was capable of unrestricted bombing.

My three daytime
Linebackers against targets that the bombers missed certainly weren't just
to
scatter bombs.

Militarily, you're right, but the ultimate objective was political not
military.

You are overlooking the difficulty in blowing away infrastructure in a thrid
world country that has been bombed for years.

Yes, keep going with that thought and you'll realize that the damage
inflicted
during LB II caused little additional hardships on the NVN government or
people. The B-52 bombings were quite a psychological shock (as POWs and NVN
attest to), but never to such a degree that anyone in Hanoi pressured the
government to go back to Paris.

The NVN were able to
reconstitute pretty quickly.

What they were able to reconstitute from LB I made little difference in
regards
to the offensive in the south or in the lives of anyone up north.

You allude to references that say the materiel
was there in LBII but the NVN weren't able to get it where it was needed to
rearm and reload. That infrastructure was somewhat rebuilt after LBI and
hit
again in LB II.

It wasn't the infrastructure damage that kept them from resupplying their SAM
batterys, it was you in an F-4 and the fact that resupplying Guideline
missiles
is a fairly slow and highly visable process.

I Personally don't
buy the argument that the NVN really didn't run out of missiles but if in
fact
we did destroy their missile assembly and tranportation infrastructure, then
you are arguing against yourself.

The only damage to the NVN Air Defense system was on the SAM batterys and
associated radars themselves. Michel wonders out loud in his book, why a
concerted effort wasn't made from the beginning of LBII to find the SAM
storage
areas. Obviously someone *thought* they knew where they were, as several B-52
sorties targeted "SAM storage areas", but none of those targets up till night
#11 stored anything related to NVN Air Defense. On night # 11 when a 3-ship
of
B-52D models attacked the Trai Ca SAM storage area, we hit pay dirt.
According
to NVN reports "hundreds" of surface-to-air missiles, both Guideline and
tactical varients were destroyed. Most people would say; "see, when Trai Ca
got
hit that's when the NVN decided to return to Paris". This would be incorrect,
Le Duc Tho had already informed the State department on Day #9 that they were
willing to return to Paris to sign the original agreement. Nixon continued
the
bombing for another 2 days and nights to insure Le Duc Tho kept his word.

You have got to be kidding! Never having been in SAC I can't speak to the
bomber employment philosophy and that might explain why the bombers missed a
lot of targets.

First, I would question that B-52s "missed *a lot* of their targets. Prior to
night #3 they missed several due to the already mentioned wind problem, but
besides that their accuracy was within advertised unguided CEP, with the
exception being the guys who were fighting for their lives with Guideline
missiles.

However, for the tactical forces that certainly wasn't the
case by a long shot.

I'll have to disagree, the ultimate objective was political, not military and
as such, any damage you did was secondary to the fact you just did damage.

It certainly doesn't explain away the use of the laser guided bombs
against critical targets.

Sure it does, the military took purely political objectives (actually not
transmitted to the forces, but they took the vague Presidential guidance)
converted them to military objectives and executed the mission. You can argue
against this all you want, but all you have to do is pick up Nixon's memoirs
and read for yourself.

You paint is as more of a case of the bombers being
sent to Hanoi just to keep the people awake while the tactical forces did
the
real work.

The bombers were a bold political statement, used to make the strongest point
Nixon could, the fighters were also a political statement, allowing 24 hour
ops
and debilitating the NVN efforts to defend themselves after the sun went
down.


BUFDRVR

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