The Wargamer

Editor's Note: This two-part AAR is also available in Adobe PDF format.

Author's Note: The author would like to extend his sincerest thanks for advice to Gary “Mo” Morgan, former Weasel Wizzo, award winning war game guru and designer of the Modern Air Power Series (John Tiller creator and programmer). Each and every error in this publication as to procedure, doctrine and “Jock-Speak” is the author’s own. Hell, tell a pilot to “right click” himself and you’ll get a more than interesting reply!

Bridge Over Troubled Water, 1971

It seemed so long ago when Lyndon B. Johnson, summoning the Allies of Great Britain, West Germany, the United Nations, and the U.S. Congress, brought forth his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, precipitating the first air strikes against North Vietnam at Quang Khe and Vinh. That was 1964. Not a year since the assassination of JFK and not that far distant from Cuba in ’62.

It commenced with the sombre words to camera by a President known for his short fuse and Southern drawl: “Repeated acts of violence against the armed forces of the United States must be met not only with alert defence but with a positive reply. That reply is being given as I speak to you tonight.”

It followed with the pronouncement of targets by Secretary McNamara whilst the jets were en route, and it ended with the loss of a pilot and our first POW: a Skyraider and Skyhawk both flying from the carrier Constellation. It was a portent of things to come.

Our “intervention” in Vietnam had now entered its twilight. Six months ago on New Year’s Eve, the Tonkin Resolution met repeal. Yet, the US troop pullout whilst apace, was definitely not deemed a retreat. Ask anyone in official circles and the withdrawal was a measured strategy. The White House even gave it a name: “Vietnamization.”

So when in late January, 17,000 troops of the ARVN pushed towards the Laotian border in operation “Lam Son 719”, they sought to finish a job begun in Cambodia by our forces a year ago; the belated closure of “The Trail” and the final passing of the initiative into the South’s hands.

It soon became apparent that 17,000 ARVN faced NVA numbers five thousand stronger. Despite brutal fixed-wing and rotary support resulting in 20,000 NVA casualties, the only legal military punch we could provide under the restrictions of the “Cooper-Church Amendment,” the enemy grew past 40,000.

Concurrent losses decimated the ARVN to just 8,000, an unsustainable ratio of five to one. Rather than living up to its name honoring the hero who triumphed over the Chinese some five centuries prior, Lam Son 719 had run its premature course.

At the end of the action, ARVN casualties numbered 7,682 with 1,764dead. US casualties numbered 1,402 with 215 killed in action. Eight US jets were lost. Seven hundred and twenty-six US helicopters were damaged, of which 108 were destroyed outright. It was an epic; its tales horrendous and extreme.

In the “O” Club, we watched President Nixon on the night of 7 April proclaim that ”Vietnamization has succeeded”. We also heard him announce the return of 100,000 more troops stateside. Three weeks later, 500,000 demonstrated for peace in Washington.

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Here we sat, this pre-monsoonal Monday, July 12, 1971, strapped to our Rhino’s, our F4E Phantoms, en route to our own Lam Son 719. The planners called it the “Thanh Hoa Rail Bridge”; the locals called it Ham Rung, from which derived the ominous label “Dragon’s Jaw”. To us, it was enough to simply say “The Bridge”. Almost 900 sorties had been flown against this 540-foot span of pavement and steel, dug and revetted into the banks of the Song Ma, and home to the sole railway line flanked by a highway, which formed part of “Route 1A” leading south from Haiphong to the DMZ. Two locomotives filled with explosives had stolen it from the French decades before. Now rebuilt (a Communist feat), it sat 50 feet above the murky water, huge rectangular trusses expertly supported by minimal presence on massive concrete piers. So many air crews gone, so much expended. We’d seen bombs bounce off its surface. To some, its landscape was more cratered than the moon.

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How it was that we were flying this day was something else all together, for by definition, since 1968, we weren’t bombing the North at all. Air reconnaissance remained our eyes, and since the end of “Rolling Thunder”, it proceeded at first unarmed and unescorted in a projection of good will.

The thing is, when you’re flying over enemy territory in a war, the bad guys are bound to be bothered, and it didn’t take long for the radars to light up, the AAA to burst, the SAM’s to fly, the MiG’s to commence a slow redeployment south, and our recon assets to start flaming down. Rules of engagement were thus set. Were any radar system Uncle Ho chose to employ in the North to blink at a US plane, be it Spoon Rest, Flat Face, Bar Lock, Side Net, or Fan Song, retaliation would follow. This doctrine became enshrined in the agreeable phrase “Protective Reaction”. As with any concept, doctrine sometimes took a persona of its own, and local Protective Reaction “Type 1” and “Type 2” soon grew to premeditation “Type 3”. Though still termed “reaction”, these were in fact offensive forays, pre-planned and pre-defined. They remained the realm of the President, and in their nomenclative, it was supposed (nothing would change the consistency of the fact) “that North Vietnam was not being bombed.”

Amidst the already sixty-odd Protective Reaction missions flown this year were the Type 3 versions “Louisville Slugger” and “Fracture Cross Alpha”, the latter encompassing over 200 sub missions of its own. Then a SAM struck luckily for the first time over Laos and word began to spread that the Seventh Air Force in Saigon had manufactured many of our casus belli just so we could win and go home. Who were we to argue? When the “frag” issued from 7AF and made its way to our Wing in Udorn, Thailand, all we cared was that we were “reacting” to something, and for this reason, “The Bridge” today was our reward. Our mission was definitely Type 3, and its aim was clear: Forget the past and earn 900 Victory Points by putting the Dragon’s Jaw out of action!

We smiled. It was a nice day to fly.