Outskirts Press, INC.

Generations at War: Book Three

December, 1972 – Operation Linebacker II... It was the official designation given by American military strategists. The North Vietnamese government called it Dien Bien Phu of the Air. But most of us who were there simply called it the Christmas Bombings, or the 11-Day War. Whatever history wants to call it now, it was America’s final air battle of the Vietnam War. The Silent Warriors of the U.S. Air Force Security Service, the “back-enders” on Strategic Air Command’s Hognose RC-135 reconnaissance planes, were orbiting there throughout this historical air battle. But it wasn’t just this one. They had quietly been in all the USAF air campaigns of the Vietnam War. Little is known about the critical role that hundreds and hundreds of these unheralded flyboys played in America’s air war against communist aggression in Southeast Asia during that era. These Silent Warriors were merely one of the many integral pieces of the great puzzle that history knows as the Vietnam Conflict. They performed their top secret role in a most spectacular fashion by intercepting enemy communications about troop and materiel movements on the ground, surface-to-air launches and anti-aircraft targeting, and MiG fighter pilot communications. The author was one among many of those generational American kids of the 60’s who were selected to join the privileged ranks of the air force’s elite. And who, by circumstance, ended up flying more than a hundred dangerous combat support missions over the skies of Southeast Asia in the final air battle campaigns of the war and beyond. This is yet another untold story about Vietnam, one you may not have heard about before. It is America’s involvement in Vietnam as seen through a much different lens. It is a story about those who fought this war using intellect as their only weapon.

December 23rd / 24th was my second Combat Apple mission of the campaign. Here I was again orbiting out over the Gulf of Tonkin covering the continuing air strikes, listening for the MiGs, and I would be here for the next twelve hour period through the early hours and late afternoon of Christmas Eve Day… We arrived over the gulf off the coast of North Vietnam in the wee hours of the morning and settled into our usual orbit at our assigned altitude somewhere between 35,000 – 40,000 feet. When you’re way up there at those heights, you can literally make out the curvature of the earth, and it’s a spectacular view to say the least. There was still an intense war going on down there and I was glued to my monitoring station under my headphones as I had been for the past hour or so before entering orbit. MiG activity at the moment was nil, not surprisingly. So I took the opportunity to get a fresh cup of coffee, and had my 8-Op relieve me for a few minutes while I headed back to the galley. On the way back to position through the dark interior corridor of the Hognose, I caught a glimpse of the world outside the portal window. Christmas Eve Day has never been the same for me since. The plane was banking into its wide turning arc at the northern end of the cylindrical-shaped orbit. The orbit turns are very subtle and you can barely sense any ‘G’ force against your body. We were quite a distance out, but even so as I looked out the portal window, the coastline of North Vietnam came into view through the darkness. You didn’t need any daylight to see what was going on down there. From that altitude you could see the clearly defined geographical layout of the Red River that ran from Haiphong on the coast up to Hanoi some seventy-five miles away. It looked like a lava flow coming from a volcano. As far as the eye could see, the earth below was burning, casting an eerie orange-red glow through the early dawn. The devastation the U.S. was wreaking on this country was almost beyond description and certainly beyond my comprehension. I remember thinking to myself, how could anybody still be alive down there? How could anything still be left standing? Maybe they haven’t given up yet because there isn’t anybody left to give up. I went back to position and settled in monitoring the NVAF tactical air frequencies listening for any MiG activity, which was sure to continue again as soon as daybreak came. I couldn’t shake the image out of my head. I asked myself what was I doing here? This was insanity beyond comprehension. I was seeing it from a safe distance. I could only imagine what the air force and naval flyboys who were carrying out the attacks were seeing and experiencing. Or feeling. I shook it off. There was a mission to carry out. I didn’t look out the portal anymore during the remainder of the mission.