NIXON’S SECRET AIR WAR THE U.S. PRESIDENT AUTHORIZED COVERT CROSS-BORDER B-52 STRIKES TARGETING NORTH VIETNAMESE FORCES STAGING IN CAMBODIAN SANCTUARIES BY ROBERT O. HARDER

BOMBS AWAY A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress unleashes its massive payload during an Operation Arc Light raid.

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While that bloody campaign eventually became a tactical victory for U.S. and South Vietnamese armed forces (some-thing few fully understand even today), the perception televi-sion brought to U.S. living rooms left the distinctly opposite impression. With all the blood, gore and horror of modern war coming to Americans in living color, Hanoi had achieved one major objective: Support for the war plummeted in the United States. Even the highly influential CBS-TV broadcaster Walter Cronkite, after a personal trip to Vietnam in late February 1968, publicly joined the growing anti-war chorus. When President Lyndon B. Johnson learned of the anchorman’s disillusion-ment, he reportedly said, “If I have lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”

Nevertheless, despite all that was going on back in the U.S.,

the fierce fighting in Vietnam continued throughout 1968— including the 77-day siege at Marine Fire Base Khe Sanh, the “mini-Tet” offensives in May and August, and Opera-tion Arc Light, the ongoing, wide-ranging B-52 carpet- bombing campaign. Tacti-cally, nearly all those engage-ments were allied wins. To the American people, however, who were getting battlefield coverage from increasingly skeptical reporters, the con-flict seemed more and more to be shaping up like a World War I stalemate, complete with high casualties and no light at the end of the tunnel.

An important turning point occurred on October 31, 1968 (not coincidentally, just days before the presidential election between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon). As a B-52 navigator-bombardier with Strategic Air Com-mand’s 306th Bomb Wing, I remember only minutes prior to a pre-mission brief-ing listening to a beleaguered President Johnson on the Armed Forces Radio Net work make the dramatic announce-ment that all fighter and heavy bomber airstrikes north of the 17th Parallel would cease. The previous March, Johnson had halted bombing of the vulnerable North Vietnamese metropolitan areas of Hanoi and Haiphong, and with that the enemy had agreed to meet in Paris to begin peace nego-tiations. But those talks had bogged down. Now the pres-ident had completely stood down Operation Rolling Thunder, the combined U.S. Air Force and Navy aerial bombardment campaign of the North.

Unfortunately, that good-faith gesture had almost the reverse effect to that intended. Not only was there no prog-ress made in Paris, North Vietnam was re-invigorated militarily. Johnson’s complete

bombing halt gave the enemy the opportunity to rebuild their air defenses, receive more Soviet matériel through the Port of Haiphong, and dramatically increase the flow of supplies and men down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

By February 1969, newly inaugurated President Richard Nixon understood the peace talks were going nowhere, never mind hopes for a clear allied victory. He decided to do some-thing bold. American air power would strike the NVA and Viet Cong (VC) at one of their most vulnerable points, near the end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail where two peninsulas of Cambodian territory—known as the “Fish Hook” or “Parrot’s Beak”— jut-ted into South Vietnam just 50 miles northwest of Saigon. On the evening of February 28, I took my place with Crew E-30 in a jam-packed briefing room at U-Tapao Air Base in Thailand. It soon became clear to the six of us that something very big was going down in the Fish Hook area. The intelligence briefer explained that the enemy had moved four divisions of infantry plus equipment out of their Cambodian sanctuary, and were crossing into South Vietnam, apparently heading for An Loc. The aircrews came alive; this was what we had been waiting for, a chance to strike the NVA and VC out in the open.

That night, 60 B-52D “Big Belly” Stratofortresses, each car-rying 60,000 pounds of bombs—the equivalent of about 600 World War II B-17G Flying Fortresses—were launched against the freshly massed enemy formations. Over a four-hour period, the BUFFs (Big Ugly Fat F---ers) smashed a 10-square-mile tar-

get box whose northwesterly edges were within a stone’s throw of the Cambodian border. I clearly recall looking back in the dark early morn-ing hours while well out over the South China Sea and see-ing the sky lit up from the fires still burning. The word the next day was that we had dealt the enemy a serious blow and, even better, their offensive plans had been knocked into a cocked hat.

After that success, Ameri-can military planners’ appe-tite for more of the same was thoroughly whetted. Unbeknown to all except the highest U.S. government officials, the White House had decided there would be no more tiptoeing around

with Cambodian neutrality and the idea that the enemy could conduct the war with impunity from safe havens on the other side of the South Vietnamese border.

Late in the day on March 17, my B-52 crew and 59 others throughout Southeast Asia reported to briefings for a replay of the February 28 raid. This time, however, there was a huge new wrinkle. After the maintenance, weather and other routine briefings, and in an unprecedented move, the security people cleared the room except for the com-manding officer, two or three key wing officers and the basic crews. Everyone else—wing staff, weathermen, intelligence officers, maintenance, chap-lains, extra crewmen, slide projector operators, visitors—was ordered out and guards sealed the briefing room.

The commander told us that we would again strike in the vicinity of the Fish Hook, but this time we would drop our weapons inside Cambodia. We were to hit a very juicy target just one

DMZ

HO CHI MINH TRAIL

WAR IN SOUTHEAST ASIAON JANUARY 30, 1968, THE NORTH VIETNAMESE ARMY (NVA) LAUNCHED THE TET OFFENSIVE, BRINGING THE VIETNAM WAR TO FEVER PITCH.

BASE OF OPERATIONS B-52s taxi on the ramp at U-Tapao Air Base in Thailand. On March 17, 1968, the author took off from U-Tapao on a secret B-52 mission to strike North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia.

BIG BAD BUFF A “Big Ugly Fat Fellow” (to use the polite term) departs U-Tapao on a mission in October 1968.

CAMBODIA

U-TAPAO AFB

UBON AFB

NAKHON PHANOM AFB

UDORN AFB

FISH HOOK

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THE WHITE HOUSE HAD DECIDED THERE WOULD BE NO MORE TIPTOEING AROUND WITH CAMBODIAN NEUTRALITY.

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1. Oil pressure gauges2. Magnetic standby compass 3. Automatic pilot disengaged

light 4. Hydraulic pack pressure low

master light 5. Clearance plane indicator 6. Trim control7. Intercom switch8. Mach indicator switch

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9. Flight command indicator10. Attitude-director indicator11. Terrain display indicator12. Vertical velocity indicator13. Radar altimeter14. Aileron trim indicator15. Mach indicator16. True airspeed indicator17. Engine fire detector system

test switch

18. Tone scoring interrupt switch

19. Auto-pilot turn control selector switch

20. Radio magnetic indicator21. Control column22. Rudder pedals23. Stabilizer trim wheels and

indicators24. Engine fire warning lights/

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firewall fuel shutoff switches25. Engine-pressure ratio

gauges26. Tachometers27. Exhaust gas temperature

gauges28. Fuel flowmeters29. Heading indicator (gyro)30. Lateral error meter31. Time-to-go light

32. Throttles33. Landing gear controls34. Landing gear control35. Airbrake lever36. Throttle break lever37. Drag chute lever38. Stabilizer trim cutout

switch39. Crosswind crab control

knob

40. Master fuselage overheat (fire) warning light

41. Gunner’s cabin pressure warning light

42. Altimeter43. Airspeed indicator44. Total fuel flow indicator45. Fuel system controls

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TECH NOTES

PILOT (PORT)COPILOT (STARBOARD)

ELECTRONIC WARFARE OFFICER (ON CENTERLINE)

CREW POSITIONS IN B-52D

The relationship of the two navigator-bombardiers down in the “Black Hole” of the Cold War-era B-52 Stratofortress was similar to that of a pilot and copilot. Each was trained as both a navigator and a bombardier. The junior officer, called the navigator or

“nav,” sat in the right seat and served primarily as the navigator but also assisted with bombing. The left seater, the radar navigator or “radar,” was primarily the bombar-dier and assisted with navigation. As the senior officer, the radar navigator was also the lower compartment commander. Here radar navigator Captain Bobby Long and the author, navigator 1st Lt. Robert O. Harder, man their stations after a November 1968 bombing mission.

RADAR NAVIGATOR (PORT) NAVIGATOR (STARBOARD)

TAIL GUNNER (IN TAIL TURRET)

Early in the Vietnam War, the Pentagon and White House made it clear to Strategic Air Command that it would be expected

to play a major conventional bombing role. The first combat missions in 1965 with the B-52F model showed that the then-current nuclear configurations in all B-52 models were not capable of supporting this new conven-tional mission. In particular, the nuclear bomb bays could only carry a maximum internal payload of 27 750- pound bombs. As a result, the decision was made to commit the B-52D model to a “Big Belly” bomb bay modification program.

The D model was chosen for several reasons. One hun-dred and seventy were built, more than any other version except the newer and more sophisticated B-52G. The D models had many more hours on their airframes, and

thus were “more expend-able.” Also, the D airframes were conducive to the modifications, which involved more than just the bomb bay. In addition to the retrofitting of the bays to accommodate up to 84 internal 500-pound bombs (doubling the punch), the Ds would receive state-of-the-art electronic counter-measures, which became known as the Phase V ECM refit. Ironically, this upgrade actually made the D model the most survivable B-52 Stratofortress in the fleet, conventional or nuclear. SAC discovered this in spades during the Linebacker II campaign in December 1972, when the newer B-52Gs brought over to augment the Southeast Asian force during the “11-Day War” were found to be so vulnerable to Soviet-made SAMs over Hanoi that they had to be withdrawn from the battle.

R.O.H.

mile across the border, the combined NVA/VC nerve center known as COSVN HQ (Central Office for South Vietnam—Headquarters), the counterpart of the Saigon-based U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV).

Our Bugle Note/MSQ radar sites would direct the B-52s in with radio calls, and the navigator-bombardiers would drop on the controller’s headings and countdown, no matter where he led the bombers; there were to be no questions asked. Navigators were forbidden from charting any position that might show the Stratofortresses on the wrong side of the border. Bombardiers were to ensure their bomb damage assessment paperwork indi-cated the weapons had been dropped on the Vietnamese side. Although the NVA were the current de facto rulers of the Fish Hook region of officially neutral Cambodia, the strike could still be construed as an illegal act of war. (Prince Norodom Siha-nouk, the country’s ruler, would decide to look the other way—he had long been playing both ends against the middle.)

Surprisingly, in many cases the high-flying bombers would never actually have to penetrate Cambodian airspace. B-52s could “throw” their bombs, letting inertia carry the ordnance several miles forward and across the border, so the airplanes didn’t necessarily need to cross into Cambodia to hit targets on that side. In order to further mask the location of the actual targets, it was later revealed that special SAC staffers filled out official paperwork that “backed in” preselected cover targets and aircraft fix positions. There was hell to pay in 1973 when those bombing data falsifications were revealed to an angry U.S. Congress.

Despite SAC’s precautions, the secrecy lid blew off just a couple of months later when the New York Times broke the story. But Prince Sihanouk did not lodge a protest, and the Times article remained largely under the public’s radar. None theless, for the next year, when reporters suspected there had been a Cambodian bombing, American officials would respond by saying if it did happen it was “accidental.”

At the time, we BUFF crew-men did ask ourselves how such a massive air campaign could possibly be kept from the public, but we had not the interest nor inclination to dwell on the matter. The only thing on our minds was the chance to destroy the ene-my’s farthest forward HQ with a single blow. The Fish Hook sanctuaries had long been ripe for the plucking; North Vietnam had correctly believed (up to that point) that the Americans would not risk widening the war by dropping bombs inside Cambodia. In this, as they would later do in 1972 with the Linebacker campaigns, the enemy under-estimated Nixon’s resolve.

And so, for the second time, the B-52s struck hard on that night of March 17-18. Aircrews would later report tremendous damage to fuel and ammunition dumps (which instantly revealed themselves by way of imme-diate and powerful second-ary explosions), though it was subsequently learned that while the enemy’s COSVN headquarters had been hit, their command and control capabilities were not seriously compromised.

More strikes followed, during which the Cambodian air campaign settled into a regular though still very secret routine using the Arc Light B-52s’ smaller and more usual six-ship attack forma-tion. It wasn’t until April 28,

1970, a full year later, that U.S. and Army of the Republic of Vietnam troops launched a ground invasion to clean out the Fish Hook border area, in what became known as the Cambo-dian Incursion. Only then did U.S. officials officially acknowl-edge the secret airstrikes of the previous year.

Nixon had ordered that highly controversial 1970 ground invasion at about the same time he announced he was withdraw-ing another 150,000 American troops from South Vietnam. Ironically, the primary purpose of the Cambodian Incursion had been to protect the American flank while those troop with-drawals were underway. Unfortunately, the folks back home weren’t buying in. A nationwide protest ensued over widening the war into Cambodia, culminating in the terrible Kent State, Ohio, shootings on May 4, 1970, when National Guard troops killed four students and wounded nine.

The Cambodian airstrikes in February and March of 1969, combined with the costly allied victory at “Hamburger Hill” in the A Shau Valley in May, could be regarded as the high- water mark of American efforts in Vietnam. After that, with U.S. forces at their peak strength of more than half a million soldiers, it would be all downhill.

By the summer of 1969, Vietnam had become political poison in the U.S., and the White House was compelled to announce yet another new war strategy, a policy of “Vietnamization,” which meant that in future only South Vietnamese soldiers would do the serious fighting and dying. U.S. Army and Marine Corps commanders were told to begin troop withdrawals at once. While this action did calm the home front to some degree, bel-ligerents on both sides understood the real implications—the U.S. intended to play defense for the rest of the war. Ho Chi Minh and his successors would take a page out of General George Washington’s playbook vis-à-vis the latter’s own eight-year struggle with the world’s then-reigning superpower—avoid losing while making your enemy so war-weary he is no longer willing to continue the fight.

Author Robert O. Harder flew 145 Vietnam War combat missions as a B-52D navigator-bombardier. For further reading, see his book Flying From the Black Hole: The B-52 Navigator-Bombardiers of Vietnam; The 11 Days of Christmas, by Marshall Michel; and B-52 Stratofortress, by Robert Dorr and Lindsay Peacock.

THE B-52D“BIG BELLY” MODIFICATION

THE ONLY THING ON OUR MINDS WAS THE CHANCE TO DESTROY THE ENEMY'S FARTHEST FORWARD HQ.

IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL Top: A B-52 refuels from a KC-135 tanker prior to a strike in Vietnam. Above: Harder receives a patch and congratulations after completing his 100th mission.

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DEADLY PAYLOAD Ground crewmen prepare to load a preracked “clip” of 500-pound bombs (top) for special delivery from a Stratofortress (above).