Posted on 04/03/2012 5:00:39 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
Operation Linebacker II, in a B-52 bomber over Hanoi, North Vietnam, on December 26, 1972.
(Excerpt) Read more at military.com ...
Very early in the video (at the :40 second mark), another B-52 (Ebony 2) is hit by two SAMs and explodes. The pilot was killed by the first SAM but the co-pilot manages to get the bombs off before the plane is hit again during its turn.
When I enlisted in the USAF in June ‘71, my first job choice was the only enlisted flying job available. Defensive Fire Control in the B-52.
This would have had me leaving Tech School, to my first assignment in Dec. 71.
Right about the time the BUFFs started getting whacked.
Fortunately, they asked if I’d rather go into Nuke Weapons school in Denver.
So, by Dec. 72, I was working on MMIII, Mk 12 Re-entry Systems at VAFB, CA, working operational test flights, rather than bouncing around the back of a BUFF, over Vietnam.
another group of pictures of the crew shotdown Dec, 1972
operation linebacker.
http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=24056
bump for later
Linebacker II led to one of my all time favorite phrases....”Bomb them back to the Peace Table”.
Anyone know what countermeasures b-52s used against SAMs? The crew seemed remarkably nonchalant about being shot at by them. Maybe more sangfroid than nonchalant.
Throughout the launches, the EWO keeps reporting “No Uplink.” Does this mean “No radar/missile lock?”
I dunno how Vietnam era Soviet SAMs operated. I know we had Wild Weasel EW assets, to their ground radars, both search and fire control, may have been effectively blanketed and they were just firing Hail Mary Shots, though Lilac 2’s prayers weren’t answered.
Hawk was and is a beam rider (it follows the illumination of ground control fire control radar) although it now has autonomous radar and IR for the end game. Patriot is a lot more sophisticated. The early Patriot was launched against a fire control radar set of coordinates, and got uplinks until it’s passive radar aquired the ground radar’s illumination signal in the end game. Modern Patriot variants have got it all, active radar, IR, passive radar, and command uplink, home on jam; they even downlink the missile’s target tracks to the fire control radar. It’s a very robust and deadly system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-75_Dvina#Countermeasures_and_counter-countermeasures
Sounds like they were firing blind. The SA-2 was a command guidance missile (about the least effective kind), the fire control radar would send steering commands to the missile. To counter it, all you need to do is jam the uplink, or the fire control radar. From the transcript it sounds like the Vietnamese were firing blind, without command guidance, hoping for a lucky hit, or to cause the B-52s to panic and either abandon their bomb runs or have crashed caused by evasive maneuvers. Sounds like the b-52s maintained discipline.
I’m reading it that way. Wikipedia says it’s command guidance (or home on jam) which means that it depended on commands from the ground to steer it. Even without interference, command guidance is limited by the beam size of the fire control radar, which needs to be smaller than the lethal radius of the warhead.
I took the “no uplink” to mean he was listening for command guidance uplinks, and not hearing them, he assumed it was a Hail Marx shot. I assume that there was blistering stand off jamming that kept the radars from acquiring the buffs. They must have been firing on con trails using visual sightings and guessing at altitude.
I’m reading it that way. Wikipedia says it’s command guidance (or home on jam) which means that it depended on commands from the ground to steer it. Even without interference, command guidance is limited by the beam size of the fire control radar, which needs to be smaller than the lethal radius of the warhead.
I took the “no uplink” to mean he was listening for command guidance uplinks, and not hearing them, he assumed it was a Hail Marx shot. I assume that there was blistering stand off jamming that kept the radars from acquiring the buffs. They must have been firing on con trails using visual sightings and guessing at altitude.
The NVA were indeed firing blind by this time. A combination of improved mission doctrine, effective jamming techniques and coordination of BUFF strikes with Wild Weasel strikes had made the SA-2s’ radars all but useless.
When the Linebacker campaign resumed after a brief cease-fire, the AF had learned a lot from the prior, not-quite-so-successful campaign. One thing they’d learned was to keep the BUFFs bunched together to maximize the effectiveness of their radar jamming. However, there was one maneuver (the post-bombing turn?) that was still vulnerable (I forget why...maybe something to do with the jamming coverage).
Also, the bomber force employed was a combination of B-52Ds (that had been deployed to the Vietnam theater for a long time, and had both the “Big Belly” bomb capacity increase and improved ECM equipment) and B-52Gs (which did not have the D-model upgrades, and comparatively inexperienced crews). IIRC the G models took the bulk of the hits in Operation Linebacker.
Thanks for the 411. That is sort of what is sounds like, still takes stones, ou qui on dit, sang froid, to press on with the mission like that.
Mark for later.
Absolutely. As the fate of Ebony 2 demonstrated, they still could be shot down.
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