“B-52’s did get murdered going into Hanoi for the reasons you stated. Air crews were refusing to fly because they were getting murdered.
15 shot down, 5 heavily damaged (1 crashed in Laos) out of 207 planes (and crews) is pretty close to 10% in my book.
You think the crews felt any better because it was only 2% losses calc’d on a ‘mission count’?”
Not a military affairs writer, are you? “By mission” is how you calculate loss rate, because in each mission the crew is exposed once again to those defenses, and believe me, that is what the crews count, not metal aircraft.
Once again, you have lost your focus. The point is that the B-52s completely brought down all air defenses in North VietNam in an 11-day campaign with the resulting loss of just 15 aircraft. And that loss could have been ZERO had there been a better strategy of how to attack Hanoi.
You are the one who lost focus. Crews were refusing to fly because the losses were so bad and EW against the ‘latest threats’ did’t save them. Losses weren’t worse simply because the NV’s ran out of SAMs.
Operation Linebacker II was an unmitigated disaster from a crew standpoint. Maybe you would have a different perspective if you had been in ‘em instead of just debriefing.