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.
You are in La-La land my friend — and you keep making statements that are not backed up by facts and history. The NVN ran out of SAMs towards the end of the 11-day campaign.
And no crews refused to fly, because none were brought up on charges, none were court-martialed; which is what would have happened had they refused. The ill feelings caused by the 15 losses were in fact assuaged when the attack strategy was changed.
Don’t denigrate my service as a briefer/debriefer by implying that I didn’t have heavy emotional involvement in the crew-loss.
Unmitigated disaster from a crew viewpoint? You are simply wrong. Crew opinions were all over the place. Opinions also changed quite a bit in February ‘73 when the POWs were released. And BTW, even with the massive B-52 carpet-bombing, no POW facilities had been hit — B-52 accuracy was legendary.