So the US lost over 3700 Fixed wing aircraft during the Vietnam war.
What does /k/ think went wrong , what mistakes and missed opportunities were there?
Most importantly do you think air power could of been decisive In winning the war? If so, how?
Vietnam Air war
The loss rate per sortie was very low considering there were ~5.3 million flown. The fact is if you use it you lose it. America had a lot of aircraft flying around so a lot of them were shot down or crashed. It was a target rich environment for the NVA.
Holy frick 5.3 million sorties?
The US military dropped 2x the amount of ordinance by tonnage on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos than the they did in BOTH the European and Pacific theaters combined.
Roughly 7.5 million tons.
And that is just showing the scale of bombing runs and other forms of air support which itself was only a part of the air war.
SAMs mainly.
Vatnik spotted.
75% Vietnam fixed wing losses were AAA and small arms. Surprising difference with the vatnik propaganda they teach in the schools now, huh?
meds time little guy
>vatniks lied to me? Huh?
>how can it be, vatniks propaganda never lies...?
It's well known that the Vietnamese would use SAMs to force aircraft to defend and drop altitude, putting them in range of mass ground fire.
Huh another piece of vatniks propaganda? In SAM areas USAF lowered altitude of cruise flights. But not to AAA range. From 30000ft to about 15000-20000ft, still outside AAA range.
Only choosen types (A-7 and F111) hugged earth. Standard fighter bomber flight was about 20000ft, they were down by AAA in target area where the lowered to accurately hit targets with iron bombs.
>t. totally not /k/oping
youre not totally wrong but pretty wrong
Pic rel engagement envelope for sa2
Also sa3 existed to force american jets even lower
So if SAMs didn't down planes, AAA didn't down planes, and fighters didn't down planes because it's all propaganda, what the frick caused 3700 air losses in Vietnam then homosexual?
the planes fell down
I may be wrong but I do remember somewhere that the North would sometimes use SAMs kind of like bait to then ambush weasel strikes.
And also do stuff like attack us ground forces for the main purpose of ambushing the Air support that would be called in with massed AA
No, mainly accidents/mechanical failures/human failure.
Even if your failure rate is 0.1% (and up to 0.6% the more used the airframe gets) when you have over 5 million sorties it totals to a couple of thousands planes.
Add to those the planes destroyed on the ground by sabotage or by a couple of Vietcongs in civilian clothing sneaking with a mortar within 2 miles of an airstrip, putting a crate of ammo on the strip and just generic ground crew fricktardery (like random moron backing up a forklift into a wing) and you have another few hundred planes lost.
Everything else is mostly SAMs and in a few cases for older ground attack planes just concentrated fire from heavy machine guns.
But accidents is the king, metal fatigue, pilot error and rush maintenance.
Almost all of those kills were from cutting edge Soviet SAM sites the US couldn't easily target.
The idea of a limited-destruction air war was impossible with the technology of the time. Linebacker worked, pre-Tet endless bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail did not.
Linebacker is bitter sweet because it showed that American air support of ARVN troops could of actually worked longer term, had popular support existed
>"""precision bombing""" campaign in ww2
>massive casualties, grotesque expense for minimal damage
>firebombing and area attacks
>german industrial base and cities obliterated for much lower casualties
>"""precision bombing""" campaign in japan
>massive casualties, grotesque expense for minimal damage
>firebombing and nuclear attacks
>hundreds of thousands dead, japs forced to surrender
>unrestricted bombing campaign in north korea
>NK industrial base and cities obliterated, almost all equipment and fighting power has to be imported from soviet/chinese sources
>"""rolling thunder""" campaign in vietnam
>massive casualties, grotesque expense for minimal damage
>linebacker bombings in vietnam
>haiphong mined, vietnamese industrial base fricked, NVA logistics train shattered
why the frick do burgers always do this? do they just hate their aircrews or something? meanwhile the israelites go all-out from day 1 and get results immediately
A hundred years from now, there won’t be one sad frick to look at all this
>minimal damage
that's my point, yes
early 8th AF operations were """precision""" raids and absolutely awful for casualty exchange ratios. 1944+ sorties were indiscriminate large-scale attacks that actually worked
For me personally I’d
a. Either not go through with rolling thunder or wage it with no restrictions , focusing on sead
b. Rush through the development of the F-111 and F-15
C. Try drag out the war into the mid 70s by just keeping us air support for the south, which would allow 4th gen aircraft to enter the field in numbers
D. Mine the north Vietnamese ports and strike the Chinese border crossings way earlier
>what mistakes and missed opportunities were there
Focusing on military targets instead of dehousing
>Most importantly do you think air power could of been decisive In winning the war? If so, how?
Yes. Simply continue Operation Linebacker II until the North Vietnamese outright capitulate, instead of letting them sign a peace treaty and then leaving, trusting them to honour it.
Never ever EVER EVER trust a communist. They are materialist, and have no concept of right and wrong. They will break a treaty at the drop of a hat.
Linebacker 2 had the unfortunate side effect of upsetting the libs and eurogays
Nixon wanted an out and the treaty was it. He didn't expect it to be upheld, why would he? He left no forces in Vietnam to ratify the treaty, because that would serve as the opposite of an exit strategy.
>What does /k/ think went wrong , what mistakes and missed opportunities were there?
Political bullshit.
Should have destroyed SAM sites, Soviet "advisors" and all, then destroyed airfields, then infrastructure and industrial targets.
Then carpet bombed every population center and covered the countryside with air dropped AP mines.
Basically, turn N.Vietnam into N.Korea 2.0
That’s a idea, why didn’t they mine the shit out the the Ho Chi Minh trail?
Pic related.
I'm betting it was AA or SAM sites. I heard from a guy who was a pilot there, that they were not allowed to attack AA or SAM sites under construction, and that the CIA knew China was delivering weapons at night by driving trucks across the border. They were not allowed to attack the China/Vietnam/Laos border either.
Basically bullshit rules of engagement tied one hand behind their backs over there.
And the United States bombed the FRICK out of that country, killed millions. North Vietnam even said that had Nixon continued Operation Linebacker II for another day, they would have surrendered.
Clearly, the Vietnam Air War was used as research critical to the eventual development of our impressive present counter-anti-air-weaponry systems. Millions of missions and thousands of lost aircraft (piloted by human pilots earnestly trying their best to survive in a real war and not a simulated exercise) yielded priceless data. Would we have the F-35 today if not for, some three score & more years ago, deep American involvement in Vietnam?
You're not wrong. We dropped more bombs in the Vietnam War than has ever been used in the history of warfare. Twice as much tonnage as ww2.
The United States could have 'won' this war by invading into North Vietnam rather than fighting a war of attrition by occupying/defending South Vietnam.
Like the push into North Korea but with worse geography (no peninsula). ChiComs had the initiative.
Nam will never not be a strategic mistake but American leadership are effortless to bait into constabulary operations because hubris. Stick to nation-state war for everything you cannot win by proxy is the moral of that story (ditto Soviets in A-stan).
This is the authoritative text at the moment as far as I'm aware. Written by James Crabtree, American Gulf War veteran.
>Originally published in 1996, Guerrilla Air Defense remains the only book which looks at the topic of improvised and insurgent air defense weapons and techniques. The rise of airpower in the 20th century proved its worth in counterinsurgency operations and in turn has seen guerrilla and partisan movements develop the means to defeat the aircraft of the enemy. As Doc Crabtree explains, the roots of air defense actually goes back before 1900. Remarkably, a copy of this book was found in bin Laden's compound when he was killed by Navy Seals in 2011.
Knowledge is power.
France is bacon.
>James "Doc" Crabtree is a former soldier, an historian and an artist. He has written many articles relevant to the military art and is also a cartoonist, producing several strips including Buster's Battery and Out On A Limb. He has published both articles and illustrations in The Fort Bliss Monitor, The ARCENT Desert Voice, the Leavenworth Lamp, Military Review, Air Defense Artillery Magazine and Slick Times.
>Crabtree's main area of expertise is air defense, although he has also studied the U.S. Civil War, World War One, World War Two, and the Middle Eastern Wars. He spent considerable time in the Middle East.
Where do you buy this?
You can find a copy online pretty easily, or at a library. Especially a military library. Booksellers would also carry them I'd reckon. You can even borrow digital copies for free through library programs. It has many useful illustrations and diagrams as well.
Specifically in Vietnam:
>American airmen flying over North Vietnam faced one of the most intensive and highly developed air defense systems in history. Although the North’s fighter planes and its surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) got the headlines, it was the light anti-aircraft guns and anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) that inflicted the heaviest losses. North Vietnam deployed more than 8,000 of these weapons around key targets throughout the country, with calibers ranging from 12.7mm machine guns to 57mm automatic cannons. These weapons inflicted more than 77 percent of the combat losses suffered by the Air Force and 52 percent of the Navy’s. They covered every major target in North Vietnam and in the countryside. After 1969, AAA guns also began to appear in key areas of Laos and some areas of South Vietnam. By 1972 they were deployed in and around North Vietnamese supply depots, artillery sites and staging areas in western and northern South Vietnam. Every aviator who flew over that country speaks of the ubiquitous AAA menace.
Diagram with more detailed information on the 12.7mm machine guns, the Soviet response to the America M2 the Ma Deuce.
>The Soviet response to the America M2 the Ma Deuce.
But this is America.
"We dem boys."
- George Washington
>3700 Fixed wing aircraft
surely that number includes helicopters
No, American lost ~5,500 helicopters in Vietnam, and 500 UAVs. 10,000 aircraft in total
Fact: 98% of all strategic bombing campaigns quit right before the enemy's will is about to break
Not immediately bombing Hanoi and Haiphong to the ground.
forgot the pic
the writing translates to "passive zone"
Like others have said, the US was unable to hit REAL important targets such as economic and population centers along with SAM sites and insurgent training facilities. A general running theme of the Vietnam war was that the US goes into a place and blows a whole bunch of shit up killing a bunch of asiatics, declares a victory and then leaves, only for more asiatics to fill their spots without any resistance. The US fought Vietnam like a conventional war, and if instead of sending 125,000 troops in 1965 like LBJ did the US sent maybe 50% of its strategic bombing fleet to flatten North Vietnam like it did with North Korea, then the war would not even remotely be in the public consciousness.
However if the US won Vietnam it would mean that there would be no reconciliation and alliance with China in the 70s or 80s, which in the grand scheme of things was FAR more important so I'm not really beat up about it.
damn imagine if the soviets gave the viets SA-3s. why didn't they give them SA-Ss?
false numbers only russians believe
less than 50 aircraft was lost