On the one hand it is kind of amazing that it is only in recent years that we have gotten decent sources in English on the Vietnamese and Chinese perspectives on the Vietnam conflict. However, the language barrier is greater than it was with German (or even Russian), and I think a major problem was that so much historiography was wrapped up in domestic US political issues. As someone who was born early in the 1980s, I was always puzzled by how documentaries I watched growing up had to obsess over "the trauma of the 1960s", as though that decade was somehow comparable to a national tragedy like the 30 Years' War in the German speaking countries. But I've since realized that people who live through events have a strong desire to relay their subjective experiences of that time, and that certainly was true of older people in the United States who vividly remembered the 1960s. Perhaps having a younger crop of historians without so much emotional attachment to the era has allowed a more balanced examination of what honestly should just be objective analyses of battles, operations and campaigns.
Getting access is also a structural problem beyond languages. Oftentimes in the past, archives were not as open as nowadays and in many places, still aren't. The "home" archives also held a lot of untapped files for a long time, thus making it both easier and more accessible to rely on them. With WW2 we see this quite clearly. About 20-30 years ago historians could still get away with writing about Germany without visiting the German military archives. Now it is impossible if your goal is to add anything of substance to the historiography, or to have it recognized as such.
@@MilitaryAviationHistory Being FORCED to do actual research instead of just reading and regurgitating someone else's work, then trying to pass themselves off as knowledgeable is a GOOD THING! Great Videos. Cheers from Toronto.
To summarize what you said - 1. You primarily learned about the war through documentaries available in the 90s. My response - you're a victim of a poor educational system. 2. The language barrier prevented understanding the Vietnamese perspective. My response - your educational system did not include exposure to the fact that books in English written by Vietnamese, both North and South, authors were already available. 3. Having no firsthand background to the contrary, you're unaware of whether the documentaries you watched were historical perspectives or rehashed TV news footage. Sidenote - TV news footage can be important but it's not objective history. 4. Your summary of what constitutes historical coverage completely ignores context. Yes, older people were and often still are traumatized. The Thirty Years War lasted long enough for the population to see for themselves, firsthand, the horrors of war. Here are some samples of what the entire nation saw on the news in short order - with no cutaways, censoring, and the endless talking head dribble putting a spin on it for you - A. American troops getting high before battle. B. A Vietnamese general blowing the brains out of what appeared to be a civilian, free of all of the bravado you're used to from TV. He didn't like the answer he was getting, he drew his revolver, blew his brains out, and was already two steps away with his revolver pocketed by the time the man hit the ground. C. Monks pouring gasoline on themselves and sitting quietly until they were burned to ash. D. The return of Dương Van Minh to power and everything that meant. E. Pinkville. F. Veterans mistreated returning home, complete with men in uniform being spat upon and worse. And that's not even a deep dive. You don't understand the national psyche of the time because you don't understand what it was like to see atrocities daily and uncut for years over the dinnertime TV news. And lest you think that you understand my politics, you don't. The above list is not a justification, it's an important part of the war history - the electorate had a near real time feedback of the ground view of horrors not broadcast before or since. It shaped the environment on the US side and influenced military doctrine. That emotional shock provided the context for a large portion of the war. Reduce your history to sterile battlefield statistics and you'll learn nothing - certainly not history. And you may even understand why so many people keep repeating history while insisting how well they understand it. Thank you for your time and consideration of this viewpoint. Apologies for any typos.
I bought the “Combat in the Sky” book at 50%. Thanks for the tip. Been hooked on this stuff since the 1970’s when acquiring my copy of “…And Kill MiGs” as a teen. I still have it. Nice presentation.
239-335 SAM launches for 24 aircraft hit (15 shot down + 9 damaged) may sound bad to most people. But it's a huge improvement over the thousands of rounds of flak it apparently took to shoot down one bomber in WW2. So while these SAMs may not have offered absolute precision, it's still a several hundred fold improvement in precision over old dumb rounds.
I think that the hit ratio sounds pretty good considering all the counter-measures employed by the most powerful superpower in history. The americans used chaffs, electronic warfare and tried to suppress enemy fire and they probably planned their road to the target and tried to employ secrecy and surprise and still did they lost so many flagships of the skies - that B52's are. And their losses of helicopters and Thunderchiefs in this war was also quite heavy. Some of this can be blamed on American politics. Some of it can be blamed on how good and cynical of an opponent the North Vietnamese was. But the US military also needs to look itself in the mirror and realize that they made many many mistakes in this war. And that caused them to lose many planes. It is important that lessons are drawn from those mistakes so they don't get repeated and America lose more planes in a future war. More could be at stake in a war against China than a limited war about Vietnam for example. Some lessons have been learned while others have not. America no longer thinks it is a high priority that fighter should be able to fly at Mach2 - like both F4 Phantom and F105 was easily capable of. However it was discovered that no air combats took place at such speeds so this useless capability has been dropped in favor of other more important abilities for a fighter jet. Dogfighting is being taught, altough it rarely happens - which is good. However this predictable behaviour of using the same process of treating bomb runs like a conveyor belt with standardized predictable processes is something that proved a big disadvantage for both US planes and army is something that needs to go away I think since the enemy will use this knowledge to his advantage to lower his own losses and maximize American losses. Sometimes America do things differently, like changing the pattern of behaviour like in this video, or in operation Bolo. And I think more of that needs to be done. I can understand for logistical reasons that it might be cumbersome to coordinate and plan things on a huge scale like of that of the american military. I don't think that dividing areas into route packs in Vietnam and Iraq and let the navy and air force get their own areas of responsability to bomb is necessarily the best use of air power, altough I guess it could lesser conflicts about who should take responsability for what, and perhaps lower the risk of confusion and friendly fire. And the system of body count and the obsession of measuring things in numbers of sorties flown and monthly quotas of bombs dropped is also stupid and create perverse incentives and puts planes and pilots into unnecessary risks. Sure you can increase the number of sorties flown by letting 4 planes carry 1 bomb each over Vietnam, instead of letting just one plane carry 4 bombs and not risking losing all 4 planes. But that would make the military leadership dissatisfied as they only cares about the numbers and not reality. And russia gets little accomplished over Ukraine. One reason for this is that russian pilots rather drops their bombs over civilian targets than military ones. They drop bombs over places like the Swedish speaking village Gammalsvenskby where not a single Ukrainian military unit is located, rather than bombing Ukrainian units near the frontline where the planes can get shot down. Its more comfortable to just bomb a civilian target that cannot shot back when you need to fulfill your montly quota of bombs dropped over Ukraine. But will this help the russian war effort win the war with just one bit? - Probably not.
By the end of WW2 the allies were using VT fused shells that apparently increased the hit probability by 5 to 10 times. I'd be very interested to know how a 1960s era VT fused AAA would compare to contemporary AA missiles.
Yes and no. Sure it was an improvement on flak but the USAF flew the same routes every time barring a few notable occasions, knowing which route, altitudes and speeds they were going to take it is actually more surprising that there were so few hits
I received danger close (within 200-500yds of my position)drop of 38, 500lb bombs from a B-1 in Afghanistan. Even knowing it was friendly, it was TERRIFYING (but somewhat thrilling and exhilarating at the same time). Ground shaking like an earthquake underneath you, the blast pressure, the large chunks of shrapnel raining down on top of us.... Luckily none of us got hurt by the shrapnel, but there were close calls. All the while I was thinking, "this must have been how the Germans felt in Berlin in WW2".
Vietnamese here, before 1972, President Ho Chi Minh had ordered the air-defense force to "research" the way the American uses B52. So in 1967 a battalion of North Vietnamese air-defense went to Quang Tri, Vinh Linh to ambush B52, they succeded shotdown 2 B-52s that year. B-52 is not invincible, it's just well guarded with jammers and smaller fighters. B-52s flight path was mostly fixed, that's why it's not very hard to predict where they were going. and btw: I lived in Kham Thien street in Hanoi, the street was obliterated in 1972 by B52 during Christmas bombing.
Three things that cut bomber losses. 1. The USAF allowed varying the attack routes at the pilots insistence. 2. Jamming got much more effective 3. Because the jamming was vastly improved the Vietnamese were forced to lob unguided missiles sky words and hope for a kill and ended up using tons of missiles. The Soviets never gave the Vietnamese their best missiles or technology. What they got was outdated Soviet missle systems with poor jamming countermeasures. They complained to the Soviets about this.
in turn, USSR sent over radar technicians to North VN to improve anti-jamming capability of the S-75 system throughout the war, so the jamming arm race continued
Reminds me of the anecdote about the 73 Arab-Israeli war, an Arab leader was talking to a Soviet liaison. Soviet: we sent you our best Surface to air missiles. Arab: Next time send us some Surface to aircraft missiles.
@@brucenorman8904 The Arabs defeat in that war actually contributed to the North's difficulties in this battle, as many S-75s were captured by the Isareli.
11:43 North vietnam use "false launch" tactic in which missile guidance signals were transmitted without a missile being launched. This could distract enemy pilots, or even occasionally cause them to drop ordnance prematurely to lighten their aircraft enough to dodge the nonexistent missile.
I know you mentioned the loss ratio for this raid would be unsustainable long term but given the intensity of the air defenses, it's amazing in my mind at any rate that heavy bombers sustained loss rates as low as they were.
did you learn math ? 12 days => 15 shot down + 9 heavily damnage ===> what will be after 120 days ? (US B-52 in southeast Asia about 200 in total And the SAM-3 in the road supply to Vietnam (China railroad)
@@vantrinhnguyen987 Considering that 120+ B-52s were flying at one time, and that these attacks went on for 11 days, 15 downed is a rather small number.
I had a guy who cut my hair some years ago who was a school child under those bombings. He said from one day to the next a classmate would not show up any more, and they would be told the child had been killed- and that was that. Just went on with their day. There were people down there.
There were also people in Hue. When the VC captured Hue during the Tet offensive, they unalived about 5K civilians. They captured they, bound their hands, gave them 9 mm head shots, and threw them in a ditch. That was deliberately done. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a bomb going off course. It wasn't one or 100 soldiers going nuts. It was policy from the highest NV level. The father of a friend of mine was a platoon leader in Vietnam. He saw things firsthand. The VC were not the good guys.
Interesting. Nixon in his Memoires claimed to have ordered the change in tactics during the Christmas bombing moratorium, shocked by the loss rate. Another source, Dana Drenkowski, wrote an article in "Soldier of Fortune" magazine which confirms that timeline - Drenkowski was a TAC pilot supporting the BUFs and reported SAC's tactical errors, via TAC. He reports the date for the tactic change was the missions after the Xmas break. SAC did modify missions before the Xmas moratorium by avoiding Hanoi and using fewer aircraft but Nixon wanted Hanoi bombed.
I think that's the record for my fastest-ever book purchase. Christoph didn't even finish his sentence and I was already putting it into my shopping cart. Thanks for the recommendation!
When the B52 opens the bomb bay doors and the bombs commence heading earthward, they seem to keep dropping and dropping and dropping and still more drop! That is one big belly mod the D models had.
BTW, one tidbit I got from the first Crewdog book in the collection of primary sources is "What we didn't know was that our ALT-22 Modulated ECM Transmitters could be countered by the SAM crews. The D models and some Gs had ALT-6B Unmodulated Transmitters that were more effective."
The SA-2 has a major weakness against fighters it can be consistently outmanoeuvred. Vietnam was starting to get the SA-2 in 1972 with is a very similar missile technically to the SA-2 but with much greater manoeuvrability which is gained by reducing its range. Throughout the war Vietnam never got the best SAM systems from the USSR like Egypt and Syria did for the 1973 war. Because of the risk of China stealing the technology if too modern missiles where shipped.
Linebacker II was air power applied with the gloves off. Until then, for the most part, politicians ran the air war and it was ineffective. Pauses and off-limits targets wasted air assets all through the war.
Even with the gloves off, air assets were still wasted. Since the objective was political, the negotiation continued and the U.S agreed to the same draft that favored North Vietnam anyway.
Only recently in the last few years are books on the Vietnam war from the Vietnamese and Chinese perspectives being published and I got a list of Kindle samples lined up to remind myself to buy them later. Recently finished the Kindle version of Combat in the Sky. In terms of information, I learned quite a lot. From the tactical to the operational level, seeing the VPAF-ADF's changes and adaptations were very informative. I do however find the prose to be rather lacking. And for force that used soviet equipment, all the measurements being in imperial was rather jarring. And it still didn't have the detached, balanced feel that I generally find agreeable from any historical analysis. Overall while informative, it felt rough. Still any new perspectives are always nice and I look forward to more in due time. Another informative video Chris.
Just a added bit. The Vietcong very sucsessful use of deep tunnels in the Iron Triangle area of South Viietnam as a staging area for attacks was eventually foiled by the use of the B52 in this area. The B52 distruction of the tunnel system was complete since their bombs blew massive holes in the ground unlike F4 fighter bombers or arty but by then these tunnels had served their purpose.
One can only wonder what would have happened if LBJ hadn't restricted the US Air force so much and allowed them a free hand on North Vietnam much earlier. If they could have knocked out the ports and transport system within the North, the Vietcong would have been out of vital supplies very quickly. Linebacker II showed what might have been possible.
most of the supplies sent from North VN to the VC in the South went through the forest & mountains of Laos if you see the unexploded ordnance map of Laos (our condolence to Laos' sacrifice), you will acknowledge that the supply route over land (now known as the Hồ Chí Minh route) was as resilient as a metastatic tendril of a cancerous tumour, endlessly regenererating in spite of how much bombs it received
@@tranquoccuong890-its-orge But in order get the munitions and supplies on to the ho chi Minh trail, they had to go through North Vietnamese ports and then through their infrastructure. The ports were obvious targets and could have been bombed and mined much earlier. The ho chi Minh trail was problematic because it ran multiple routes through neutral countries.
Maybe if the butcher of Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson, along with his henchman Robert McNamara. Hadn't lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to massively raise the United States participation in Vietnam, 50 THOUSAND Americans and one MILLION Vietnamese may not have died.
@@philiphumphrey1548LBJ was afraid the Chinese would enter the war if we closed Haiphong and put the railroads out of business. If we had used B-52’s early in the war before the N Vietnamese acquired the SAM’s and the MiG 21 it would have ended the war and saved thousands of American and Vietnamese lives.
Fascinating video. I am always surprised at the fascination that people from other countries have any interest whatsoever in our USAF planes and armed forces were up to in a war that most Western countries condemned (NATO) and yet because of the USA's image of the leader of the free world everyone, including the West Germans and the Japanese, who we occupied, soundly were on our side except for the aggression against the Vietnamese, I guess.
A little late to this video but I’m not positive but I remember that the loss probability of a B-52 had a lot to do with the model types ECMs as some had a recent upgrade and others did not. There was also heavy dependency on the three ship layout kinda like the more modern “Box” format but for SAMs. A chunk of losses came from two ship flights who lacked the redundancy of a third ship
a added comment. The Soviets missile techs first tried to blame it all on how the Vietnamese stored and took care of their missiles. They said it was very careless.
I'm re-reading the "We Were Crewdogs" series of books and the 11-day war (as the Crewdogs called it) was originally supposed to be a three day operation. As you know, the fourth and subsequent days were added. The first three days were following classic bomber tactics derived from WWII - for each target, three waves of bombers, at different altitudes, would fly to their IP and then fly straight and level over the target, drop their bombs, and rollout in formation. In subsequent days, the bombers came in from different directions and the support aircraft (i.e. F-4 Wild Weasel, EB-66) would not light up until the bombers were obvious. Between the change in tactics and the dwindling store of SA-2s, the North Vietnamese were not as effective.
@@maxcorder2211 To you it may be nonsense, but to us Vietnamese, it is an act of bravery. We Vietnamese are a hundred times more courageous than you Americans.
@@dattranthanh6757 I am a former B-52 aircraft commander. I flew several of the bombing missions over N Vietnam during 1972. No N Vietnamese pilot ever shot down a B-52 or rammed his plane into a B-52. But, B-52’s did shoot down 2 MiG 21’s. The N Vietnamese MiG pilots were very good and very brave. They did the best they could to defend their country. They have my respect as one warrior to another. It is not necessary to embellish what happened. There are detailed records in US Air Force and Navy history. We know exactly how many airplanes we lost, where they went down and the cause. We know what happened to the pilots and crew. But, you write whatever you want.
Back in '69 the B-52 was loving referred t as a BUF...."BIG UGLY FUCKER!! Where and how it got the extra F i don't know! For your information I have over 5,000 hours as a B -52 Radar Navigator (ie. Bombardier) with 185 bombing mission over Nam. Incidentally, I never thought of it as being ugly....Sinister; but not ugly!
North Vietnam signed a peace treaty and invaded the South while the US was in political turmoil from Watergate. North Vietnam did not stop the US. They signed a treaty, which they broke, and defeated the lone ARVN. In fact it was the US which stopped North Vietnam, until it became politically unsustainable to back Saigon.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD 1,We signed peace with the US, not with the Khmer Separatists. 2, What audacity for pro-Separitists to call us out on Violating the Paris Agreement when they violated the Geneva Accord.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD Wait until you hear about the South Vietnamese breaking that treaty by rejecting a popular vote to reunify the country, causing the war in the first place. They also broke the next treaty by declaring a recontinuation of the war in 1974, but it seems you only believe one side's propaganda.
Its funny but the Army actually built a large base over one of the tunnel systems and the Vietcong kept popping up out of unseen entrances to attack the soldiers inside the base till eventually most of the secret entrances were found.
11 หลายเดือนก่อน
Good thing I saved up some of my youtube millions. I am getting some books now :)
USAF Wild Weasels and US Navy/ Marines Iron Hand missions was quit successful during the Linebacker 2 Air campaign over Hanoi and Haiphong harbour, those planes armed with AGM 45 semi computer guide, the AGM 78 the Inertial navigation computer memory system guide, clusters and Iron bombs rack havoc on the SA2 Fan song radar Batteries Sam sites and Son 9 fire can radars AAA guns sites, there was also USSR soldiers manning those weapon system, North Korean Air men/ soldiers and Chinese Air men/ soldiers, the Chinese suffered 20 thousand casualties during the war.
casualties on the Chinese side in the war perhaps came from the builders force that PRC sent over to help North VN fix & rebuild its bombed infrastructure the USSR casualties were probably radar operators & radar technicians that were sent over to help North VN SAM operators dealing with jamming & countermeasure from US airplanes i am not sure about North Korean casualties in here though, never heard of them. maybe they helped with air force training ? but then USSR pilot trainers could also do that
@@vantrinhnguyen987 yes, by shut down the SA 2 Fang Song Radar Van and moving the radar dish around effect sometime, but sometimes the Shrike AGM 45 remember the location exploding within 20 feet near Radar van, the AGM 45 was semi computer passive homing, that why the AGM 78 standard was developed with Bendix or Maxson memory core IGN gudiance with negate the Sa2 operators from Shut down or shaking the radar dish this was the biggest fear of the North Vietnamese SA 2 200 man crews.
By LBII the US finally had run N Vietnam out of missiles and was suffering far less losses. They also changed tactics resulting in far less loss and far more damage. That’s why the N Vietnamese, not the US, requested a return to the negotiating table. The US had some 600 B52s so the losses, while heavy, were not catastrophic enough to force the USAF to quit bombing.
@@fredericklockard3854 The US knew they would achive nothing until they kill the last VN with the price of more B52s shoot down, more soldiers killed, more US people angry, . When NVN did request a return to the negotiating table, the US had to accept the exactly same terms favorable to NVN that the US rejected before. The most important term is the US army get out off VN. No new term added. So get over it, US lost the war. Although you may think that US won this Xmas battle, whaterver. It's so simple. Dont join any war in VN and you will win.
The US only had just over 200 B52s in the Vietnam Theatre. Pulling planes from Europe or Alaska was not an option as it would reduce nuclear deployment capabilities from those theatres. The US was running out of bombers as the B52 production was stopped in 1962. Linebacker 2 was not sustainable.
US policy has always been to treat aircraft that made it home or even close to home but then crashed or were written off as accidents (crashes) and not combat losses. This is how they can just 15 B-52s lost when the actual number was anywhere up to 20 airframes, this is also how they can implausibly claim that the F-15 has never had a combat loss when up to half a dozen aircraft have been written off in the various Gulf Wars.
But don't they write down all reasons why they lose their aircrafts? You can for example read a comprehensive list of F16 fighters lost year after year and see the cause of the loss... birdstrike, hitting a telephone pole, getting hit by lightning and so on
Not sure whether that was the policy at the time. But i read that several B-52 managed to limp back to Utapao were written off as total loss but not counted into that 15
They did the same thing with helicopters. Something like 10,000 choppers were lost but the rule was if the tail (with tail number) could be recovered it wasn't counted as "lost". Made the losses seen much lighter.
If it landed at its base it wasn't counted as shot down. Plenty of aircraft are lost even in peacetime due to accidents. For statistics sake, that how they counted what was lost to enemy action.
The war could only be stopped by these bombings. By 1975 NVA units had a easy time against ARVN units because of bad leadership no supplied in. Ammo, Medical supplies and Air cover.
I think ARVN failed more because of a lack of a will to fight among the peasantry that made up the armys manpower base. And the officers were corrupt just like the entire state apparatus was corrupt and nepotistic. Equipment was lacking because of corruption, desertions were high. And unsurprisingly was the peasantry unwilling to fight to defend a state ruled by landlords that opressed them and stole 80% of their income. Many thought that Communism might not be such a bad alternative to that. And to that one could add vietnamese nationalism and the will to unify the country. And the strategic hamlet program that meant forced resettlement did not increase the popularity of the regime either.
@@ucnguyenanh9414 It was a big mistake of USA to accept this opressive and corrupt regime in South Vietnam. And that was perhaps on of the biggest reasons why people wanted North Vietnam to win. Some in the US leadership might have feared that US would be seen as imperialistic if they told another country have it should be runned and meddled in its internal affairs. But I regard it as necessary to remove the corrupt South Vietnamese leadership and end the opression of the Vientamese landlords. As that would be the only way to win back the support for the South Vietnamese for their government and offer a good alternative to Communist opression. The Vietnamese wanted an unified country. And they hated the landlord opression, the corruption, they hated being forced to resettle into strategic hamlets, and they did not like the catholic ruling class that controlled their buddist asian country.
@@nattygsbord The better afternative was to let the nation to unified in the 1956 election, which was robbed from the Vietnamese in both the South and the North.
I dunno, 60 seconds out of a ~1020 sec long video seems fair in my mind - maybe that's just me. You can also rely on me having a timestamp to skip if you want :)
When I was young our neighbors were newly arrived Vietnamese refugees. This family had two brothers, roughly the same age as me. When they came to visit, I’ll never forget the look that passed between their faces when they saw my B-52 model on the shelf.
I wonder why didnt the Soviets or Chinese perhaps send a diplomat or politician with enough political clout to Hanoi or Haiphong or areas bombed AND perhaps that would be a huge risk to the US forces in launching a raid there since if the politican or diplomat is killed or hurt in the bombings then that would be a world of explaining to do given in Rolling Thunder in 65 anyways SAM sites could not be attacked intially due to fears of killing or injuring Soviet or Chinese technicians working in those sites....couldnt the North Vietnamese have also requested the Russians or Chinese to send diplomats or politicians to the targeted areas and also warn the USA about risks in bombing the areas? Or even Le Duc Tho could have also been on site there and Kissinger would have had a harder time to negotiate???
Remember, this was a proxy war with the Soviets. These results probably scared the heck out of the Soviets. Their best air defense system being being relatively easily defeated. The US basically attacking with one hand tied by politics, unimaginative generals target restrictions and operating in a small contained area. Don't kid yourself with the old belief the Soviets didnt send their "good" stuff. They surely had some of their best people there helping operate the systems.
I believe USA over-estimated Soviet russia enormously throughout the Cold War. In 1947 did USA have 400 nuclear bombs and russia had none so it could basically have nuked all of russia and won the cold war with no losses of their own. And the mighty russian army that had won WW2, had done so with american ammunition and radios. And by 1945 did half of russias GDP lay in ruins. More than half of all men born in some age groups of the 1920s had died in the battlefield against Hitler. Russia was much weaker and did not have much military muscles left. The country was too exhausted to win WW2 on its own, and was helped to get pushed through the finish line with American oil, lend lease, food, trucks and direct military assistence by the allies that tie up German troops in France and Italy. Russias "victories" in the space race also needs some nuance as DeadKennedyInSpace shows in his video. Throughout this space race was USA always the country that made more long lasting victories in the space race and from the 1970s onwards it came to totally dominate it. While russian space exploration was mostly done with many failures, meager results, and many lies about their actual gains in the space race. The economic performance between the east and west are also enormous. Russia never had a post-war economic miracle like other severly destroyed countries such as Italy, Germany and Italy. Russias military equipment also performed poorly in Israels wars, and indeed in most wars fought did the russian backed side suffer much heavier losses than their opponent. And even in the failure that is Vietnam did the American probably achieve a positive kill ratio... despite Vietnam was fighting on their home turf, knew the terrain, could lay mines and booby traps, and choose where and when to fight and only fight ambushes and always getting the first shot on their enemy. American military doctrines sucked. And it still do. But American military equipment was good, and the motivation of the soldiers were pretty good. I think the idea of stirring oneself blind on kill ratios and body counts made Americans lose focus on what is war is all about. And the only way they knew how to get their hands on the Vietcong was to have their infantry walk into enemy ambushes and then hope that superior american fire power from artillery and fighter jets would blow up all enemies so America could get its desired body count. It was a criminal to throw teenage boys to walk into ambushes like that in my opinion. Its of course much of a lesser crime than throwing men in human wave attacks without artillery and tank support like the russians in Ukraine. But still... However in more conventional wars have USA proven unbeatable. Saddams army in 1991 was considered a powerful military force with much men with combat experience and much tanks and an air force and air defence with stuff from both eastern and western countries. And in many ways one could argue that it was a military more technologically equal to USA in 1991, than what russia is compared to USA today. I mean a T-72 tanks that Iraq used in 1991 was less outdated back then, than it is today 32 years later. However despite being a powerful enemy on paper, did Saddams military get wiped out pretty fast and with extremely few American losses. And regardless what one thinks of USAs criminal war against Iraq in 2003, is there no doubt that the victory against Saddams big army was pretty easy and happened fast and with few losses. And this was in a country where USA had to fight an enemy on the other side of the planet. Compare that to russia today which have massive logistical problems with even fighting a neighbouring country. As soon as the invasion goes far away from a railway line does everything falls apart. The russian military is so pathethic that it cannot penetrate deeper than 100km into enemy lands before it have massivly over-extended itself and ran out of fuel - like they did north of Kyiv in 2022. The american military have many flaws - like its doctrine and lack of auftragstaktik. But it is the worlds undisputed no.1 in logistics. Its technological dominance is unquestioned. And other armies around the world quickly copies everything USA comes up with... like insecure teenagers buys the same clothes as the cool guy in school the day after they see him wear something new. Both civilian and military hospitals have copied the methodology of treating a sick or wounded person from the US military. And the idea of using white t-shirts in vietnam was abandoned in Vietnam because they made a soldier easy to spot for the enemy, so therefore did the US military begin to use green clothes instead. And other armies quickly followed the american example. For much of the Cold war did USA have the technological dominance. It had the F4 Phantom that on paper outperformed anything Europe and russia had. It had the nukes before anyone else. It was an early user of attack helicopters, it began using precision bombing already in the Vietnam war against the Dragon jaw bridge to keep its own losses of planes low, it built stealth bombers, GPS and internet and much else. And the russian military today is primitive by comparison. Some said it is of the same technological level as the American military was when it fought the Vietnam war. I think that is a fair comparison. Its a military that still lacks body armor, nightvision, and use steel helmets instead of kevlar. Its medical aid is much worse than the americans in Vietnam, despite enormous gains in knowdledge in medical care has been done the last 20-30 years. And russia does not have any tank equal to M1 Abrams. And even if we ignore F-22 and F35... would the US airforce still probably easily win over russias best fighter - the SU35. Mostly because it have better pilots, but F15 - and especially the later variants are still among the best planes in the world and will outperform SU35 in much. Add to that how much russias SAMs have underperformed in this war. One would expect that they at least could keep Engels air force base, their flagship Moskva and their meetings with the 30 highest officers of the russian black sea fleet safe - but nope. Russian air defence can still not shot down american tech from the early 1990s like the HIMARS rockets. And the best of the best russian missiles - the kinzhal missile is being shot down by the old patriot air defence. And russian artillery in general have proven to be inferior in everything.. precision, range, reload time, and takes more time to move and make ready. And despite russian enormous superiority in numbers have they not been able to win this war yet after 2 years. Much is of course thanks to the superiority of western artillery and superior ammunition, one Excalibur round can do the same job as 80 normal rounds in modern warfare. And russia does not have anything equal to that. If one wanna be generous one can say that they have a bad copy of the old copperhead rounds which USA have begun to replace with modern better precision ammunition such as excalibur and BONUS.
chris is one of the best youtubers in his area of knowledge. and this is a great video. But the only disturbing part for me is the inability to call linebacker an indiscriminate terror bombing, thus massacre and a war crime. one bomb droped by another country to western soil qualifies as drama and attackers are seen nothing but monsters. Such a beautiful content ends up, because of the discrimnative soft language Chris uses, as a piece of western bias... it is sd to notice this absolute bias and western style hand washing... why such a harsh and dramatic language while talking about people who are burned in owens and silent murmuring when talking about burning people with air droped bombs???
Western bias, like the Hue Massacres, where the Viet Cong murdered thousands and no one ever talks about it. Or all those placed into “re-education camps” after the war ended? Western bias, yeah, sure.
It would have been good to mention the civilian losses. I understand that it isn't your specialty, but covering an 'operation' whose goal was literally to kill civilians without discussing the aftermath is just wrong.
Unless my understanding is mistaken, Linebacker 2 targeted military and infrastructure. Civilian casualties were mostly a sideffect of bombing infrastructure. And with "only" over a 1000 civilians killed, if that was one of its purposes they did a piss poor job at it.
@@andresmartinezramos7513 The civilian death toll was over 2,300 in addition to over 1,300 injuries (Based on the book Rain of Fire by John Morocco). There were multiple strikes at Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi, resulting in the death of 28 doctors and nurses. Other hospitals, schools, and civilian housing (over 5,000 of them) were also hit and demolished. Civilians are definitely the target since most of the bombs were dropped on population centers. The only reason why the death toll wasn't higher was because the majority of the population in the area also fled to the countryside but since carpet bombings were so severe and indiscriminate thousands died anyway.
@@cuongle7990 I checked Wikipedia (I know) and it cites Rain of Fire by John Morocco for the figure of 1,624 civilians killed. But still, even 2500 deaths are not that numerous when considering the scale of the bombing, which I agree did hit civilian populations. However, that does not mean that Linebacker 2 was an operation "whose goal was literally to kill civilians" But to back up the idea, Linebacker dropped 20000 tons worth of bombs resulting in 2000 civilians dead. That is in contrast with operations launched against civilian targets (and not just civilian targets but they were also part of the objectives) This are Wikipedia numbers for their respective bombings and the Blitz one is an aggregate. Dresden day 1, 3900 tons of bombs for 25000 dead Tokyo "Meeting house", 1510 tons 100000 dead The Blitz + V1 + V2, 12000 tons 30000 dead Leipzig 4/12/1943, 1400 tons for 1800 dead "This is a small number for such a heavy attack" Civilian death2 were limited given the scale of the inferno. That does not happen if you are actively trying to bomb civilians.
@@andresmartinezramos7513 If you're making a comparison to other bombing campaigns, then death per tonnage is more important. Hanoi in the 1970s had an area of over 2000 km2 and a population of around 400,000 people (70% of whom fled the city). If you use Dresden as an example, that city was 400 km2 with around 600,000 people in the 1940s. That's 5 times the area with 2/3 the population. Haiphong and surrounding cities were also targeted. Linebacker II killed more per tonnage than many of your examples, so civilians were targeted more often, not less.
@@cuongle7990 Dresden , 25000 dead / 3900 tons of bombs = 6.41 dead people per ton Linebacker 2, 2000 dead / 20000 tons of bombs = 0.1 dead people per ton Each ton of explosives killed more than 60 times the people in Dresden than it did in Hanoi. I did the math. "death per tonnage is more important" That is what I did, I just ordered the factors the other way around. But that just gives you the inverse of the fraction. As for the population density. Thinking in terms of death rate times the sparsity of bombs Dresden , (25000 dead / 600000 people) * (400km2 / 3900 tons of bombs) = 0.00427 dead by area per person per ton Linebacker 2, (2000 dead / 400000 people) * (2000km2 / 20000 tons of bombs) = 0.005 dead by area per person per ton So around the same when giving the absolute best chance you can get. But... This is while assuming incorrectly that those 2000km2 of Hanoi are even representative of the urban area of the city, most of it probably being farmlands. For example a country with a population density of around 200 people/km2 is Italy as a whole, not it's urban centers. At the time, North Vietnam with a population of 23.8 million and a land area of 158000km2 had a population density of 150 people/km2. Note in edition: "death rate times the sparsity of bombs" Is equivalent to "death rate times divided by the density of bombs" Again a matter of using your preferred fraction or it's inverse They both equal dead by area per person per ton Edit2 I fucked up one extra cero where there shouldn't have been.
I appreciate that this may not be obvious but you surely realize that videos do not get produced within 2h. The script was completed months ago, while the video had been finished a few weeks ago and the date was locked in some time ago with the sponsor.
Well, you blew that one fast. It wasn't the SA-2 that gave us problems during Linebacker, it was SA-3. We already had SA-2 beat by the late 60s and the Ruskies brought in the SAM3. I was ECM fighting the SAMs for SAC. BTW, we also had the SAM 3 beat by 72 until they came up with a countermeasure to our countermeasure and it only took us 2 weeks to come up with a countermeasure to their countermeasure to our countermeasure. I got to help with that. We were beating their SAMs so bad and hitting our targets so well that, instead of firing their SAM missiles from the cities out into the jungles, they moved their SAMs out into the jungle and started firing towards the cities so their missiles would fall on their people and then took pictures of their dead people to blame our Buffs, while we were bombing industrial areas and not residential areas. The wonderful Hanoi Jane (Jane Fonda) helped them push those lies. I remember one intel picture of a father, mother, and their two kids lying dead in their bedroom floor with a big piece of white metal next to them and the Commies saying they were killed by one of our bombs. Bull crap. Their SAM3s were white and none of our bombs were white and a 500 pound bomb leaves a crater almost a block wide so there would have been nothing left of that bedroom. They were killed by a piece of a SAM3 that fell on their house into their bedroom, which doesn't leave much of a crater. You have to understand that, when one of their SAM3s reached maximum altitude and ran out of fuel, it automatically detonated, sending the missile parts plunging to the ground. That is clearly what killed that family. I almost forgot, we (ECM) had the SAM3 radars beat so bad that the Vietnamese had to start putting out spotters to locate Buffs heading towards Hanoi, they would radio back the location, altitude (using geometry), direction, and time so the next line of spotters could help determine speed so they could estimate when our Buffs would be in a certain target area. When it was time, the SAMs just fired a bunch of missiles in what we called the "shotgun effect", hoping they would hit something. We had them beat really bad for them to use ye ole "poke and hope" warfare. We only lost 15 Buffs. Hey, commies lie. When was the last time commies told the truth about anything? At that time we called the Buff "rolling thunder" because that is what those bombs sounded like with a string of detonations. Better than 80% of the Buff missions for Linebacker were B-52D models flown out of Guam. We devastated North Vietnam so bad they were forced to sign the Paris Peace Accords in February 1973. In 1975, the Democrat Part passed a treason bill (Afghan Joe was a big part of that) that gave South Vietnam to North Vietnam and then proclaimed that the US Military lost the war and everyone has believed that lie since. BTW, I worked the last two bombers to shoot down fighter planes. They were both B-52D models; one is in a museum somewhere and the other one is at the entrance to the Air Force Academy in Colorado. They have a big red star on their vertical stabilizers. They shot down MIG21s with quad 50s or four 50 caliber machine guns sticking out the butt of the Buffs. They shot them down over Hanoi during Linebacker II. Oh yeah, most of those SAM operators and MIG pilots were Ruskies but the commie media wouldn't admit it. I don't care what you left academe historians tell you. I fought that fight. I only decided to watch this to see how inaccurate their lies would be. You are just telling us what they told you. I also worked the Wild Weasels when they were flying thuds and the 555 fighter squadron out of Udorn. By the end of the war, our fighters had a kill ration of 12 to 1.
No SA-3 were online in the AO during linebacker II. Also "Forced to sign the peace accord" on terms that the North Vietnamese had laid out prior to the operation is truly one of those "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" if there was ever one.
Thanks for clearing up the things and yes I knew that US forces lost relatively few B-52 and the guns on the bum was quite effective. Very true the commies always lie. A corrected if I may: the US troops wasn't losing the war in itself, it had lost confidence fighting a country that couldn't care less about the soldiers and veterans that fought in Vietnam. Forgive me if I'm expressing my opinion.... Thanks for your service...
Australia here a viet vet usa stated south viet army were lame we didnt trust them some were kit carson scouts australia didnt think much of south vietnamise army elan seems same problem in afghanistan and be warned dont want same in taiwan if imperial china invades
it's really wired how it's consider that the US lost in Vietnam, but linebacker 2 brought the north crawling back to the negotiation table and signed the Paris peace accord in 73 essentially ending the war on what can only be describe as a US victory since the south was still free and the north field all it's pre war objectives then the north just waited for an anti war congress to be elected in 74, and when they were sure the US would fail on it's promise to help the south they just invaded
All for a failed attempt at "containment" of communism and millions of dead Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese, it's all colonialism still we are an imperial power and we suck.
And interesting too how the North reeled in it's sponsors to supporting them to finish off what remained of the ARVN while the latter fought a losing battle with the loss of supplies after US withdrawal of support. Makes one wonder though how different things would be if ARVN is still armed and supplied properly like their adversaries
@@alwayscurious3357 no doubts on what they could've achieved with greater continued support with the ARVN having notable exemplary units like their rangers
Had to apply pressure. What can't be overlooked is "linkage" , detente with the Soviet Union and opening China, plus signing significant arms limitation treaties in 72, these were intended to be mutually reinforcing, pulling support from Vietnam and getting the peace talks back on track. Where additional pressure was required, as was often the case, the B52s were sent in. A notable period in US foreign policy where ideology took a back seat and it became possible to extract from a war that had no objectives, no plan ro achieve victory. The more ideological people get, the more innocent people tend to lose their lives. Of course, it couldn't last, Carter poked his nose into Soviet domestic policy and a new arms race was kicked off.
@@alwayscurious3357nor much in all liklihood, the ARVN, aside from sime special forces units, had very little conception why they were ther3 other than to draw a salary. It melted away, the request from Soutth Vietnam wasnt military resupply is was to return the bombers, direct action that Congress had finally cut off
Except the treaty the North signed was the same treaty they ALREADY agreed to, and not the one the US was trying to force on the North. It's almost as if the bombing is just to cover a defeat...
![กี่หมื่นฟ้า | Your Sky Series EP.1 [1/4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vLGjxFL6U_I/mqdefault.jpg)
On the one hand it is kind of amazing that it is only in recent years that we have gotten decent sources in English on the Vietnamese and Chinese perspectives on the Vietnam conflict. However, the language barrier is greater than it was with German (or even Russian), and I think a major problem was that so much historiography was wrapped up in domestic US political issues. As someone who was born early in the 1980s, I was always puzzled by how documentaries I watched growing up had to obsess over "the trauma of the 1960s", as though that decade was somehow comparable to a national tragedy like the 30 Years' War in the German speaking countries. But I've since realized that people who live through events have a strong desire to relay their subjective experiences of that time, and that certainly was true of older people in the United States who vividly remembered the 1960s. Perhaps having a younger crop of historians without so much emotional attachment to the era has allowed a more balanced examination of what honestly should just be objective analyses of battles, operations and campaigns.
Very well said.
(Child of the 60’s here.)
Getting access is also a structural problem beyond languages. Oftentimes in the past, archives were not as open as nowadays and in many places, still aren't. The "home" archives also held a lot of untapped files for a long time, thus making it both easier and more accessible to rely on them. With WW2 we see this quite clearly. About 20-30 years ago historians could still get away with writing about Germany without visiting the German military archives. Now it is impossible if your goal is to add anything of substance to the historiography, or to have it recognized as such.
@@MilitaryAviationHistory Being FORCED to do actual research instead of just reading and regurgitating someone else's work, then trying to pass themselves off as knowledgeable is a GOOD THING!
Great Videos. Cheers from Toronto.
To summarize what you said -
1. You primarily learned about the war through documentaries available in the 90s. My response - you're a victim of a poor educational system.
2. The language barrier prevented understanding the Vietnamese perspective. My response - your educational system did not include exposure to the fact that books in English written by Vietnamese, both North and South, authors were already available.
3. Having no firsthand background to the contrary, you're unaware of whether the documentaries you watched were historical perspectives or rehashed TV news footage. Sidenote - TV news footage can be important but it's not objective history.
4. Your summary of what constitutes historical coverage completely ignores context.
Yes, older people were and often still are traumatized. The Thirty Years War lasted long enough for the population to see for themselves, firsthand, the horrors of war. Here are some samples of what the entire nation saw on the news in short order - with no cutaways, censoring, and the endless talking head dribble putting a spin on it for you -
A. American troops getting high before battle.
B. A Vietnamese general blowing the brains out of what appeared to be a civilian, free of all of the bravado you're used to from TV. He didn't like the answer he was getting, he drew his revolver, blew his brains out, and was already two steps away with his revolver pocketed by the time the man hit the ground.
C. Monks pouring gasoline on themselves and sitting quietly until they were burned to ash.
D. The return of Dương Van Minh to power and everything that meant.
E. Pinkville.
F. Veterans mistreated returning home, complete with men in uniform being spat upon and worse.
And that's not even a deep dive. You don't understand the national psyche of the time because you don't understand what it was like to see atrocities daily and uncut for years over the dinnertime TV news.
And lest you think that you understand my politics, you don't. The above list is not a justification, it's an important part of the war history - the electorate had a near real time feedback of the ground view of horrors not broadcast before or since. It shaped the environment on the US side and influenced military doctrine. That emotional shock provided the context for a large portion of the war. Reduce your history to sterile battlefield statistics and you'll learn nothing - certainly not history.
And you may even understand why so many people keep repeating history while insisting how well they understand it.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this viewpoint. Apologies for any typos.
@@Ni999regarding F, veterans being spat on. That is basically a myth. There were no accounts of it at the time. You should look into it.
I bought the “Combat in the Sky” book at 50%. Thanks for the tip. Been hooked on this stuff since the 1970’s when acquiring my copy of “…And Kill MiGs” as a teen. I still have it. Nice presentation.
Thanks, glad to point you to that additional discount and hope you enjoy the book
This is fascinating. This is one of my top 3 go-to channels for military aviation.
Thank you
239-335 SAM launches for 24 aircraft hit (15 shot down + 9 damaged) may sound bad to most people. But it's a huge improvement over the thousands of rounds of flak it apparently took to shoot down one bomber in WW2. So while these SAMs may not have offered absolute precision, it's still a several hundred fold improvement in precision over old dumb rounds.
This. Germany used about 8000-16000 shells per bomber, depending on what statistic is used.
Loss rate was very high not sustainable
I think that the hit ratio sounds pretty good considering all the counter-measures employed by the most powerful superpower in history. The americans used chaffs, electronic warfare and tried to suppress enemy fire and they probably planned their road to the target and tried to employ secrecy and surprise and still did they lost so many flagships of the skies - that B52's are. And their losses of helicopters and Thunderchiefs in this war was also quite heavy.
Some of this can be blamed on American politics. Some of it can be blamed on how good and cynical of an opponent the North Vietnamese was. But the US military also needs to look itself in the mirror and realize that they made many many mistakes in this war. And that caused them to lose many planes.
It is important that lessons are drawn from those mistakes so they don't get repeated and America lose more planes in a future war. More could be at stake in a war against China than a limited war about Vietnam for example.
Some lessons have been learned while others have not. America no longer thinks it is a high priority that fighter should be able to fly at Mach2 - like both F4 Phantom and F105 was easily capable of. However it was discovered that no air combats took place at such speeds so this useless capability has been dropped in favor of other more important abilities for a fighter jet. Dogfighting is being taught, altough it rarely happens - which is good.
However this predictable behaviour of using the same process of treating bomb runs like a conveyor belt with standardized predictable processes is something that proved a big disadvantage for both US planes and army is something that needs to go away I think since the enemy will use this knowledge to his advantage to lower his own losses and maximize American losses.
Sometimes America do things differently, like changing the pattern of behaviour like in this video, or in operation Bolo.
And I think more of that needs to be done. I can understand for logistical reasons that it might be cumbersome to coordinate and plan things on a huge scale like of that of the american military. I don't think that dividing areas into route packs in Vietnam and Iraq and let the navy and air force get their own areas of responsability to bomb is necessarily the best use of air power, altough I guess it could lesser conflicts about who should take responsability for what, and perhaps lower the risk of confusion and friendly fire.
And the system of body count and the obsession of measuring things in numbers of sorties flown and monthly quotas of bombs dropped is also stupid and create perverse incentives and puts planes and pilots into unnecessary risks. Sure you can increase the number of sorties flown by letting 4 planes carry 1 bomb each over Vietnam, instead of letting just one plane carry 4 bombs and not risking losing all 4 planes. But that would make the military leadership dissatisfied as they only cares about the numbers and not reality.
And russia gets little accomplished over Ukraine. One reason for this is that russian pilots rather drops their bombs over civilian targets than military ones. They drop bombs over places like the Swedish speaking village Gammalsvenskby where not a single Ukrainian military unit is located, rather than bombing Ukrainian units near the frontline where the planes can get shot down.
Its more comfortable to just bomb a civilian target that cannot shot back when you need to fulfill your montly quota of bombs dropped over Ukraine. But will this help the russian war effort win the war with just one bit?
- Probably not.
By the end of WW2 the allies were using VT fused shells that apparently increased the hit probability by 5 to 10 times. I'd be very interested to know how a 1960s era VT fused AAA would compare to contemporary AA missiles.
Yes and no. Sure it was an improvement on flak but the USAF flew the same routes every time barring a few notable occasions, knowing which route, altitudes and speeds they were going to take it is actually more surprising that there were so few hits
Fitting day to publish this video, regarding Kissinger’s passing.
wow I didn't hear that glad I saw this comment
His interviews and publicly stated opinions towards the end of his life are worth reviewing...
I received danger close (within 200-500yds of my position)drop of 38, 500lb bombs from a B-1 in Afghanistan. Even knowing it was friendly, it was TERRIFYING (but somewhat thrilling and exhilarating at the same time). Ground shaking like an earthquake underneath you, the blast pressure, the large chunks of shrapnel raining down on top of us.... Luckily none of us got hurt by the shrapnel, but there were close calls.
All the while I was thinking, "this must have been how the Germans felt in Berlin in WW2".
Nah,the germans felt like those afghans.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 not every German died in the bombings. And those who died wouldn't remember what it felt like.
My dad got bombed during the London Blitz and sixty/seventy years later just the sound of an air raid siren on TV would cause him to break down.
Vietnamese here, before 1972, President Ho Chi Minh had ordered the air-defense force to "research" the way the American uses B52. So in 1967 a battalion of North Vietnamese air-defense went to Quang Tri, Vinh Linh to ambush B52, they succeded shotdown 2 B-52s that year. B-52 is not invincible, it's just well guarded with jammers and smaller fighters. B-52s flight path was mostly fixed, that's why it's not very hard to predict where they were going.
and btw: I lived in Kham Thien street in Hanoi, the street was obliterated in 1972 by B52 during Christmas bombing.
Three things that cut bomber losses. 1. The USAF allowed varying the attack routes at the pilots insistence. 2. Jamming got much more effective 3. Because the jamming was vastly improved the Vietnamese were forced to lob unguided missiles sky words and hope for a kill and ended up using tons of missiles. The Soviets never gave the Vietnamese their best missiles or technology. What they got was outdated Soviet missle systems with poor jamming countermeasures. They complained to the Soviets about this.
in turn, USSR sent over radar technicians to North VN to improve anti-jamming capability of the S-75 system throughout the war, so the jamming arm race continued
@@tranquoccuong890-its-orge yes this is true , The Soviets sent over experts who monitored the American jamming frequencies after Line Backer two.
Reminds me of the anecdote about the 73 Arab-Israeli war, an Arab leader was talking to a Soviet liaison.
Soviet: we sent you our best Surface to air missiles.
Arab: Next time send us some Surface to aircraft missiles.
@@brucenorman8904 The Arabs defeat in that war actually contributed to the North's difficulties in this battle, as many S-75s were captured by the Isareli.
@@brealistic3542 There was no more bombing after Linebacker II. That ended the US participation in Vietnam.
11:43 North vietnam use "false launch" tactic in which missile guidance signals were transmitted without a missile being launched. This could distract enemy pilots, or even occasionally cause them to drop ordnance prematurely to lighten their aircraft enough to dodge the nonexistent missile.
North Vietnam use "false launch" tactic to lure bombs and anti-radar missiles (Shrike) and lure US fighters into attacking the fake air defense site.
I know you mentioned the loss ratio for this raid would be unsustainable long term but given the intensity of the air defenses, it's amazing in my mind at any rate that heavy bombers sustained loss rates as low as they were.
did you learn math ? 12 days => 15 shot down + 9 heavily damnage ===> what will be after 120 days ? (US B-52 in southeast Asia about 200 in total
And the SAM-3 in the road supply to Vietnam (China railroad)
@@vantrinhnguyen987 Considering that 120+ B-52s were flying at one time, and that these attacks went on for 11 days, 15 downed is a rather small number.
I had a guy who cut my hair some years ago who was a school child under those bombings. He said from one day to the next a classmate would not show up any more, and they would be told the child had been killed- and that was that. Just went on with their day.
There were people down there.
There were also people in Hue. When the VC captured Hue during the Tet offensive, they unalived about 5K civilians. They captured they, bound their hands, gave them 9 mm head shots, and threw them in a ditch.
That was deliberately done. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a bomb going off course. It wasn't one or 100 soldiers going nuts. It was policy from the highest NV level.
The father of a friend of mine was a platoon leader in Vietnam. He saw things firsthand. The VC were not the good guys.
@@FactCheckerGuyThis justifies nothing.
Interesting. Nixon in his Memoires claimed to have ordered the change in tactics during the Christmas bombing moratorium, shocked by the loss rate. Another source, Dana Drenkowski, wrote an article in "Soldier of Fortune" magazine which confirms that timeline - Drenkowski was a TAC pilot supporting the BUFs and reported SAC's tactical errors, via TAC. He reports the date for the tactic change was the missions after the Xmas break. SAC did modify missions before the Xmas moratorium by avoiding Hanoi and using fewer aircraft but Nixon wanted Hanoi bombed.
I think that's the record for my fastest-ever book purchase. Christoph didn't even finish his sentence and I was already putting it into my shopping cart. Thanks for the recommendation!
Have a good read!
When the B52 opens the bomb bay doors and the bombs commence heading earthward, they seem to keep dropping and dropping and dropping and still more drop! That is one big belly mod the D models had.
@@keithad6485 yup. It gives me a massive erection!
Robin Olds who is seen in the first pictures wrote an interesting book named "Fighter Pilot".
Coincidental with Kissinger. You could cover the secret bombings in Cambodia (I don't know if that actually would be a great topic for you).
Nice timing to have this come out the day after Kissinger dies.
BTW, one tidbit I got from the first Crewdog book in the collection of primary sources is "What we didn't know was that our ALT-22 Modulated ECM Transmitters could be countered by the SAM crews. The D models and some Gs had ALT-6B Unmodulated Transmitters that were more effective."
The SA-2 has a major weakness against fighters it can be consistently outmanoeuvred.
Vietnam was starting to get the SA-2 in 1972 with is a very similar missile technically to the SA-2 but with much greater manoeuvrability which is gained by reducing its range.
Throughout the war Vietnam never got the best SAM systems from the USSR like Egypt and Syria did for the 1973 war. Because of the risk of China stealing the technology if too modern missiles where shipped.
such good timing...
Another great book about the air war in Vietnam is 'Clashes: Air Combat Over Vietnam' by Marshal Michel. Highly recommended.
Linebacker II was air power applied with the gloves off. Until then, for the most part, politicians ran the air war and it was ineffective. Pauses and off-limits targets wasted air assets all through the war.
Even with the gloves off, air assets were still wasted. Since the objective was political, the negotiation continued and the U.S agreed to the same draft that favored North Vietnam anyway.
It seems the USAF defaults to lazy mode until it bleeds.It's funny how the same mistake downed the F-117 over 20 years later.
Only recently in the last few years are books on the Vietnam war from the Vietnamese and Chinese perspectives being published and I got a list of Kindle samples lined up to remind myself to buy them later.
Recently finished the Kindle version of Combat in the Sky. In terms of information, I learned quite a lot. From the tactical to the operational level, seeing the VPAF-ADF's changes and adaptations were very informative.
I do however find the prose to be rather lacking. And for force that used soviet equipment, all the measurements being in imperial was rather jarring. And it still didn't have the detached, balanced feel that I generally find agreeable from any historical analysis.
Overall while informative, it felt rough. Still any new perspectives are always nice and I look forward to more in due time.
Another informative video Chris.
Just a added bit. The Vietcong very sucsessful use of deep tunnels in the Iron Triangle area of South Viietnam as a staging area for attacks was eventually foiled by the use of the B52 in this area. The B52 distruction of the tunnel system was complete since their bombs blew massive holes in the ground unlike F4 fighter bombers or arty but by then these tunnels had served their purpose.
One can only wonder what would have happened if LBJ hadn't restricted the US Air force so much and allowed them a free hand on North Vietnam much earlier. If they could have knocked out the ports and transport system within the North, the Vietcong would have been out of vital supplies very quickly. Linebacker II showed what might have been possible.
most of the supplies sent from North VN to the VC in the South went through the forest & mountains of Laos
if you see the unexploded ordnance map of Laos (our condolence to Laos' sacrifice), you will acknowledge that the supply route over land (now known as the Hồ Chí Minh route) was as resilient as a metastatic tendril of a cancerous tumour, endlessly regenererating in spite of how much bombs it received
@@tranquoccuong890-its-orge But in order get the munitions and supplies on to the ho chi Minh trail, they had to go through North Vietnamese ports and then through their infrastructure. The ports were obvious targets and could have been bombed and mined much earlier. The ho chi Minh trail was problematic because it ran multiple routes through neutral countries.
Maybe if the butcher of Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson, along with his henchman Robert McNamara. Hadn't lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to massively raise the United States participation in Vietnam, 50 THOUSAND Americans and one MILLION Vietnamese may not have died.
@@philiphumphrey1548LBJ was afraid the Chinese would enter the war if we closed Haiphong and put the railroads out of business. If we had used B-52’s early in the war before the N Vietnamese acquired the SAM’s and the MiG 21 it would have ended the war and saved thousands of American and Vietnamese lives.
Fascinating video. I am always surprised at the fascination that people from other countries have any interest whatsoever in our USAF planes and armed forces were up to in a war that most Western countries condemned (NATO) and yet because of the USA's image of the leader of the free world everyone, including the West Germans and the Japanese, who we occupied, soundly were on our side except for the aggression against the Vietnamese, I guess.
A little late to this video but I’m not positive but I remember that the loss probability of a B-52 had a lot to do with the model types ECMs as some had a recent upgrade and others did not. There was also heavy dependency on the three ship layout kinda like the more modern “Box” format but for SAMs. A chunk of losses came from two ship flights who lacked the redundancy of a third ship
a added comment. The Soviets missile techs first tried to blame it all on how the Vietnamese stored and took care of their missiles. They said it was very careless.
Brilliant as usual! Thanks!
I'm re-reading the "We Were Crewdogs" series of books and the 11-day war (as the Crewdogs called it) was originally supposed to be a three day operation. As you know, the fourth and subsequent days were added. The first three days were following classic bomber tactics derived from WWII - for each target, three waves of bombers, at different altitudes, would fly to their IP and then fly straight and level over the target, drop their bombs, and rollout in formation. In subsequent days, the bombers came in from different directions and the support aircraft (i.e. F-4 Wild Weasel, EB-66) would not light up until the bombers were obvious. Between the change in tactics and the dwindling store of SA-2s, the North Vietnamese were not as effective.
A B-52.. a friend you can depend on! ✈️👍
In Vietnam, there was a pilot named Vu Van Thieu. He bravely rammed his Mig21 into a B52 bomber. His name was given to a street.
That's fiction, only happened in the communist's mind for their propaganda purpose
@@dattranthanh6757 Baloney.
@@maxcorder2211 To you it may be nonsense, but to us Vietnamese, it is an act of bravery. We Vietnamese are a hundred times more courageous than you Americans.
@@maxcorder2211 Leave me alone. What does it have to do with you? I write whatever I want.
@@dattranthanh6757 I am a former B-52 aircraft commander. I flew several of the bombing missions over N Vietnam during 1972. No N Vietnamese pilot ever shot down a B-52 or rammed his plane into a B-52. But, B-52’s did shoot down 2 MiG 21’s. The N Vietnamese MiG pilots were very good and very brave. They did the best they could to defend their country. They have my respect as one warrior to another. It is not necessary to embellish what happened. There are detailed records in US Air Force and Navy history. We know exactly how many airplanes we lost, where they went down and the cause. We know what happened to the pilots and crew.
But, you write whatever you want.
Back in '69 the B-52 was loving referred t as a BUF...."BIG UGLY FUCKER!! Where and how it got the extra F i don't know! For your information I have over 5,000 hours as a B -52 Radar Navigator (ie. Bombardier) with 185 bombing mission over Nam. Incidentally, I never thought of it as being ugly....Sinister; but not ugly!
Vietnam Fudd: "We could have won but someone stopped us!"
Reality: "Ya, they where called the North Vietnamese."
North Vietnam signed a peace treaty and invaded the South while the US was in political turmoil from Watergate.
North Vietnam did not stop the US. They signed a treaty, which they broke, and defeated the lone ARVN. In fact it was the US which stopped North Vietnam, until it became politically unsustainable to back Saigon.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD 1,We signed peace with the US, not with the Khmer Separatists.
2, What audacity for pro-Separitists to call us out on Violating the Paris Agreement when they violated the Geneva Accord.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD Wait until you hear about the South Vietnamese breaking that treaty by rejecting a popular vote to reunify the country, causing the war in the first place. They also broke the next treaty by declaring a recontinuation of the war in 1974, but it seems you only believe one side's propaganda.
Its funny but the Army actually built a large base over one of the tunnel systems and the Vietcong kept popping up out of unseen entrances to attack the soldiers inside the base till eventually most of the secret entrances were found.
Good thing I saved up some of my youtube millions. I am getting some books now :)
COMBAT TREE sounds similar in concept to the RAF's WW2 PERFECTOS.
USAF Wild Weasels and US Navy/ Marines Iron Hand missions was quit successful during the Linebacker 2 Air campaign over Hanoi and Haiphong harbour, those planes armed with AGM 45 semi computer guide, the AGM 78 the Inertial navigation computer memory system guide, clusters and Iron bombs rack havoc on the SA2 Fan song radar Batteries Sam sites and Son 9 fire can radars AAA guns sites, there was also USSR soldiers manning those weapon system, North Korean Air men/ soldiers and Chinese Air men/ soldiers, the Chinese suffered 20 thousand casualties during the war.
casualties on the Chinese side in the war perhaps came from the builders force that PRC sent over to help North VN fix & rebuild its bombed infrastructure
the USSR casualties were probably radar operators & radar technicians that were sent over to help North VN SAM operators dealing with jamming & countermeasure from US airplanes
i am not sure about North Korean casualties in here though, never heard of them. maybe they helped with air force training ? but then USSR pilot trainers could also do that
@@tranquoccuong890-its-orge There is a cemetary of North Korean pilots.
DO you know how Vietnamese disable US Shrike ?
@@vantrinhnguyen987 yes, by shut down the SA 2 Fang Song Radar Van and moving the radar dish around effect sometime, but sometimes the Shrike AGM 45 remember the location exploding within 20 feet near Radar van, the AGM 45 was semi computer passive homing, that why the AGM 78 standard was developed with Bendix or Maxson memory core IGN gudiance with negate the Sa2 operators from Shut down or shaking the radar dish this was the biggest fear of the North Vietnamese SA 2 200 man crews.
Using the same combat route & air speeds each day for about 2 weeks=astounding foolishness.
All for what? Nothing. And the show rolls on.
'Great' isn't the word I'd have used for it but thank you nevertheless for your tireless research.
The drastic (4x) overestimation of number of SAMs launched may be attributed to the SA-2s ability to transmit faux guidance signals.
often times claims can be inflated simply by multiple people claiming a single plane, thinking they had been the ones that hit it.
Nice timing
Very interesting.
After Linebacker 2, Nixon had to return to the negotiation because 34 B52s were shot down
By LBII the US finally had run N Vietnam out of missiles and was suffering far less losses. They also changed tactics resulting in far less loss and far more damage. That’s why the N Vietnamese, not the US, requested a return to the negotiating table. The US had some 600 B52s so the losses, while heavy, were not catastrophic enough to force the USAF to quit bombing.
@@fredericklockard3854 The US knew they would achive nothing until they kill the last VN with the price of more B52s shoot down, more soldiers killed, more US people angry, . When NVN did request a return to the negotiating table, the US had to accept the exactly same terms favorable to NVN that the US rejected before. The most important term is the US army get out off VN. No new term added. So get over it, US lost the war. Although you may think that US won this Xmas battle, whaterver.
It's so simple. Dont join any war in VN and you will win.
The US only had just over 200 B52s in the Vietnam Theatre.
Pulling planes from Europe or Alaska was not an option as it would reduce nuclear deployment capabilities from those theatres.
The US was running out of bombers as the B52 production was stopped in 1962.
Linebacker 2 was not sustainable.
Always remeber the Vietnamese were outgunned by a factor of 50 to 1 in terms of overall resources. A lot of the AA crews were young women !
"means of production"
Is this a tribute to Kissinger dying?
Maggots: 1 Kissinger: 0 Hallelujah
@@luciusquinctiuscincinnatus505 Praise the Lord
US policy has always been to treat aircraft that made it home or even close to home but then crashed or were written off as accidents (crashes) and not combat losses. This is how they can just 15 B-52s lost when the actual number was anywhere up to 20 airframes, this is also how they can implausibly claim that the F-15 has never had a combat loss when up to half a dozen aircraft have been written off in the various Gulf Wars.
But don't they write down all reasons why they lose their aircrafts? You can for example read a comprehensive list of F16 fighters lost year after year and see the cause of the loss... birdstrike, hitting a telephone pole, getting hit by lightning and so on
Not sure whether that was the policy at the time.
But i read that several B-52 managed to limp back to Utapao were written off as total loss but not counted into that 15
They did the same thing with helicopters. Something like 10,000 choppers were lost but the rule was if the tail (with tail number) could be recovered it wasn't counted as "lost". Made the losses seen much lighter.
Also, many damaged planes needed months of repair. SAC was not in a good shape for a long while
If it landed at its base it wasn't counted as shot down. Plenty of aircraft are lost even in peacetime due to accidents. For statistics sake, that how they counted what was lost to enemy action.
Is this Bismarck from BoTime Gaming?
The war could only be stopped by these bombings. By 1975 NVA units had a easy time against ARVN units because of bad leadership no supplied in. Ammo, Medical supplies and Air cover.
I think ARVN failed more because of a lack of a will to fight among the peasantry that made up the armys manpower base. And the officers were corrupt just like the entire state apparatus was corrupt and nepotistic. Equipment was lacking because of corruption, desertions were high. And unsurprisingly was the peasantry unwilling to fight to defend a state ruled by landlords that opressed them and stole 80% of their income. Many thought that Communism might not be such a bad alternative to that. And to that one could add vietnamese nationalism and the will to unify the country. And the strategic hamlet program that meant forced resettlement did not increase the popularity of the regime either.
@@nattygsbord whole nation was corrupt. Johnson n McNamara micromanaged the war!
@@nattygsbord The "ARVN" and the goverment that led it shouldn't have existed in the first place.
@@ucnguyenanh9414
It was a big mistake of USA to accept this opressive and corrupt regime in South Vietnam. And that was perhaps on of the biggest reasons why people wanted North Vietnam to win.
Some in the US leadership might have feared that US would be seen as imperialistic if they told another country have it should be runned and meddled in its internal affairs.
But I regard it as necessary to remove the corrupt South Vietnamese leadership and end the opression of the Vientamese landlords. As that would be the only way to win back the support for the South Vietnamese for their government and offer a good alternative to Communist opression.
The Vietnamese wanted an unified country. And they hated the landlord opression, the corruption, they hated being forced to resettle into strategic hamlets, and they did not like the catholic ruling class that controlled their buddist asian country.
@@nattygsbord The better afternative was to let the nation to unified in the 1956 election, which was robbed from the Vietnamese in both the South and the North.
@MilitaryAviationHistory >>> Great video...👍
Hold on painful part almost done?…. Yeah that ad took way to long my friend
I dunno, 60 seconds out of a ~1020 sec long video seems fair in my mind - maybe that's just me. You can also rely on me having a timestamp to skip if you want :)
Grandpa Buff in his youth
@@scottl9660 Kid, your weird
When I was young our neighbors were newly arrived Vietnamese refugees. This family had two brothers, roughly the same age as me. When they came to visit, I’ll never forget the look that passed between their faces when they saw my B-52 model on the shelf.
South Vietnamese...right????
I believe so. They spoke excellent French, like a lot of people from that generation.
why do I think this is related to kissingers death
Why would I buy a book on a North Vietnam perspective?
Yeah, why would you believe anything anyone else says? US propaganda is all you need.
Kissinger died today
I wonder why didnt the Soviets or Chinese perhaps send a diplomat or politician with enough political clout to Hanoi or Haiphong or areas bombed AND perhaps that would be a huge risk to the US forces in launching a raid there since if the politican or diplomat is killed or hurt in the bombings then that would be a world of explaining to do given in Rolling Thunder in 65 anyways SAM sites could not be attacked intially due to fears of killing or injuring Soviet or Chinese technicians working in those sites....couldnt the North Vietnamese have also requested the Russians or Chinese to send diplomats or politicians to the targeted areas and also warn the USA about risks in bombing the areas? Or even Le Duc Tho could have also been on site there and Kissinger would have had a harder time to negotiate???
Remember, this was a proxy war with the Soviets. These results probably scared the heck out of the Soviets. Their best air defense system being being relatively easily defeated. The US basically attacking with one hand tied by politics, unimaginative generals target restrictions and operating in a small contained area. Don't kid yourself with the old belief the Soviets didnt send their "good" stuff. They surely had some of their best people there helping operate the systems.
I believe USA over-estimated Soviet russia enormously throughout the Cold War. In 1947 did USA have 400 nuclear bombs and russia had none so it could basically have nuked all of russia and won the cold war with no losses of their own. And the mighty russian army that had won WW2, had done so with american ammunition and radios.
And by 1945 did half of russias GDP lay in ruins. More than half of all men born in some age groups of the 1920s had died in the battlefield against Hitler. Russia was much weaker and did not have much military muscles left. The country was too exhausted to win WW2 on its own, and was helped to get pushed through the finish line with American oil, lend lease, food, trucks and direct military assistence by the allies that tie up German troops in France and Italy.
Russias "victories" in the space race also needs some nuance as DeadKennedyInSpace shows in his video. Throughout this space race was USA always the country that made more long lasting victories in the space race and from the 1970s onwards it came to totally dominate it. While russian space exploration was mostly done with many failures, meager results, and many lies about their actual gains in the space race.
The economic performance between the east and west are also enormous. Russia never had a post-war economic miracle like other severly destroyed countries such as Italy, Germany and Italy.
Russias military equipment also performed poorly in Israels wars, and indeed in most wars fought did the russian backed side suffer much heavier losses than their opponent. And even in the failure that is Vietnam did the American probably achieve a positive kill ratio... despite Vietnam was fighting on their home turf, knew the terrain, could lay mines and booby traps, and choose where and when to fight and only fight ambushes and always getting the first shot on their enemy.
American military doctrines sucked. And it still do.
But American military equipment was good, and the motivation of the soldiers were pretty good.
I think the idea of stirring oneself blind on kill ratios and body counts made Americans lose focus on what is war is all about. And the only way they knew how to get their hands on the Vietcong was to have their infantry walk into enemy ambushes and then hope that superior american fire power from artillery and fighter jets would blow up all enemies so America could get its desired body count.
It was a criminal to throw teenage boys to walk into ambushes like that in my opinion. Its of course much of a lesser crime than throwing men in human wave attacks without artillery and tank support like the russians in Ukraine. But still...
However in more conventional wars have USA proven unbeatable. Saddams army in 1991 was considered a powerful military force with much men with combat experience and much tanks and an air force and air defence with stuff from both eastern and western countries. And in many ways one could argue that it was a military more technologically equal to USA in 1991, than what russia is compared to USA today. I mean a T-72 tanks that Iraq used in 1991 was less outdated back then, than it is today 32 years later.
However despite being a powerful enemy on paper, did Saddams military get wiped out pretty fast and with extremely few American losses.
And regardless what one thinks of USAs criminal war against Iraq in 2003, is there no doubt that the victory against Saddams big army was pretty easy and happened fast and with few losses. And this was in a country where USA had to fight an enemy on the other side of the planet.
Compare that to russia today which have massive logistical problems with even fighting a neighbouring country. As soon as the invasion goes far away from a railway line does everything falls apart. The russian military is so pathethic that it cannot penetrate deeper than 100km into enemy lands before it have massivly over-extended itself and ran out of fuel - like they did north of Kyiv in 2022.
The american military have many flaws - like its doctrine and lack of auftragstaktik.
But it is the worlds undisputed no.1 in logistics. Its technological dominance is unquestioned. And other armies around the world quickly copies everything USA comes up with... like insecure teenagers buys the same clothes as the cool guy in school the day after they see him wear something new.
Both civilian and military hospitals have copied the methodology of treating a sick or wounded person from the US military.
And the idea of using white t-shirts in vietnam was abandoned in Vietnam because they made a soldier easy to spot for the enemy, so therefore did the US military begin to use green clothes instead. And other armies quickly followed the american example.
For much of the Cold war did USA have the technological dominance. It had the F4 Phantom that on paper outperformed anything Europe and russia had. It had the nukes before anyone else. It was an early user of attack helicopters, it began using precision bombing already in the Vietnam war against the Dragon jaw bridge to keep its own losses of planes low, it built stealth bombers, GPS and internet and much else.
And the russian military today is primitive by comparison. Some said it is of the same technological level as the American military was when it fought the Vietnam war. I think that is a fair comparison. Its a military that still lacks body armor, nightvision, and use steel helmets instead of kevlar. Its medical aid is much worse than the americans in Vietnam, despite enormous gains in knowdledge in medical care has been done the last 20-30 years.
And russia does not have any tank equal to M1 Abrams. And even if we ignore F-22 and F35... would the US airforce still probably easily win over russias best fighter - the SU35. Mostly because it have better pilots, but F15 - and especially the later variants are still among the best planes in the world and will outperform SU35 in much.
Add to that how much russias SAMs have underperformed in this war. One would expect that they at least could keep Engels air force base, their flagship Moskva and their meetings with the 30 highest officers of the russian black sea fleet safe - but nope.
Russian air defence can still not shot down american tech from the early 1990s like the HIMARS rockets. And the best of the best russian missiles - the kinzhal missile is being shot down by the old patriot air defence.
And russian artillery in general have proven to be inferior in everything.. precision, range, reload time, and takes more time to move and make ready. And despite russian enormous superiority in numbers have they not been able to win this war yet after 2 years.
Much is of course thanks to the superiority of western artillery and superior ammunition, one Excalibur round can do the same job as 80 normal rounds in modern warfare. And russia does not have anything equal to that.
If one wanna be generous one can say that they have a bad copy of the old copperhead rounds which USA have begun to replace with modern better precision ammunition such as excalibur and BONUS.
@@nattygsbord 👏👏👏
"Best" my ass. The SAM-2s were obsolete long before Linebacker 2, and the Soviets didn't supply the Vietnamese with better for fear of Chinese theft.
Amazing timing with the video and the recent good news.
chris is one of the best youtubers in his area of knowledge. and this is a great video. But the only disturbing part for me is the inability to call linebacker an indiscriminate terror bombing, thus massacre and a war crime. one bomb droped by another country to western soil qualifies as drama and attackers are seen nothing but monsters. Such a beautiful content ends up, because of the discrimnative soft language Chris uses, as a piece of western bias... it is sd to notice this absolute bias and western style hand washing... why such a harsh and dramatic language while talking about people who are burned in owens and silent murmuring when talking about burning people with air droped bombs???
Western bias, like the Hue Massacres, where the Viet Cong murdered thousands and no one ever talks about it. Or all those placed into “re-education camps” after the war ended? Western bias, yeah, sure.
Algorithm.
It would have been good to mention the civilian losses. I understand that it isn't your specialty, but covering an 'operation' whose goal was literally to kill civilians without discussing the aftermath is just wrong.
Unless my understanding is mistaken, Linebacker 2 targeted military and infrastructure. Civilian casualties were mostly a sideffect of bombing infrastructure. And with "only" over a 1000 civilians killed, if that was one of its purposes they did a piss poor job at it.
@@andresmartinezramos7513 The civilian death toll was over 2,300 in addition to over 1,300 injuries (Based on the book Rain of Fire by John Morocco). There were multiple strikes at Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi, resulting in the death of 28 doctors and nurses. Other hospitals, schools, and civilian housing (over 5,000 of them) were also hit and demolished.
Civilians are definitely the target since most of the bombs were dropped on population centers. The only reason why the death toll wasn't higher was because the majority of the population in the area also fled to the countryside but since carpet bombings were so severe and indiscriminate thousands died anyway.
@@cuongle7990 I checked Wikipedia (I know) and it cites Rain of Fire by John Morocco for the figure of 1,624 civilians killed. But still, even 2500 deaths are not that numerous when considering the scale of the bombing, which I agree did hit civilian populations. However, that does not mean that Linebacker 2 was an operation "whose goal was literally to kill civilians"
But to back up the idea, Linebacker dropped 20000 tons worth of bombs resulting in 2000 civilians dead.
That is in contrast with operations launched against civilian targets (and not just civilian targets but they were also part of the objectives) This are Wikipedia numbers for their respective bombings and the Blitz one is an aggregate.
Dresden day 1, 3900 tons of bombs for 25000 dead
Tokyo "Meeting house", 1510 tons 100000 dead
The Blitz + V1 + V2, 12000 tons 30000 dead
Leipzig 4/12/1943, 1400 tons for 1800 dead "This is a small number for such a heavy attack"
Civilian death2 were limited given the scale of the inferno. That does not happen if you are actively trying to bomb civilians.
@@andresmartinezramos7513 If you're making a comparison to other bombing campaigns, then death per tonnage is more important.
Hanoi in the 1970s had an area of over 2000 km2 and a population of around 400,000 people (70% of whom fled the city). If you use Dresden as an example, that city was 400 km2 with around 600,000 people in the 1940s. That's 5 times the area with 2/3 the population. Haiphong and surrounding cities were also targeted.
Linebacker II killed more per tonnage than many of your examples, so civilians were targeted more often, not less.
@@cuongle7990
Dresden , 25000 dead / 3900 tons of bombs = 6.41 dead people per ton
Linebacker 2, 2000 dead / 20000 tons of bombs = 0.1 dead people per ton
Each ton of explosives killed more than 60 times the people in Dresden than it did in Hanoi. I did the math.
"death per tonnage is more important" That is what I did, I just ordered the factors the other way around. But that just gives you the inverse of the fraction.
As for the population density. Thinking in terms of death rate times the sparsity of bombs
Dresden , (25000 dead / 600000 people) * (400km2 / 3900 tons of bombs) = 0.00427 dead by area per person per ton
Linebacker 2, (2000 dead / 400000 people) * (2000km2 / 20000 tons of bombs) = 0.005 dead by area per person per ton
So around the same when giving the absolute best chance you can get. But...
This is while assuming incorrectly that those 2000km2 of Hanoi are even representative of the urban area of the city, most of it probably being farmlands. For example a country with a population density of around 200 people/km2 is Italy as a whole, not it's urban centers. At the time, North Vietnam with a population of 23.8 million and a land area of 158000km2 had a population density of 150 people/km2.
Note in edition:
"death rate times the sparsity of bombs"
Is equivalent to
"death rate times divided by the density of bombs"
Again a matter of using your preferred fraction or it's inverse
They both equal dead by area per person per ton
Edit2
I fucked up one extra cero where there shouldn't have been.
Posting this on the day after Kissingers death and not mentioning his role is certainly an interesting choice..
I appreciate that this may not be obvious but you surely realize that videos do not get produced within 2h. The script was completed months ago, while the video had been finished a few weeks ago and the date was locked in some time ago with the sponsor.
@@MilitaryAviationHistory Hold up, so this was just a coincidence all along? I'm actually surprised
Boring talk on front end. Confusing talk about political factors.
Well, you blew that one fast. It wasn't the SA-2 that gave us problems during Linebacker, it was SA-3. We already had SA-2 beat by the late 60s and the Ruskies brought in the SAM3. I was ECM fighting the SAMs for SAC.
BTW, we also had the SAM 3 beat by 72 until they came up with a countermeasure to our countermeasure and it only took us 2 weeks to come up with a countermeasure to their countermeasure to our countermeasure. I got to help with that.
We were beating their SAMs so bad and hitting our targets so well that, instead of firing their SAM missiles from the cities out into the jungles, they moved their SAMs out into the jungle and started firing towards the cities so their missiles would fall on their people and then took pictures of their dead people to blame our Buffs, while we were bombing industrial areas and not residential areas. The wonderful Hanoi Jane (Jane Fonda) helped them push those lies.
I remember one intel picture of a father, mother, and their two kids lying dead in their bedroom floor with a big piece of white metal next to them and the Commies saying they were killed by one of our bombs. Bull crap. Their SAM3s were white and none of our bombs were white and a 500 pound bomb leaves a crater almost a block wide so there would have been nothing left of that bedroom. They were killed by a piece of a SAM3 that fell on their house into their bedroom, which doesn't leave much of a crater.
You have to understand that, when one of their SAM3s reached maximum altitude and ran out of fuel, it automatically detonated, sending the missile parts plunging to the ground. That is clearly what killed that family.
I almost forgot, we (ECM) had the SAM3 radars beat so bad that the Vietnamese had to start putting out spotters to locate Buffs heading towards Hanoi, they would radio back the location, altitude (using geometry), direction, and time so the next line of spotters could help determine speed so they could estimate when our Buffs would be in a certain target area. When it was time, the SAMs just fired a bunch of missiles in what we called the "shotgun effect", hoping they would hit something. We had them beat really bad for them to use ye ole "poke and hope" warfare.
We only lost 15 Buffs. Hey, commies lie. When was the last time commies told the truth about anything?
At that time we called the Buff "rolling thunder" because that is what those bombs sounded like with a string of detonations. Better than 80% of the Buff missions for Linebacker were B-52D models flown out of Guam.
We devastated North Vietnam so bad they were forced to sign the Paris Peace Accords in February 1973. In 1975, the Democrat Part passed a treason bill (Afghan Joe was a big part of that) that gave South Vietnam to North Vietnam and then proclaimed that the US Military lost the war and everyone has believed that lie since.
BTW, I worked the last two bombers to shoot down fighter planes. They were both B-52D models; one is in a museum somewhere and the other one is at the entrance to the Air Force Academy in Colorado. They have a big red star on their vertical stabilizers. They shot down MIG21s with quad 50s or four 50 caliber machine guns sticking out the butt of the Buffs. They shot them down over Hanoi during Linebacker II.
Oh yeah, most of those SAM operators and MIG pilots were Ruskies but the commie media wouldn't admit it.
I don't care what you left academe historians tell you. I fought that fight. I only decided to watch this to see how inaccurate their lies would be. You are just telling us what they told you.
I also worked the Wild Weasels when they were flying thuds and the 555 fighter squadron out of Udorn. By the end of the war, our fighters had a kill ration of 12 to 1.
No SA-3 were online in the AO during linebacker II. Also "Forced to sign the peace accord" on terms that the North Vietnamese had laid out prior to the operation is truly one of those "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" if there was ever one.
Man, this has to be the most American comment I've read in a long time... and not in a good way.
Thanks for clearing up the things and yes I knew that US forces lost relatively few B-52 and the guns on the bum was quite effective. Very true the commies always lie. A corrected if I may: the US troops wasn't losing the war in itself, it had lost confidence fighting a country that couldn't care less about the soldiers and veterans that fought in Vietnam. Forgive me if I'm expressing my opinion....
Thanks for your service...
Australia here a viet vet usa stated south viet army were lame we didnt trust them some were kit carson scouts australia didnt think much of south vietnamise army elan seems same problem in afghanistan and be warned dont want same in taiwan if imperial china invades
B52 losses seem accurate 20+ ?? usa and australia lost very large numbers of a/c in vietnam it was a extremely hostile enviroment
"Viet Cong Minister of Justice" 🤣
Russia only dreams of having these capabilities! 😁
it's really wired how it's consider that the US lost in Vietnam, but linebacker 2 brought the north crawling back to the negotiation table and signed the Paris peace accord in 73 essentially ending the war on what can only be describe as a US victory since the south was still free and the north field all it's pre war objectives
then the north just waited for an anti war congress to be elected in 74, and when they were sure the US would fail on it's promise to help the south they just invaded
All for a failed attempt at "containment" of communism and millions of dead Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese, it's all colonialism still we are an imperial power and we suck.
And interesting too how the North reeled in it's sponsors to supporting them to finish off what remained of the ARVN while the latter fought a losing battle with the loss of supplies after US withdrawal of support. Makes one wonder though how different things would be if ARVN is still armed and supplied properly like their adversaries
@@alwayscurious3357 no doubts on what they could've achieved with greater continued support with the ARVN having notable exemplary units like their rangers
Had to apply pressure. What can't be overlooked is "linkage" , detente with the Soviet Union and opening China, plus signing significant arms limitation treaties in 72, these were intended to be mutually reinforcing, pulling support from Vietnam and getting the peace talks back on track. Where additional pressure was required, as was often the case, the B52s were sent in. A notable period in US foreign policy where ideology took a back seat and it became possible to extract from a war that had no objectives, no plan ro achieve victory. The more ideological people get, the more innocent people tend to lose their lives. Of course, it couldn't last, Carter poked his nose into Soviet domestic policy and a new arms race was kicked off.
@@alwayscurious3357nor much in all liklihood, the ARVN, aside from sime special forces units, had very little conception why they were ther3 other than to draw a salary. It melted away, the request from Soutth Vietnam wasnt military resupply is was to return the bombers, direct action that Congress had finally cut off
I was in service then. Everthing stank. But N.V. got real srious bout the peace talks chop chop. Hate to say but sometimes u have to break the eggs.😮
Rot in hell Mike.
get some
North vietnam came out winners regardless
Except the treaty the North signed was the same treaty they ALREADY agreed to, and not the one the US was trying to force on the North. It's almost as if the bombing is just to cover a defeat...
Beautiful