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00:00December 1972, after nearly a decade of fighting in Vietnam, American forces decided to make
00:11one final push for victory. For 11 days and nights, U.S. Navy and Air Force bombers, led
00:19by the venerable B-52, flew around-the-clock missions, raining over 15,000 tons of bombs
00:27onto North Vietnam. The operation, known as Linebacker II, brought the communist war machine
00:36to its knees. The men and machines of Linebacker II didn't just fly bombing missions. They
00:44ultimately flew America out of the Vietnam War.
00:57For four years, the U.S. Air Force and Navy pummeled the North Vietnamese in an intense but limited
01:26bombing campaign known as Rolling Thunder. The goal, to stop weapons and supplies flowing
01:36from the north to the communist Viet Cong guerrillas in the south, and to send a clear message to
01:42their North Vietnamese sponsors.
01:57For three years, pilots of fighter bombers like the Air Force F-105 Thunder Chief and the Navy's workhorse,
02:03the A-4 Skyhawk, constantly bombarded a heavily defended North Vietnam.
02:12Air crews routinely braved one of the most formidable anti-aircraft defense networks ever
02:19amassed, while at the same time operating under the most restrictive rules of engagement in history.
02:25The list of binos was at least ten times longer than the B-sums, okay? There'll be none of this,
02:34there'll be no of that, there'll be none of this, there'll be none of that. We couldn't fly over
02:38Hanoi. If you went in, you could only fly certain routes. It was asinine. You know, you'd fly by and
02:46they're unloading boats in Haiphong, and you'd say, oh, well, okay, we'll dodge those later.
02:51The list of things you couldn't do was enormous. The restrictions only made U.S. missions more
02:56dangerous. While American airmen were able to evade North Vietnamese air defenses,
03:01they were hardly making a dent in the men and material going to support the Viet Cong. Bombing
03:06restrictions might have been scoring points in the political arena, but it was ultimately costing
03:10America and its allies victory on the battlefield. Rolling thunder is a hell of a good idea. It just
03:17never was applied rationally. We'd start it, we'd stop it, we'd start it, we'd stop it. Every time it
03:22looked like we were doing some good, then we'd go into another bombing halt so you could repair
03:27everything we'd hit. And there was no continuity. You know, we didn't take out all the bridges in one
03:32area. We didn't take out all the anything in one area. We'd jump over and hit that, jump over and hit that,
03:37jump over. Finally, with negative reports dribbling in from the front, President Lyndon Johnson decided
03:52to halt bombing operations above the 19th parallel. Rolling thunder was over. U.S. forces began a steady
03:59withdrawal from bases in South Vietnam and Thailand. The Air Force withdrew more than 400 aircraft, while the
04:06Navy reduced its number of carriers offshore by half.
04:16The situation was grim. The ground war in South Vietnam was heating up.
04:23Hundreds of U.S. Airmen shot down during rolling thunder were being held as prisoners of war in various
04:29North Vietnamese compounds. Many of the downed pilots were from B-52 crews.
04:44In an unprecedented move, B-52s, the lumbering bomber, had become the plane of choice for
04:52close air support of ground troops throughout rolling thunder.
05:03Meanwhile, smaller, lighter bombers, typically better suited for the low-altitude ground bombing
05:08missions, flew defensive missions against the North Vietnamese. The switch in roles was unusual for U.S.
05:15troops in Southeast Asia. Many questioned the decision. Ultimately, though, the B-52's firepower
05:22went unmatched against the rather primitive defenses of the Viet Cong.
05:29The controversial decision to use the giant bomber won some support when many ground troops credited it
05:35with saving their lives. A big strategic bomber for close air support is surprising, but that's how we
05:47used the airplane in those days. We're talking about dropping bombs within hundreds of meters of friendly forces,
05:56and it worked.
06:12Until 1971, the air war targeted the main corridor for supplies flowing to communist forces in South Vietnam.
06:19The Ho Chi Minh Trail was not one road, but a network of paths, streams, and trails that ran 1,500 miles
06:28through the mountains between Laos and South Vietnam. It was the lifeline for communist forces in South Vietnam,
06:34delivering over 60 tons of supplies daily.
06:44In around-the-clock missions, U.S. forces dropped more bombs on the trail than were dropped during the
06:49entire Second World War. Sadly, with little effect.
06:57Finally, bombing was called off, giving the North Vietnamese further opportunity to increase their strength.
07:06Early on, the North Vietnamese weren't much of a threat. Their air defenses were limited to 36 MiG-17s,
07:13about 1,500 anti-aircraft guns. Within just a few years, the situation had changed dramatically.
07:22The North Vietnamese Air Force was equipped with nearly 250 MiGs, many of which were MiG-21s,
07:28the Soviet Union's latest fighter. Also, they had developed an extensive and well-coordinated ground-based
07:35defense network. Their new defenses included hundreds of radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns
07:45and SA-2s, Soviet surface-to-air missiles that could travel at Mach 3 up to 60,000 feet.
07:52Now, it was clear that North Vietnamese forces were becoming steadily more aggressive,
08:08moving its forces further into southern North Vietnam and Laos.
08:11To stop the offensive, the United States built a noose of air assets throughout the region.
08:24The Navy positioned planes and pilots everywhere. Carrier fleets were reinforced. Hundreds of Air Force
08:31F-4 Phantoms and B-52s, plus additional support aircraft, were positioned at bases in South Vietnam,
08:38Thailand and Guam. Despite ongoing peace talks between Hanoi and Washington, on March 29, 1972,
08:53North Vietnamese forces mounted a large-scale ground invasion into South Vietnam.
09:02The invasion caught the unsupported and poorly prepared South Vietnamese forces completely off guard.
09:08In response, President Richard Nixon launched Operation Freedom Train, a massive bombing campaign
09:17against southern North Vietnam in an attempt to halt the flow of men and supplies heading southward.
09:24By early May, an angered President Nixon called on the full force of U.S. air power, expanding Freedom Train
09:31into an unrestricted attack on targets throughout all of North Vietnam. The first Linebacker campaign had begun.
09:42Unlike Rolling Thunder, during Linebacker, the Nixon administration allowed military commanders the freedom
09:49to throw around to throw around the full weight of their forces. Rules of engagement were relaxed. Pilots no longer needed permission to hit targets that had previously been considered politically sensitive.
10:01The primary weapons of the new campaign were also dramatically different than those employed during Rolling Thunder.
10:10One of the most significant changes was the addition of laser-guided smart bombs.
10:15They were carried by fighter bombers like the F-4 Phantom and big bombers like the B-52.
10:22That is where the laser-guided weapons had the greatest impact. The extraordinary accuracy of the
10:33new bombs and the B-52's internal targeting system allowed strike forces to accurately hit sites that were close to
10:41religious buildings, civilian areas, and POW compounds.
10:52Strike forces bombed oil and fuel storage sites, air bases, seaports, communications lines, and rail yards,
11:01targets that they had been waiting and wanting to strike for years.
11:11The intensity of the American bombing campaign forced North Vietnam back to the negotiating table.
11:21On October 8, North Vietnam accepted nearly all U.S. proposals for peace.
11:28By late October, it appeared imminent that a peace accord would be signed in Paris.
11:33On October 27, 1972, a bombing halt was once again placed on targets above the 20th parallel.
11:41Ending the first linebacker campaign.
11:49As had happened in the past, the North Vietnamese interpreted the bombing halt as a sign of weakness
11:56and took the opportunity to advance their position on the ground.
12:01Peace talks resumed in the beginning of December, but the North Vietnamese returned to their original,
12:06unyielding stance. And before the year was out, the talks had collapsed.
12:13In response, President Nixon sent the North Vietnamese an ultimatum.
12:18Return to the negotiation table, or bombing would begin again in earnest.
12:24The North Vietnamese chose not to reply.
12:27Nixon's response was quick and decisive. On December 18, 1972, field commanders received the order that
12:34began the Linebacker 2 campaign. Quote,
12:37You are directed to commence a maximum effort. Repeat, maximum effort of B-52 strikes in the Hanoi Haiphong
12:44areas. Unquote. The new campaign would be called Linebacker 2.
12:49American planes and pilots are engaged in Linebacker 2, the most massive bombing campaign of the Vietnam War.
13:03For the first time ever, unrelenting firepower would be aimed at the heart of North Vietnam, Hanoi.
13:09They're only restrictions, civilian areas, religious sites, and POW compounds.
13:17While Linebacker 2 was planned as a three-day maximum effort strike, U.S. Airmen were instructed
13:24to be prepared to carry on beyond three days, if necessary.
13:30All the bets were off in this December campaign. We went after everything. We bombed all the airfields.
13:37We bombed barracks. We bombed missile sites. We bombed radar sites. We bombed dock areas.
13:46We bombed everything there was. We were all bombing downtown. There were no prescribed targets that we
13:52couldn't strike. During this operation, U.S. Airmen faced an even more daunting task than their
14:04predecessors. North Vietnam had improved its MiG fighter force and the skill of its pilots.
14:15Hanoi and Hai Phong were protected by almost two dozen SAM sites, each of which contained up to six
14:21missile launchers, adding up to hundreds of SA-2s.
14:25The fighters would come up and try to make us jettison our loads or whatever. The SAMs were to support the
14:35fighters or to shoot us down. And then if they could drive us down into the lower altitudes, then their
14:42AAA would come up on us. They were very good. I mean, let's face it, they had quite a long time to
14:47perfect their system. We knew that it was going to be a lot of SAM missiles. We were briefed that we
14:55expected MiGs and we were vulnerable, quite vulnerable. The B-52s hadn't really gone that far north and
15:03hadn't experienced that heavily defended targets that we were planning to go to.
15:08During the 11 days of Linebacker 2, no fewer than 1,300 SAMs were launched at U.S. strike aircraft,
15:22making the Hanoi, Hai Phong area one of the most heavily defended cities in the world at that time.
15:38When the SAMs had come up through the overcast, you'd see a great big fireball and then
15:45little lights pop out through the top as they were coming up. It was, I don't know how else to explain
15:52it, it was the best 4th of July I've ever seen in my life in December. The primary strength of
16:00Linebacker 2 lay in the more than 200 massive B-52 bombers that flew out of Anderson Air Force Base in
16:07Guam and Yu Tapau Air Base in Thailand. B-52's radar-guided bombing systems were immune to weather
16:14restrictions, allowing them to bomb accurately even during the worst weather of the monsoon season.
16:21Approaching their targets silently at 30,000 feet in the air, the B-52s could hardly be heard from below.
16:27For the North Vietnamese, the first sign of a B-52 attack was often the impact of bombs falling down
16:36around them. Depending on which base the B-52 mission launched from, crews faced a variety of
16:43hardships. If they left from Guam, just getting to the action took almost 12 hours and required multiple
16:50refuelings. While the flights from Thailand were much shorter, they were more frequent, placing the crew in
16:58harm's way more often. Also, many crews had never flown in combat before, making the missions even more
17:07stressful. We hadn't really gone to what we call combat, where the pressurization changed. The voices
17:16change from a normal voice to a very low pitched, and you really had to know the individuals in the
17:23aircraft and know their voices to be able to know who was talking. And that was one of the things that
17:29we weren't sure what was going to what was going to happen when we did actually go.
17:41On December 18th, the first night of linebacker two, 129 B-52s and 15 F-111s
17:48departed in three waves for seven targets in the Hanoi target complex.
17:51The B-52s employed many of the same tactics that had been used throughout Rolling Thunder.
18:06The bombers approached Hanoi in streams, cells of three following cells of three,
18:11at roughly the same heading and altitude.
18:16At the same time, orders were given not to make any evasive maneuvers,
18:21so as to preserve the electronic countermeasure protection of the cell formation.
18:25As a result, B-52 bomber crews were sitting ducks for the deadly North Vietnamese SAM arsenal.
18:35I'm sitting back there trying to jam the radars and try to deter their tracking capability,
18:43and also trying to see where the missiles are. And we didn't have the luxury of keeping,
18:48being able to maneuver away from as much as the fighters could. And so it was a new experience
18:54for us having so many missiles shot at us at one time.
19:01During the three-wave attack, no fewer than 200 SAMs were fired at the approaching B-52s,
19:08destroying three of the giant bombers.
19:20Following the tragic losses of day one, tactics were altered to allow evasive maneuvers while traveling
19:27in and out of the combat zone. Time separation between cells was also increased to four minutes,
19:34allowing each cell additional room to maneuver.
19:41They lost aircraft the first night, and so the threat briefing was very intense.
19:46And we expected to lose people just because of the number of missiles that were fired,
19:54and the number of us going up there. The attrition was going to be significant because we were going
19:59up in numbers that somebody was going to get hit, so we didn't know what was going to happen.
20:03The changes paid off. No B-52s were lost on the second night. But U.S. forces soon discovered that
20:15while their crews were learning more with each mission, so too were the North Vietnamese.
20:20A fact made more clear on the third night of linebacker two.
20:24The first wave to fly that night was made up of 33 B-52s. Six of the bombers successfully targeted
20:39the Gialam train repair yard outside of Hanoi.
20:46The rest of the crews were not as fortunate. The remaining B-52s encountered intense SAM fire
20:54as they struck the Yen Vien rail yard. No less than 130 missiles were launched at the remaining
21:02aircraft. The North Vietnamese downed three of the big birds. The second wave of the evening returned
21:10without a loss. But the third wave again encountered tremendous resistance. Three more B-52s were lost to
21:18SA-2 missiles. All of which were hit while making their post-target turn. One of the most impressive
21:25things that I saw in Vietnam was a B-52 get hit in the belly by a SAM and to spiral down through the clouds.
21:34It lit up the whole sky because there were a couple of stratus cloud layers at altitude. And the 52
21:42actually got hit above one of those layers. So it was like a big neon light up above the clouds lighting
21:49up the clouds. And then as it spun through the layers of clouds you could see the the aircraft burning
21:55illuminated by its own its own flame. A total of nine B-52s were lost on the first three nights of
22:05linebacker two with the heaviest losses coming on the last night. While linebacker two did not come as a
22:18surprise to the North Vietnamese, the intensity of the attacks was more than they had anticipated.
22:25Even so, the North Vietnamese learned quickly that the B-52s had an Achilles heel.
22:35The giant planes were equipped with electronic countermeasure pods designed to jam North Vietnamese
22:41SAM and anti-aircraft radars. When the bombers were flown in close formation, the entire cell was
22:48protected by an electronic shield. But if the formation was broken, the shield was weakened significantly.
22:57What we were supposed to do was supposed to do gentle maneuvers and much more effective. And the idea
23:05was that everybody stays together. If you have somebody do an evasive maneuver, he breaks away and
23:11now you have three separate targets. You isolate yourself. You lose what's called mutual protection
23:18of the jamming from the aircraft together. The ECM shield reached its weakest point during the post-target turn,
23:29immediately following the bomb drop. The maneuver rendered the B-52's ECM equipment useless, leaving
23:36the planes electronically unprotected. To make matters worse, only half of the G-model B-52s had been outfitted with
23:44the latest ECM pods, which afforded substantially better protection. This, coupled with multiple
23:52inoperative ECM transmitters, proved to be both costly and fatal. While equipment problems contributed to
24:00B-52 losses, the greatest factor was still tactical. The previous three or four nights, whenever we had
24:09taken the heavy losses in B-52s, they had come in what's called same day, same way. You'd come in in a long
24:17string of maybe six or eight, nine, ten airplanes, and it would be real easy for the guys with the SAM
24:23sites to calibrate their missiles. Frustrated by mounting losses, many crews began to press commanders for
24:35tactical changes based on experience gained in combat. We were getting hit pretty hard, so
24:44we were asking for some changes. We would like to be able to do some other tactics that hadn't been
24:51allowed for. We also said we'd like to go straight out to the ocean. At least if you hit, you're coasting
24:58out to friendly territory. And I think that we got about 75 percent of what we asked for.
25:07B-52 crews planned their missions with great care in an attempt to minimize risk
25:13and maximize the efficiency of the strike force.
25:19The tactics developed by the crews offered greater protection.
25:23They would enter the target area at different headings and actually cross each other's flight path.
25:29Furthermore, cells would fly at different altitudes.
25:33One wave was coming, going east to west, and the other wave was going west to east.
25:38And I always hoped that we were on top of the other wave, not underneath.
25:44Finally, they decreased the angle of bank during the post-target turn, reducing the deadly loss of
25:56electronic protection. Now, their only choice was to test the new tactics on the battlefield and hope
26:04that they proved effective. While the B-52s were the muscle of the Linebacker 2 campaign,
26:20the massive bombers received extensive support from a vast array of Naval and Air Force airpower.
26:26Perhaps the most potent and effective support came from the crews of Air Force F-111s.
26:35And a major coordinated strike like Linebacker 2 was, the B-52s were the strong point. Everything
26:43else was in support of that. And the F-111s, what we did during that time was bomb airfields and keep
26:49the MiGs down so they couldn't get up and harass the B-52s.
26:57The General Dynamics F-111s suffered a disastrous initial deployment in 1968.
27:03Several F-111s were lost due to failures in the aircraft's terrain-following navigation system.
27:10With the kinks ironed out, an improved F-111 returned to combat with a vengeance as a nighttime,
27:16all-weather bomber. Within 33 hours of deployment from their home at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada,
27:27some 50 F-111s were fully operational for Linebacker strikes. Their crews, eager to prove themselves and
27:35the advanced capabilities of their aircraft.
27:45We were flying at 200 feet at very high speeds at night and in the weather.
27:49It was still, to a qualified crew member, a guy that had trained in that airplane,
27:53it was the safest way to go. I would rather go in a battle in that airplane than any other airplane
27:57I've ever flown. The F-111 was put into action that took full advantage of its impressive ordinance
28:09load, superior navigation system, and all-weather capability.
28:19Flying fast and low, her crews were able to successfully strike some of North Vietnam's
28:25most heavily defended targets, including MiG bases, airfields, and later in the campaign, SAM missile sites.
28:38Flying at such a low altitude would seem to pose tremendous risk to these airmen.
28:44But speed, combined with the low-level night capability, made the F-111 invisible to North
28:50Vietnamese gunners. Unable to find a target to guide on, rendered the SAMs virtually useless,
28:58even over the formidably defended Hanoi and Haiphong.
29:06There was an airfield not too far to the northeast from Hanoi that I hit one night about 3 in the morning.
29:13Unfortunately, one of our other troops had hit it just a little while before and woke them all up and got them mad.
29:22There was firepower galore stuff coming up all over. I never saw so much in my life.
29:29And the most spectacular was a quad 37. These are four 37-millimeter
29:34fire guns mounted together. And the tracers formed just about a solid red
29:44beam of light, four beams that lasted a long ways. In fact, those four beams went over my nose.
29:53And I can picture that right now, all that stuff coming up and these red beams going right across
30:00my nose. And I still marvel that nothing hit me.
30:09The newly renovated jet was also equipped with electronic countermeasures to jam enemy radar.
30:16However, the crews rarely employed them, fearing that the ECMs would highlight rather than hide them.
30:24Instead, they stuck to old-fashioned flying maneuvers.
30:27When the bombs came off, you could see the flash of the bombs hitting the ground,
30:32because you're only at a couple hundred feet when you release the bombs.
30:36And the flash would light up your airplane just like the flash from a flash camera.
30:40So you immediately did a left bank, let's say, when the flash went off, and then immediately reverse it.
30:48Because then they fired in the direction of where they saw you from the flash,
30:50because it would blind them as well as you.
30:58Initially, the F-111 bombers made pre-strikes against air bases in order to prevent Migs from
31:05making it into the air. Towards the end of linebacker two, the F-111's primary role became
31:11nighttime strikes against SAM sites that would otherwise have been aimed against the B-52s.
31:17Okay, it looks good. Okay. And we're in target, and I'm picking up...
31:21The SAC people loved us. We diverted a lot of the firepower of the North Vietnamese
31:28against us, and we went after their SAM sites and blew the hell out of a few of them
31:33that would have been shooting missiles at their B-52s. And in fact, SAC at one point said that
31:38they weren't going in unless the F-111s were going in. So I don't think that was probably true,
31:43but it made us feel good anyway.
31:59The U.S. Strategic Air Command believed that North Vietnamese MiGs would be the greatest threat to the
32:05B-52 strike force during linebacker two.
32:16As a result, over half of the Air Force F-4 Phantoms were dedicated to patrolling for MiGs.
32:23The idea being to kill before being killed. Fortunately, the threat was vastly diminished by
32:29the end of the campaign compared with the previous air strategy, Rolling Thunder.
32:37While it was a relief not to face off with enemy planes, it was also draining. Patrol missions
32:43became long stretches of flying, rarely disrupted by the thrill of a dogfight.
32:48If we didn't expend, if we went up there and we didn't blow our tanks, then what we would do is
32:55we'd go back out, refuel, and go up with the next strike force. And if again we didn't expend,
33:02we'd go back out, refuel, and go in with the final. They had three waves that night. So I took off about
33:07midnight and I was landing at 7.30 in the morning.
33:18With the MiG threat out of the way, crews still faced a deadly opponent. B-52s were particularly
33:25vulnerable to SAMs. Over 100 SAM missile launchers surrounded Hanoi and Haiphong. Most SAMs were
33:35electronically guided by highly skilled radar operators, while others were ballistically
33:41launched in hopes of a lucky strike. The giant B-52s were equipped with their own ECM protection,
34:00but the sheer number of SAMs in the sky renewed the need for the Wild Weasels, specially equipped
34:06F-105s designed to find and destroy SAM sites. The role of the Wild Weasels changed little from
34:15the days of Rolling Thunder to Linebacker II. Using upgraded F-105Gs, F-4s, and vastly improved radar
34:24homing missiles, Wild Weasel crews resumed the cat-and-mouse game of SAM suppression that they
34:30had begun years earlier. Well, you just protect the airplanes that you're out there to protect. I mean,
34:36I had a wave of B-52s coming over my shoulder and my electronic warfare officer and myself tried to
34:43place ourselves between the surface-to-air missile site and the people we were trying to protect.
34:49Even when we ran out of missiles, we'd turn our nose towards an active site and chances are they'd go down.
34:57They were not one to argue with a weasel pointing its nose at the site.
35:02At night, B-52s and F-111s dominated the skies.
35:19During the day, various Air Force and Navy aircraft carried out strike missions.
35:26Initially, the daylight strikes were hampered by bad weather.
35:29But once the skies cleared up, strike forces unloaded laser-guided bombs on North Vietnam's power plants.
35:42A steady rain of bomb raids pummeled North Vietnamese air defenses almost continually until Christmas.
35:49The U.S. was gaining ground.
35:51Finally, at midnight on Christmas Eve, after seven days of continuous bombing, President Nixon called a 36-hour ceasefire.
36:12U.S. air crews desperately needed a rest. They hoped the ceasefire would be the beginning of the end.
36:18Perhaps they had bombed Hanoi back to the negotiating table.
36:25For most American crews, the break from constant combat conditions was a welcome change.
36:31They needed time to rest their bodies and heal their wounds. The war had been costly.
36:39The losses were taking a toll on their morale.
36:43In the downtime, confined to their air bases, crews confided in one another.
36:48The crucible of combat forged a bond that would never break.
36:54Like my crew, I guess all the crews were pretty much the same.
36:58Made up of six different personalities, six individuals.
37:03You know, you're living together for five months at a time.
37:08You're doing everything together. And so it's almost like a family.
37:18The family of airmen and their relatives back home were put to the test in this particularly anxious
37:24situation. While peace was on the horizon, they still didn't know when or if they'd ever make it home.
37:33Every day was the same over there for us. But for the wives back here,
37:41who just had to sit and wait. It seemed like every Monday night,
37:48somebody got a visitor to let them know that their husband wasn't coming home.
37:54There was another objective for linebacker two, to secure the release of the hundreds of U.S.
38:02prisoners of war. So many of them were fellow airmen who had been shot down over North Vietnam
38:08during rolling thunder. To the men imprisoned on the ground, the sound of bombs raining down all around
38:15them was the sound of freedom. It restored their hope that maybe they would make it home alive.
38:25Captain John McCain was one of those men, imprisoned for more than five years after being shot down over
38:32downtown Hanoi. Perhaps the most spectacular thing I've ever seen in my life was the first night of the B-52
38:40raids. The entire sky would be lit up when a B-52 would be hit, falling from 30,000 feet with
38:47thousands of gallons of fuel on fire, the surfaced air missiles filling the sky. Incredible and just
38:56unbelievable. And it was also clear to us that we were going to get out because the Vietnamese simply
39:05could not sustain that kind of punishment. I had one POW friend named Ted Gostas and he was held in
39:12isolation for the entire time he was captured until the very end when he was released. And his isolation
39:19stopped all senses except for hearing. And he said, I heard the B-52s coming and I knew what was going to
39:29happen before it even happened. And he could actually hear the whisper of those jets from 30,000 feet,
39:3615 miles away or so coming toward Hanoi. And he swears this to this day, that he could hear them and he
39:42knew the war was over. While many airmen taking part in linebacker two were grateful for the break in
39:50hostilities, many felt that it did little more than give the North Vietnamese a chance once again
39:56to repair and restock their defenses. There were a lot of unhappy crew members when they had that
40:04Christmas ceasefire because we knew exactly what was going to happen and it sure did.
40:13Attempts at diplomacy failed again. The North Vietnamese decided to gamble with what little they had left.
40:21Nothing could have prepared them for what was coming. While American diplomats worked the bargaining table,
40:33military planners prepared to unleash the most devastating air attack thus far.
40:37Phase three, the final phase of linebacker two began on the day after Christmas in 1972.
40:55The largest single wave of B-52s ever amassed flew to 10 targets in the Hanoi and Haiphong area.
41:02They dropped nearly 10,000 bombs in a matter of minutes.
41:07Finally, it appeared that the attack might break the North Vietnamese forever. On the ground in Hanoi,
41:16it was the POWs who witnessed the fear in their captors' eyes.
41:21Well, we heard, of course, the sirens go off. We saw the missiles flying and the sky lighting up,
41:28the whole ground shaking as the B-52 bomb loads struck the ground. They were using our prison as an offset
41:37point for their radar bombing. And it went on for hours and hours and hours, all night long, night
41:46after night, for about 10 days. And the guards were shook, the guards and the interrogators. You could
41:53tell they were frightened. For the first time, they felt the strength of the United States air power.
42:04Fear didn't paralyze the North Vietnamese SAMs. More than 150 missiles were fired, taking down two B-52s,
42:12the final B-52 losses of the Vietnam conflict.
42:18By the 10th day of bombing, with the SAM threat and anti-aircraft defenses significantly diminished,
42:25some began to wonder if more strikes were necessary. They seemed to accomplish the desired goal.
42:34Their targets were destroyed. In fact, some airmen suspected that the North Vietnamese
42:42had run out of missiles to fire.
42:47They launched a lot of missiles in the first three days of the 11 days.
42:51And then things got pretty quiet. And the rumor was that we had run them out of missiles,
42:57which I believe, because they had launched a ton of missiles. And by Christmas Eve, the mission we
43:03flew on Christmas Eve, we hardly heard an electronic beep and there wasn't a single missile shot and no
43:10sign of MiGs. So it was real quiet. We could have been flying over Kansas.
43:16On the final day of Linebacker 2, 60 B-52s from both Thailand and Guam flew their final mission
43:28against North Vietnam. Only a handful of randomly fired SAMs were launched at the aircraft.
43:38Within 24 hours, President Nixon called a halt to bombing north of the 20th parallel.
43:47It had taken 1,300 strike sorties and tens of thousands of bombs to get to this point.
43:58It had cost the United States dearly in men and machinery. 26 aircraft were down. Many more airmen
44:06were killed or captured. From the B-52 contingent alone, nearly three dozen crew members became POWs.
44:14Some were later repatriated. 29 would never return home.
44:23Linebacker 2 demonstrated unrelenting military might. But its psychological impact was impossible
44:31to calculate. The B-52 bombings shattered the urban centers of Hanoi and Haiphong,
44:37and any sense of security in the hearts of its people.
44:45The psychological aspect of the B-52s, I think, was in literature,
44:52is proven that it was a tremendous psychological weapon to the ground forces of North Vietnam and
44:57the Viet Cong. As far as actually being a tremendous factor in the ending of the war,
45:03I think the Christmas bombing is a testament to that's exactly what brought the North Vietnamese to the
45:11table as quickly as it did. And in my opinion, it's something that should have been done in 1967.
45:18Within a month of the campaign, North Vietnam signed a ceasefire agreement in Paris, officially ending
45:28American involvement in Vietnam. For the United States, the most important aspect of the agreement
45:35was the release of over 600 American prisoners of war, many of whom had spent more than six years
45:42in such notorious jails as the Hanoi Hilton.
45:50We finally did what we should have done many years ago and many lives ago. We should have done this.
45:56We want to get our POWs out of the North. We want to get them back. And we want to get out of
46:01Vietnam with honor, so to speak. And we were happy and we thought we had done that. At least in the North,
46:09we had done our part of it anyway. The all-out bombing campaign, mounted by the crews of B-52s,
46:18F-111s, and other support aircraft during the 11 days of Linebacker II, managed to achieve what 10 years
46:26of bitter conflict had failed to reach, a peace agreement between the United States and North
46:32Vietnam. But it was a bittersweet resolution for the many U.S. servicemen who would forever wonder
46:40if the war could have ended earlier.
46:51They took us through the war, and ran a tent at the time.
47:05Famous talk in front of the U.S. servicemen who impeded the world to pass.
47:12I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.
47:16I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.
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