Archie to SAM: A Short Operational History of Ground-Based Air ...

AIRMEN VERSUS GUERRILLAS
Linebacker II
On 14 December President Nixon gave the North Vietnamese
72 hours to get back to serious negotiations “or else.” The “or
else” was a three-day bombing offensive against North Vietnam,
which Nixon ordered that day and then changed on 19 December
to an indefinite period. The object of Linebacker II—the code
name for the December bombing—was to restart negotiations. 40
US Airmen returned to the home of the SAMs, AAA, and MiGs
on the night of 18 December. 41 For three consecutive days, the
script was about the same. First, F-111s began with attacks on
airfields and various other targets at 1900, kicking off an operation
that lasted about nine and one-half hours. 42 About 20 to
65 minutes later, the first of three waves of B-52s unloaded their
bombs. The second wave followed about four hours later and
was in turn followed by the third wave about five hours later.
Each wave consisted of 21 to 51 B-52s supported by 31 to 41
other aircraft, and each wave flew exactly the same pattern:
the same heading from the west and, after a sharp turn after
bombing, the same exit heading to the west. There were also
daylight attacks by Air Force, Marine, and Navy aircraft.
The bombing rocked Hanoi, but the aircraft losses jolted the
Airmen as well. During the first three days of the operations,
12 aircraft went down, not a large number and seemingly
bearable; however, B-52 losses—three on the first night and six
on the third—were shocking. B-52s were, after all, America’s
primary strategic nuclear bomber, the foundation of the airbreathing
leg of the Triad. Up to this point, the US Air Force
had lost only one B-52 to enemy fire, although 17 had been
lost to other causes. While the overall B-52 loss rate of 3 percent
of effective sorties on the three missions appeared acceptable,
the loss rate on the third mission was 6.8 percent, and
the nine B-52s lost to this point in Linebacker II represented
almost 5 percent of the 170 to 210 B-52s the US Air Force had
deployed in Southeast Asia and over 2 percent of the 402 in
service in 1972. 43 This was reminiscent of the summer and fall
of 1943 over Germany.
The B-52 losses highlighted a number of problems. First, the
B-52 fleet was of mixed quality, consisting of 107 of the older
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