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colocated with the 7th Air Force's operations and
intelligence staffs. He wanted the SIGINT staff to
be part of the overall activities of the 7th AF. He
was afraid that if NSA or the NRV controlled it,
the center would be diverted from its primary
support mission. Backing up Triantafellu was the
DSAF assistant chief of staff for intelligence and
the NSA Pacific representative, Brigadier General
John Morrisorr."
C:~//~I) NSAfought Triantafellu's plan, claiming
that the problem was not the idea, but the
realities of manning the center. Filling the proposed
thirteen billets, especially in an operational
mode, would require a large number of highly
trained SIGINT analysts, a commodity in short
supply throughout the Indochina theater. NSA
won out and in March 1966, the 7th AF's SIGINT
Support Group (SSG) was formed at Tan Son
Nhut Air Base. Even though the SSG was within
the operational compound of the 7th AF, and that
unit was its primary customer, the SIGINT group
remained under the operational control of the
NRV. It did not take long for SSG operations to
become diverted from its principal mission of
support. By the middle of
1966, the SSG began publishing
SIGINT product
which had nothing to do
with 7th AF daily operations,
and the direct support
effort fell to a secondary
role. By 1967, the 7th
AF had to bring its complaints
about the SSG to
NSA. By the end of the
year, the SSG had
dropped almost all of its
reporting mission and
resumed its main role of
direct support'"
Task Force 77. The navy maintained two or three
attack carriers at a location known popularly as
Yankee Station, a point at sea near the DMZ
between the two Vietnams. The navy controlled
its strikes through a series of radar picket ships
and shipborne controllers known collectively
under the callword of Red Crown. The carrier
strikes were centered on the coastal regions of the
DRV and the narrow panhandle south of the
nineteenth parallel. The First Marine Wing of the
Third Marine Amphibious Force flew from bases
in the north of the RVN. Occasionally, they would
strike targets in the southern region of the DRV.
(D) Finally, there was the Strategic Air
Command (SAC), which conducted the famous B­
52 Arc Light strikes over both North and South
Vietnam. These bombers flew from Andersen Air
Force Base, Guam, Utapao, Thailand, and
Kadena, Okinawa. SAC's bombers attacked various
"chokepoints" along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in
the DRV and Laos. The Arc Light missions also
included tactical strikes against suspected communist
troop concentrations during ground campaigns
such as Khe Sanh.
(D) In addition to the
Air Force, flying from the
Gulf of Tonkin were the
aircraft of the D.S. Navy's
(V) F-105 ThunderchiefS in formCltion over Vietnam
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