Read Online Vietnam II: A War Novel Episode 2 (V2) by C.R. Ryder - Free Book Online
Authors: C.R. Ryder
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the whole time. At this point Scott interrupted and whispered something in my ear.
“What about Bao Cao?”
“Yes. There were prisoners there during the war. I spent a year there in ’81. I never saw any American there though.” Pham said. “If there are any Americans left they would be in Hanoi.”
We bid Pham goodbye and I talked with Scott and Todd.
“He says that if anyone is still alive they are in Hanoi.”
They nodded and looked grim.
“We don’t have the go to head that far north yet.”
“What do we do?”
“There’s something close by we are going to look into first.”
“Got the word on SATCOM that one of the high altitude U2 birds found possibles in a reeducation camp here in the mountains. It was abandoned and now it’s got a big signal.”
“On top of that they’ve got pictures of Caucasians at the camp.” Scott explained. “We’ve been ordered to check it out.”
Lieutenant Colonel Carol Madison
Air Force Intelligence Officer
Pacific Command Operations Center
The first trouble was between Dickens and me. He was using old school naval doctrine in the joint world and it needed a little rewriting.
At the outset of air war planning, the Navy proposed that, as in Vietnam and counter to new joint doctrine, it be allotted separate aviation attack sectors. The Navy knew land and carrier operations are very different. For example, carrier operations depended on weather and tides that frustrated precision operations. However, it is reasonably acceptable to insist on precise timing of land base launch aircraft.
The Air Component commander rejected the Navy’s proposal. The joint planning required integrating all air operations over Vietnam, whatever their origin. Separate agendas and redundant planning between the major air arms, Air Force and Navy, had contributed to air combat ineffectiveness in V1. Cohesion was the order of the day. With solid joint integration, for example, aircraft from both services could fly apparently random patterns, converging only at their targets. The Vietnamese air defense would find it impossible to coordinate their resources to deflect the air campaign. The targets would be for all intense and purposes undefendable. This type of attack and the required coordination was not easy. It required very detailed planning. Flight paths, radio frequencies and call signs would all have to be set in advance of the first aircraft going wheels up.
The Air Force took the lead with planning as they had trained for exactly this sort of operation for years, and it had the computers needed to set it up. Once the Air Operations Center (AOC) plan had been devised, individual units were given their detailed orders. That was easy enough on land. However, the carriers proved to be the weak link. For all the mobility carriers offered they lacked a solid communications channel to receive their orders and the computers to break them down into requirements for individual aircraft; the Navy and Air Force had never planned to fight this way. They were about to fight a joint war with weapons made for a more divided military.
The Navy would later fit all the carriers with high-capacity satellite links and better computers capable of receiving and processing joint air plans, but for now we had to go to war with what we had. Of course none of that did us any good at the time and the only solution was for printed copies of the plans to be faxed to Andersen or Clark and delivered by hand, where the plans were developed.
All the work for a sophisticated planning system was misspent. The PNAF never really challenged coalition dominance of airspace. The elaborate coordination system was never needed. If anything the AOC shot themselves in the foot as the lengthy planning cycle precluded attacks on pop-up targets such as PNAF aircraft which the Vietnamese government kept moving around airbases on a 24-hour cycle. The
“What about Bao Cao?”
“Yes. There were prisoners there during the war. I spent a year there in ’81. I never saw any American there though.” Pham said. “If there are any Americans left they would be in Hanoi.”
We bid Pham goodbye and I talked with Scott and Todd.
“He says that if anyone is still alive they are in Hanoi.”
They nodded and looked grim.
“We don’t have the go to head that far north yet.”
“What do we do?”
“There’s something close by we are going to look into first.”
“Got the word on SATCOM that one of the high altitude U2 birds found possibles in a reeducation camp here in the mountains. It was abandoned and now it’s got a big signal.”
“On top of that they’ve got pictures of Caucasians at the camp.” Scott explained. “We’ve been ordered to check it out.”
Lieutenant Colonel Carol Madison
Air Force Intelligence Officer
Pacific Command Operations Center
The first trouble was between Dickens and me. He was using old school naval doctrine in the joint world and it needed a little rewriting.
At the outset of air war planning, the Navy proposed that, as in Vietnam and counter to new joint doctrine, it be allotted separate aviation attack sectors. The Navy knew land and carrier operations are very different. For example, carrier operations depended on weather and tides that frustrated precision operations. However, it is reasonably acceptable to insist on precise timing of land base launch aircraft.
The Air Component commander rejected the Navy’s proposal. The joint planning required integrating all air operations over Vietnam, whatever their origin. Separate agendas and redundant planning between the major air arms, Air Force and Navy, had contributed to air combat ineffectiveness in V1. Cohesion was the order of the day. With solid joint integration, for example, aircraft from both services could fly apparently random patterns, converging only at their targets. The Vietnamese air defense would find it impossible to coordinate their resources to deflect the air campaign. The targets would be for all intense and purposes undefendable. This type of attack and the required coordination was not easy. It required very detailed planning. Flight paths, radio frequencies and call signs would all have to be set in advance of the first aircraft going wheels up.
The Air Force took the lead with planning as they had trained for exactly this sort of operation for years, and it had the computers needed to set it up. Once the Air Operations Center (AOC) plan had been devised, individual units were given their detailed orders. That was easy enough on land. However, the carriers proved to be the weak link. For all the mobility carriers offered they lacked a solid communications channel to receive their orders and the computers to break them down into requirements for individual aircraft; the Navy and Air Force had never planned to fight this way. They were about to fight a joint war with weapons made for a more divided military.
The Navy would later fit all the carriers with high-capacity satellite links and better computers capable of receiving and processing joint air plans, but for now we had to go to war with what we had. Of course none of that did us any good at the time and the only solution was for printed copies of the plans to be faxed to Andersen or Clark and delivered by hand, where the plans were developed.
All the work for a sophisticated planning system was misspent. The PNAF never really challenged coalition dominance of airspace. The elaborate coordination system was never needed. If anything the AOC shot themselves in the foot as the lengthy planning cycle precluded attacks on pop-up targets such as PNAF aircraft which the Vietnamese government kept moving around airbases on a 24-hour cycle. The
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