Air University Review, September-October 1967

Battles are Bloody Maneuvers: A View from the Cockpit

Major John P. O’Gorman

To a tactical fighter pilot, the nuclear bomb is a crude weapon. With it, precision delivery is not needed. Even if you miss your target by a thousand feet, you will have destroyed your objective. Not so with the old “iron” bomb.

Because of the precision required, delivery of a conventional bomb and destruction of enemy aircraft in the air constitute an art—an art that we almost lost between World War II and the present conflict in Vietnam. We relearned it in Korea, but we may still be in danger of losing it because we do not practice the art to its fullest extent.

It may be a terrible thing to say, but from the point of view of the professional tactical fighter force it is fortunate that Vietnam did not happen five years later. By then, where would the experienced pilots of World War II and Korea have been? Many would have been lost in the early 1970s to reserve dates of separation. Some would have been grounded by the annual grounding boards. Many more would have been relieved of their annual flying requirements. Prior to Vietnam, a whole generation of fighter pilots had grown up being trained primarily in nuclear weapons delivery. Their ability to deliver a nuclear weapon anywhere in the world was outstanding. The art of flying fighters in a conventional engagement, however, remained with those who were trained for Korea and World War II.

We have not been completely saved by the Vietnam revival of iron-bomb warfare. Because of the devastating power of a hydrogen weapon, the training requirement to employ masses of weapons has been neglected. Our enemy in Asia employs masses to fight his wars—if not on the battlefield, then in support of guerrilla forces—because this is his greatest strength. If permitted the opportunity, he will again employ masses of aircraft. We will then need squadron and wing commanders capable of handling masses of fighters, as we had in World War II and Korea: men who can direct and employ 50 or more airborne fighters; flight leaders and wingmen who can handle their flights and themselves in a sky full of aircraft, whether attacking enemy aircraft, an industrial complex, or a bridge. There is need for control-tower operators who are experienced with more than eight aircraft inbound for landing, and there is need for instrument approach systems that can handle large numbers of returning aircraft.

Let us look at the training since Korea, the problems we face in Vietnam, and the tactics that have evolved through a combination of both. Let us also examine what we must do to preserve a fighter force that can fight both nuclear and conventional wars.

Actually, training began in 1952 with the tailwheel-equipped T-6. Many younger pilots had flown only aircraft with tricycle landing gear, and some difficulty was encountered by them in mastering the more-difficult-to-land tailwheel-configured aircraft. A-1E gunnery training at Hurlburt Field, Florida, was almost the same (except for equipment and location) as the Phase I and II gunnery taught at Luke AFB, Arizona, and Laughlin AFB, Texas, in the early and mid 1950s. The tactics taught at Laughlin from 1953 until it became a pilot training base in 1956 were basically the same as those used by the A-1E over South Vietnam and the F-105 over North Vietnam. A-lE air combat tactics were not as extensive as those taught in the F-84 and T-33, but air-to-ground tactics are essentially the same. Other than the codification and naming of maneuvers and the introduction of electronic countermeasures (ECM), tactics air-to-air and air-to-ground seem to be the same as those used in Korea. Violent maneuvering against a surface-to-air missile (SAM) is not dissimilar to the in-place break used by the F-84 against the Mig-15 in Korea.

Training the Vietnamese in gunnery at Bien Hoa was very similar (except for the combat environment) to training foreign students at Laughlin AFB. A language barrier existed as it had with the French, Yugoslavs, Turks, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, and others. Although small in stature and short on flying experience, the Vietnamese were equal in ability and courage to other nationals, including Americans.

The missions flown at Bien Hoa when not training Vietnamese pilots were combat strike missions. Before sufficient forward air controllers (FAC) were introduced to cover all of South Vietnam, missions were flown as they are over North Vietnam. The squadron was ordered to hit targets at certain geographical coordinates. The mission was planned and briefed by the flight leader. The target was specifically identified by description or photographs. The flight then navigated to the target, identified it, and hit it. Sometimes the A-lEs were controlled by Vietnamese FAC’s, flying small spotter aircraft called O-1Es and using smoke grenades to mark the target. The language problem made this somewhat difficult, but the essential words—”You see my smoke,” answered by “I see your smoke,” followed by “You hit my smoke”—were easily understood.

Air power is most effective against a concentrated target. The Viet Cong dispersed in the jungles of South Vietnam are not ideal targets for air strikes. When they are forced to concentrate for defense against our ground troops, air strikes become very effective: their location becomes known, our weapons become more effective, and friendly ground casualties are greatly reduced.

To win their war militarily in the south, the Viet Cong (VC) must mass for battle. One of the approaches is to overrun a Vietnamese fort or army camp. These forts protect villages, plantations, and other more extensive areas. When the VC concentrated their forces to take one of these positions, they again became a very good target for air power.

Because masses of troops made good targets for air strikes, the VC switched to the cover of night attacks. This, in turn, brought our flare ship into prominence.

The flare ship has become essential for night fort defense. C-47s and C-123s loaded with million-candle-power flares are on ground or airborne alert. They proceed immediately to a fort under attack and begin dropping flares. The flares alone are sometimes enough to dissuade the Viet Cong. The light from the flares assists those in the fort to see the attackers, who are usually dressed completely in black. But the primary purpose of the flare ships is to light the area so the strike fighters can operate using the same tactics they use in the daytime.

As the war in the south became more sophisticated, jets were introduced, navigation was aided by TACAN (tactical air navigation system) and radar vectors, and American FAC’s controlled almost all air strikes. Although the incident rate of mistaken targets has always been extremely low, relieving the strike pilot of responsibility for identifying the target greatly simplified his mission. The forward air controller became in many ways the most important pilot in the war.

In the summer of 1965 the A-1Es were called upon to escort rescue helicopters, known by the call sign of “Jolly Green,” into North Vietnam. The first flight was deployed out of Bien Hoa to support F-105 operations for one particular high-risk strike. It was composed of five pilots, one mechanic, one armorer, and four aircraft. In addition to covering that one mission, the flight continued to operate out of a forward air base for 20 days until relieved by a complete detachment. The A-IE flying the rescue mission is known as “Sandy.” The combination of Jolly Greens and Sandys has become a very highly developed combat rescue team.

When a pilot is downed in North Vietnam he is initially capped by the remainder of his flight. A flight of four Sandys and two Jolly Greens, on ground or airborne alert, immediately proceeds in the direction of the downed pilot. Two of the Sandys go ahead, because of their somewhat greater speed, to locate the downed pilot. The other two stay close to the Jolly Greens to protect them from ground fire. If the reaction is quick enough, the Sandys arrive at the scene before the cap flight runs out of fuel The fighters point out the location of the downed pilot to the Sandys, who orbit in the vicinity until the arrival of the Jolly Greens. Ground fire that threatens the Jolly Greens at the rescue scene or en route is suppressed by the Sandys, either with their own weapons or by acting as FAC’s for other fighters that have been diverted for the rescue. A-1Es in search of downed aircrews have penetrated through flak and missiles to within 15 miles of Hanoi.

A-lEs are also employed as FAC’s in out-of-country missions, where the missile threat is not great but the ground fire or range is too great for the O-1s. The heavy tropical foliage lends itself extremely well to camouflaging supply routes and equipment. Whole roads have been covered with foliage and are extremely difficult to see from the air. A-1Es are sometimes assigned the task of finding targets in these areas. Intelligence designates the most likely locations for reconnaissance, and the A-1E pilots acting as FAC’s are given fighters to use on targets they discover. After acquiring a target, the FAC marks it and, by radio, calls the fighters in for the strike.

Missions in the A-1E can be very long. Airborne cover for ground operations has often lasted between seven and eight hours. The unsuccessful search for Smoky 21 (an AC-47 gun ship) required sunup to sundown operations by a flight of four A-1Es for three consecutive days. The pilots took off before dawn, searched for six to seven hours, landed for fuel, food, and water, and were airborne again within 45 minutes. They then searched until dark. This was firing enough for TAC pilots who had at least learned from ocean crossings that it was possible to spend eight to twelve hours in a single-seat aircraft; but it was nearly exhausting for Air Defense pilots accustomed to relatively short intercept missions.

Low-level navigation and nuclear delivery, emphasized since the 1950s at the expense of basic tactics, were unusable. Low-level navigation at 500 to 1500 feet altitude, as practiced for over 10 years in preparation for nuclear penetration missions, did not apply. Real low-level at 50 feet is applicable against SAM’s and flak, but there is as much difference between pilotage at 50 feet and at 500 feet as there is between pilotage at 500 feet and at 5000 feet. Without practice and training at 50 feet, that altitude could not be used in combat. The over-the-shoulder nuclear bomb delivery maneuver was never designed to deliver a 750-pound bomb against a 10- by 30-foot bridge. This is not to say that the nuclear mission filled by fighters was not essential or that the training and tactics for that mission were not excellent. Rather this is a plea that we not again lose sight of basic fighter tactics.

We should never forget that flying and employing a fighter is an art. It is not the same discipline that is required to sit in a silo and press a button to fire a nuclear missile. Like any art—music, painting, surgery—delivering weapons with a fighter requires continual and extensive practice. To maneuver an aircraft at speeds between 300 and 600 knots under a great variety of cloud heights and visibility conditions cannot be mastered with a set of books and a dozen or so training missions on an air-to-ground range. This art of flying fighters requires continued and extensive practice.

Part of the training for nuclear penetration missions is in-flight refueling. This training is excellent and applies to our missions in Vietnam.

The missions up north for the F-105 regularly require in-flight refueling. This becomes routine and, other than the fatigue it adds to the mission, is no great problem as long as the weather is good or refueling locations can be changed if the weather is bad. It is during marginal conditions that refueling really gets “interesting.” This has always been true on deployments and ocean crossings, and it presents no difficulty in Southeast Asia that cannot be handled by the flight leaders with imaginative cooperation of the tanker crews.

On a mission deep into North Vietnam, the strike pilots do not have the advantage of a FAC to locate and mark their targets. Their navigation has to be precise and accurate. The flak is too intense for them to orbit the target. They approach from a planned direction so that they can immediately recognize the target. In this particular war, small errors have a far-reaching effect. Bombing in North Vietnam has been compared to delicate surgery. The degree of competence required to interdict a small bridge adjacent to a populated area under marginal weather conditions while receiving heavy ground fire would be no mean achievement for any profession. Strict compliance with orders to strike a particular target and no other and to confine the bombs to the exact target area generates considerable professional pride.

Tracking time for a dive-bomb pass is the time available, after the aircraft is established in a dive, to fly the fighter so as to place the pipper (an optical aiming device) in the proper position in relation to the target so that the bombs will hit the target. This time amounts to between six and nine seconds whether you are flying an F-105 or an A-1E. The biggest problem is to estimate the effect the wind is having on your aircraft. The aircraft must be constantly adjusted to compensate for this wind so that the pipper arrives at an estimated position relative to the target that will allow for the continued wind effect imparted to the bomb by the aircraft at release. These calculations are made simultaneously with power adjustments, so that an exact airspeed is reached at an exact altitude while maintaining an exact dive angle.

Those six to nine seconds are available only when conditions are optimum. If, because of ground fire, missiles, or weather, optimum conditions do not prevail, the six to nine seconds can be reduced well below six. Bombs have been successfully dropped on very small bridges along the Red River in North Vietnam when haze had reduced air-to-ground visibility to not much more than a mile. This reduces the tracking time to something between one and two seconds.

Dive bombing is only one of many modes of delivering weapons from a fighter. There is skip bombing, rocketry, strafing with machine guns or cannon, nuclear delivery, air-to-air guns and rockets, and other deliveries using radar. At one time the Tactical Air Command required qualification or familiarization in ten to fifteen different weapon delivery modes.

The tactics used in the Vietnam war seem to be the same as those used in Korea, with an element of evolution considered. The most notable innovation in aerial warfare in Vietnam is the surface-to-air missile, the SAM. Our tactics against the SAM are partly those used against enemy aircraft and partly those used against antiaircraft artillery.

If electronic countermeasures are developed to their logical ultimate (and this may be possible), then fighters could operate as if no electronic threat existed. Where ECM are short of this goal, tactics are developed and modified to counter any electronic threat.

Higher speeds and the use of air-to-air. missiles may be responsible for some evolution in tactics. But the fighter pilot must still maneuver his aircraft into a position where he can bring his weapons to bear on the enemy, while avoiding placing himself in a position where his opponent can accurately fire at him. Speeds are relative: if the World War I Spad pilot chose to use his then unheard-of speed of about 100 mph to run rather than turn to engage the enemy, no air battle took place. Today, as long as the Migs continue to run, our fighters will continue flying to their target relatively unopposed by the enemy aircraft. We must always be prepared to engage, however, because the enemy does not always choose to run. Our aircraft as well as our training must be the most advanced obtainable.

Looking back, I realize that our training was good. What we learned, we learned well. But the difference between being qualified in, or familiar with, all the different weapon delivery modes and being highly proficient in those modes is time—time for practice and more practice. It is my belief that just a few more hours of practice in delivery of conventional weapons would have made a great difference in the early days of Vietnam.

The art of flying fighters, like any art, can be learned and maintained only through practice. When nuclear weapons are being employed, a high level of this art may not be required; but in a nonnuclear war, because of the requirement to engage the enemy and employ masses of weapons, a high level of this art must be maintained.

Nuclear weapons, because of their extensive destructive power and highly developed systems, do not now require the accuracy and training that are required in the delivery of conventional weapons. Ten percent or less of the training allocated to weapons delivery should be sufficient to maintain proficiency in the actual delivery of nuclear weapons. Only by increasing the amount of training allocated to weapons delivery and concentrating primarily on the various conventional weapons can we maintain this very fine art.

Accuracy in delivery of conventional weapons aft-to-ground must be better developed to reduce exposure to enemy flak and missiles. The greater the accuracy, the fewer restrike missions and the less exposure to enemy ground weapons.

If 90 percent or more of weapons employment training is in conventional or nonnuclear weapons, the greater portion of that time must be in air-to-air maneuvering. This is the most important and most demanding aspect of the art of flying fighters. Its importance is again emphasized with the realization that with conventional weapons we cannot sneak through enemy defenses but must meet and destroy them in the air before our mass of weapons can be delivered.

The expense of maintaining the high state of the art—the level attained in World War II and Korea and now reacquired in Southeast Asia—can certainly be justified by the cost in pilots and munitions to relearn the art for each war. Possibly the shock effect of suddenly employing such an effective force would cause an enemy to capitulate immediately. This is the force required for short-span wars, wars of such brief duration that time is not available to regain the art.

The increase in training, that is, the increase in flying time, must also take into consideration the necessity of employing masses of convention weapons. Some training must be provided in employing squadron or larger-sized groups of fighters simultaneously against the enemy in the air and on the ground.

Remember: conventional war requires the employment of masses of aircraft. The bomb damage from four fighters on a railroad marshaling yard can be repaired before the next train is due—certainly by the next night if masses of labor are employed. The damage done by one hundred fighters becomes a greater problem. If there are one hundred flak guns defending this target their problem is many times greater against one hundred aircraft than it is against four.

To release a bomb from an aircraft diving at a precise dive angle, at an exact altitude, at a certain airspeed (over 500 knots), with release winds of varying velocity, so that it will travel over 4000 feet without guidance and hit within fifty feet of the target, requires practice. To fire rockets, release napalm, and fire cannons under the same exacting conditions so as to hit within an even smaller area requires even more practice. To successfully maneuver one aircraft against another in aerial combat requires as much or more practice than air-to-ground work. But to lead fifty or more fighters against aerial or ground targets and to keep in mind the location of each of these aircraft requires genius as well as practice.

There is danger in practicing this art even under training conditions. Aircraft run into each other and into the ground. But to reduce or eliminate the practice, rather than attack the particular unsafe action, is to reduce or lose altogether the ability to carry on conventional aerial warfare. We must train the way we are going to fight.

It should be said of United States fighter forces as it was of the Roman legions: “Their maneuvers are bloodless battles; their battles bloody maneuvers.”

Hq Tactical Air Command

Contributor

Major John P. O’Gorman (B.S., St. Louis University) is Project Officer for the F-105 Weapon System, Hq Tactical Air Command. In basic and advanced flying training he flew the T-6, T-28, and T-33, and in gunnery training the F-84E. He served as a gunnery instructor for three years, attended the Squadron Officer School, and then was assigned at Bergstrom AFB, Texas, flying the F-84F, and at Bentwaters, England, flying the F-101. While stationed at Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina, flying The F-105B, D, and F, he volunteered to fly the A-1E. Major O’Gorman then served consecutive tours at Bien Hoa, Vietnam, flying the A-1E, and at Takhli, Thailand, flying the F-l05.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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