These are some photos from a recent playtest game for a mini-campaign in my upcoming CY6:JA book Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club: The Navy over North Vietnam during Rolling Thunder 1965-68. Since this was a playtest I just used my standard 1/600th TD aircraft.
The Navy player has to allocate his forces over the three linked game. Suddenly missiles and fuel (remaining afterburner count) become much more critical. They have 12 F-8 and 2 A-4s with the Walleye bombs. He has to meet the F-8 count for each game. He can try to protect his damaged or missile less F-8s by allocating fresh ones, but there are not enough F-8 to always use fresh ones.
The history is as follows:
The Navy had developed a new weapon the AGM-62 "Walleye" glide bomb, it was the first truly "Fire and Forget" smart bomb, and its standoff ability allowed the weapon to be released beyond the reach of localized defenses. One of the USS Bon Homme Richard attack squadrons VA-212 (Rampant Raiders) was the combat operational evaluation squadron for the "Walleye" and they had used it with great success on March 10th against barracks at Sam Son. The Raiders' Skipper; Cdr. Homer Smith was an Annapolis engineering graduate and had become a true believer in the "Walleye".
In 1967 the Johnson Administration had expanded the list of authorized targets to include power plants, in hopes of forcing the North Vietnamese into negotiations. Power plants were hit in Than Hoa and Haiphong, but one power plant was untouchable; Yen Phu located near Hồ Tây (West Lake) on the northwestern end of Hanoi; a densely populated area. The power plant could not be hit with a conventional strike, for fear of massive collateral damage.
When the "Bonnie Dick", pulled off the line for an R&R period at the end of March, President Johnson was in Guam for a meeting with his commanders in Vietnam. Cdr. Smith used his liberty time to fly to Guam and have a meeting with President Johnson, and propose a way to hit Yen Phu. Johnson listened and approved it personally. The plan was to hit the plant on May 15th but the weather would not allow the strike to proceed.
The "Walleye" required very specific environmental conditions (bright sunlight and high contrast shadows) to function correctly, so Cdr. Smith had to choose a time and approach route that would setup the optimal conditions for the strike. The weather was finally right on May 19th 1967 and coincidentally Ho Chi Minh's birthday, the "Bonnie Dick" launched the raid, with Cdr. Smith leading the strike himself. The best approach was from the west, with an afternoon arrival time, so that the shadows would be their strongest. To arrange this Smith planned an unusual route for the strike, it would ingress south of Hanoi, behind the "Sawtooth" mountains, then turn northeast and make its run into the target. Egress would follow the same route out. What made this route particularly unusual was that the approach would use the USAF's Route Package 6A airspace; in doing so, Smith plan (intentionally or not) would sow the seeds of confusion in the Vietnamese Air Defense – Air Force's (AD–AFV) Ground Controlled Interception (GCI).
The strike would consist of only a single flight of two A-4s each equipped with a single "Walleye"and a specially modified drop tank that carried a VCR to record the Walleye data, and a heavy escort of twelve F-8s from the two fighter squadrons on board the Bon Homme Richard; VF-211 (Checkmates) and VF-24 (Red Checkertails). Each fighter squadron flew a different type of F-8; VF-24 had the slightly less powerful clean wing F-8C, a pure day fighter, while VF-211 flew the all weather F-8E. The decision was made that VF-211 would provide the TARCAP, and VF-24 flak suppression.
VF-24's flak suppression aircraft could carry only a single AIM-9D, as three of their missile stations would be loaded with LAU-33/35 "Shotgun" Zuni pods. To ensure the safety of the flak suppression flight, VF-24 armed 3 of its 6 Crusaders with nothing but Sidewinders, so the role of flak suppression really wasn't strongly addressed. The strike would pay a price for not having enough flak suppression. The AD–AFV had gotten wind of the impending attack from interrogating POWs, and had shifted a number of AAA guns to defend the plant. The Hanoi power plant was defended by no less than eighteen six gun batteries of 57mm guns and three batteries of 14.5mm AAA machine guns mounted on armored cars. But the standoff ability of the Walleye would allow the Navy aircraft to avoid the worst of it.
It had been luck of the draw that VF-24 was assigned the flak suppression on this mission; on other missions VF-211 flew in the same configuration as VF-24. The F-8E had wing stations that the F-8Cs lacked, that could carry the LAU-10 Zuni pods, leaving the missile stations open, but not all F-8E squadrons where equipped or trained with these pods. According to Cole Pierce a pilot in VF-211, prior to the cruise, they had not trained with the LAU-10 pods, and he wasn't sure that they had brought the hardware to use their wing stations on that cruise. VF-211's CO Cdr. Speer "…was a fighter pilot first and a bomber pilot never."*
The strike launched in rare clear weather, topped off their fuel and headed inland. Using the "Sawtooth" mountains as cover the strike vanished from the AD–AFV CGI. About the same time that the Bon Homme Richard strike disappeared, a strike from the USS Kitty Hawk was going "Feet Wet" to strike the truck parks in Van Diem just south of Hanoi. The AD–AFV may have though the missing strike was part of the Kitty Hawk strike group. When the Hanoi strike group, reappeared over the mountains it was flying inbound from the southwest of Hanoi, from the direction that USAF strikes typically arrived. The size of the strike was too small to be an Air Force raid, so the AD–AFV assumed the group was a USAF MIGCAP group trolling for MiGs, in front of a yet-undetected F-105 bomber group. Vietnamese Peoples Air Force (VPAF) MiGs were vectored to intercept and instructed not to engage, but to trail the fighters, to setup an attack on the soon to be following F-105s. When the Kitty Hawk strike on Van Diem commenced, the AD–AFV was caught in a bind, should they divert fighters to the attack going on, or to keep them in check to block the F-105s? In the end they split the difference and sent a few fighters to interfere with the Van Diem attack setting up the scenario "Kitty Litter".
As the Hanoi strike group continued towards the power plant through ever increasing flak and SAMs, the AD–AFV realized too late that this was no fighter sweep, but an actual strike, and that there were no following F-105s. At that point they released the MiGs to engage the strike, and a swirling melee erupted over western Hanoi, setting up the scenario "When You Care Enough…" The MiGs arrived too late to prevent the launch of the Walleyes, but the fight continued as the strike group tried to egress Hanoi, setting up the scenario "We've Gotta Get Out of this Place". The raid's Walleyes did some damage to the power plant, but did not fully destroy it. The Navy would launch two more strikes on May 21st and June 10th to finish the job.
At the end of the day the raid was successful, but at a high cost. The Navy lost 2 F-8s to flak and SAMs; both pilots were captured and spent the remainder of the war as POWs. A third F-8 was damaged so badly in a dogfight that it was forced to recover on another carrier, and was written off. All of the remaining aircraft of the strike were damaged, but recovered safely. The VPAF took it in the teeth, losing 4 MiG-17s to Navy fighters, and an unknown number damaged by their own flak. The beating the VPAF took from the Navy, combined with VPAF losses to the Air Force in the month of May would force them out of the skies for the next 6 weeks.
1 Response to question via F-8 Crusader Association list and email from Cdr. Cole Pierce VF-211 ('66-'69)
This is from "Kitty Litter" the A-6 didn't quite make the clouds before the MiG gunned it down. He tried to play the table edge instead of dragging the MiG into the F-8s, it didn't work out so well for the Navy a lost A-6 and a captured crew.
These next photos are from "When You Care Enough…"
The cloud of angry MiGs chasing the strike group
An early gun pass over West Lake
The furball erupts, as a F-8 launches a sidewinder at a twisting MiG
The MiGs burn to break through chasing the A-4s.
The F-8s had nearly run the table on flak sites knocking out 4 of 5 medium flak (57mm). One A-4 got its Walleye off and put it into the power plant. But the second was in danger of being gunned down by the breakaway MiGs. But instead the sole surviving medium flak reach out and touched it. Shooting it down, and killing Cmdr Smith. With the loss of Smith, the remaining F-8s and A-4 fled south to escape Downtown.
We have the last game to play but things look grim for the Navy as they now try to get away…