There was a clear difference in the character of these two wars. In South Vietnam, the operations were less complex and markedly less hazardous. The AA fire was not as intense, and there were no surface-to-air missiles or fighter aircraft. As a consequence, the strike groups consisted principally of weapon carriers. There was no need for flak suppressors or fighter cover. If a friendly plane were shot down, it was highly probable that the crew would be rescued because of the presence of friendly ground forces in the vicinity, the absence of a generally hostile civilian populace, and the immediate availability of land-based rescue helicopters.
The air war in North Vietnam was a different story. Strike groups had to penetrate what at that time was the most intense and modern air defense environment in existence. The strike groups faced fighters, high-and medium-altitude surface-to-air missiles, and highly accurate automatic weapons fire at low altitudes. Strike groups had to be accompanied by fighter cover, “iron hand” anti-SAM pouncers, electronic jammer planes, antiradar missile shooters, and rescue units held in reserve for covering and rescuing downed aircraft crews. Most of the shootdowns of friendly aircraft occurred in the North, and although in many cases survivors were able to eject and land safely in their parachutes, only a small percentage of the surviving aircrews were rescued. The air defense environment encountered by rescue helicopters was simply too intense in most cases to allow them to penetrate any distance at their slow speeds and low altitudes into North Vietnam.
Except during the several bombing pauses that occurred during the war, the principal combat effort of the carriers was in the air war in the North. However, some tactical air effort from the carriers was still routinely scheduled for the in-country war in South Vietnam.
Carrier operations into North Vietnam were conducted from the vicinity of Point Yankee in the Gulf of Tonkin. Operations into South Vietnam were carried out from an area in the southern Gulf of Tonkin called Point Dixie, and carriers conducting the air war in the South were said to be at Dixie Station. Because a carrier at Dixie Station was covering an operating area entirely inside South Vietnam, which was more easily accessible by the South Vietnamese air force, the U.S. Air Force, and the Marine Corps squadrons based in-country, there was not a high priority for the carriers to operate on Dixie Station except during one of the White House — mandated bombing pauses in North Vietnam.
Dixie Station was a normal assignment for a carrier and its air wing newly deployed to the western Pacific, breaking in for a month under combat circumstances that were not as intensive as those encountered up north. It became Seventh Fleet policy to assign newly arrived carriers in Vietnam to thirty days at Dixie Station so they received their baptism of fire in a lower-intensity combat.
Normally, at least three carriers were on Yankee Station at all times. Sometimes the number went up to four or even five, as carrier arrivals and departures overlapped. On at least one occasion, late in the war, there were six carriers simultaneously conducting operations at Yankee Station. With the minimum of three carriers at Point Yankee, targets in North Vietnam could be covered twenty-four hours a day.
The large-deck carriers, Forrestal and subsequent classes including the Enterprise, normally carried a complement of eighty to ninety tactical aircraft, consisting of two squadrons of F-4 Phantoms, two squadrons of A-4 Skyhawks, and one squadron of A-6 all-weather Intruder bombers. In addition, the carrier operated helicopters, airborne tankers, reconnaissance aircraft, and early warning E-2 aircraft in its organic air wing.
The Phantom squadrons flew combat air patrol (CAP) armed with air-to-air missiles such as the Sidewinder and Sparrow III. On armed reconnaissance and strike missions, the F-4s carried bombs—500- or 250-pound low drag — or air-to-ground missiles. The Skyhawks also flew strike and air-to-ground support missions with bombs and air-to-ground missiles, visually locating their targets and aiming their weapons.
The A-6 Intruder squadrons had the only real capability for all-weather attack. In this role they proceeded individually to their targets, bombing by radar. The A-6 was also the main element in the major daylight strikes, known as Alpha strikes, because of its heavy load-carrying capability. The A-4s and F-4s also flew night missions using flares to locate and illuminate targets for visual attacks by bombs and rockets. The A-6s operated alone at night, while Skyhawks and Phantoms worked in pairs. Special missions such as radar busting used A-4s or F-4s with antiradiation guided missiles.
The carriers employed two modes of flight operations, cyclic operations and alpha strikes. During cyclic operations, the Enterprise would launch twenty-five to forty aircraft in a single “event” every hour and a half during its twelve-hour assigned period of flight operations, conducting eight cycles of these events during each flying day. The first event would launch, then the second event would launch an hour and a half later and the aircraft from the first event would immediately land. Planes from the first event would be refueled and rearmed, their pilots briefed, and the planes launched again as the third event — just before the second event landed. Launch and recovery times were staggered among the carriers during the day to keep planes over the target area at all times. The largest number of aircraft normally committed to a single target in one strike in cyclical mode was twenty to thirty.
Alpha strikes were used to put a very heavy weight of ordnance on a single target complex in a very short period of time, either for the shock effect or because of a need to penetrate very heavy defenses, as in the case of attacks in the vicinity of Haiphong and Hanoi. On the alpha strike, virtually all available aircraft on the carrier were organized into a single strike group. Alpha strikes were usually coordinated with the other carriers on the line and, often, with major U.S. Air Force strikes coming out of Thailand. On occasion as many as five or six carriers could be available on the line due to the overlapping of carriers arriving and departing. Then five alpha strikes could pound a single target complex within an hour, with the Air Force coming in before and after the Navy effort.
Alpha strikes were usually scheduled by the higher authorities in Saigon or Hawaii. Sometimes Washington would call for heavy effort against Hanoi or Haiphong for political reasons perhaps unknown to the commanders in the field. This could cause difficulty for both the Air Force and Navy air commanders because the headquarters in Washington did not have a feel for the weather conditions prevailing in the area to be attacked at that particular time or period of the year. With so many planes in a restricted air space at one time, bad weather could really cause problems.
In 1967, the weather conditions over North Vietnam had been exceptionally unfavorable for combat air operations through the entire winter and into the spring. The prevailing conditions were low visibility at the surface and multiple cloud layers up to twenty thousand feet, with cells of high turbulence and rain embedded randomly in the air mass. All echelons of command, from the White House to the flag officers at sea, were frustrated at the almost total lack of effectiveness of the air campaign because of the persistent bad weather. Washington wanted results, and the afloat commands were trying to respond. The all-weather capabilities of the Intruder were being taxed to the maximum, but most of the radar-significant targets were on the proscribed list — the commercial industrial plants near Hanoi or the port facilities at Haiphong, for example. The military targets that were eligible were either fleeting — such as trucks — or SAM sites and troop-marshaling areas that did not present significant radar targets. So it was natural that whenever there appeared a possible break in the weather, the squadrons launched as many sorties as possible. Only too often the conditions were dangerously unfavorable. A plane flying in the overcast is a sitting duck for a SAM. To avoid a missile, the pilot must be able to see it, because to evade a SAM that is homing requires that the pilot outmaneuver the missile by a hard five-G turn at the last minute.