The Newport News had been radically maneuvering on easterly courses and would soon run out of sea room. To the east was the Île de Norway archipelago, to the northeast the coast of Cat Ba, and to the north the shoals and minefields of Haiphong. It wasn’t known if the P-6s had torpedoes or missiles or both. Torpedoes could be trouble enough as the North Vietnamese craft continued to track along a course that would intercept the cruiser’s retirement path. The situation could become messy.
Then CIC reported a fourth fast attack craft had been detected. How had we gotten ourselves into such a fix?
LION’S DEN
Back in mid-August, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had directed me to plan for a naval gunfire strike, to be identified as Lion’s Den, against military facilities in the Haiphong — Cat Ba area. The targets would include the Cat Ba Airfield, military barracks, coastal defense guns, ammunition dumps, and radars. This operation would be more than the ordinary Linebacker gun strike. Haiphong was about three hundred miles north of the front lines, and as the major North Vietnamese port, it had always been heavily defended. The Seventh Fleet had laid extensive minefields in the channels and approaches to the port of Haiphong on 8 May 1972. Since the mining, the North Vietnamese had considerably strengthened the defenses in the Haiphong area, which now included search and detection radars, coast watcher networks, coastal defense guns, gun-control radar, surface-to-air missile sites, and fire-control direction centers.
The Seventh Fleet staff intelligence officer, in briefing the enemy defensive capabilities for Lion’s Den, advised that there would be no air threat. The Vietnamese aircraft in the area were day fighters with no ability to attack ship targets at night. All intelligence sources seemed to agree that torpedo- or missile-equipped high-speed patrol craft would not be a factor. No fast patrol boats had been sighted or detected in the Haiphong area from overhead photography or communication intercept in several months. Coastal defense artillery would constitute the only real threat to the bombardment group.
As commander, Seventh Fleet, I had some special concerns about Operation Lion’s Den. My personal experience with naval gunfire operations was not lacking. In World War II, as gunnery officer of the destroyer Bennion (DD-662), I had directed heavy preparatory bombardments as well as direct gunfire support for troops ashore at Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Palau, and in the Philippines. At Palau, the Bennion had emptied her magazines three times in one week during the assault on Peleliu. The Bennion had suffered casualties from shore battery fire at Samar and had been next to the Ross (DD-563) when that destroyer had been put out of action by mines during the shore bombardment phase of the battle for Leyte. Most of the guns and ammunition being used for shore bombardment in Vietnam in 1972 were the same as those the Navy had employed in World War II: the 5-inch/38, 6-inch/47, and 8-inch/55.
At that time in Vietnam, all gun-armed major combatants were taking their turns on the gun line. Even the Seventh Fleet’s flagship, the Oklahoma City (CLG-5), a missile cruiser, was being called upon to provide shore fire support with her 6-inch battery every three or four days. There had been no disabling hits and only minor casualties from enemy counter battery fire to the Seventh Fleet cruisers or destroyers so far in Vietnam, although many hostile rounds had been fired.
The Seventh Fleet cruisers and destroyers were conducting gunfire support on a daily basis and generally had a low regard for the danger posed by the North Vietnamese shore batteries. When the fall of shot came close, the ship simply moved or changed course and speed, and the shore battery gunners had to recompute their fire-control problem. The North Vietnamese guns being used for coastal defense were field artillery pieces and not designed to track moving targets. Against fixed targets, though, they had proved to be deadly. The bombardment of the Marine base during the siege of Khe Sanh was convincing evidence. The technique of field artillery is to fire a few rounds at a fixed point, observe the fall of shot, and then adjust the fire in range and azimuth until the rounds consistently hit the desired point. The battery is then said to be registered on the target. When the guns fire again, the initial rounds are on target and the area can be saturated with a devastating effect.
I continued to harbor the nagging worry that if one of our ships were to become immobilized within range of a shore battery, it would take only a few minutes before the artillery would be hitting it consistently. This was the heart of my concern. To reach the targets at Haiphong and Cat Ba, the bombardment group would have to close the shoreline to well within range of the enemy’s coastal artillery emplacements. Although their rounds might lack accuracy against the moving ships, the sheer volume of fire from the large number of coastal defense sites, identified in our intelligence photos, would increase the chances of a “lucky” hit on a bombarding ship. If the projectile were to penetrate a vital area such as a magazine or an engineering space, the ship could lose power and become dead in the water. Then it would become a sitting duck for coast artillery.
In World War II, when this did occur, tow lines would be passed to the stricken vessel from another warship or a fleet tug (fleet tugs were always on hand during the bombardment and landing phases of World War II amphibious operations), and the damaged ship would be towed out of range. To pass a towline in Haiphong Harbor, at night, under an intense artillery barrage, with no air cover, would be messy at best. The chances of losing the towing ship were good, too. Other than the bombardment group, the rest of the fleet would be at least a hundred miles away.
A military commander has to be prepared to accept losses during combat in wartime, but not to expose his forces to unnecessary losses. The possible gains should outweigh the probable losses. This brought up a less evident but more sensitive factor. In the worst case, if a U.S. destroyer were sunk in Haiphong Harbor within range of shore batteries, the survivors in the crew could probably be evacuated in the minutes after sinking, but even then at considerable risk to the rescuing vessel. We would not be able to salvage the stricken warship, however. The bombardment force would be making its firing run on a seven-mile leg in a water depth of forty to fifty feet. A destroyer sunk in this depth would be salvageable but, unfortunately in this location, not by friendly forces. It would just not be possible to conduct a salvage operation, difficult at best, under the barrels of the enemy’s heavy guns. Even establishing local air superiority in the salvage area would probably be impossible, being within effective range of a host of surface-to-air missile sites. On the other hand, the wreck would be susceptible to exploitation by enemy divers who could retrieve sensitive equipment. Classified material could fall into the hands of the North Vietnamese and then migrate to their Communist allies, the Chinese and Soviets. The compromise of electronics, code machines, and secret documents would be very damaging.
My paramount worry was nuclear weapons. At that time, U.S. national policy was to neither confirm nor deny that U.S. Navy warships carried nuclear weapons. The effectiveness of this policy was essential to our nuclear deterrent posture. It allowed our nuclear-capable warships — submarines, cruisers, and carriers — to enter foreign ports, both neutrals and those of our Cold War allies. At the same time, our actual level of nuclear readiness remained uncertain to the Soviets. If an enemy were able to examine the internal spaces of one of our deployed warships, the “neither confirm nor deny” policy would be weakened regardless of what was — or was not — found in the ship’s magazines.