There I Was … in Cambodia
While reading “The Shadow War In Cambodia,” which referred to March 18, 1969, I realized that I was there [January, p. 54]. As a FAC billeted with the Army in An Loc, our AOR included Loc Ninh, Tay Ninh, and that stretch of the Cambodian border. That morning, I had the dawn patrol in my trusty O-1 puttering along at 70 knots near the border. We knew the NVA had camps just over the border, so we stayed a few clicks away. In 1968, one of our FACs had wandered over into Cambodia and was shot down and killed by Sihanouk’s son flying a T-28. One flew the O-1 just with the rudder pedals while using binoculars for signs of the enemy. And there it was in my binocs! Not the NVA but clear tracks of an Arc Light starting in Vietnam, crossing a narrow tributary of the Mekong, and marching into Cambodia!
WOW! Some poor BUFF crew had screwed up royally and was in deep kimchi. Upon returning to An Loc I briefed the ALO. Since we didn’t know this was all hushed up, the word soon got out. Shortly thereafter I volunteered for a super hushed assignment with the Ravens in Laos, but that’s another story.
Lt. Col. Bill Angliss,
USAF (Ret.)
Redlands, Calif.
I read this article with interest as I was a participant in part of this bombing of Cambodia. I cannot address the behind-the-scenes politics of the situation, but the aircrew level description is not completely accurate. I was a copilot on a crew that was briefed for what we were told was the first bombing mission against Cambodia. It was not in March 1969, but rather between April 19-24. I do not have the specific date in my paper flight records as we aborted on takeoff roll and a spare aircraft took our place. (The B-52D used water injection on takeoff. At max weight out of Guam, you could usually take off if one engine—occasionally two—did not take water. Our right wing did not take water. We would have run out of both runway and island before reaching flying speed.)
The briefings I attended that spring and summer were not the hush-hush, “change targets inflight” described in the article. The entire crew attended the briefing and were briefed on actual targets in Cambodia. The briefing normally included a code word to be broadcast by GCI [ground control intercept] if they detected anyone about to penetrate Cambodian airspace. We were dutifully briefed on the code word and told to ignore it.
For the first mission, there was one political impact on routing. The targets were just inside Cambodia. The bomb runs were made perpendicular to the border. As soon as the last bomb departed, each aircraft turned as sharply as a B-52 could turn. The aircraft did not penetrate Cambodian airspace—the bombs did. That mattered to someone.
At that time, 60 B-52 sorties were being flown each day. While I was there that spring and summer, we had periodic “compression” missions. A token half-dozen two-ship strikes were flown during the day to maintain some normal B-52 activity. The rest of the sorties for the day were targeted against one base area listed in the article. Spacing between each three-ship formation was based on how quickly combat skyspot controllers could handle the traffic. For supposedly unoccupied jungle, eastern Cambodia burned very brightly that summer.
Maj. Raymond Milberg,
USAF (Ret.)
Colorado Springs, Colo.
Bismarck Not So Tough
John Correll’s article, “In Pursuit of the Bismarck” [February, p. 56], starts off with oft-repeated statement that Bismarck was “the most powerful warship in the world.” This is far from the truth, a mere propaganda statement. One must compare Bismarck to her contemporary battleships, the British King George V class, British Nelson class. French Richelieu, Italian Littorio, and the USN’s potent USS South Dakota.
First, the Bismarck did not have 16-inch naval rifles for armament. She was equipped with eight 15-inch guns in four turrets. Compare this to the KGV with 10 14-inch guns, Nelson with nine 16-inch, Richelieu with eight 15-inch, Littorio with nine 15-inch, and South Dakota with nine 16-inch. All had more “throw weight” in terms of firepower. Of course, the Japanese Yamato, launched but not yet commissioned, outclassed them all with nine 18.1-inch guns.
Displacement, construction quality, speed, and armor did not favor Bismarck either, with South Dakota the best and Richelieu close behind. Only Yamato and later US Iowa class would be better.
Correll misstates the actions of British Admiral Holland, commanding the old battlecruiser Hood and the not quite completed KGV battleship Prince of Wales. Holland could not have “waited across the path of the Germans.” Holland was aware of the shortcoming of Hood’s light armor. At long range, plunging shells could and did make short work of her. He tried to close the range quickly to utilize his gunfire superiority, on paper at least, with 18 heavy guns to the German’s eight.
After the battle, the critical factor in finding Bismarck again was when she was spotted by a US Navy officer, Ensign Leonard Smith, piloting a British Catalina, on May 26. His report enabled HMS Ark Royal to launch her Swordfish for the crippling torpedo attack.
All this overlooks the fact that the most powerful warships in the world were not battleships. These were obsolescent as the British air attack in November 1940 on the Italian fleet at Taranto would prove. The same old and slow Swordfish would sink four vessels, two of them battleships. This was 13 months before Pearl Harbor.
The most powerful warships in the world in 1940 were aircraft carriers. We can argue if they were the USS Lexington and Saratoga or the IJNS Akagi and Kaga. That’s another story.
Lt. Col. A. J. Parmet,
USAF (Ret.)
Kansas City, Mo.
I was wrong in attributing 16-inch guns to Bismarck instead of 15-inch. That error will be corrected in the version of the article posted online. On the other points, however, I relied on a number of sources whose conclusions differ from yours in several respects.
According to William H. Garzke Jr., whose work on battleships is well-regarded, the King George V class battleships were acknowledged as being incapable of defeating Bismarck in single combat. Winston Churchill, who had considerable knowledge of the Royal Navy, said that Bismarck probably would have sunk Rodney [Nelson class] if they had met “singly.”
British naval historian Iain Ballantyne says that “Bismarck was potentially worth at least two British battleships.” British Vice Admiral and historian B. B. Schofield writes that, “Although the 10 14-in. guns with which the King George V class battleships were armed fired a broadside 220-lb heavier than the eight 15-in. guns of the Bismarck, the latter was some 6,700 tons larger and structurally better built.”
In the Hood engagement, Admiral Holland missed his opportunity to “cross the T” and thus meet the Bismarck with all of his big guns facing the enemy broadside. Had he done so, he would indeed have had 18 guns in play—eight from Hood and 10 from Prince of Wales. By charging forward, he reduced his presentation to a total of 10 guns in the forward turrets (four on Hood and six on Prince of Wales). Bismarck, on a course almost perpendicular to the British, crossed Holland’s T and had all of its main guns firing broadside. Holland further dissipated his effectiveness by mistakenly concentrating his initial rounds on Prinz Eugen rather than Bismarck.
The article did not specifically name the pilot flying the Catalina flying boat, but the accompanying photo and caption identified him—accurately, according to the sources I have seen—as Pilot Officer Dennis A. Briggs, RAF. Ensign Leonard B. “Tuck” Smith, USN, was apparently along as copilot. The report was called in by the radio operator while Briggs evaded enememy fire.
My article, “The Air Raid at Taranto” in the March 2017 issue [p. 60], recounts the success of the Swordfish against the Italian navy in considerable detail.
The power of carriers in sea battle depended on the capability of the aircraft they launched. Swordfish from the carrier Victorious had attacked Bismarck on May 25 with no significant results. The Swordfish from Ark Royal crippled Bismarck on May 26 with a lucky shot. The torpedo caught Bismarck as it was swinging hard to port and disabled the rudder. Bismarck could not break out of the continuous counterclockwise turn.
Eight British ships, including battleships King George V and Rodney, then closed in and pounded Bismarck with 2,876 shells and 71 torpedoes. Bismarck finally sank when the Germans opened the seacocks and set off scuttling charges.—John T. Correll
A fact that is usually not told in these articles is that the copilot of the PBY Catalina that found the Bismarck was an US Navy officer who was part of the unit training the British in their new aircraft. Of course this had to be kept quiet in May 1941 as these United States weren’t officially “de jure” at war with Germany (though we “de facto” were). However, there is no reason to keep the cover-up going 76.5 years later.
Also, there is a story that during one of the battles (either May 24 or May 26) a tall sailing ship was sighted by the combatants, and they paused until the sailing ship was out of danger. I don’t know if the story is true though.
MSgt. Dennis B. Swaney,
USAF (Ret.)
Oroville, Calif.
No Come Back, Either
Referencing the Letter in the January 2018 issue “ One-way Nukes” from Col. Mike Sexton [p. 4], I would like to add another viewpoint to that story. Not all of the “one-way missions” were Air Force or Navy with their modern super fast F-100s, F-105s, etc. During the Berlin Crisis in 1961-62, then-President John F. Kennedy issued a call-up to hundreds of Air National Guard squadrons and other units. After flying from Harmon AB, Newfoundland, to the Azores on the longest F-84F leg ever of over 1,680 [nautical miles], and not being refueled in the air, those of the Air Force ANG units flying the venerable “old” F-84F also faced probable one-way missions that were not nuclear but just old “dumb” iron bomb missions. We, the ANG units, were assigned nonnuclear targets in Soviet-controlled countries that were in good probability going to be “one way” due to the very likelihood of us being shot down either by anti-aircraft weapons in the target areas or [by] enemy aircraft such as the MiG 15s-17s. This was with the rumors of Communists having developed SAMs and having built hundreds of SAM sites in the communist zone. We in the F-84F would be hauling six to eight 750-pound dumb bombs and using the Hi-Lo fly at 420-500 knots—high profile to our targets—and back to our launch base in France, and then pulling up to 60,000-70,000 feet, where our airspeed would be down to the 180-200 knot range at most as we rolled in to dive bomb our targets, which were railroad and highway bridges, railyards, etc., all the while still being tasked to keep our 450-gallon drop tanks due to a critical shortage of those tanks in-theater and worldwide in the Air Force.
Now remember, F-84Fs used 450-gallon drop tanks for long-range missions. Those tanks were 16-18 feet long and about two-and-a-half feet wide and were a huge drag in the air. We later learned that the probable loss rate for those missions would be 60 percent or greater.
We were, for the most part, going to be on a “one-way mission.”
I really enjoy every issue of your magazine, thank you.
Maj. Robert V. Thompson,
USAF/NJANG (Ret.)
Punta Gorda, Fla.
A Widow Goes Down
My hometown of Adams, Mass., sits in the shadow of Mount Greylock, the highest point in the state. One day as I was walking down my street, I heard an airplane coming from east to west toward the mountain. It was a P-61 Black Widow [“They Owned the Night,” December 2017, p. 52]. It must have been around an altitude of 4,000 feet. It flew overhead and headed toward the mountain. As it got closer to the mountain, its engine(s) started to sputter. As it flew over the mountain, there was silence and shortly after it disappeared from sight over the mountain, a thin stream of smoke rose up from behind the mountain. I do not remember if a report was published in the newspaper and if it was, what it said. I do know it was a sad day for anyone associated with the crew, but an awesome experience for me, a young boy of 10 or 11 years old. The memory of this event has been with me ever since, and it seems like just yesterday that it happened.
Col. William C. Koch Jr.,
USAF (Ret.)
Raleigh, N.C.
Hit and MIss
The AETC’s commander’s comments concerning the USAF pilot shortage in the January [“Verbatim: Outside the Lines,” p. 52] column comprise both a hit and a miss. He suggests a “national pilot training academy that is partially funded by airlines and industry and the military.” That is a miss. The much-publicized airline pilot shortage is a myth; there are far more civilian pilots with FAA airline pilot certificates than airline pilot jobs. What that industry has lacked is the willingness to reasonably compensate pilots, especially at the regional airline level. That sort of problem tends to be self-correcting, and that is what is presently happening. Lieutenant General Roberson also states that producing sufficient military pilots “is outside the resource capacity of the United States Air Force,” and that is the hit. Williams Air Force Base, Reese Air Force Base (where I began my flying career), and others are gone forever along with the infrastructure that made them work. That sort of problem does not self-correct; only proper resources within DOD for an adequate pilot training system will heal our self-inflicted injury.
David Himes
Honolulu
A Phoenix Rises
MSgt. [Israel] Del Toro has become a national symbol [“Like a Phoenix,” December, p. 26]. Stripped of physical clues to his racial or other identity because of a cruel wartime incident, he is, to all appearances, left only with his name. That suggests a Hispanic factor. His given name of Israel could be some clue to his religion or national connection. But all that we do know by looking at him is that he is a male human being named Israel Del Toro. No doubt he is proud of his ancestral predecessors, but that is not apparent to our eyes.
But when we hear about him and what he has done with his life, he becomes a symbol of all that is good about America. He is an American who, regardless of race, color, religion, or other ethnic typing, is very brave, determined, and devoted to serving his family and his country. No identification politics needed. No saying “he’s representative of his _____.” He is him. After all adjectives are removed, he stands there all by himself as the best America has to offer. Not a representative of the best, but the best. Despite cruel fate, he wants to go back and serve. He refuses to be a victim but chooses participation in American life. As such, he has conquered the bad “isms” existing in our country and stands alone as an American hero who represents all that we can be.
Lt. Col. Charles L.Harrington,
USAFR, MSC (Ret.)
Walnut Creek, Calif.
Murders in Texas
I was disappointed by Air Force Magazine’s January editorial on the massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas, which resulted in the horrendous death of 26 people praying in church [“A Simple Lesson From 26 Murders in Texas,” p. 2]. I am glad that the editorial attempted to deal with this terrible event, but feel that the approach that registering would-be murderers will contribute meaningfully to reducing the routine mass murders that occur in our country. Registering people but allowing guns to be legally transferred to them anywhere outside of stores is an expensive and worthless approach. While I fully endorse the Second Amendment right of states to have militias, we should be able to do so without making guns easily available to murderers. Until we do, registering potential murderers will have zero effect.
Steven E. Zalesch
New Haven, Conn.
Dueling Engine
On p. 38 of the December issue, the author states that the B-2 uses an engine similar to the GE F404, as used in the T-50A trainer aircraft [“Heading To a T-X,” p. 34].
The B-2s engine, the GE F118, is based on the F110, not the F404. The F110 in turn was based on the F101, the turbofan equipping the B-1.
Note that an enhanced version of the F404 is available, with up to 19,000-lbs. thrust in afterburner, which could be fitted to the T-50A.
Also note that the T-X winner will likely end up in a decade or so being the selected mount of the Thunderbirds, since the F-35 will obviously not be suitable.
TSgt. Chris Dierkes
Stratford, Conn.
Umm, Oops
Thank you for publishing my letter [Letters: Namesake: Dyess,” February, p. 5].
However, since this occurred during WWII, presumably the president was Franklin Roosevelt, not Theodore Roosevelt. I’m sure readers will figure that out.
Lt. Col. Robert Rogers,
USAF (Ret.)
Sudbury, Mass.
They did. Our bad.—the editors
Missile Replacement
I have read your magazine as a lifetime member of the Air Force Association for over 40 years. This month, I was particularly pleased to see Wilson Brissett’s article “Replacing Minuteman” [February, p. 27].
As a former career Minuteman III missile operator and flight tester I think we should look at strengthening the ground-based nuclear deterrent as Brissett indicates. In the article, I immediately recognized the picture of two Minuteman III missiles in flight from Vandenberg AFB on p. 28. It brought back many fond memories. However, the picture itself is printed backward. As the 1st Strategic Air Division Test and Evaluation test conductor, I trained the SAC launch crews for that Global Shield mission. From what we called “the point,” where the launch countdown team was located (about a mile from Launch Facility (LF) 08), I counted down those crew members for their launch-initiating keyturn.
As I recall, Glory Trip 40GM was the first to launch. It should be on the right-hand side of the photo, pitching over from right to left. It roared out of LF-09, followed by Glory Trip 68GM from LF-08 only 12 seconds later. We intentionally delayed the launch of the second missile so that we could stop it if the first did not go well. The second missile had a one-of-a-kind telemetry collar on it, and stopping it from launching would save us the capability to attempt a “dual launch” later. Range safety split up their safety sensors to provide the minimum allowable safety coverage on each of the two missiles in flight at the same time. Thus, the risk of something going wrong was much higher than that for a normal flight test. The stress was palpable until the second missile was well downrange. As far as I know, there has not been a “dual launch” since.
Lt. Col. Brian Willis,
USAF (Ret.)
Manhattan, Kan.
The important discussion of the triad brought to mind that in the 1970s I had the privilege of working with and spending considerable time traveling with Rear Adm. George H. Miller, at the time the Navy’s leading strategist. We often discussed the triad as the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines were being designed at that time.
The cost and effectiveness of maintaining the triad components was a frequent topic. Ballistic missile submarines unquestionably provided the most survivable and hence most flexible component of US strategic striking forces. The bomber component was the most vulnerable, on the ground and in the air, especially in the face of ever-advancing Soviet air defense systems (fighters and surface-to-air missiles). And it was the least flexible because—depending upon specific Soviet targets—the bombers would be over Soviet territory or in their air defense zone for one to two hours before striking their targets. Thus, during those one or two hours they could not be effectively recalled and the United States would be at war. Submarine missiles and ICBMs could be recalled up to some 30 minutes before striking their targets—i.e., their flight time to targets in the Soviet Union.
With respect to costs, developing new bombers and tanker aircraft, periodically upgrading them, their crew costs, and other factors probably made the bomber component the most expensive part of the triad.
In Miller’s opinion, the ICBM force was vital. While the United States might lose one or two or even more ballistic missile submarines, for several reasons there might not be a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, to destroy the ICBM force the enemy would have to impact many nuclear warheads on the United States. That would undoubtedly lead to an all-out nuclear conflict. Thus, in many respects, ICBMs on US territory were the ultimate deterrent force.
Norman Polmar
Alexandria, Va.