For American aircrews flying
into North Vietnam some fifty years ago, the most notorious target in Southeast
Asia was the Thanh Hoa Bridge. Crossing
a swift-flowing Ma River seventy miles south of Hanoi, the double-span bridge was
dubbed “The Dragon’s Jaw” for its anchoring karsts. It was both a vital point for war materiel
headed south and a symbol of national pride.
Communist Party Chairman Ho Chi Minh personally dedicated the bridge
when completed in 1964.
U.S. Air Force and Navy
squadrons tried repeatedly to destroy the bridge throughout the dolorous
Vietnam War. The first attempt by four
dozen F-105 Thunderchiefs on April 3, 1965, did little more than scrape the
paint. The follow-up effort the next day
did no better, losing two “Thuds” to Vietnamese MiGs while another fell to flak
gunners. In all, six U.S. and South
Vietnamese planes were lost in the two days with five pilots killed and one
captured.
The problem was
multi-tiered. First, the Vietnamese
seriously over-engineered the combined rail-highway structure, ensuring its
immunity to conventional ordnance.
Secondly, the U.S. lacked the
heavy weapons to destroy the steel structure.
One Thunderchief pilot who flew both missions said, “I laid my string of
eight 750-pounders right across the bridge but when the smoke cleared the damn
thing was still there.”
Follow-up air strikes over
the next three and a half years also failed.
The rail tracks and approaches to the bridge were frequently disrupted
but the industrious Vietnamese always repaired the damage.
Then in 1968 Democrat President
Lyndon Johnson blew the whistle, ending the first half of “The Southeast Asia
War Games.” LBJ, who had escalated the conflict
three months before the 1964 election, alternately tried to force and cajole
Hanoi to the bargaining table. There was
no reason for the Communists to negotiate: they had large forces in South
Vietnam with sanctuaries in Laos, Cambodia, and much of the North. All they needed was time. And they had time a-plenty.
By then at least thirteen
U.S. planes had been lost directly attacking the bridge with twenty fliers
killed or captured. The biggest loss
occurred in May 1966 when an unconventional mission launched air-dropped mines
from C-130 Hercules transports. The
first night’s effort failed but the “Herc” escaped. When headquarters foolishly ordered a repeat
the following night, the defenders were ready.
They shot down the big, slow target with all eight fliers killed.
At year-end Republican
Richard Nixon won a landslide election.
After taking office in January 1969, Nixon relaxed some of the more
onerous restrictions about bombing the North but generally pursued a
wait-and-see approach. The Hanoi
politbureau—not surprisingly—saw Nixon’s patience as weakness. In April 1972 the North launched a massive
conventional army against the South,
After more than three years
of fruitless negotiating by Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s ineffectual secretary of
state, the gloves came off. U.S. air
power was unleashed against priority targets throughout the North, including
Hanoi, the vital port of Haiphong—and Thanh Hoa Bridge.
Though the defenders had
enjoyed years to improve defenses with anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air
missiles, the attackers also had prepared.
A new generation of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) improved upon the
largely ineffective “smart” and “dumb bombs” used before.
On May 13 the famed 8th
Tactical Fighter Wing from Ubon, Thailand, rolled in on the Dragon’s Jaw with
2,000-pound bombs armed with laser designators.
The Paveways were deadly accurate—they knocked the western span of the
bridge off its moorings. And the
strikers got away clean.
Two final losses occurred
during 1972: an Air Force Phantom with crew recovered in late April, and a Navy
photo-reconnaissance jet in mid-June.
The tailhook aviator was flying again the next day.
The Air Force and Navy
continued sending conventional bombers against the bridge over the intervening
five months, with little effect.
Therefore, on October 9, Vought A-7 Corsair IIs from the carrier USS America launched to slay the Dragon for
good. They put their one-ton TV-guided
weapons on the remaining part of western span and snapped it in two—the remains
toppled into the Song Ma.
Economists reckoned during
the Vietnam War America expended about ten dollars to inflict one dollar of
damage upon the Communists. A large part
of the effort was 3.3 million “iron bombs,” most of which inflicted no significant
harm. However, a relative handful of PGMs
destroyed not only Thanh Hoa Bridge but other vital targets including
additional bridges in the never-ending logistics battle.
Hanoi signed the “peace
agreement” in January 1973, a cynical arrangement that neither side expected to
last. The Communists completed their
“reunification” of Vietnam in 1975 when the U.S. Congress refused to send
additional military aid to Saigon.
In the blush of peace—or its
reasonable facsimile—the Viets began rebuilding the bridge. The wartime structure was scrapped and replaced
in the mid 70s, with additional spans added downstream, the most recent a
modern structure erected by a Japanese firm.
There the story lingered for
decades. The Viets claimed 104 Yankee
Air Pirates downed in the area around Thanh Hoa, an oft-repeated claim. However, my search of daily records shows
about fifteen losses specifically targeted against the bridge.
Then last July a former Navy
attack pilot brought the Dragon’s Jaw back into focus. Stephen Coonts, best-selling author of Flight of the Intruder and more than
twenty other books, announced his intention to tell the full story of Thanh Hoa
Bridge.
He
said, “Barrett Tillman and I are in the early stages of writing a book about
The Dragon’s Jaw: The Thanh Hoa Bridge. I was very reluctant to emotionally go
back to Vietnam, so this project dragged for a couple of years. Finally I
decided to suck it up and do it while I was still able and many of the men who
flew the missions were still above ground to talk to…I am soliciting your help.
If you flew one or more missions against
the Dragon’s Jaw…or against the associated rail-yard, barracks, SAM or flak
sites, we would like to hear from you.”
And
did we ever hear from “you.” Not only
aircrews but weaponeers, structural engineers, and a surprising variety of
Vietnamese sources answered our call.
Their responses will enable us to tell the Dragon’s Jaw tale from both
sides—or all sides, depending on how they’re reckoned.
History
has a shelf life, and some of the participants in the Thanh Hoa story have
departed the pattern. But we got an
early enough start to tell The Dragon’s tale, and the manuscript will be
delivered to the publisher next year.
Watch this space.
