History Matters: From Charles Lindbergh to laser-guided bombs in Vietnam
Note: each week we will be exploring the connections (both in print and on OpsLens TV) between seemingly disconnected events that occurred this week in military history, in addition to our daily military history posts. (Originally published at OpsLens.com)
During this week in 1944, the Allies were in the final preparation stages for what Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower called “the Great Crusade” – the invasion of Normandy. An elaborate deception campaign successfully tricked the Germans into thinking that Gen. George Patton was about to lead the fictional First U.S. Army Group, consisting of inflatable tanks and equipment, across the English Channel to Pas De Calais.
To eliminate Germany’s ability to quickly redeploy its divisions spread across France once they learned that Patton’s invasion at Calais was a hoax, Eisenhower launched Operation CHATANOOGA CHOO CHOO – a series of massive air attacks against Axis rail infrastructure by the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces, along with the Royal Air Force warplanes and French resistance fighters. Over the next few days, the French skies were full of bombers which hammered the German railroads, marshaling yards, and vital bridges while fighter-bombers attacked rolling stock and hundreds of irreplaceable locomotives.
The attacks devastated Nazi Germany’s logistics, essentially sending much of their transportation in northern France “back to the Stone Age.” The air and deception campaigns prove to be so successful that it took several weeks to move units from Calais to defensive positions – far too late to stop the invasion force.
The man credited with coining the statement of bombing a country back to the Stone Age was, at the time, commanding the Eighth Air Force’s 305th Bomb Wing. Before Gen. Curtis LeMay became famous for his campaign of incendiary attacks against Japan and instrumental leadership of Strategic Air Command and as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cold War, he was a fearless B-17 commander that personally led his formations, created new defensive tactics, and flew in the lead even when the general was not needed in the air.
Before serving as Pres. John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense, Col. Robert S. McNamara had the job of studying the effectiveness of bombing missions for the Army Air Force. McNamara said that LeMay was “the finest combat commander of any service I came across in the war.”
During President Eisenhower’s inaugural parade, the U.S. military unveiled a massive, brand-new artillery piece. In addition to conventional rounds, the highly mobile M65 “Atomic Annie” 11-inch gun could hurl an 850-lb. atomic-tipped shell at a range of 20 miles.
On May 25, 1953, 3,200 soldiers and civilians gathered at Frenchman Flat in the Nevada Test Range to witness the first – and only – time the United States shoots a cannon-launched atomic device. At 8:30 a.m., Atomic Annie fires a Mark 9 warhead, similar in both construction and yield to the Little Boy bomb dropped on Nagasaki nearly eight years ago. 19 seconds after leaving the barrel, the shell explodes just over six miles downrange with a blast equivalent to 15 kilotons of TNT.
Shortly after being fielded throughout Europe and Korea the M65 would be surpassed by other tactical nuclear devices such as man-portable recoilless rifles, rockets, and missiles. But nuclear artillery will remain part of the U.S. arsenal in various forms until the early 1990s.
Another nuclear first occurred three years later on May 21, 1956. During the Operation REDWING tests – not to be confused with the 2005 Navy SEAL operation in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush Mountains codenamed Operation RED WINGS – a B-52 Stratofortress bomber flying nearly 50,000 feet over the Bikini Atoll released a Mark 15 thermonuclear device. Within moments, a 94,000-ft. mushroom cloud rises over the Pacific Ocean, marking the United State’s first air-dropped H-bomb – dubbed the CHEROKEE shot. The Soviet Union now knows that Gen. LeMay’s Strategic Air Command can drop bombs anywhere in the world, 250 times more powerful than those we used on Japan.
The B-52 was just a baby during the CHEROKEE test, and incredibly the Big Ugly Fat Fellow remains in service over 60 years later. Also fascinating is that after all the effort and massive expense of the world’s nuclear powers to develop these deadly devices is that no other weapon in human history has been fielded in hopes that they would never again be used. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these weapons have been a valuable deterrent and brought great diplomatic leverage to those that have them, and has entirely changed the nature of warfare between nuclear powers. While presidents Eisenhower and Harry Truman threatened to use them on occasion, the emphasis has been on keeping these weapons holstered ever since the Soviet Union’s arsenal began rivaling ours.
When we think of cockpit footage of bombs hitting enemy targets with near-surgical precision, most of us are reminded of Operation DESERT STORM in 1991. But 50 years ago, Raytheon’s Paveway laser-guided bombs made their first combat appearance – in Vietnam.
This week in 1968, specially equipped F4D Phantom fighters of the 433rd “Satan’s Angels” Tactical Fighter Squadron “painted” the targets while other Phantom pilots dropped their smart bombs, which used sensors to track the laser’s sparkle, guiding the weapon towards the laser and delivering a remarkable improvement on accuracy.
During the war’s final years, handfuls of Paveway-equipped Phantoms would carry out strikes on heavily defended strategic targets that couldn’t be knocked out previously by hundreds of sorties with pilots dropping “dumb” bombs. Two such targets are the Paul Doumer and Thanh Hoa Bridges in North Vietnam. Beginning with Operation ROLLING THUNDER in 1965, thousands of U.S. warplanes will target the vital structures, which withstand hit after hit and become resistance symbols for the communists. After losing scores of planes in the unsuccessful strikes, the Air Force finally turns to a handful of F-4s with Paveways. Both bridges are knocked out within days of each other in 1972 – without a scratch to the Americans.
On May 21, 1927, little-known Air Mail pilot and U.S. Air Service Reserve Corps captain Charles A. Lindbergh touches down at Paris’ Le Bourget Aerodrome after his treacherous nonstop 33 ½ hour flight over the Atlantic Ocean – a feat made even more remarkable considering Lindbergh made the flight using dead reckoning, since there were no navigational aids. 150,000 French citizens are on-hand to witness perhaps the most famous flight in history.
The race to perform the first nonstop Transatlantic flight had recently claimed the lives of three air crews: French Col. René Fonck (the all-time Allied “ace of aces”), the U.S. Navy’s Lt. Stanton Wooster and Lt. Cmdr. Noel Davis, and French war heroes Capt. Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli.
30 years to the day after Lindbergh’s famous ride, Air Force major and Korean War jet ace Robbie Risner, who incidentally will be awarded the Air Force Cross for leading a raid against North Vietnam’s seemingly indestructible Thanh Hoa Bridge in 1965, flies the same route taken by “Lucky Lindy.” Risner’s F-100 Super Sabre completes the trip in just 6 hours and 38 minutes, setting a transatlantic speed record, but receives considerably less press.
On May 26, 1961, a Convair B-58 Hustler – the first operational bomber to fly twice the speed of sound – travels the same route as Lindbergh and Risner in a blistering 3 hours and 19 minutes. Unfortunately, the crew will perish the following week when their Hustler crashes after takeoff from Le Bourget Field during an air show.
Less than a month after the first American blasts off into space, President John F. Kennedy declares, on May 25, 1961, his intention to put a man on the moon in less than ten years, asking Congress to make the space program a top priority. Although Kennedy does not live to see it, his dream comes true when Apollo 11 lifts off from the space center named in his honor on July 16, 1969.
One year after Kennedy’s declaration, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Malcolm “Scott” Carpenter becomes the second American to orbit the earth. Circling the globe three times in his “Aurora 7” space capsule, the astronaut spends nearly four hours above the Earth’s surface performing science experiments. When Carpenter accidentally bumps his hand against the cockpit wall, he discovers that the mysterious “fireflies” spotted by John Glenn during his orbital mission are in fact ice particles knocked loose from the capsule.
One final note: Charles Lindbergh tried to rejoin the Armed Forces after the Pearl Harbor attacks, but was denied entry by the White House. But he worked in the field as a consultant, coming up with new procedures to double the bomb capacity of the F4U Corsair and found a way to significantly increase the range of the P-38 Lightning by leaning fuel. He worked his way into the cockpit and flew 50 combat missions.
During a bomber escort mission, he splashed a Japanese observation plane with his P-38 west of New Guinea. He was flying with the 433rd “Satan’s Angels” Fighter Squadron– the same outfit that would drop the first Paveway bombs in Vietnam.