Part 3
Vietnam
The United States Air Force (USAF) began operations in South Vietnam in 1961, under the aegis of advising the South Vietnamese. General Anthis commanded its major unit, the 2nd Air Division which later escalated into the huge air effort all are familair with, operating independent of the ground objectives, 'began inventing targets to keep the growing number of planes busy ... the more the Air Force bombed, the bigger its role.' The refined logic of insurgency warfare, based on incremental control of the population and isolation of the legitimate government and so different to the European environment that spawned the classic air theories, continued to elude the American and Vietnamese pilots and their commanders. They continued to bomb the most visible man made structures that had little to do with fighting insurgents who needed to be rooted out through infantry operations.
It seemed to the USAF leader that the war in South Vietnam was essentially a conventional conflict masquerading as; "subtle and complicated counterinsurgency . . . a threat to Air Force interests since (it) placed renewed importance on a ground effort". Anthis directed that all buildings were now to be referred to as 'structures' - including huts, peasant homes, even pig sties and piles of bamboo. By the end of 1961, an average of 400 'structures' a week were being reported as destroyed. This had expanded, by August 1965, to 5349 structures destroyed and 2400 damaged - all supposedly enemy targets.(Ref-38) (Ironically, in some post-war narratives, 'structures', have been transformed back into 'buildings' to give the impression of substantial value. A conservative estimate by US intelligence suggests that less than one in ten of these "structures" were of any significance to the VC or NVA. The figure for 'enemy bunkers' has similarly been shown to be erroneous - a bomb crater often assuming this classification. Ed)
Yet when this mighty air weapon was wielded in direct support of ground forces, the results were almost always decisive, from the smallest ground action to the most complex. Ground directed air operations turned the situation around in the 'Iron Triangle' during 1967. Air strikes in support of the siege of Khe Sanh held by a United States Marine Corps garrison were instrumental in securing the ultimate success in this two months battle. A feature of Close Air Support in Vietnam highlighted by Khe Sanh, was the greater effectiveness of less powerful aircraft. The 'regimental commander (was) impressed by ground controlled radar bombing by lesser craft (than the B52) which better met his pressing need.'
Elsewhere, obsolete aircraft such as World War II vintage, piston engine Skyraider and modified C47 gunships were 'better able to meet the needs of ground units than were fighter units bought in by FACs.' The most spectacular instance was the direction of B52 'Arc Light' strikes, normally a strategic preserve, by the United States Corps Commander Vann, in the Battle for Kontum. The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) attacked the city in corps strength. Vann 'laid the best part of 300 B52 strikes in the environs of Kontum' over the three week battle, that he personally directed into enemy concentrations. In spite of this, one NVA division broke through, with 10 T52 tanks (out of 40), but were held by the South Vietnamese infantry and forced to withdraw. Technical control of these 'Arc Light' missions may well have remained with the USAF, but the ground force commander was the only person with the intimate knowledge to place their munitions to effect the battle, which was still a close run thing finally decided by the infantry defenders of Kontum.
The RAAF deployment to South Vietnam was under the nominal command of the Commander, Australian Force Vietnam (COMAFV), Major General Wilton. From the outset Wilton was worried by 'the RAAF's lack of appreciation of joint operations'. The CAS, Air Marshal Murdoch, had forcefully expressed his indignation that RAAF squadrons were commanded by 'an Army general' and earlier, both the CAS and Minister for Air, Howson had 'strenuously opposed ... RAAF under army control'; this despite the fact that the Army had the prime mission to be supported in Vietnam and that COMAFV could theoretically have been a naval or air force senior officer. This was a tangible embodiment of the working out of the role conception conflict within the RAAF to the point where it now considered that not only should its air operations be separate from tactical requirements, but that only its officers were fit to direct them.
The RAAF 'Directive to the Commander Royal Australian Air Force Component Vietnam', signed by the CAS, pointedly located the Task Force Air Commander (and the Commanding Officer of 9 Squadron, Wing Commander Scott) at Vung Tau, 20 kilometers from 1 Australian Task Force headquarters at Nui Dat and insisted that duplicates of his reports to COMAFV were to be sent to the CAS personally. The Department of Air, thereby, continued to attempt to 'command RAAF operations from Australia' in exactly the same manner as Air Marshal Jones had twenty-five years earlier. The spirit of Milne Bay, and that of ground and air force unity, had withered as a corporate ideal within the RAAF, if not within some of its individual members.(Ref 40)
The most potentially detrimental development was the insistence that 'Air Board regulations, framed for peacetime, should apply'. Strictures, included 9 Squadron Iroquois helicopters not operating 'into insecure locations' or undertaking roles that were 'offensive'. This exhibited a lack of awareness by the RAAF of the requirements of the ground force in South Vietnam and, by inference, restricted the Army to secure locations where the enemy were unlikely to be, if they wished to be supported by 9 Squadron. The unworkable nature of such operational constraints in war caused Major General Mackay, at one stage, to ground 9 Squadron.
A request from COMAFV for RAAF Canberras, based at Phan Rang, to perform a photo-reconnaissance of Phuoc Tuy province was rejected by Department of Air on the grounds that 'the Canberras were there (in Vietnam) to give the pilots combat experience before they went to the United States to convert to Phantoms'. The Canberra squadron was effectively part of the USAF's strategic arm, in that service's often remote and unsynchronised operational environment which fitted the RAAF's strategic role perception of how a war should be fought.. Therefore apart from the helicopters of 9 Squadron, 1ATF had to rely mainly on USAF Tactical Air and US Army Aviation for offensive Close Air Support.
At the time, though, excellent ground attack units, the Avon Sabre squadrons, were doing nothing more than peacetime training in Australia and on deployment to Butterworth in Malaya. Although subsonic and obsolete for the Air Control role, if based at Vung Tau or Bien Hoa, they could have provided organic Close Air Support for the 1ATF commander and Australian ground forces in Phuc Tuy. Short flight times and dedicated tasking to 1ATF could have given invaluable assistance over the long period of Australian involvement. It could have been another classic example of support to the ground forces in the Milne Bay mould and, quite possibly, just as noteworthy. Instead, the closest the RAAF came to using Sabres in Vietnam was a small detachment to Ubon, Thailand, for airfield defence - this in a situation when hundreds of Mach 2 Phantoms flew from this airfield daily on sorties to North Vietnam. It was almost as if the RAAF were now involved in a war parallel to that which included the land battle and did not concede any of the operational principles that had produced such outstanding cooperation with ground forces in the Pacific War.
If we consider Milne Bay as the Australian apex of the correct application of the principles of Close Air Support, the Battle of Long Tan represents its nadir. Again, the circumstance of the battle fought in Phuoc Tuy province five kilometres from Nui Dat are well known. On the afternoon of 18th August, 1966, D Company, 6 Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, met and held a regimental strength force of Viet Cong and NVA for three hours. In drenching rain, this one infantry company, aided by intense artillery support, forced the enemy to stop its move toward the IATF base until relieved by cavalry and infantry, which forced the enemy to withdraw. This one battle was pivotal to the survival of I ATF and, at a crucial time in its progress, RAAF support was available only because of the conscious decision of one pilot to disobey orders and that of a senior RAAF officer to both encourage and turn a blind eye to that disobedience. If Air Board orders had been followed, the RAAF would never have flown in support of the Long Tan battle.
The Task Force Air Commander, Group Captain Raw, a World War II veteran aware of the needs of ground forces, was at 1ATF headquarters when the battle commenced. Fortuitously, so were two 9 Squadron Iroquois, commanded by Flight Lieutenant Riley, which had transported a concert party to Nui Dat. Otherwise, no 9 Squadron aircraft would have been on station, or likely to have been released from Vung Tau given dire 'insecure' and 'non offensive' restrictions on their operations contained in Air Board orders. Both of the RAAF officers were aware of these orders, more so Raw, who was also the RAAF Commander, Vung Tau. D Company was facing a desperate lack of ammunition calling artillery fire almost on their position to break up enemy attacks and on the verge of being overwhelmed. Riley overheard all this from radio traffic. In spite of objections by one of his pilots on breaking Air Board directives that would risk aircraft and that they would be killed', Riley, on his initiative, offered to fly ammunition to the beleaguered infantry 'at all costs ... to support fellow Australians in difficulty', taking all responsibility as detachment commander. One other pilot, Lane, also volunteered to fly, alone if necessary. Raw immediately authorised Riley's mission, more closely aware of the dire situation of D Company and that the Iroquois was the only aircraft capable of the task. He declined to advise 9 Squadron at Vung Tau to both save time and to avoid creating a situation for Scott where he may 'not have been in a position to authorise it.' D Company received the ammunition resupply, delivered by Riley's two aircraft and their crews, in appalling visibility and rain, without gunship cover and into the teeth of intensive small arms fire, and the battle was saved. The delay in this ammunition arriving due to procrastination over the "legality" of the situation, however was considerable.( Ref 41) The analogy with Milne Bay is telling in all but one respect; Riley's airmen flew the sortie in support of D Company in spite of RAAF policy, not because of it.
To their everlasting credit, the integrity and courage of Riley, the devotion of his aircrew, the sense of duty and sagacity of Raw, all honoured the legacy of Milne Bay. All had recognised, in the furnace heat of combat, the insistent imperative of the land battle.
The support that eventually was provided by 9 Squadron to the Special Air Service squadron at Nui Dat is often cited as proof that the RAAF corrected its ways. It overshadows the fact that this was support to only one specialist infantry company out of a minimum of 13 rifle companies that comprised the infantry strength of 1 ATF. As late as 1971, 9 Squadron still refused requests from a company commander to extract his soldiers from what they considered a marginal landing zone, the task being eventually completed by Royal Australian Navy Iroquois (The Emus) operating with the US Army out of Black Horse. In another instance in 1971, a 1ATF operational task was ignored to give a senior RAAF officer his Iroquois endorsement. Support of these mainstream units continued to come mainly from US Army Aviation and USAF resources, as they had done from the beginning of the Australian involvement. They were reliable and timely, and could always be depended on to fly into "suspect" areas - after all infantry operations were intended to "seek out and close with the enemy" and the very nature of their operations called for insertion or extraction from potentially "hot" LZs. (Ad 2)
It could be said that apart from the Caribou Squadron, RAAF involvement in Vietnam was almost inconsequential to the conduct of Australian ground operations in a war that was essentially a ground conflict.
