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Linebacker II: The Cunning Plan
By MigBuster,
In late 1972 President Richard Nixon was facing the prospect of having the funding cut for Vietnam by congress, so took one last gamble before they could reconvene to get North and South Vietnam to terms and pull the US out of the war with its POW's. This gamble would involve for the first time large B-52 raids on actual strategic targets in North Vietnam including Hanoi and Haiphong. Now having better relations with the Soviets and Chinese the gloves were off and he duly instructed Strategic Air command ( SAC) to sort it out……. unfortunately it didn’t quite roll down the chain far enough.
What ended up as a relatively short eleven-day campaign, started out and was planned for three days and those first days are really the focus of this article due to some rather strange tactics. Surprise attack
All B-52 sorties were launched either from the Pacific island of Guam at Anderson AFB or U-Tapao RTAFB (Thailand), with Guam having a very long flight time to target requiring A-A refueling for the B-52Ds. The B-52s were to take off from Guam and fly right over a Soviet spy trawler sitting in international waters of the end of the runway.
As the B-52 raid got closer to North Vietnam they would test all their ECM gear handily notifying the SAM operators of the frequencies being used in advance. As they neared the target the F-4 Chaff bombers would fly in front of the raid and drop chaff to provide a protective chaff corridor that the B-52s would fly through giving extra protection. However it seems that not only did the chaff present a big arrow pointing to the intended target on the Vietnamese radar scopes it then promptly blew away in the very high winds providing next to no real protection.
On top of that as planned for the first three nights the B-52 waves (three waves per night) were to follow the same route as F-105s had done since 1967 and fly over the targets in level flight (to a determined point) at the same altitudes, speed, heading and times…………with a nice long pause between each wave. General Melchett: Field Marshal Haig has formulated a brilliant new tactical plan to ensure final victory in the field.
Captain Blackadder: Ah. Would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of our trenches, and walking very slowly towards the enemy?
Captain Darling: How could you possibly know that Blackadder? It's classified information!
Captain Blackadder: It's the same plan that we used last time..........and the seventeen times before that.
General Melchett: Exactly! And that is what is so brilliant about it! It will catch the watchful Hun totally off guard! Doing precisely what we've done eighteen times before is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time! There is, however, one small problem.
Captain Blackadder: That everyone always gets slaughtered in the first ten seconds.
General Melchett: That's right. And Field Marshal Haig is worried this may be depressing the men a tad. So, he's looking for a way to cheer them up.
Captain Blackadder: Well, his resignation and suicide seems the obvious choice.
General Melchett: Hmm, interesting thought. Make a note of it, Darling.
(from Blackadder Goes Forth BBC)
Unsurprisingly the B-52 crews, although very pleased to be finally doing something to end the war knew the tactics were dumb with comments including “like Ducks in a shooting Gallery” and “I knew it would be a turkeyshoot….....for those on the ground”. The idea of flying in level flight was to maintain Jamming integrity for the B-52 cells, also because the antenna need to be pointing down to provide the jamming coverage, thus if you turn no more protection. On the first nights some of the B-52 pilots did indeed try to outmanoeuvre upcoming SAM's not completely trusting the Jamming [and a B-52 can certainly turn at 30,000ft]. This lead to some threats of court martial for any pilot that did jeopardize cell integrity by turning (for certain waves). The threat of Court Martial reported by all sources doesn’t seem to account for the contradictory fact that the pilots were ordered to perform a Post Target Turn after dropping the payload. This meant they would turn directly over the worse concentration of SAM sites over Hanoi with no jamming protection and into the Jet Stream winds keeping them in the lethal SAM radius a lot longer. This Post Target Turn was not only unnecessary but was essentially a big cause of some of the losses. B-52s at Anderson AFB Guam December 1972 (USAF) Night One 18/19 December
As an example of a raid the first night strike consisted of three waves of 129 B-52s (three waves of 48, 30 and 51). This is a breakdown of Wave One only.
The Vietnamese defenders
The Vietnamese were not expecting or geared up for a strategic bombing campaign of this scale, they had sent personnel and sites down to South North Vietnam and now had to recall them and everyone else on leave. The main problem was they were short of assembled SA-2B missiles. Each site (Battalion) only held six on launchers and six more on trucks in reserve. Once a truck had loaded one on the launcher it had to go to a depot and collect another, however you now had queues of trucks waiting for missiles – they could only assemble 40 per day. Luckily the pause between waves helped them somewhat. [The only way the USAF could have helped the Vietnamese more by this point was to drop fully assembled SA-2s on parachutes!! ] Even though on night one they had managed to down three B-52s (two others damaged), by Night two they had noticed the obvious use of the same tactics but were not able to capitalize on them straight away. They would launch the SA-2s unguided and when the B-52s did the Post Target Turn they would lock on and the SAM would guide in. This was not as easy as it sounds and needed practice, so they didn’t manage to down any B-52s on night two (only damaging two). From the US point of view, it seems no loss had vindicated SACs tactics, however when the Vietnamese got their tactics worked out on night three six B-52s were shot down (one other damaged) in only two waves (Second wave was cancelled by the head of SAC General Meyer after the losses in the first - but the third Wave was pushed ahead to "save face"). Some US sources seem to indicate they thought the Vietnamese had different SAMs (SA-3) but they only actually had SA-2Bs – the US were just clearly underestimating them if that was the case. B-52 window damaged from SA-2 fragments (USAF) Where did this cunning plan come from?
SAC was running the show from their HQ and were very much for centralized planning - unfortunately they were detached from reality and were too arrogant to know it. WW II & Korea fighter Ace General John C Meyer was in charge and had been accused of being hesitant to make decisions by the lower Generals. [Well most would be hesitant if their expertise lay in fighters]: Richard Baughn flew as a fighter pilot in World War II and then went on to command a SAC bomber unit as a brigadier General, and recalled feeling out of place in SAC due to the mindsets driven by different cultures. “You just feel like a third shoe, a third foot” and he believed that “if a SAC guy came to a TAC base, he would probably feel the same way.” From a common base in pilot and navigator training, the major commands imprinted different approaches to their unique missions and aircraft. In the words of Baughn, “Bomber pilots and fighter pilots are two different types. Always have been. They think differently and act differently.” It was these same lower Generals who were responsible for the planning of Linebacker II - in particular General Peter Sianis. With his WW II and Korean War experience of Strategic bombing and no experience of a modern IADS he was definitely the person you wanted in charge of this [NOT]. According to Colonel Frederick J. Miranda, SAC’s logistics representative on the planning staff, General Sianis saw the map prepared by staff officers that showed routes of flight for the operation, with “several different routes leading to Hanoi.” Miranda related what next occurred: General Sianis walked out of his inner office, took a look at the map, and said, “That’s not the way we do it!” Then he removed the colored tape showing the Andersen B-52 routing from the map and rerouted that bomber stream to a route over South Vietnam into Laos and forming up with the U-Tapao bomber stream. He also changed the post-target exit routing to one requiring all aircraft to make a right turn after dropping bombs and stated, “One way in and one way out!” He then instructed his staff to go make those changes and come back with the briefing. I will never forget how the map looked after General Sianis made changes. The colored tape was hanging loosely and the general made a comment, “You guys probably have a lot of tape, don’t you?” This was a significant last-minute change resulting in replanning, additional poststrike refueling, and the now infamous “post-target turn.” He essentially took the planning function away from the majors and lieutenant colonels and straitjacketed them with the “one way in, one way out” directive. No one questioned the SAC DCS/Operations. [Doh!] The Post Target Turn is something required when delivering Nuclear bombs to avoid the blast, its inclusion at a time when Nuclear bombing was low level single ship is not really explained or justified anywhere. B-52G-125-BW (59-2582) awaiting at Anderson AFB Guam to take off on 18 December 1972 (USAF) Jamming
The Electronic Warfare experts at SAC were confident that by maintaining cell integrity the B-52s would be fully protected against the SAMs, a cell was supposed to be three B-52s but sometimes a cell would include only two bombers and sometimes the cells would have degraded or failed ECM equipment due to the no abort maximum effort policy. Although SAC at the time thought the unmodified Jammers on the newer B-52Gs were the cause of some of the losses (and stopped Gs flying over Hanoi) it wasn’t the full story because they were also using the wrong type of jamming. North Vietnam was using an SA-2B SAM that was modified by the Soviets [supplied in 1971] to prevent Beacon jamming after analyzing an QRC-160-8 (ALQ-87) ECM pod found in the jungle. In the late 1960s this type of jamming had rendered the SA-2 all but useless by jamming its uplink command guidance. Now fair enough, how were the SAC EW experts to know this?……………..well they could have read reports from the US Seventh Air Force on the matter who had been aware this SAM was in use and had been reporting on it for the past year. Or they could also have tested the B-52 jammers against the modified SA-2B they had captured and was sitting in Eglin AFB! In fact it wasn’t until during Linebacker II and after the losses of the first 4 days they started testing that they confirmed that the Post Target Turn removed all jamming and the beacon jamming was not effective.
B-52Ds preparing to take off for another Linebacker II mission (USAF) Aftermath
Although no plan is said to survive contact with the enemy it doesn’t help when you have centralized planning and control by people that simply do not know what they are doing from the start. SAC eventually handed the planning down the 8th Air Force and with many other tactical changes things never got anywhere near as bad as Night three had been - by nights 10/11 the resistance from Hanoi had become almost irrelevant to the point they could freely fly over it. Overall Linebacker II ended up achieving Nixons objectives and the gamble paid off for him with the peace treaty being signed in January 1973. However for the B-52 flyers as always it was a very different war and by 1973 some had clearly had enough of Meyers management policies: [note B-52 Arc Light & Bullet Shot operations continued until August 1973] On January 3, those crewmembers not flying assembled in the Arc Light Center briefing room, where they first watched Meyer pin the Air Force Cross on Colonel McCarthy, who had flown two missions during the operation. Meyer then addressed the Airmen in the audience, and his message was blunt. The general elaborated on the need for cell integrity in the missions over North Vietnam, remarking that tight formations provided the greatest chance to thwart the SAM threat by using the combined jamming capability of three bombers to defeat the data-links guiding the missiles. He then stated that aircraft commanders were not to maneuver during the bomb run and repeated the court-martial threat that they had previously received at the start of Linebacker II. At that moment, the briefing room became totally silent—all whispered conversations stopped, the normal coughing that typically comes from any audience halted, and no one moved. Then, suddenly, roughly half the Airmen in attendance stood up and walked out, “like a herd of cattle,” John Allen remembered. Many of those were chagrined that McCarthy had flown only two missions, plus that he had done so from the jump-seat of G model aircraft, though qualified only in D models. Allen described what came next: Of the roughly 200 that remained, 75 to 80 people just went crazy. They picked up whatever was nearby and threw it at the stage—flight computers, briefing books, Coke cans, folding chairs, you name it. It was like if you had ever been
to a burlesque house, where they’d throw tomatoes and apples at a bad act, it was just like that. It couldn’t have lasted more than 13 seconds, the assault, but [Meyer] got hit a bunch of times. I saw a Coke can bounce right off his head. I
was just frozen in my tracks—I couldn’t do anything—it was mob action. He went down on a knee, and a bevy of colonels picked him up and helped him off stage. Meanwhile, the guys jumped up on stage and physically chased him down to the
flight line. There were a bunch of guys running after him, including the guys that were “gone” and the others of us that just wanted to see what would happen. He was in his staff car, heading toward his airplane, a shiny silver and white VC-135. They chased him down to where they now have the B-52 [Arc Light Memorial] up on a pedestal. They ran down and they threw chunks of gravel that were next to the road, just pelting his staff car and the power cart [used to start engines],and continued to pelt him as he went up the ramp. Then off he went and we never heard anything more from CINC [commander in chief] SAC. Crews in briefing at Anderson AFB December 1972 (USAF)
Sources and Further Reading To Fly and Fight: The experience of American airmen in Southeast Asia (Andrews WF, 2011) , George Mason University The 11 Days of Christmas (Michel III ML, 2002) Encounter Books Linebacker II: A View from the Rock (McCarthy JR & Rayfield RE, 1976), Office of Air Force History Maxwell AFB War From Above The Clouds (Head WP, 2002) Air Force Press Maxwell AFB Patterns and Predictability: The Soviet evaluation of operation Linebacker II (Drenkowski D & Grau LW ) Fifty Shades of Friction: Combat Climate, B-52 Crews, and the Vietnam War (Clodfelter M, 2016) National Defense University Press F-105 Wild Weasel vs SA-2 “Guideline” SAM Vietnam 1963-73 (Davies.P, 2011) Osprey Publishing The Red SAM: The SA-2 guideline Anti-Aircraft Missile (Zaloga SJ, 2007) Osprey Publishing B-52 Stratofortress units in combat 1955 to 1973 (Lake, J 2004) Osprey Publishing Quote from Blackadder Goes Forth (BBC, 1989) Title photo B-52D-65-BO s/n 55-110 weapons loading (USAF)
What ended up as a relatively short eleven-day campaign, started out and was planned for three days and those first days are really the focus of this article due to some rather strange tactics. Surprise attack
All B-52 sorties were launched either from the Pacific island of Guam at Anderson AFB or U-Tapao RTAFB (Thailand), with Guam having a very long flight time to target requiring A-A refueling for the B-52Ds. The B-52s were to take off from Guam and fly right over a Soviet spy trawler sitting in international waters of the end of the runway.
As the B-52 raid got closer to North Vietnam they would test all their ECM gear handily notifying the SAM operators of the frequencies being used in advance. As they neared the target the F-4 Chaff bombers would fly in front of the raid and drop chaff to provide a protective chaff corridor that the B-52s would fly through giving extra protection. However it seems that not only did the chaff present a big arrow pointing to the intended target on the Vietnamese radar scopes it then promptly blew away in the very high winds providing next to no real protection.
On top of that as planned for the first three nights the B-52 waves (three waves per night) were to follow the same route as F-105s had done since 1967 and fly over the targets in level flight (to a determined point) at the same altitudes, speed, heading and times…………with a nice long pause between each wave. General Melchett: Field Marshal Haig has formulated a brilliant new tactical plan to ensure final victory in the field.
Captain Blackadder: Ah. Would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of our trenches, and walking very slowly towards the enemy?
Captain Darling: How could you possibly know that Blackadder? It's classified information!
Captain Blackadder: It's the same plan that we used last time..........and the seventeen times before that.
General Melchett: Exactly! And that is what is so brilliant about it! It will catch the watchful Hun totally off guard! Doing precisely what we've done eighteen times before is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time! There is, however, one small problem.
Captain Blackadder: That everyone always gets slaughtered in the first ten seconds.
General Melchett: That's right. And Field Marshal Haig is worried this may be depressing the men a tad. So, he's looking for a way to cheer them up.
Captain Blackadder: Well, his resignation and suicide seems the obvious choice.
General Melchett: Hmm, interesting thought. Make a note of it, Darling.
(from Blackadder Goes Forth BBC)
Unsurprisingly the B-52 crews, although very pleased to be finally doing something to end the war knew the tactics were dumb with comments including “like Ducks in a shooting Gallery” and “I knew it would be a turkeyshoot….....for those on the ground”. The idea of flying in level flight was to maintain Jamming integrity for the B-52 cells, also because the antenna need to be pointing down to provide the jamming coverage, thus if you turn no more protection. On the first nights some of the B-52 pilots did indeed try to outmanoeuvre upcoming SAM's not completely trusting the Jamming [and a B-52 can certainly turn at 30,000ft]. This lead to some threats of court martial for any pilot that did jeopardize cell integrity by turning (for certain waves). The threat of Court Martial reported by all sources doesn’t seem to account for the contradictory fact that the pilots were ordered to perform a Post Target Turn after dropping the payload. This meant they would turn directly over the worse concentration of SAM sites over Hanoi with no jamming protection and into the Jet Stream winds keeping them in the lethal SAM radius a lot longer. This Post Target Turn was not only unnecessary but was essentially a big cause of some of the losses. B-52s at Anderson AFB Guam December 1972 (USAF) Night One 18/19 December
As an example of a raid the first night strike consisted of three waves of 129 B-52s (three waves of 48, 30 and 51). This is a breakdown of Wave One only.
The Vietnamese defenders
The Vietnamese were not expecting or geared up for a strategic bombing campaign of this scale, they had sent personnel and sites down to South North Vietnam and now had to recall them and everyone else on leave. The main problem was they were short of assembled SA-2B missiles. Each site (Battalion) only held six on launchers and six more on trucks in reserve. Once a truck had loaded one on the launcher it had to go to a depot and collect another, however you now had queues of trucks waiting for missiles – they could only assemble 40 per day. Luckily the pause between waves helped them somewhat. [The only way the USAF could have helped the Vietnamese more by this point was to drop fully assembled SA-2s on parachutes!! ] Even though on night one they had managed to down three B-52s (two others damaged), by Night two they had noticed the obvious use of the same tactics but were not able to capitalize on them straight away. They would launch the SA-2s unguided and when the B-52s did the Post Target Turn they would lock on and the SAM would guide in. This was not as easy as it sounds and needed practice, so they didn’t manage to down any B-52s on night two (only damaging two). From the US point of view, it seems no loss had vindicated SACs tactics, however when the Vietnamese got their tactics worked out on night three six B-52s were shot down (one other damaged) in only two waves (Second wave was cancelled by the head of SAC General Meyer after the losses in the first - but the third Wave was pushed ahead to "save face"). Some US sources seem to indicate they thought the Vietnamese had different SAMs (SA-3) but they only actually had SA-2Bs – the US were just clearly underestimating them if that was the case. B-52 window damaged from SA-2 fragments (USAF) Where did this cunning plan come from?
SAC was running the show from their HQ and were very much for centralized planning - unfortunately they were detached from reality and were too arrogant to know it. WW II & Korea fighter Ace General John C Meyer was in charge and had been accused of being hesitant to make decisions by the lower Generals. [Well most would be hesitant if their expertise lay in fighters]: Richard Baughn flew as a fighter pilot in World War II and then went on to command a SAC bomber unit as a brigadier General, and recalled feeling out of place in SAC due to the mindsets driven by different cultures. “You just feel like a third shoe, a third foot” and he believed that “if a SAC guy came to a TAC base, he would probably feel the same way.” From a common base in pilot and navigator training, the major commands imprinted different approaches to their unique missions and aircraft. In the words of Baughn, “Bomber pilots and fighter pilots are two different types. Always have been. They think differently and act differently.” It was these same lower Generals who were responsible for the planning of Linebacker II - in particular General Peter Sianis. With his WW II and Korean War experience of Strategic bombing and no experience of a modern IADS he was definitely the person you wanted in charge of this [NOT]. According to Colonel Frederick J. Miranda, SAC’s logistics representative on the planning staff, General Sianis saw the map prepared by staff officers that showed routes of flight for the operation, with “several different routes leading to Hanoi.” Miranda related what next occurred: General Sianis walked out of his inner office, took a look at the map, and said, “That’s not the way we do it!” Then he removed the colored tape showing the Andersen B-52 routing from the map and rerouted that bomber stream to a route over South Vietnam into Laos and forming up with the U-Tapao bomber stream. He also changed the post-target exit routing to one requiring all aircraft to make a right turn after dropping bombs and stated, “One way in and one way out!” He then instructed his staff to go make those changes and come back with the briefing. I will never forget how the map looked after General Sianis made changes. The colored tape was hanging loosely and the general made a comment, “You guys probably have a lot of tape, don’t you?” This was a significant last-minute change resulting in replanning, additional poststrike refueling, and the now infamous “post-target turn.” He essentially took the planning function away from the majors and lieutenant colonels and straitjacketed them with the “one way in, one way out” directive. No one questioned the SAC DCS/Operations. [Doh!] The Post Target Turn is something required when delivering Nuclear bombs to avoid the blast, its inclusion at a time when Nuclear bombing was low level single ship is not really explained or justified anywhere. B-52G-125-BW (59-2582) awaiting at Anderson AFB Guam to take off on 18 December 1972 (USAF) Jamming
The Electronic Warfare experts at SAC were confident that by maintaining cell integrity the B-52s would be fully protected against the SAMs, a cell was supposed to be three B-52s but sometimes a cell would include only two bombers and sometimes the cells would have degraded or failed ECM equipment due to the no abort maximum effort policy. Although SAC at the time thought the unmodified Jammers on the newer B-52Gs were the cause of some of the losses (and stopped Gs flying over Hanoi) it wasn’t the full story because they were also using the wrong type of jamming. North Vietnam was using an SA-2B SAM that was modified by the Soviets [supplied in 1971] to prevent Beacon jamming after analyzing an QRC-160-8 (ALQ-87) ECM pod found in the jungle. In the late 1960s this type of jamming had rendered the SA-2 all but useless by jamming its uplink command guidance. Now fair enough, how were the SAC EW experts to know this?……………..well they could have read reports from the US Seventh Air Force on the matter who had been aware this SAM was in use and had been reporting on it for the past year. Or they could also have tested the B-52 jammers against the modified SA-2B they had captured and was sitting in Eglin AFB! In fact it wasn’t until during Linebacker II and after the losses of the first 4 days they started testing that they confirmed that the Post Target Turn removed all jamming and the beacon jamming was not effective.
B-52Ds preparing to take off for another Linebacker II mission (USAF) Aftermath
Although no plan is said to survive contact with the enemy it doesn’t help when you have centralized planning and control by people that simply do not know what they are doing from the start. SAC eventually handed the planning down the 8th Air Force and with many other tactical changes things never got anywhere near as bad as Night three had been - by nights 10/11 the resistance from Hanoi had become almost irrelevant to the point they could freely fly over it. Overall Linebacker II ended up achieving Nixons objectives and the gamble paid off for him with the peace treaty being signed in January 1973. However for the B-52 flyers as always it was a very different war and by 1973 some had clearly had enough of Meyers management policies: [note B-52 Arc Light & Bullet Shot operations continued until August 1973] On January 3, those crewmembers not flying assembled in the Arc Light Center briefing room, where they first watched Meyer pin the Air Force Cross on Colonel McCarthy, who had flown two missions during the operation. Meyer then addressed the Airmen in the audience, and his message was blunt. The general elaborated on the need for cell integrity in the missions over North Vietnam, remarking that tight formations provided the greatest chance to thwart the SAM threat by using the combined jamming capability of three bombers to defeat the data-links guiding the missiles. He then stated that aircraft commanders were not to maneuver during the bomb run and repeated the court-martial threat that they had previously received at the start of Linebacker II. At that moment, the briefing room became totally silent—all whispered conversations stopped, the normal coughing that typically comes from any audience halted, and no one moved. Then, suddenly, roughly half the Airmen in attendance stood up and walked out, “like a herd of cattle,” John Allen remembered. Many of those were chagrined that McCarthy had flown only two missions, plus that he had done so from the jump-seat of G model aircraft, though qualified only in D models. Allen described what came next: Of the roughly 200 that remained, 75 to 80 people just went crazy. They picked up whatever was nearby and threw it at the stage—flight computers, briefing books, Coke cans, folding chairs, you name it. It was like if you had ever been
to a burlesque house, where they’d throw tomatoes and apples at a bad act, it was just like that. It couldn’t have lasted more than 13 seconds, the assault, but [Meyer] got hit a bunch of times. I saw a Coke can bounce right off his head. I
was just frozen in my tracks—I couldn’t do anything—it was mob action. He went down on a knee, and a bevy of colonels picked him up and helped him off stage. Meanwhile, the guys jumped up on stage and physically chased him down to the
flight line. There were a bunch of guys running after him, including the guys that were “gone” and the others of us that just wanted to see what would happen. He was in his staff car, heading toward his airplane, a shiny silver and white VC-135. They chased him down to where they now have the B-52 [Arc Light Memorial] up on a pedestal. They ran down and they threw chunks of gravel that were next to the road, just pelting his staff car and the power cart [used to start engines],and continued to pelt him as he went up the ramp. Then off he went and we never heard anything more from CINC [commander in chief] SAC. Crews in briefing at Anderson AFB December 1972 (USAF)
Sources and Further Reading To Fly and Fight: The experience of American airmen in Southeast Asia (Andrews WF, 2011) , George Mason University The 11 Days of Christmas (Michel III ML, 2002) Encounter Books Linebacker II: A View from the Rock (McCarthy JR & Rayfield RE, 1976), Office of Air Force History Maxwell AFB War From Above The Clouds (Head WP, 2002) Air Force Press Maxwell AFB Patterns and Predictability: The Soviet evaluation of operation Linebacker II (Drenkowski D & Grau LW ) Fifty Shades of Friction: Combat Climate, B-52 Crews, and the Vietnam War (Clodfelter M, 2016) National Defense University Press F-105 Wild Weasel vs SA-2 “Guideline” SAM Vietnam 1963-73 (Davies.P, 2011) Osprey Publishing The Red SAM: The SA-2 guideline Anti-Aircraft Missile (Zaloga SJ, 2007) Osprey Publishing B-52 Stratofortress units in combat 1955 to 1973 (Lake, J 2004) Osprey Publishing Quote from Blackadder Goes Forth (BBC, 1989) Title photo B-52D-65-BO s/n 55-110 weapons loading (USAF)
DCS weekend News 25 May 2018
By MigBuster,
Persian Gulf Map for DCS World, Now Available!
We are excited to announce that the Persian Gulf Map for DCS World is now available for download. This is our first modern-day combat theater outside of the Caucasus map, and it will provide many interesting and engaging historical and hypothetic scenarios. To purchase this new map for DCS World, please visit DCS e-shop.
Please note that the Persian Gulf Map early access release is only for DCS World 2.5 Open Beta. Once the map becomes final, it will be available in the DCS World 2.5 Release version.
The Persian Gulf Map for DCS World focuses on the Strait of Hormuz, which is the strategic choke point between the oil-rich Persian Gulf and the rest of the world. Flanked by Iran to the North and western-supported UAE and Oman to the south, this has been one of the world’s most dangerous flash points for decades. It was the location of Operation Praying Mantis in 1988 in which the US Navy sank several Iranian naval vessels.
The region also includes the vast Arabian Sea that is well-suited for combat aircraft carrier operations, and it will be an amazing area of operations for the upcoming Hornet and Tomcat. Be it from land bases in Iran, UAE and Oman, or from the deck of an aircraft carrier, the Persian Gulf Map offers a wide array of combat mission scenarios to prove your mettle.
Key Features:
201,000 sq km highly detailed map area that centers on the Strait of Hormuz.
As part of DCS World 2.5, this map include highly detailed terrain, textures, seas, and buildings.
17 accurately created airbases in Iran, the UAE and Oman. Airbases include a variety of landing aids that can include TACAN, VASI lights, realistic approach lights, and VOR.
Detailed cities such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Bandar Abbas with unique buildings.
"Strong Hold" islands such as Abu Musa, Siri, and the Tunb islands.
Iran, the UAE and Oman will be added to the list of DCS World nations.
Unique trees, bushes, grass and other vegetation using speedtree technology.
Varied terrain from towering mountains and valleys to desert plains.
New map objects like super tankers, cargo ships, pleasure craft, and dhows.
New Iranian liveries for ground and air units.
Map expansion coming soon with Kerman and Shiraz airbases in Iran.
DCS World Gift System
A common request we've had from you, our customers, is a gift system to purchase DCS World products for others. It's here! The gift system allows you to purchase any product on the DCS World e-Shop and send them as gifts to other users registered on WWW.DCS-WORLD.COM.
When in the "My Shopping Cart" store page, you now have a "Buy as a gift" button. Upon selection, you can then enter a DCS World username or their e-mail address to gift them the purchase; you can also leave them a comment.
Your gift orders will also be listed in your DCS World Store page.
Note that when purchasing a DCS World product as a gift, no bonus points are earned, but you can use bonus points to purchase a gift.
DCS World and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
On May 25th 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect, a regulation that greatly influences how companies collect, process, and use personal data. Eagle Dynamics SA (EDSA) and The Fighter Collection (TFC) have updated their Privacy Policies to comply with new European Union data protection laws. Please read our Privacy Policy, which describes how we collect, use, and share your information to provide you a better game service. We've recently made important updates to our products and services to help you on your journey to GDPR readiness.
Nothing is changing about your current settings or how your information is processed. Rather, we’ve improved the way we describe our practices in gathering statistics data.
You can manage the content and information you share when you use DCS World and our website through Personal Section of DCS site.
We store data for as long as it is necessary to provide products and services to you. Information associated with your account will be kept until your account is deleted, unless we no longer need the data to provide products and services.
You can delete your account at any time. When you delete your account, we delete everything related to that account such as your personal information and purchase history.
Sincerely,
The Eagle Dynamics Team
The Eagle Dynamics Team
Il2 Update 3.003 (Bf-109G14 & Spitfire Mk IX)
By 76.IAP-Blackbird,
Update 3.003
Hello everybody,
One month after the last update we present you another one. The new update 3.003 starts the Bodenplatte Early Access program - if you pre-purchased it, you can fly the first aircraft from its plane set right now.
At this early stage, only two planes are available - Bf 109 G-14 and Supermarine Spitfire Mk.IXe (with old pilot models since new, late war ones, aren't ready yet).
Bf 109 G-14 is the last fighter model from 109 'G' lineup. This model has the completely new canopy with the increased field of view 'Erla', transparent armored glass headrest and the increased rudder surface. The more advanced DB-605AM engine is equipped with the automatic water-methanol mixture injector system that engages at maximum throttle, allowing for increased intake pressure and engine power as the result. The running time at maximum throttle has been increased to 10 minutes with less engine overheat and required radiators opening. The aircraft armament is similar to Bf 109 G-6, but it can carry heavy unguided rockets 21cm WGR-21 (9.5 kg of explosives and up to 30 kg of fragments in each rocket).
Supermarine Spitfire Mk.IXe is the most well-known and widespread model of the legendary WWII British fighter. Thanks to the number of selectable modifications we have implemented, you're effectively getting four aircraft, not one. By selecting certain modifications, you can have Spitfire LF Mk.IXe (with the Merlin-66 engine for lower altitudes) or Spitfire HF Mk.IXe (with the Merlin-70 engine for higher altitudes) or their modifications with clipped wings. In addition, you can select either the standard Mk.II gunsight or the advanced gyro gunsight G.G.S. Mk.IID that automatically shows the correct target lead provided you have the target base and distance set! Also, unlike the lend-lease Spitfire Mk.Vb, this model is equipped with rockets and bombs.
Our new Engineer-Programmer Kirill Konnov describes how the gyro gunsight works in detail:
The gyro gunsight is an advanced device capable of automatically calculating and correcting the lead angle for firing at a moving target. The attempts of building such a device begun even before the war in Great Britain and Germany, but first gyro gunsights appeared only in 1941.
It is taken for granted that airspeeds of the own and target aircraft are nearly the same or close enough, so the required lead angle is in direct ratio to the angular speed of the target. Therefore, to calculate the target lead angle, three values are required at any moment: distance to the target, projectile flight time and the angular speed of the own aircraft.
The pilot set the distance to target himself, therefore the simple optical rangefinder was part of the gunsight - adjusting the distance knob changed the size of the moving circular reticle. If the target base (its wingspan) is set correctly using another knob, then adjusting the circular reticle to be the same size as the visible (angular) target size effectively sets the target distance.
The time required for a projectile to travel the required distance has been set in the internal structure of the gunsight parts themselves and couldn't be changed. The angular speed of the own aircraft is the same as the angular speed of the gunsight itself.
But how to calculate the correct angular target lead using these values? There were no computers in the modern sense of this word at that time, so a really complex optomechanical system has been invented. It included the round mirror attached to the gyroscope with three degrees of freedom.
The rotor of the gyro has been rotating in the magnetic field created by inductance coils (Picture 2). The current in the coils has been adjusted according to the set target distance so the resulting deviation from the aircraft axial line during a banking turn projected the targeting reticle to a correct lead angle.
There were four operating modes: fixed reticle, gyro and fixed reticles, gyro reticle and night mode. In the night mode, the target lead is calculated for the fixed distance of 150 yards, ignoring the distance input from the user (but the optical rangefinder in this mode is still functional).
According to the historical data, an average hit accuracy with this gyro gunsight G.G.S. Mk. IID was more than two times better than with regular collimator gunsights on the same aircraft. The main principles used in this gunsight were used in the development of new gunsights and targeting equipment all the way to 1970s.
Having analyzed the level of complexity and unpredictability of the internal processes of this device (many parts of the gunsight are actually crosslinked and serve more than one purpose) I have decided to model the entire system 'as is' without significant simplifications. Therefore, the behavior of the lead indicator in the sim is close to the real gunsight as it is possible.
Update changelist:
1. Bf 109 G-14 is available to all Battle of Bodenplatte owners;
2. Spitfire Mk.IXe is available to all Battle of Bodenplatte owners;
3. Finishing a mission no longer results in an incorrect results screen while using automatic login via autoplay.cfg file;
4. Multiplayer server ban time control has been fixed;
5. The random black screen issue while joining a multiplayer server should be gone now;
6. The multiplayer modifications blocking logic has been corrected;
7. Two units that were AI-only are joinable now: 15.(span)/JG 27 (BOM) and 13.(slow.)/JG 52 (BOK). In addition, two new pilot biographies were added. Big thanks to the community enthusiasts who wrote the texts!
8. Vehicles in a column shouldn't crash into a destroyed vehicle (QMB and Career modes);
9. Player home airfield won't have an empty callsign anymore (Career);
10. The Career mission generator won't fail when there are too few aircraft left in a unit;
11. Many text corrections in the Career mode;
12. The issue in the Career mode when a pilot transferred to another unit still flew for his former unit has been fixed;
13. All single missions should display correctly in the mission list;
14. Default map zoom in has been corrected both in briefing and in flight;
15. Gunsight settings (set distance, etc.) won't reset anymore when a new enemy aircraft is spawned;
16. Tank handling (turning) at higher speeds has been improved;
17. Wrong world scale in Windows Mixed Reality devices such as Samsung Odyssey caused by the doubled reported IPD value should be fixed now. Please discuss the update in this thread.
2. Spitfire Mk.IXe is available to all Battle of Bodenplatte owners;
3. Finishing a mission no longer results in an incorrect results screen while using automatic login via autoplay.cfg file;
4. Multiplayer server ban time control has been fixed;
5. The random black screen issue while joining a multiplayer server should be gone now;
6. The multiplayer modifications blocking logic has been corrected;
7. Two units that were AI-only are joinable now: 15.(span)/JG 27 (BOM) and 13.(slow.)/JG 52 (BOK). In addition, two new pilot biographies were added. Big thanks to the community enthusiasts who wrote the texts!
8. Vehicles in a column shouldn't crash into a destroyed vehicle (QMB and Career modes);
9. Player home airfield won't have an empty callsign anymore (Career);
10. The Career mission generator won't fail when there are too few aircraft left in a unit;
11. Many text corrections in the Career mode;
12. The issue in the Career mode when a pilot transferred to another unit still flew for his former unit has been fixed;
13. All single missions should display correctly in the mission list;
14. Default map zoom in has been corrected both in briefing and in flight;
15. Gunsight settings (set distance, etc.) won't reset anymore when a new enemy aircraft is spawned;
16. Tank handling (turning) at higher speeds has been improved;
17. Wrong world scale in Windows Mixed Reality devices such as Samsung Odyssey caused by the doubled reported IPD value should be fixed now. Please discuss the update in this thread.
Il2 DD Update Dev Blog 193 (Mapsize Bodenplatte)
By 76.IAP-Blackbird,
Hello everybody,
The time has come to tell you more about the historical timeframe of Battle of Bodenplatte.
As we said in our previous Dev Blog #192, we're making all four different seasons for this map. Some might think that we'll model only 1-2 days of the actual Bodenplatte operation when the Luftwaffe made the all-out attack on the Allied airfields near Brussels and Antwerp. However, our “Battle of” series is much more than that! The Career mode for this new theatre of war will last from September 17th, 1944 to March 28th, 1945 – 188 days of war in total.
Historically, 11 significant engagements took place in this area during the given timeframe. In the Career mode, you'll see your area of operations, mission types, acting air force units, their home airfields and other details that correspond to the historical data. You'll be flying in and around many famous operations and battles. Of course, we can’t model every skirmish or battle on the ground, but we will have an exciting Career spanning this later stage of the war when the Allies were fighting their way into Germany.
Operation Market Garden (September 17 – 26, 1944)
Battle of Aachen (October 2 – 21, 1944)
Battle of the Scheldt (October 2 – November 8, 1944)
Operation Queen (November 16 – December 15, 1944)
Operation Watch on the Rhine (December 16 – 25, 1944)
Allied Counter-Offensive (December 26, 1944 – January 25, 1945)
Operation Bodenplatte (January 1, 1945)
Operation Veritable (February 8 – March 10, 1945)
Operation Clarion (February 22 – 23, 1945)
Operation Grenade (February 23 – March 10, 1945)
Operation Plunder (March 23 – 28, 1945) As said above, we won't be able to recreate these ground operations in super detail, but the overall situation, mission tasks, home airfields and mission targets will change as they should historically just as you experience with Stalingrad, Moscow and Kuban. This, along with the corresponding features of the Career mode like pilot biographies, squadron histories, newspaper articles, videos, squadron rosters, medals and rank progression will create an authentic experience of flying on the Western Front during the late war period. The whole timeframe will be divided into 5 chapters: Chapter 1: Fighting in Holland (September 17 – October 1, 1944)
Chapter 2: Autumn Offensive (October 2 – December 15, 1944)
Chapter 3: Battle of the Bulge (December 16 – 25, 1944)
Chapter 4: Allied Counter-Offensive (December 26, 1944 – February 7, 1945)
Chapter 5: Battle of the Rhine (February 8 – March 28, 1945) To create this new theatre of war, a thorough research will be done on where the units of both sides were based, their tasks and what aircraft they used day by day. Two new award systems for the US and Great Britain are to be created from scratch, as well as the late war pilot models for Luftwaffe, RAF and USAAF along with their chutes. The Newspaper articles is a huge task on their own and takes several months to complete. If you’d like to help with this contact Jason. We also plan on making additional mission types for this unique location and timeframe. All in all, this will be a lot of work for us, but progress is already being made. For example, we have finalized the map boundaries and the airfield locations. This map is bigger than we initially planned (flyable area is 401 x 324 km - it is 129.900 sq.km) and several compromises will have to be made to make it a reality. It will stretch us to the limit of what is possible in our development schedule, but as with our other maps it will be really cool when it’s done.
You can discuss the news in this thread
Battle of Aachen (October 2 – 21, 1944)
Battle of the Scheldt (October 2 – November 8, 1944)
Operation Queen (November 16 – December 15, 1944)
Operation Watch on the Rhine (December 16 – 25, 1944)
Allied Counter-Offensive (December 26, 1944 – January 25, 1945)
Operation Bodenplatte (January 1, 1945)
Operation Veritable (February 8 – March 10, 1945)
Operation Clarion (February 22 – 23, 1945)
Operation Grenade (February 23 – March 10, 1945)
Operation Plunder (March 23 – 28, 1945) As said above, we won't be able to recreate these ground operations in super detail, but the overall situation, mission tasks, home airfields and mission targets will change as they should historically just as you experience with Stalingrad, Moscow and Kuban. This, along with the corresponding features of the Career mode like pilot biographies, squadron histories, newspaper articles, videos, squadron rosters, medals and rank progression will create an authentic experience of flying on the Western Front during the late war period. The whole timeframe will be divided into 5 chapters: Chapter 1: Fighting in Holland (September 17 – October 1, 1944)
Chapter 2: Autumn Offensive (October 2 – December 15, 1944)
Chapter 3: Battle of the Bulge (December 16 – 25, 1944)
Chapter 4: Allied Counter-Offensive (December 26, 1944 – February 7, 1945)
Chapter 5: Battle of the Rhine (February 8 – March 28, 1945) To create this new theatre of war, a thorough research will be done on where the units of both sides were based, their tasks and what aircraft they used day by day. Two new award systems for the US and Great Britain are to be created from scratch, as well as the late war pilot models for Luftwaffe, RAF and USAAF along with their chutes. The Newspaper articles is a huge task on their own and takes several months to complete. If you’d like to help with this contact Jason. We also plan on making additional mission types for this unique location and timeframe. All in all, this will be a lot of work for us, but progress is already being made. For example, we have finalized the map boundaries and the airfield locations. This map is bigger than we initially planned (flyable area is 401 x 324 km - it is 129.900 sq.km) and several compromises will have to be made to make it a reality. It will stretch us to the limit of what is possible in our development schedule, but as with our other maps it will be really cool when it’s done.
You can discuss the news in this thread
Strike Fighters 2: The Last of the Lightnings
By MigBuster,
With so many different aircraft in Strike Fighters it is often the case of selecting an aircraft and fudging it around the skies with only vague recollection of how the radar works and how it is supposed to handle because you didn’t have the time to refresh. The Last of the Lightnings is a mod that unusually for SF2 centers mainly on getting familiar with a certain type of aircraft and its systems. You might even term it DCS lite however I can’t imagine seeing any of the aircraft in this mod featuring in that sim in my lifetime. So, what is it about?
The Last of the Lightnings (by comrpnt) is a set of scripted single missions (like YAP) that take the player through an RAF Operational Conversion Unit (OCU) training program and is based on the writings of ex Lightning and F-4 pilot Ian Black. This takes place in 1976 and you are flying the English Electric Lightning F.mk6.
The what you say? or as FastCargo once stated before being put under court martial by the USAF for blasphemy [or not]. The Lightning was the last fully designed British supersonic fighter to enter service and its only requirement seems to have been performance above everything else [especially fuel]. Strike Fighters 2 comes with all seven of the single seat variants: Lightning F.mk1 Lightning F.mk1A Lightning F.mk2 Lightning F.mk2A Lightning F.mk3 Lightning F.mk6 Lightning F.mk53 Okay if you are wondering where your Lightnings are then you didn’t buy SF2 Expansion Pack 2 did you, in which case you are one of the reasons TK is now doing crappy phone games only………[hey his words] not to make you feel too guilty! Shame really because it comes with some of the best 3D pits Thirdwire ever did, and probably unique as far as combat sims go with the Lightning: The centrepiece of the mod is a pdf guide that must have taken some time to do and is quite detailed in places.
So the point of this is that you will be learning to fly the Lightning or at least be better at it. On Hard flight model (~SFM in DCS) it can be tricky to handle so you will be dragged through formation landings, flying, A-A refueling and even learn how to use the radar to properly intercept targets and actually read the radar symbology. Some of this should be useful for other aircraft at least.
Install
So yes you need SF2E and SF2 Exp 2 to run this minimum. I was running this from a full merged install, of which I created a separate install by copying the game exe file and running that to create a new Mod folder called LastOfTheLightnings for it.
Full instructions are on the PDF and is mostly drag and drop with some ini file editing. For the training rounds I created new folders in the weapons folder and not the old-fashioned way recommended. Mods
So once up and running I added mods and changed them as I went through the course. Because of the changes that come with the mod I only changed the terrain tiles, runway, and sky using Better Widesky (Cellisky/Orsin). I have also put in mods to give more head movement and darker nights. Up and running
Firstly, you go to single mission only and choose the missions using the date code e.g. [760522] then ignore the text the game puts in because it is wrong [only go by the date code to get the correct mission per the guide].
Check your loadout - obviously the training rounds should be there otherwise don’t touch or change anything just look at the map and then launch. So you start either on the runway or the taxi way on these missions.
At the beginning the tricky parts are landing on formation with your Qualified Flying instructor (QFI) and playing chase the QFI. Especially at night you need to be on your feet to keep track of the guy initially!
You are then given instruction on how A-A refueling should be done, e.g. fly in formation on the port side before refueling then fly formation on the starboard wing. You then have to try it at night and in clouds. Yes the amazing Ravenclaw Bucc is in this pack. The Intercept phase is interesting and you will be going after low and high targets before flying in formation with them, so you will need to learn what those dots and lines mean
After basic intercepts you get to do ACM against the pesky aggressor F-4Ms, although don’t pay too much attention to the instruction for this because they will spam those AIM-7s at you, luckily they are only training rounds [if you installed them properly] and wont kill you. Next live weapons are used to intercept remote controlled unmanned drones (Hunters). The early ones fly straight but the later ones give you problems by turning a lot. After basic strafing there is a pretty cool finale for your graduation, firstly you fly an F-4M as a photo chase plane: Then you get to fly position 9 in a graduation formation fly over of RAF Jever.
Final salute to comrpnt for a fine job six years later.
With so many different aircraft in Strike Fighters it is often the case of selecting an aircraft and fudging it around the skies with only vague recollection of how the radar works and how it is supposed to handle because you didn’t have the time to refresh. The Last of the Lightnings is a mod that unusually for SF2 centers mainly on getting familiar with a certain type of aircraft and its systems. You might even term it DCS lite however I can’t imagine seeing any of the aircraft in this mod featuring in that sim in my lifetime. So, what is it about?
The Last of the Lightnings (by comrpnt) is a set of scripted single missions (like YAP) that take the player through an RAF Operational Conversion Unit (OCU) training program and is based on the writings of ex Lightning and F-4 pilot Ian Black. This takes place in 1976 and you are flying the English Electric Lightning F.mk6.
The what you say? or as FastCargo once stated before being put under court martial by the USAF for blasphemy [or not]. The Lightning was the last fully designed British supersonic fighter to enter service and its only requirement seems to have been performance above everything else [especially fuel]. Strike Fighters 2 comes with all seven of the single seat variants: Lightning F.mk1 Lightning F.mk1A Lightning F.mk2 Lightning F.mk2A Lightning F.mk3 Lightning F.mk6 Lightning F.mk53 Okay if you are wondering where your Lightnings are then you didn’t buy SF2 Expansion Pack 2 did you, in which case you are one of the reasons TK is now doing crappy phone games only………[hey his words] not to make you feel too guilty! Shame really because it comes with some of the best 3D pits Thirdwire ever did, and probably unique as far as combat sims go with the Lightning: The centrepiece of the mod is a pdf guide that must have taken some time to do and is quite detailed in places.
So the point of this is that you will be learning to fly the Lightning or at least be better at it. On Hard flight model (~SFM in DCS) it can be tricky to handle so you will be dragged through formation landings, flying, A-A refueling and even learn how to use the radar to properly intercept targets and actually read the radar symbology. Some of this should be useful for other aircraft at least.
Install
So yes you need SF2E and SF2 Exp 2 to run this minimum. I was running this from a full merged install, of which I created a separate install by copying the game exe file and running that to create a new Mod folder called LastOfTheLightnings for it.
Full instructions are on the PDF and is mostly drag and drop with some ini file editing. For the training rounds I created new folders in the weapons folder and not the old-fashioned way recommended. Mods
So once up and running I added mods and changed them as I went through the course. Because of the changes that come with the mod I only changed the terrain tiles, runway, and sky using Better Widesky (Cellisky/Orsin). I have also put in mods to give more head movement and darker nights. Up and running
Firstly, you go to single mission only and choose the missions using the date code e.g. [760522] then ignore the text the game puts in because it is wrong [only go by the date code to get the correct mission per the guide].
Check your loadout - obviously the training rounds should be there otherwise don’t touch or change anything just look at the map and then launch. So you start either on the runway or the taxi way on these missions.
At the beginning the tricky parts are landing on formation with your Qualified Flying instructor (QFI) and playing chase the QFI. Especially at night you need to be on your feet to keep track of the guy initially!
You are then given instruction on how A-A refueling should be done, e.g. fly in formation on the port side before refueling then fly formation on the starboard wing. You then have to try it at night and in clouds. Yes the amazing Ravenclaw Bucc is in this pack. The Intercept phase is interesting and you will be going after low and high targets before flying in formation with them, so you will need to learn what those dots and lines mean
After basic intercepts you get to do ACM against the pesky aggressor F-4Ms, although don’t pay too much attention to the instruction for this because they will spam those AIM-7s at you, luckily they are only training rounds [if you installed them properly] and wont kill you. Next live weapons are used to intercept remote controlled unmanned drones (Hunters). The early ones fly straight but the later ones give you problems by turning a lot. After basic strafing there is a pretty cool finale for your graduation, firstly you fly an F-4M as a photo chase plane: Then you get to fly position 9 in a graduation formation fly over of RAF Jever.
Final salute to comrpnt for a fine job six years later.
The Drop Tank Dilemma
By MigBuster,
For virtual pilots the question of when to ditch your drop tanks is an easy one, that’s right when you feel like it! Of course but when it comes to real world use it has never been that straight forward. So how have they been used in combat over the years?
Older viewers may remember the Yankee Air Pirate team actually disabling tank jettison in some of their missions for Wings Over Vietnam to stop players dropping them ha.
Quite frankly no one gave a toss about these rather mundane items until the F-35 showed up it seems when all of a sudden they became a massive burden on older generation jets with arguments going to the point of stating they couldn’t even be jettisoned!
So now for a rather exciting history of some drop tank usage in combat. A bit of background
Drop tank usage became common in WWII, and most will know about P-51s and P-38s on Escort over Germany with drop tanks which were jettisoned when the German fighters showed up. The need for this was to extend the range of the aircraft. [doh really]
P-51 flight with drop tanks (Historylink101.com) So, couldn’t they just put more fuel internally?
You may notice that tanks used in WWII were relatively small……..piston engines didn’t need that much fuel compared to jet engines. But, by the late 1950s drop tanks had become much larger because the Jet engines were getting more powerful and thus needing much more fuel.
More Jet fuel means more weight and fuel is very heavy and takes up space, so if someone is designing a fighter with a set of performance requirements they often had to keep internal fuel to a minimum and put the fuel to meet the range requirement externally in drop tanks.
The idea being that the pilot flies to the combat zone on drop tanks but has to jettison the tanks when performance was required. Into the Korean War era
Jettisoning tanks was not always as smooth as in flight sims. May 20 1951 James Jabara was part of a 4 FIW fighter Sweep over Sinuju. As soon as MiG-15s were sighted the order came to drop tanks and Jabara punched them but only the left (Port) tank dropped. Stuck with one tank he was supposed to return to base but disregarded orders and managed to get one confirmed kill (by both sides) and damage a second despite the asymmetric control problems he must have been having. F-86 v MiG-15 over Korea (Troy White) F-105 and Vietnam era
In this era dropping tanks was common but again didn’t always go without drama. “We never did figure out why they had to drop them right on top of us, and I can assure you that a 20 foot long fuel tank in the face can ruin your entire day.” (J Broughton)
So wrote Jack Broughton in 1969 regarding his F-4 escorts, and in Vietnam, flights sometimes even dropped tanks just to go into the combat area clean. This also applied to some Thud drivers as well it appears although Broughton states he preferred to hang on to the tanks if he could for ResCAP. Basically in a ResCAP [Rescue CAP ] situation if the F-105 gets low on fuel they would leave the combat area to Air to Air Refuel, but it needed the tanks to get back to the combat area again for any useful period of time.
If they knew they wouldn’t have to refuel again during ResCAP (e.g. getting dark) dropping the empty tanks was done anyway to increase endurance [due to the reduction in Drag and weight].
F-4s had to drop their centerline tanks at least to be able to fire AIM-7s, and ideally ensure they were flying at a speed and attitude / AoA [Angle of Attack] where the tanks didn’t hit the aircraft after jettison and ruin the pilots day! In 1973 Paul Howson fired two AIM-7E-2 Sparrows and both hit the centerline tank although luckily they didn’t penetrate it. Although he thought he had jettisoned the tanks earlier the centerline tank was still attached due to a failure. F-105D Thuds with a KC-135A (USAF) “It is hard to figure out how we can go to the Moon, yet we can’t build a fool proof system that will allow you to let go of a big blob of a tank when you want to.” (J Broughton) Picking up SAM activity the flight of Thuds dropped the tanks, but the curse of the hung drop tank affected one of the flight. The drop tanks now being bigger was a bigger problem because that one aircraft with a hung tank now needs to use a lot more fuel to keep up with the flight, or the rest of the flight needs to fly slower through the danger area! On one mission Jack discovered a failure on the 650 Gal tank that meant he couldn’t transfer fuel from the A-A tanker (KC-135) so opted to jettison it when empty on the way there. Again, getting rid of the tank when empty increased endurance enough for the mission by reducing overall drag and weight. Meanwhile over Israel
Typically, Israeli pilots jettisoned the drop tanks when they were vectored towards any suspected enemy aircraft. During the Yom Kippur War this got to 50 drop tanks jettisoned per day, and they were jettisoning them even if the contact they were vectored to was false or friendly. To avoid such waste the policy was changed so they would only drop them once they had visually acquired their targets! On the 14th April 1969, Rouven Rozen had a bit of a pilot fail when he forgot to jettison the centerline tank on his Mirage IIICJ and ended up with a MiG on his tail after some rather sub-par maneuvering. Luckily the MiG pilot wasn’t so hot and he managed to pull him into a scissors and turn things around by getting behind the MiG. In another instance Iftach Spector was flying towards contacts they were vectored to on their radar which turned out to be Drop tanks that had been jettisoned by MiGs falling from the sky. IDF Mirage IIICJs (dailykos.com) The 4th Generation arrives
When the F-15/16 came along they had the same design concept as the previous generation F-4s which was fly to the target on external fuel and jettison them for combat however there was one major change. The drop tanks were manufactured to a higher quality and could be used at 9G when empty. Most of the F-4 drop tanks in Nam were ferry tanks and were not really stressed for combat as such but made good canoes. This change no doubt drove up the complexity and cost of the tanks and provided more incentive for the air force to not just jettison them for the hell of it.
Some of those drop tanks were converted into canoes by enterprising Vietnamese farmers (Aviationist.com) Into the Storm Now for some examples from more recent conflicts, typically they are jettisoned in emergency situations which includes any A-A engagement, flame out or SAM being fired at you. Desert Storm had its fair share of A-A and A-G action, here Jerry Oney in an F-15E taking a big risk:
"Well there we were, a couple of the USAF’s finest, flying the mighty Strike Eagle at around 2000ft below a mostly scattered cloud deck in a two-mile trail at 500kts conducting a road recce for some scuds. Even then I was thinking “this isn’t the greatest idea in the history of the earth”. I was soon proved correct as we flew past this Iraqi airfield and saw the smoke trail of an SA-7, or maybe an SA-9, heading past us and towards lead. The next bit of action seemed compressed into about two seconds or less – lead broke hard into the missile in an attempt to defeat it, I watched the thing overshoot and detonate about 500ft above lead, Bill [the pilot] manoeuvred hard to avoid lead as we now had a face full of F-15E heading towards us. Damn an Eagle can turn.
I felt all our ordnance come off the airplane as Bill calmly punched the jettison button as part of our attempt to avoid hitting lead and get our weight down in anticipation of another shot coming our way." F-15Cs with drop tanks (USAF) Cesar Rodriguez flying an F-15C describes one engagement with a MiG:
"…so the western AWACs called on GUARD, Pop up contacts, 330 degrees for 13 miles. At 13 miles I had no option but to engage without any SA [Situational Awareness] , so I directed an in-plane turn to 330 degrees, jettisoned wing tanks and put my radar into the location of the target….." Here is another account from Rhory Dreager and Rodriguez of a different engagement in an F-15C:
"We do not want to get into any turning merges if we did not have to, so we get our MiG-23 EID [Electronic ID] and AWACS clearances out of the way well before we could shoot. The MiGs were flying at 500ft, and we were flying a cut off intercept on them. At about 40 miles, AWACs told us that one of the MiGs had returned home, so we now had a radar picture of a three-aircraft “Vic” – one guy out in front and the other two guys flying behind and either side. Rodriguez added that RC-135 Rivet Joint also confirmed the EID on the MiG-23s. Dreager ordered a jettison of wing tanks to allow better maneuverability and greater speed with which to increase their WEZ." 17 Jan 1993 F-16C pilot Craig Stevenson was on a no-fly zone patrol with an F-4G over Northern Iraq when a MiG-23 started darting to the no-fly zone. As soon as AWACs had identified the MiG as hostile and called “commit” Craig jettisoned his nearly full fuel tanks but held onto his bombs.
“At .95 mach I was well above the selective jettison design limitation for the fuel tanks, and the aircraft was quick to let me know. The jettison was so violent I remember looking back at my horizontal stabilizers to make sure they hadn't been damaged by the fuel tanks.”
Air Force Magazine Note that even aircraft that use drop tanks do not always have to use them in combat, especially where A-A tankers are available. In Desert Storm F-16s of the 363rd FW(P) Forward deployed to King Khalid Military City AB in Saudi Arabia with A-10s meaning they could deploy with 4 x MK-84s as standard load-out with no drop tanks: USAF F-16s at KKMC during the Storm - foreground is Block 25D #84-1257 of 17TFS (USAF) Fighters without drop tanks
Just to be awkward there have been a few fighters designed post Korean war that have not had the option of using Drop Tanks, these include the F-8 Crusader (non J), Su-27 Flanker, and the F-35 Lightning II. F-8 Crusader (worldwars.net) This means that when fully fueled on take off they have a much higher relative internal fuel load-out and weight because they are carrying the fuel that others carried in drop tanks. So, until the Su-27/F-35 get their fuel down to about 60% say their relative performance is significantly reduced in terms of subsonic climb, acceleration and overall turn performance. However, the lack of drag from large drop tanks will mean they can have better acceleration and higher practical speed through the transonic and supersonic regions of flight when only carrying light to no external stores. These jets also include fuel dump mechanisms that allow them to dump fuel for emergency situations such as an emergency landing.
With this approach you also need a very high thrust engine to overcome the extra fuselage size, weight and drag that was put there to hold the extra fuel in the first place. Su-27 intercepts a Swedish ELINT aircaft (Swedish AF)
Are drop tanks really the best way of doing things? Valid arguments against include that they take up pylon space, can cause problems if they fail, and impose performance limitations on an aircraft. Also some of the fuel in the drop tank is needed just to offset the extra weight and drag. Logistics of Drop Tanks can be an issue in terms of maintenance and getting enough to a squadron. Did any squadron ever run out of drop tanks post Korean War? [Answers on a post card because I am not aware of any on the Western side]. Cost is another thing that is brought up, it is however much cheaper to jettison the tanks rather than lose the entire aircraft and pilot. Any plus points? Rather good at extending range [duh] You can jettison them, unlike CFTs and bigger airframes. Erm….sometimes can be used to land on if they are empty and the gear fails [or you forget to lower it]: F-16C Block 25 lands on tank at Luke AFB June 17 2004 (F-16.net) The Future Seems the arguments are mute because with F-22, J-20 and Su-57 using drop tanks, and talk of some being developed for F-35 they are not going anywhere in my lifetime. Chegndu J-20 February 2017 (Elephant) Sources
Thud Ridge (J.M.Broughton, 1969) Crecy Publishing
James Jabara (Sherman S 2001) online Acepilots.com http://acepilots.com/korea_jabara.html
Israeli Mirage and Nesher Aces (Alomi. S, 2004) Osprey Publishing
F-15E Strike Eagle Units in Combat 1990-2005 (Davies.S, 2005) Osprey Publishing
F-15C Eagle Units in Combat (Davies.S, 2005) Osprey Publishing
USAF F-4 Phantom II MiG Killers 1972 -73 (P.Davies, 2005) Osprey Publishing
Sukhoi Su-27 (Gordon.Y, 2007) Midland Publishing Title Photo credit USAF
So now for a rather exciting history of some drop tank usage in combat. A bit of background
Drop tank usage became common in WWII, and most will know about P-51s and P-38s on Escort over Germany with drop tanks which were jettisoned when the German fighters showed up. The need for this was to extend the range of the aircraft. [doh really]
P-51 flight with drop tanks (Historylink101.com) So, couldn’t they just put more fuel internally?
You may notice that tanks used in WWII were relatively small……..piston engines didn’t need that much fuel compared to jet engines. But, by the late 1950s drop tanks had become much larger because the Jet engines were getting more powerful and thus needing much more fuel.
More Jet fuel means more weight and fuel is very heavy and takes up space, so if someone is designing a fighter with a set of performance requirements they often had to keep internal fuel to a minimum and put the fuel to meet the range requirement externally in drop tanks.
The idea being that the pilot flies to the combat zone on drop tanks but has to jettison the tanks when performance was required. Into the Korean War era
Jettisoning tanks was not always as smooth as in flight sims. May 20 1951 James Jabara was part of a 4 FIW fighter Sweep over Sinuju. As soon as MiG-15s were sighted the order came to drop tanks and Jabara punched them but only the left (Port) tank dropped. Stuck with one tank he was supposed to return to base but disregarded orders and managed to get one confirmed kill (by both sides) and damage a second despite the asymmetric control problems he must have been having. F-86 v MiG-15 over Korea (Troy White) F-105 and Vietnam era
In this era dropping tanks was common but again didn’t always go without drama. “We never did figure out why they had to drop them right on top of us, and I can assure you that a 20 foot long fuel tank in the face can ruin your entire day.” (J Broughton)
So wrote Jack Broughton in 1969 regarding his F-4 escorts, and in Vietnam, flights sometimes even dropped tanks just to go into the combat area clean. This also applied to some Thud drivers as well it appears although Broughton states he preferred to hang on to the tanks if he could for ResCAP. Basically in a ResCAP [Rescue CAP ] situation if the F-105 gets low on fuel they would leave the combat area to Air to Air Refuel, but it needed the tanks to get back to the combat area again for any useful period of time.
If they knew they wouldn’t have to refuel again during ResCAP (e.g. getting dark) dropping the empty tanks was done anyway to increase endurance [due to the reduction in Drag and weight].
F-4s had to drop their centerline tanks at least to be able to fire AIM-7s, and ideally ensure they were flying at a speed and attitude / AoA [Angle of Attack] where the tanks didn’t hit the aircraft after jettison and ruin the pilots day! In 1973 Paul Howson fired two AIM-7E-2 Sparrows and both hit the centerline tank although luckily they didn’t penetrate it. Although he thought he had jettisoned the tanks earlier the centerline tank was still attached due to a failure. F-105D Thuds with a KC-135A (USAF) “It is hard to figure out how we can go to the Moon, yet we can’t build a fool proof system that will allow you to let go of a big blob of a tank when you want to.” (J Broughton) Picking up SAM activity the flight of Thuds dropped the tanks, but the curse of the hung drop tank affected one of the flight. The drop tanks now being bigger was a bigger problem because that one aircraft with a hung tank now needs to use a lot more fuel to keep up with the flight, or the rest of the flight needs to fly slower through the danger area! On one mission Jack discovered a failure on the 650 Gal tank that meant he couldn’t transfer fuel from the A-A tanker (KC-135) so opted to jettison it when empty on the way there. Again, getting rid of the tank when empty increased endurance enough for the mission by reducing overall drag and weight. Meanwhile over Israel
Typically, Israeli pilots jettisoned the drop tanks when they were vectored towards any suspected enemy aircraft. During the Yom Kippur War this got to 50 drop tanks jettisoned per day, and they were jettisoning them even if the contact they were vectored to was false or friendly. To avoid such waste the policy was changed so they would only drop them once they had visually acquired their targets! On the 14th April 1969, Rouven Rozen had a bit of a pilot fail when he forgot to jettison the centerline tank on his Mirage IIICJ and ended up with a MiG on his tail after some rather sub-par maneuvering. Luckily the MiG pilot wasn’t so hot and he managed to pull him into a scissors and turn things around by getting behind the MiG. In another instance Iftach Spector was flying towards contacts they were vectored to on their radar which turned out to be Drop tanks that had been jettisoned by MiGs falling from the sky. IDF Mirage IIICJs (dailykos.com) The 4th Generation arrives
When the F-15/16 came along they had the same design concept as the previous generation F-4s which was fly to the target on external fuel and jettison them for combat however there was one major change. The drop tanks were manufactured to a higher quality and could be used at 9G when empty. Most of the F-4 drop tanks in Nam were ferry tanks and were not really stressed for combat as such but made good canoes. This change no doubt drove up the complexity and cost of the tanks and provided more incentive for the air force to not just jettison them for the hell of it.
Some of those drop tanks were converted into canoes by enterprising Vietnamese farmers (Aviationist.com) Into the Storm Now for some examples from more recent conflicts, typically they are jettisoned in emergency situations which includes any A-A engagement, flame out or SAM being fired at you. Desert Storm had its fair share of A-A and A-G action, here Jerry Oney in an F-15E taking a big risk:
"Well there we were, a couple of the USAF’s finest, flying the mighty Strike Eagle at around 2000ft below a mostly scattered cloud deck in a two-mile trail at 500kts conducting a road recce for some scuds. Even then I was thinking “this isn’t the greatest idea in the history of the earth”. I was soon proved correct as we flew past this Iraqi airfield and saw the smoke trail of an SA-7, or maybe an SA-9, heading past us and towards lead. The next bit of action seemed compressed into about two seconds or less – lead broke hard into the missile in an attempt to defeat it, I watched the thing overshoot and detonate about 500ft above lead, Bill [the pilot] manoeuvred hard to avoid lead as we now had a face full of F-15E heading towards us. Damn an Eagle can turn.
I felt all our ordnance come off the airplane as Bill calmly punched the jettison button as part of our attempt to avoid hitting lead and get our weight down in anticipation of another shot coming our way." F-15Cs with drop tanks (USAF) Cesar Rodriguez flying an F-15C describes one engagement with a MiG:
"…so the western AWACs called on GUARD, Pop up contacts, 330 degrees for 13 miles. At 13 miles I had no option but to engage without any SA [Situational Awareness] , so I directed an in-plane turn to 330 degrees, jettisoned wing tanks and put my radar into the location of the target….." Here is another account from Rhory Dreager and Rodriguez of a different engagement in an F-15C:
"We do not want to get into any turning merges if we did not have to, so we get our MiG-23 EID [Electronic ID] and AWACS clearances out of the way well before we could shoot. The MiGs were flying at 500ft, and we were flying a cut off intercept on them. At about 40 miles, AWACs told us that one of the MiGs had returned home, so we now had a radar picture of a three-aircraft “Vic” – one guy out in front and the other two guys flying behind and either side. Rodriguez added that RC-135 Rivet Joint also confirmed the EID on the MiG-23s. Dreager ordered a jettison of wing tanks to allow better maneuverability and greater speed with which to increase their WEZ." 17 Jan 1993 F-16C pilot Craig Stevenson was on a no-fly zone patrol with an F-4G over Northern Iraq when a MiG-23 started darting to the no-fly zone. As soon as AWACs had identified the MiG as hostile and called “commit” Craig jettisoned his nearly full fuel tanks but held onto his bombs.
“At .95 mach I was well above the selective jettison design limitation for the fuel tanks, and the aircraft was quick to let me know. The jettison was so violent I remember looking back at my horizontal stabilizers to make sure they hadn't been damaged by the fuel tanks.”
Air Force Magazine Note that even aircraft that use drop tanks do not always have to use them in combat, especially where A-A tankers are available. In Desert Storm F-16s of the 363rd FW(P) Forward deployed to King Khalid Military City AB in Saudi Arabia with A-10s meaning they could deploy with 4 x MK-84s as standard load-out with no drop tanks: USAF F-16s at KKMC during the Storm - foreground is Block 25D #84-1257 of 17TFS (USAF) Fighters without drop tanks
Just to be awkward there have been a few fighters designed post Korean war that have not had the option of using Drop Tanks, these include the F-8 Crusader (non J), Su-27 Flanker, and the F-35 Lightning II. F-8 Crusader (worldwars.net) This means that when fully fueled on take off they have a much higher relative internal fuel load-out and weight because they are carrying the fuel that others carried in drop tanks. So, until the Su-27/F-35 get their fuel down to about 60% say their relative performance is significantly reduced in terms of subsonic climb, acceleration and overall turn performance. However, the lack of drag from large drop tanks will mean they can have better acceleration and higher practical speed through the transonic and supersonic regions of flight when only carrying light to no external stores. These jets also include fuel dump mechanisms that allow them to dump fuel for emergency situations such as an emergency landing.
With this approach you also need a very high thrust engine to overcome the extra fuselage size, weight and drag that was put there to hold the extra fuel in the first place. Su-27 intercepts a Swedish ELINT aircaft (Swedish AF)
Are drop tanks really the best way of doing things? Valid arguments against include that they take up pylon space, can cause problems if they fail, and impose performance limitations on an aircraft. Also some of the fuel in the drop tank is needed just to offset the extra weight and drag. Logistics of Drop Tanks can be an issue in terms of maintenance and getting enough to a squadron. Did any squadron ever run out of drop tanks post Korean War? [Answers on a post card because I am not aware of any on the Western side]. Cost is another thing that is brought up, it is however much cheaper to jettison the tanks rather than lose the entire aircraft and pilot. Any plus points? Rather good at extending range [duh] You can jettison them, unlike CFTs and bigger airframes. Erm….sometimes can be used to land on if they are empty and the gear fails [or you forget to lower it]: F-16C Block 25 lands on tank at Luke AFB June 17 2004 (F-16.net) The Future Seems the arguments are mute because with F-22, J-20 and Su-57 using drop tanks, and talk of some being developed for F-35 they are not going anywhere in my lifetime. Chegndu J-20 February 2017 (Elephant) Sources
Thud Ridge (J.M.Broughton, 1969) Crecy Publishing
James Jabara (Sherman S 2001) online Acepilots.com http://acepilots.com/korea_jabara.html
Israeli Mirage and Nesher Aces (Alomi. S, 2004) Osprey Publishing
F-15E Strike Eagle Units in Combat 1990-2005 (Davies.S, 2005) Osprey Publishing
F-15C Eagle Units in Combat (Davies.S, 2005) Osprey Publishing
USAF F-4 Phantom II MiG Killers 1972 -73 (P.Davies, 2005) Osprey Publishing
Sukhoi Su-27 (Gordon.Y, 2007) Midland Publishing Title Photo credit USAF
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