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16. Tactical Arc Lights
- The University of Alabama Press
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16 Tactical Arc Lights Arc Light was the code name for the massive attacks carried out by B-52D Stratofortress bombers throughout the course of the Vietnam War. During the first three years I served in Vietnam I heard the thunder of Arc Light attacks being delivered many times, but they were always in the distance because the big bombers normally targeted enemy locations far from friendly troops. As an infantry officer I had viewed the B-52 as a strategic rather than a tactical weapon since their attacks did not directly affect the immediate ground battles in which I’d been involved. Arc Light missions normally consisted of several groups of aircraft, called cells, of three B-52s each. They flew so high they were often out of sight and sound of their targets far below. The three aircraft in each cell flew in echelon , and as they approached their release point they positioned themselves to ensure their bombs would saturate the target area. An Arc Light strike resulted in complete devastation as each aircraft was loaded with eighty-four 500-pound bombs carried internally and twenty-four 750-pound bombs on hard points under the wings. If two cells totaling six bombers were hitting a target, a fairly common occurrence, they combined to deliver a grand total of 360,000 pounds of high-explosive destruction into a very restricted space in a period of only a few minutes.1 The geographic area an Arc Light attack went into was called a box, and each box was designed for a specific type of target. The targets in the vicinity of An Loc were primarily enemy troop concentrations, and the footprints of the boxes were roughly a half mile long and a quarter mile wide. Bomb craters often overlapped throughout a target box; no one wanted to be very close to the business end of an Arc Light attack. During the years before I joined Team 162 I had seen the breathtaking results of Arc Light missions on several occasions. The high explosives deliv- 78 Chapter 16 ered by a B-52 strike created a shattered and dust-riddled disaster. Every living thing was shocked senseless or killed, giant trees were shredded and torn apart, and pulverized rock covered the whole area with a gray powder that only emphasized the terrible destruction. Once-lush jungle was blasted into a giant tangle of splintered junk almost impossible to climb through, and the surviving trickle of water in fractured streambeds was filthy and seemed to puddle aimlessly. During the battle for An Loc the air force shifted B-52s from attacking strategic targets in distant places to supporting the An Loc garrison in a very direct and immediate way. While B-52s had bombed in close proximity to the defenders of Khe Sanh several years before, the tactical Arc Light was reborn at An Loc when target boxes were drawn all around the outskirts of the town and loads of bombs began to fall close to friendly troops. What once had been the sound of distant thunder now became a compelling and growing hurricane of explosion that was delivered with dramatic effect. As the battle for An Loc progressed, Arc Light attacks took place at all hours of the day and night, and many were in the immediate vicinity of the town.When an attack was going to go in nearby I wanted to be to the side of the target box rather than on either the approach or the exit end. I was fairly confident the aircraft would be lined up properly to go down the length of the box, but I did worry about getting caught in an early or late release of bombs.Since I was not involved in drawing target boxes, I never knew exactly where they were located or the approach direction of the aircraft. So when the bombs began to fall I just tried to crawl inside my helmet while making repetitious and fevered protestations to the Almighty. Even one errant bomb hitting the battalion’s position would certainly have been one too many. Normally we had a heads-up when an Arc Light was on the way, but in some cases they just suddenly arrived with a thundering roar that shook the whole world and caused clouds of pulverized rubber trees and dirt to drift in the wind. Every tactical Arc Light was potentially very dangerous to the defending troops, and it was a real...