Launch the Intruders: A Naval Attack Squadron in the Vietnam War, 1972 (review)

Boasting one of the trade's strongest military history booklists, the University Press of Kansas has added to its laurels with Carol Reardon's Launch the Intruders, a detailed examination of one U.S. Navy attack squadron, VA-75, in 1972. This study succeeds on several levels: it makes for engrossing reading; it represents a sophisticated unit and operational history; and it provides a fuller picture of the air war over Southeast Asia.

Sent off to combat on short notice, VA-75 (officially Medium Attack Squadron 75; informally the Sunday Punchers) deployed in the spring of 1972 aboard the USS Saratoga to counter the North Vietnamese "Easter Offensive" and remained in action through the "Christmas Bombing" of Linebacker II. Reardon touches on virtually every element of life in a 1972 warship: the challenges of an emergency recall for deployment, the problems of hosting an admiral and his staff aboard, racial tensions, and rowdy leave times in Olongapo. She does not shy from such touchy subjects as forbidden liquor, illicit drug use, and the reaction of navy men to prominent critics (e.g., Jane Fonda and Senator Ted Kennedy).

Reardon also considers professionally sensitive issues like senior aviators hoarding the high-profile missions while their juniors flew the routine tanker operations; the delicate matter of combat decorations; the difficulties that dedicated reservists faced in "augmenting" to the regular navy; and forced retirements through the "cut lists." The author handles well the more technical aspects of carrier aviation including the cyclical nature of air operations; the dangers of the flight deck; the maintenance problems that hectored the A-6 aviators and killed one squadron commander; and the special tests of night and foul weather operations.

A great strength of this book is its vivid portrait of naval aviators at the sharp end. Reardon's depiction of the A-6 in combat is sure-handed. She contrasts the line periods off South Vietnam with the much more hazardous missions flown over the North against enemy fighters, SAMs, and ground fire, especially the much-feared ZSU-23. Her treatment of low-level night operations is riveting, especially that of one aircraft which flew through a ridgetop treeline to trap aboard the carrier with chunks of wood in the wings and the radome stained a pine green. She analyzes the motivations of fliers who faced death in a war few believed was being won. 

This handsome and well-illustrated volume is based on myriad sources. Its thirty-nine pages of notes reveal a host of interviews, cockpit tapes, personal papers, and records at various repositories, most notably the Naval Historical Center and the Vietnam Archives at Texas Tech University. One of Reardon's especially fortuitous discoveries was the squadron's logbook listing every mission, crew, ordnance load, and bomb damage assessment. At the end of the cruise, a junior officer plucked this historical treasure from the trashbin and kept it in his basement for thirty years.

On the debit side, Launch the Intruders could have benefited from placing the VA-75 story in a broader context. More background information on the A-6 and a fuller comparison with similar Air Force units and with other Intruder squadrons would have been illuminating. Notwithstanding, Reardon has written a model unit history and, through this lens, a most revealing study of the closing stages of the Vietnam war.