This is the hundred-seventeenth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series or go back to the master post to pick up where you will.
I finished reading Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam the other night. The book ends in an afterward, which both sums up and editorializes upon the preceding body of the work.
Mark Bowden opines that the greatest failure of the Tet Offensive was the failure of the U.S. high command, and Westmoreland in particular, to admit what was happening. Throughout the incident, the official line was that the U.S. was not at all surprised by the offensive, that it was an overwhelming failure from the enemy’s perspective, and that all was well and in hand. Westmoreland’s persistence with this line even as the truth became obvious to everyone else suggests it more than just spin – he must have really believed it.
The results of this misjudgement were devastating. It meant that the Battle of Hue began with U.S. forces woefully undersized and under-supported. One imagines, given a realistic assessment of the situation, that American forces might have held back until they were sufficiently prepared before attempting to retake Hue. Bowden plausibly suggests that a slight delay and a more organized operation might have, in the end, not only resulted in fewer American casualties but also could have shortened the overall battle duration.
The other failure was that the U.S. Government lost the support of the press and the public, such as it was, by being caught in an obvious lie. One wonders whether opinion would have turned so fast and so hard had the Johnson administration simply been honest starting on January 31st. Yes, we’d have had to admit that we were caught with our pants down but once we got them up again and buckled, we could explain that we won the fight.
Of course, Bowden does not believe that America’s War in Vietnam was ever winnable under any circumstances. The character (at least in part) of the insurgency as a independence movement combined with the perpetual failings of the South Vietnamese government was too much for any military success to overcome. So Bowden believes.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/rollin4.jpg?w=1024)
What this means is that, even as the largest battle of the war was being fought in Hue, the U.S. command was trying to continue on as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. As a demonstration of such, I flew a Rolling Thunder mission which took place on February fourth. Business as usual even while still in the thick of the Tet Offensive.
It is a typical (if on the smaller end) mission against the Hanoi area. One flight of F-105s is loaded with bombs intended for the primary target and that group is accompanied by a second flight designated as air defense suppression (SEAD or Iron Hand). Joining both groups is a flight of F-4s for combat air patrol and an A-6 electronic-warfare aircraft (EWA). Historically, the February 4th mission drew in an interception by MiG-21s. In the ensuing battle, an F-105 was downed by the MiGs and then a MiG was brought down by the F-4s. F-105 pilot Lt. Col. Carl W. Lasiter ejected after his plane was hit by an enemy missile. He landed safely but was quickly captured and then spent more than five years as a Prisoner of War. The bombing mission was not completed.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/rollin5.jpg?w=1024)
Two items color my play-through of this scenario. First, when I arrived in the target area I realized I didn’t know what my target was. Maybe it was because I was supposed to be leading the Iron Hand flight, not the target flight. Or maybe the setup of the mission just left off the little “bomb” icon on the “cheat map” for other reasons. I’ll just say, having went where they told me, and having no further instructions, I figured I’d bomb the biggest thing I saw, which was an enemy runway. The other special circumstance was that my bombs hit the tarmac!
As you might glean from the above screenshot, I hit the edge of the runway. What I didn’t hit was the targets that were designated for me, if indeed this was where they were. I know that because I scored nothing at the end of the mission. I also managed to complete 80% of a (fairly sloppy) landing. I was on the runway and in the process of trying to slow down when I flipped my plane and died. Usually I kill myself around about the first encounter between wheels and pavement.
But that’s not much of a story, is it. Read on because I also decided to look at something else.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/rollin1.jpg?w=909)
I posted about my struggle and then my success in downloading and playing Yankee Team, 1966. I even suggested that this could be considered a kind of Rolling Thunder sandbox, allowing the exploration of various North Vietnam bombing missions not necessarily tied to a single set of scenario parameters. I didn’t play it that way, mind you. I only played it the once.
In the upgraded Command: Modern Operations, this scenario has been enhanced substantially and joined by a few fellow travelers. CMO adds to the stand-alone scenarios and campaigns a category of “Quick Battle.” These are “random battles,” albeit ones that are generated from a historically grounded template. The setups include Yankee Station 1967, which I assume is an enhancement of the Yankee Team, 1966 concept that I played in CMANO (although I’ve yet to verify that). These two, of course, model the Navy’s allotment of the Rolling Thunder air strikes. For the Air Force perspective, there is now Rolling Thunder 1967.
As you can see from the above dialog, the player may choose the parameters of their mission and these choices are then combined with some random jiggering of the opposition. It allows the creation of a mostly-historical situation but yet one that can still contain some surprises for the player. In the past, I’ve created an IL-2 quick battle from an CMANO setup. The flip side of that is now possible. I was able to create a CMO mission using the IL-2 scenario information. In this case, the IL-2 filled in the details of a documented, historical mission and so made it easier than starting from online research.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/rollin2.jpg?w=1024)
In contrast to the otherwise-more-historical mission parameters from the IL-2 setup, the CMO version accurately places the attack package as launching from Korat Air Force Base in Thailand. It also, mercifully, starts the aircraft in the air so as to skip over the tedious process of taking off and forming up.
The result was rather straight-forward and very much on the easy side for this game. Of course, that’s hardly the point. I’ll also add that my selections probably made it easier than if I had tried to be accurate. For example, I chose MiG-17s instead of MiG-21s as my opposition flight. I did that primarily because that was the default. I didn’t want to mess too much with the defaults and accidentally create a scenario that was impossible for me to play. I suppose it would have been more instructive to put the same enemy aircraft in and then see whether or not combat results were similar. Maybe an exercise for another time.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/rollin3.jpg?w=1024)
As you can see above, I was a little bit sloppy when bringing my aircraft onto the target. My idea was to have the bombers attack from behind the A-6 jamming, which required some reordering of the aircraft in flight. By the time they got to the target, my F-105s had got pretty strung out and my F-4 fighters were off to the left doing… well, something they probably shouldn’t have been. CMO has a lot of configurable parameters to help control all this stuff. Problem is I don’t even remember what I did last time, when I was starting to get the hang of the CMANO interface. I’m still a long way from figuring out all the options available.
One last word. On that top screenshot, I have no idea what the yellow characters (“<” in this view), which periodically appear on the screen, are meant to signify. I assume they are some sort of navigational aid but I’ve not found the explanation in any manual or forum post. It’s a mystery.
Return to the master post or continue on to compare Squad Battles versus Steel Panthers in their treatment of one of the Seven Firefights in Vietnam.