| Date: 28 December 1972 |
| Aircraft type: B-52D Stratofortress |
| Serial Number: 56-0605 |
| Military Unit: 7 BW attached to 43 SW |
| Service: USAF |
| Home Base: Andersen AFB, Guam |
| Name(s): |
| Capt Frank Douglas Lewis (POW) |
| Capt Samuel Bolden Cusimano (POW) |
| Maj James Carroll Condon (POW) |
| Maj Allen Louis Johnson (KIA) |
| 1Lt Bennie Lamar Fryer (KIA) |
| MSgt James Wayne Gough (POW) |
| Twelve aircraft were targeted on the railway yards at Trung Quang near Hanoi on the night of the 27th. Cobalt 1 was hit by a SAM at 25,000 feet near Bac Ninh, 15 miles northeast of Hanoi. The four cells had started their bombing run and encountered heavy flak and SAM activity. A total of about 45 SAMs were fired at the aircraft as they approached Hanoi. One minute before bomb release Cobalt 1 was locked onto by two SAMs and although Capt Lewis and his crew evaded those, they were not able to dodge a third missile that struck the B-52 as it was in a tight turn. All the crew were injured to some extent by the explosion of the SAM and 1Lt Fryer was almost certainly killed at that point. The wings caught fire, the fuel tanks were ruptured and the electrical system failed. Forty seconds after being hit and unable to release his bombs, the captain gave the order to abandon the aircraft. Four of the crew ejected from the aircraft before it crashed near Hanoi. MSgt Gough was hit by pieces of burning debris from the engines and wings as he left the aircraft. Maj Johnson, the EWO, was thought to have ejected from the aircraft. A North Vietnamese interrogator told Capt Lewis that he knew that his navigator was a black man, indicating either that he had been captured or that his body had been found. The four survivors were all released on 29 March 1973. The crew was deployed from the 320th BW at Mather AFB, California and was flying an aircraft from Carswell’s 7th BW. These two aircraft were the last B-52s to be lost during the Linebacker II raids.
1Lt Fryer’s remains were returned by the North Vietnamese on 30 September 1977 and Maj Johnson’s were returned on 4 December 1985 and formally identified the following June. Capt Cusimano had flown 144 missions in C-123K flareships from Nakhon Phanom before assignment to B-52s. Maj Condon had amassed over 6,000 hours in SAC B-47s and B-52s and had flown over 120 missions during the war. Day 10 of the B-52 raids saw a total of 60 aircraft take part, 30 B-52Ds from U-Tapao together with 15 B-52Ds and 15 B-52Gs from Andersen. Four waves of aircraft attacked SAM sites around Hanoi, while two waves hit the Lang Dang railway yard on the northeast railway again. On this night a total of 99 supporting aircraft, mostly F-4s, A-7s, F-105Gs and EB-66s, assisted the B-52 effort and fewer SAMs seemed to be fired than on previous nights. Andersen also sent 28 B-52s to other targets in Southeast Asia on the night of the 28th/29th. The following day, 29 December 1972, was the final day of the Linebacker II B-52 strikes and was once again completed without loss to the attackers. On this day 30 B-52Ds from U-Tapao and 18 B-52Ds and 12 B-52Gs from Andersen hit SAM storage sites at Phuc Yen and Trai Ca as well as the Lang Dang railway yards yet again. Thirty more B-52Gs flew other missions against targets in North and South Vietnam. Only a handful of SAMs were launched at the raiders and only one MiG was seen during the raid. However, SAC was now running out of lucrative targets for the B-52s and so, with signs that the North Vietnamese were now willing to resume peace talks at Paris, the Linebacker II campaign came to an end. The B-52 force at Andersen and U-Tapao had completed a total of 729 out of a planned 741 sorties against targets around Hanoi, Haiphong and Thai Nguyen against some of the most formidable SAM and AAA air defences in the world. Around 15,287 tons of bombs were dropped on 34 targets by the B-52s and it was estimated by the USAF that some 1,600 military or industrial buildings had been destroyed or badly damaged. In addition the northeast railway had been interdicted in several places almost bringing train movements to a halt and some three million gallons of fuel had been destroyed. In addition to the B-52s, USAF and Navy tactical aircraft flew 1,041 day and 1,082 night sorties over North Vietnam during the campaign. Estimates of the number of SA-2s fired at the B-52s vary between 884 and 1,285. Only 24 missiles achieved hits giving the SA-2 a hit rate of 2.7 per cent if the lower figure is used. Fifteen B-52s were lost during Linebacker II, all of them to SAM hits, thereby reducing the SA-2’s success rate to only 1.7 per cent of the number of missiles launched. Although the SA-2 might not have been as effective as some analysts feared and the B-52 loss rate amounted to only 2.06 per cent, lower than predicted, the loss of 15 aircraft was still a heavy price to pay. The loss rate improved after Day 3 due to revised tactics, more flexible routings, compressed times-on-target, increased numbers of support aircraft and restrictions on the use of the B-52G. Of the 92 crewmembers flying in the 15 B-52s that were shot down, 59 survived, 33 of them as POWs. The effectiveness of Linebacker II must be judged against the fact that peace negotiations resumed in Paris on 8 January leading to the signing of a cease-fire agreement 19 days later and the release of the POWs in the weeks that followed. |
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