<text id=00he1807><title>Targets and Weapons</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Targets and Weapons</hdr><body>
<p>The Rolling Thunder campaign had a classical target list: radar sites, bridges, rail lines, roads. There were some notable omissions to complicate things. Neither North Vietnamese MiG airfields nor surface-to-air (SAM) sites were targeted at first. With regard to the SAM sites, there was a popular belief on the civilian side of the Pentagon for some months that the North Vietnamese would not fire the missiles against US planes if the planes did not attack the missile sites. With regard to the MiG airfields, there was probably a belief that either Russians, or Chinese, or both, might be at those fields as advisers, and it would not have been a good thing to have killed a number of them.
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<p>There was a buffer zone at the Chinese border, a 25-mile (40-km) depth that was sacrosanct. The cities of Hanoi and Haiphong also had restricted zones surrounding them, within which no attack could be mounted.
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<p>The targets were well defended by heavy anti-aircraft artillery. The North had about 1,000 guns in place, located at about 400 sites. Most of it was medium-caliber, 37-mm and 57-mm, with some larger 85-mm and 100-mm weapons. Additionally, one of the most effective weapons of the war was a multiple-barreled Russian-designed ZSU-23-4, a 23-mm automatic rapid-firing weapon that hosed the approaches to targets.
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<p>A reconnaissance flight by a Lockheed U-2 spotted the first SA-2 (NATO name 'Guideline') SAM site early in April 1965, and by the end of the year more than 50 had been plotted. The North Vietnamese air force (NVAF) was equipped with a handful of Russian-designed Ilyushin Il-28 (NATO name 'Beagle') light bombers, and about 50 miscellaneous MiGs, both the -15 and the -17 models.
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<p>The primary USAF strike aircraft was the Republic F-105 Thunderchief, almost universally called the 'Thud'. It was the only USAF fighter-bomber that could go north and strike at supersonic speed. And, in the words echoed by many pilots, "Speed is life!" The secondary strike aircraft was the North American F-100 Super Sabre, recalled from duty with the Air National Guard to serve in Southeast Asia. Some combat missions were flown by the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, and the ubiquitous Martin B-57 flew many bombing strikes against targets in the South.
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<p>Their supporting forces were Strategic Air Command Boeing KC-135A tankers on racetrack orbits over northern Laos and the Gulf of Tonkin. Low- and high-flying reconnaissance aircraft and drones made up the primary intelligence-gathering force, and rescue units were always on standby.
