Orange County Register article from December 24th, 2002.

A Christmas at War

O.C. airmen recall bombing raids on North Vietnam 30 years ago and see lessons for the possible war in Iraq.

By JEFF ROWE

The Orange County Register

As church bells toll tonight observing the birth of Christ two millenniums ago, some Orange County men will be lost in thoughts of where they were 30 years ago.

In the air over North Vietnam.

At midnight, Don Henry of Laguna Beach had just crossed the coastline from North Vietnam and was looking for an air tanker to refuel his F-105 Thunderchief, which was so low on fuel that Henry and his backseat electronics warfare officer had tightened their seat-belt straps in anticipation of ejecting into the black of the China Sea.

Henry's job had been to hunt for North Vietnamese surface-to-air missile sites and either destroy them or force them to turn off the radar scopes that would search for the waves of B-52s flying overhead.

'We almost had to take a swim," he says.

Henry flew eight times in all during what was code-named Linebacker II, the saturation B-52 raids that then President Nixon ordered after the Paris peace talks with the North Vietnamese collapsed on the verge of an accord.

During the Christmas raids, U.S. bombers and fighters dropped 15,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnamese targets. The raids ignited diplomatic protests and howls from many in Congress, but not the intense anti-war demonstrations on college campuses - possibly because it was during the holidays, and the war had been winding down. The pulverizing had the desired effect: North Vietnamese negotiators returned to Paris, where a peace accord was signed weeks later. American prisoners of war returned home a few weeks after that.

Raids had long-term effects on O.C.

While the raids ended the U.S. role in the war, the bombing campaign also put in motion changes that would eventually shape Orange County in a way no one could foresee at the time. The North Vietnamese rebuilt from the bombing and, with U.S. forces gone, overran the South Vietnamese army. The fall of South Vietnam in 1975 launched the wave of Vietnamese migration to Orange County that helped re-energize neighborhoods and reshape its culture.

Some South Vietnamese who have settled in Orange County since those days wish the United States had used its air might a little longer. "If the U.S. had bombed the North for 10 more days, they would have surrendered." says Nguyen Phuong Hung of Garden Grove, who served with U.S. forces in Vietnam.

Hung, who now works as a computer programmer, says a North Vietnamese surrender might have preserved South Vietnam as an independent nation.

'If we're going to fight, do it completely'

Although the eventual collapse of South Vietnam dismayed Henry and his fellow airmen, they say their efforts in Vietnam hastened the end of the Cold War by forcing the Soviet Union to spend billions supporting the North Vietnamese. But neither Henry nor a dozen other Orange County airmen interviewed in recent weeks want to see the United States ever again dragged into a protracted struggle with vague objectives.

"My hope is that if we go in (to Iraq), we go in decisively," says Henry, who did not expect to be in Vietnam for long when he flew his first missions in 1966.

Charles Pratt of Laguna Hills and Art Aviles of Huntington Beach agree. Pratt flew an F-4 Phantom in the Christmas raids, Aviles a KC-1 35 air tanker. Both say the lessons learned 30 years ago still apply.

"If we're going to fight, do it completely and all the way," says Aviles, who helped plan the raids.

But Aviles, Pratt, Henry and others seem at peace with their roles in'72.

During those raids, they were encouraged knowing that American prisoners of war could hear the bombs being dropped on nearby rail yards and other targets - a noise that the 591 U.S. airmen held prisoner at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" said sounded like rolling thunder as the bombs fell.

Asked what he will be thinking tonight, Henry's composure seems to falter for a moment. He fetches some papers from another room and shows them to a visitor. It's a list, four pages long, single-spaced, with names followed by rank, squadron, hometown and date of death.

All fellow aviators, buddies of Henry, some of whom died in recent years but most in action over Vietnam.

"I'll be thinking of them," he says.

CONTACT the reporter at: (71 4) 445-6694 or jrowe@ocregister.com

Pilot Don Henry, left, and Electronic Warfare Officer Bob Webb preflight their F-105G aircraft loaded with Standard Arm and Shrike anti-radiation missiles. December 1972.