Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET - Sensitive
target No. 18.8) and Thanh Hoa bridges (JCS target No. 14) were the northern-most fixed-target strikes in this campaign to be followed by additional armed reconnaissance strikes to sustain the interdiction. ROLLING THUNDER 9 (2-8 April) through ROLLING THUNDER 12 (23-29 April) completed the fixed- target strikes against 26 bridges and seven ferries.
a. ROLLING THUNDER 9 permitted three armed recce missions on specified route segments. Sorties were increased to not more than 24 armed recce strike sorties per 24-hour period in ROLLING THUNDER 10 through ROLLING THUNDER 12. This effort was still far short of the level considered by the JCS to be "required for significant effectiveness."
b. Prior to ROLLING THUNDER 10, armed recce targets were limited to locomotives, rolling stock, vehicles, and hostile NVN craft. For ROLLING THUNDER 10 through ROLLING THUNDER 12 the rules were changed to provide day and night armed recce missions to obtain a high level of damage to military movement facilities, ferries, radar sites, secondary bridges, and railroad rolling stock. It also included interdiction of the LOC by cratering, re-striking and seeding choke-points as necessary.
c. From the beginning, armed recce geographical coverage was limited to specified segment's of designated routes. By ROLLING THUNDER 9 It had increased to one-time coverage of Routes 1 (DMZ to 19-58-36N), 7, 8, 15, 101, and lateral roads between these routes.
d. The dropping of unexpended ordnance on Tiger Island was authorized in this period. Prior to this time, ordnance was jettisoned in the sea.
ROLLING THUNDER 13 (30 April - May 1965) through ROLLING THUNDER l8 (11-17 June) continued U.S. and VNAF strikes against 52 fixed military targets (five restrikes) as follows: six ammo depots, five supply depots, 21 barracks, two airfields, two POL storages, two radio facilities, seven bridges, two naval bases, one railroad yard, two thermal power plants, one port facility, and one ferry. It was argued by the JCS that, as some barracks and depots had been vacated, political insistence on hitting only military targets south of latitude 20° was "constraining the program substantially short of optimum military effectiveness."
a. During this six-week period armed recce sorties were expanded to a maximum allowable rate of 4O per day and a maximum of 200 per week (60 additional armed recce sorties were authorized for ROLLING THUNDER 17). Although this period saw a significant increase in armed recce, the new level was well below existing capabilities and, so the JCS argued, "the increase was authorized too late to achieve tactical surprise."
b. With ROLLING THUNDER 13 armed recce authorizations changed from stated routes, etc., to more broadly defined geographical areas, in this case the area south of 20°.
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