As 388th TFW Vice Commander Col. Jack Broughton put it, ‘I had been shot down by our own people’.
In order to prevent potential Chinese or Soviet intervention in the Vietnam War, Washington exercised strict control over these bombing missions. Restrictions included a ban on attacks in the “sanctuary” areas around Hanoi (North Vietnam’s capital), Haiphong (its main port), and within a buffer zone along the Chinese border. In addition, many categories of targets were initially off-limits, such as enemy airfields, surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites, and fuel storage and distribution facilities.
As recounted by Peter E. Davies in his book F-105 Thunderchief Units of the Vietnam War, a clear example of how restrictive the in-theater Rules of Engagement (RoE) were for all U.S. tactical aircraft occurred during a mission on June 2, 1967. After completing a successful bombing run, F-105 pilot Maj. Ted Tolman chose to attack gun positions near the port of Cam Pha that had fired on his formation during their outbound leg. While strafing the gun emplacements, Tolman spotted a ship amid the intense anti-aircraft fire directed at him. Unfortunately, the vessel turned out to be the Soviet freighter Turkestan, which triggered serious diplomatic protests. These escalated to a conversation between President Johnson and Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin, during which Kosygin reportedly produced a 20 mm shell said to have been taken from the Turkestan’s hull. The incident ultimately led to court-martial proceedings against MiG ace Tolman, his wingman, Maj. Lonnie Ferguson, and the 388th TFW Vice Commander, Col. Jack Broughton.
Tolman’s flight had to divert to Ubon because of the weather, where he unwisely claimed he had not fired his cannon during the mission. Out of loyalty to his pilots, Col. Broughton assisted in destroying Tolman’s gun-camera footage (used by Seventh Air Force to verify adherence to the RoE) after returning to Takhli. The two pilots were ultimately acquitted, but Col. Broughton—who had been slated to take command of the 432nd TRW at Udorn—was made the fall guy. Stripped of his command, he left the Air Force. Although a Washington, D.C., appeals court soon overturned the court-martial as a serious miscarriage of justice, the USAF had already lost one of its most effective F-105 leaders. As Broughton later remarked, ‘I had been shot down by our own people.’
PACAF Commander-in-Chief Gen. John D. Ryan, who had pushed for the court-martial, was well known for his abrasive manner, as Broughton recalled in another incident involving F-105 cameras.
“Thuds” carried two different cameras. The nose-mounted gun camera pointed forward and was triggered whenever the cannon or Sidewinder missiles were fired. The second, a sweep camera, was installed on the underside of the aircraft. It started recording when the bombs were released and panned backward to capture their impact and provide useful bomb damage assessment (BDA). As you pulled out of a steep dive-bombing attack, the sweep camera was filming the bomb strikes while you were jinking hard to stay alive—or getting shot down. Gen. Ryan confused the roles of these cameras. He reviewed the sweep camera footage, saw us jinking as we departed the target, and accused us—quite forcefully and in person—of jinking during our actual attack runs, thereby reducing our bombing accuracy.
`I insisted, in an act that was obviously politically incorrect, that once we rolled in on the target, our ass belonged to “Uncle Sam” until we punched the bombs off on a target, and that we never wiggled until our bombs were released. Gen. Ryan told me not to give him that crap.
`Early in Rolling Thunder, we had to carry big camera pods on one jet in some flights of four. After several bad incidents where the camera carrier could not keep up with his squadron mates, thus jeopardizing the whole flight, we managed to get that foolishness stopped.’
Most of the F-105’s camera footage was of limited value for bomb damage assessment (BDA), which instead depended primarily on imagery from dedicated reconnaissance aircraft.
F-105 Thunderchief Units of the Vietnam War is published by Osprey Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo by U.S. Air Force
