The Hub
In March 1967, an effort was
made to close the east-west segment of Route 911 shown in the upper portion of
the picture. Located just below
the Chokes and just above the intersection (lower right) where Route 239 lead
southwest from Route 911, the HUB was one of the few segments that had no
convenient bypass. Nail FACs were
scheduled for fulltime coverage during the day, and C-130 Flare ships
(Lamplighter or Blind Bat) were scheduled for full nighttime coverage with the
goal of keeping the road closed once it was closed.
The aircraft tended to be pulled away for other missions with active
targets, so the read ended up being reopened each evening.
The North Vietnamese soon remedied the situation by building Route 916,
a major bypass leading southwest from the Chokes.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The following is a more detailed discussion that I wrote in Crickets on a
Steel Tiger
Operation HUB
The
23rd TASS Tactics Board regularly looked for weaknesses in the network of
roads that snaked through Laos. In
January 1967, the board resubmitted a recommendation for a new operation.
The plan called for attacks against new points on Route 911 and force
more trucks out onto Route 23.
The
FACs wanted to create temporary chokepoints that were not ringed with AAA like
the regular interdiction points. Trucks
delayed near those points could be attacked more. Once the enemy brought in more AAA/AW, the FACs planned to
abandon each new point and concentrate the airstrikes elsewhere.
This
plan was similar to successful attacks along Route 911 in early 1966.
The new plan included the additional objective of forcing more trucks
onto the longer, less defended Route 23.
The
1967 plan called for day strikes against a chosen road segment.
FACs would stay overhead throughout the day to prevent repairs.
Lamplighter, the C-130 flare aircraft, would replace the O-1s at dusk. The 24-hour coverage over the damaged road would keep the
road closed indefinitely.
The
Nails also knew exactly where the first bombs of the operation should fall.
Just below the Chokes, all bypasses necked down to a single road.
Every southbound truck on Routes 911 and 912 used that one mile section
of road.
If
the fliers could close that short piece of road, every truck driver would have
to divert to Route 23. Trucks
that reached the Chokes on Route 912 would have to turn north on 911 instead
of south. These trucks would have
to detour 120 miles to cover the 30 miles separating the Chokes and the
transshipment center at Tchepone.
The
North Vietnamese had one other option. Drive
the trucks as close as possible to the new choke point.
Then, using pack animals, cargo bicycles, and plain manpower, carry the
cargo to trucks south of the damaged road.
Shuttling
the cargo was the more likely reaction. The
North Vietnamese had no desire to expose all their trucks to 90 more miles of
the gauntlet in central Laos.
Yet,
clusters of their trucks above and below the new choke point would make
lucrative targets for night armed reconnaissance missions and daylight strikes
against truck parks just north of the point.
With
some "pride of authorship," the Nails suggested that the single
point interdiction program be called the "Nailhole."
Seventh Air Force scheduled the Nailhole plan to start on 6 February
1967. [i]
However, early in February there were not enough aircraft available to
devote to the plan. The attack had to be delayed for more than a month.
Seventh
Air Force Operation Plan 483-67 started the single point interdiction plan on
14 March 1967. This plan actually
called for new attacks in the Ban Laboy Ford area, at FOXTROT and at GOLF, as
well as at the point picked as the "Nailhole." [ii] Airstrikes were limited to the Nailhole,
however, because of the limited number of flare, FAC, and strike aircraft that
could be dedicated to the plan.
Someone
at Seventh Air Force renamed this spot the "HUB."
The Nails preferred the original name, but the HUB was a descriptive
title. The accompanying picture
shows that the roads above and below the point spread out like spokes of a
wheel from a hub.
The
initial strikes of Operation HUB began at 0644 on the morning of March 14th.
By seven o'clock, seven Navy A-4s had delivered 33 500-pound bombs and
cratered two separate segments of the road about three-quarters of a mile
apart. Additional airstrikes hit
the Hub, and Nail FACs stayed overhead throughout the day to discourage
repairs.
The
new tactic caught the North Vietnamese unprepared, and the HUB remained closed
for the first 34 hours. A working
paper, prepared by the Tactical Air Analysis Center of the Seventh Air Force,
reported that "After the second day, the enemy seemed to adjust his road
repair capability to enable opening the HUB every night." [iii]
Operation
HUB continued through March 25th with Nail FACs overhead during most of the
daytime hours. On some days,
however, weather cancelled some of Nail missions scheduled over the HUB; on
other days, the haze was so thick that FACs could barely see the ground from
the regular altitudes. In the
haze, orbiting FACs occasionally spotted individual workers trying to fill
craters with hand tools. A Willie
Pete from one of the O-1s was sufficient to send the worker scrambling for
cover.
The
Lamplighter C-130 flareships were scheduled to keep over the HUB at night.
Alley Cat, the night ABCCC, was not to divert Lamplighter unless
absolutely necessary. The flareship actually maintained only a limited presence
over the HUB, [iv]
and the road-repair crews fixed the road cuts at night.
So,
Operation Hub failed to keep even one road segment closed days at a time.
The operation produced some results, however, and provided experience
that would be of value to the airmen a year later.
HUB
demonstrated the power of continuous aerial surveillance.
Maintaining a FAC-flare ship over the Trail was sufficient to prevent
road repair activity. This airborne presence was more effective in keeping a road
segment closed than simply attempting to close the road day after day with
airstrikes. The inability to keep
aircraft over the HUB, however, broke the cycle and let the repair crews break
the stranglehold..
A
second lesson, then, was that a coordinated interdiction plan had only limited
potential for success unless all appropriate agencies provided the necessary
support. If the North
Vietnamese were left an opening, they would exploit it.
On
the positive side, there was evidence that HUB disrupted the enemy's routine.
The North Vietnamese temporarily stockpiled supplies, as expected, in
the area above the HUB. During
the first 13 days of March 1967, 161 airstrikes against suspected truck parks
caused 113 secondary explosions or fires.
During the HUB operation and the two weeks following it, 78 strikes
resulted in 216 secondaries. [v]
Although the sample size is small, these results lived up to
expectations.
The
North Vietnamese learned the most important lesson of Operation HUB.
As ineffectual as the aerial efforts were, they pinpointed a major
weakness in the road network. Less than a month later, a FAC discovered major construction
in the area southwest of BRAVO. The
new road, designated by the Americans as Route 916, became a seven-mile,
jungle-covered bypass from near BRAVO down to Route 91.
The Route 916 bypass allowed traffic to avoid the more open stretches
of Route 911 through interdiction points CHARLIE and DELTA.
This
development increased the frustrations of the FACs. The Nails felt that the Nailhole concept had been
"bungled" because Operation HUB did not receive the priority
necessary for success. And, Route
916 was a difficult road segment for the FACs to cover. The Nails feared that the new road would undermine the
success of the night program by diverting traffic away from the exposed
sections of Route 911.
In the months that followed, however, the North
Vietnamese made only limited use of Route 916 and continued sending the main
traffic down Route 911.
[i] "23rd TASS Activities," 5 February
1967, 2.
[ii] "Documentation,"
Appendix B, 37.
[iv] Ibid.,
38, 39, 43, 44.
