Page 52 - DFCS NEWS MAGAZINE 2020-1

Linebacker II – Night One
B-52 “Charcoal 1” Shot Down By Ch, Col. Robert G. Certain, USAF (Ret.)
Crews prepare to load a B-52 with 750-pound bombs. In Operation Linebacker II in December 1972, B-52s flew 729 sorties dropping 15, 237 tons of ordnance in the largest mass bombing operation of the Vietnam war.
They were lined up nearly as far as the eye could see. More B-52 bombers were going out on this raid then had ever been attempted before; 87 from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam and another 42 from U-Tapao, Thailand.
"We took off one airplane a minute out of Guam for
hours. Just on time takeoff after on time takeoff," recalled
pilot Michael J. Connor.
The Paris Peace Talks had broken down and President
Nixon made the decision for a decisive major attack on
military targets around Hanoi to bring the North
Vietnamese back to the bargaining table.
Then a Captain, Bob Certain was the Navigator on
this, his 100th mission the night of 18 December, 1972.
This is his story. -Ed.
bombardiers and navigators. Col. Russ McCarthy, commander of the 43rd Strategic Wing, came to the podium and announced, “Gentlemen, your target for tonight is Hanoi,” as a slide of North Vietnam with a target triangle over Hanoi lit up the screen behind him. Linebacker II was beginning.
I was assigned with a great crew; Lt. Col. Don Rissi was the Pilot in Command, 1Lt. Bobby Thomas was Co-Pilot, Maj. Dick Johnson was the Bombardier, Capt. Tom Simpson was the Electronic Warfare Officer (EW) and our Gunner up front was MSgt. Walter “Fergie” Ferguson. I was the Navigator for the mission.
Arriving at B-52 58-0201 an hour before engine start, we carefully completed the preflight checks on the entire aircraft and its systems and then sat in the shade under the wing for another 15-20 minutes engaging in quiet chatter and reflection. The briefer had suggested a 10% loss of aircraft that night. Being young, the possibility of being shot down seemed remote to us; but the likelihood of being hit was higher.
Forty-five minutes before take-off we climbed aboard to start the eight engines and to begin the mission. Fifteen minutes later we pulled out of our parking stub and joined the long line of BUFFs (Big Ugly Fat Fellas) on the taxiway. We were on the move, and I was feeling elated and businesslike as I made additional checks of my equipment.
A few seconds into the roll, Charlie Tower called again to say yet another aircraft ahead of us had aborted and left the runway, moving us into the Charcoal 1 (10th G model) position. We were now in the lead position where we normally flew, and I felt a lot more comfortable being there rather than back in the line.
After takeoff, the mission proceeded normally for several hours. I studied the mission, routes, and target, took fixes, ate, slept, and chatted with other crewmembers.
As we approached the Philippines, we were to rendezvous with a KC-135 to receive a nominal onload of 50,000# of JP-4 to arrive back over Guam with a minimum load of 15,000. We caught the tanker, took our fuel, and proceeded on the mission. We were refueling directly into the sun. Don could not see the boom as we approached until he had contact. Bobby was leaning way over to the right in his seat calling position.
The “compression point” (where we were to compress the wave of 9 B-52s from five to one-mile separation) was over Laos just beyond the western border of South Vietnam and just southwest of the demilitarized zone. Now that the sun had set, the pilots could see SAMs streaking into the night sky from hundreds of miles away.
As we entered the briefing room on Monday morning 18 December, 1972, instead of the usual 3 to 9 crews, the room was packed with over a hundred pilots, copilots,
52 / DFCS News Magazine / SUMMER 2020