Lest Biden Forget

(Credit: Smithsonian Magazine, in an article by David Freed entitled “The Missile Men of North Vietnam,” December 2014)

 

The Biden Administration, and its titulary head “The Big Guy”, may be susceptible to Putin’s intimidation due to their lack of historical knowledge of the Vietnam War.

A recent D.C. announcement that $800 million of war-materiel was being rushed to Ukraine may bring new threats from Putin.

But, if Putin tries to intimidate Joe, Joe will need to be reminded that Pootie-Poot (as “W” allegedly referred to Putin when directing his staff to get him on the phone) lives in a class house he inherited from his KGB days.

What follows is history some in the Biden Administration may have forgotten, or never knew. Including “The Big Guy” who successfully dodged the draft back during the Vietnam War with a medical deferment that miraculously went away soon after that war ended.

A former North Vietnamese military officer remembers when the shipment of arms from Russian had a deadly impact on American flyers.

According to the Smithsonian Magazine piece cited above:

“What does it feel like to push a button, launch a surface-to-air missile, and blow a B-52 bomber out of the sky? Ask Nguyen Van Phiet. As a young North Vietnamese military officer, his SA-2 rockets were credited with downing four of the giant Boeing Stratofortresses during U.S. raids on and around Hanoi in December 1972.

More than 40 years later, sitting in his comfortable Hanoi rowhouse, the wizened, soft-spoken Phiet, 76, a retired lieutenant general and former deputy commander of Vietnam’s air defense force, shows little emotion when recalling those deadly days. ‘The Americans were disturbing our freedom,’ he says in Vietnamese as we sip tea from delicate china cups at his dining room table. ‘I was fulfilling my responsibility to the nation.’”

In 1965, “[Phiet] was sent to the Soviet Union along with about 1,000 of his countrymen for SA-2 [SAM-2 surface-to-air missile] training. For nine months, they studied and drilled 14 hours a day, seven days a week, learning enough Russian that many became conversant with their instructors.” 

On 22 October 1966, “[W]ith his Soviet advisers looking on, Phiet received a report from headquarters in Hanoi that approximately two dozen U.S. warplanes were inbound from Thailand.”

His SA-2 battery fired one missile and shot down a USAF F-105 Thunderchief.

“U.S. records show that no F-105s were lost on that day over North Vietnam. The day before, however, a ‘Thud’ [an F-105 alias] assigned to the 469th Tactical Fighter Squadron, based in Thailand, was seen exploding in a fireball on a bombing mission south of Hanoi. The pilot, Captain David J. Earll of Dallas, Texas, was initially reported missing in action. Twenty years later, his remains were located.” (Earll pictured here)

 

A detailed history of Russian-manufactured SAMs in North Vietnam is found here at GlobalSecurity.org, along with the roles played by the USSR and the Peoples’ Republic of China in getting the SAMs into North Vietnam.

“[E]vidence suggests that throughout the spring of 1965 the DRV (N. Vietnam) vacillated between yielding to Chinese pressure and thus deferring completion and activization of SAM sites until the fall, when North Vietnamese cadres could complete their training in the USSR to operate them, or flouting Chinese wishes and accepting enough Soviet personnel to put the SAMs into operation more promptly. Finally, under the influence of the mounting US bombing, the DRV seems to have opted for the latter course, and prevailed upon Peking to permit a limited quota of Soviet SAM personnel to pass.

The bulk of Soviet SAM equipment and personnel, following a Chinese agreement to let specific numbers pass at the beginning of June, arrived by stages in North Vietnam in the latter half of June and the first half of July, and thus coincided roughly with the increase in U.S. air strikes against DRV territory north of Hanoi. North Vietnamese propaganda displayed greatly increased concern about this US movement northward, and seemed particularly exercised at the violations of Hanoi’s ‘suburban airspace’ and the attacks on one of the rail lines to China.”

One summary of U.S. aircraft losses to SAM missiles totals 235 aircraft from 1965-1973. Most were attributed to SA-2 missiles, while many fewer kills were from the SA-7 models in 1972-1973.

Direct Russian weapons support to North Vietnam, according to a December 1965 issue of the Soviet Army newspaper, Red Star, was announced then and, according to GlobalSecutry.org., was closely followed as a “pledge of military and economic assistance was made in an agreement signed in January 1966, when Aleksandr N. Shelepin, a member of the Soviet Communist Party Presidium and Secretariat, visited Hanoi.”

So, someone should remind The Big Guy that Putin lives a big glass house. And, The Big Guy should remind Putin that what comes around, goes around.

Follow AFNN:

Truth Social: @AFNN_USA

Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa

Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa

GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA

CloutHub: AFNN_USA