Four A-4E aircraft from USS Independence, with an A-6 Intruder pathfinder, found a site near Kép Air Base, northeast of Hanoi, and destroyed it. Operation Iron Hand began on August 12, 1965, but the first actual strike against a SAM site was not accomplished until the morning of October 17. Not until several American planes had been shot down–-the first Navy losses were VA-23 A-4 Skyhawk aircraft from USS Midway in August-was official sanction was given for anti-SAM missions. Over the next several months more SAM sites were discovered, but permission to mount strikes on these sites was refused. Soviet installations had a distinctive six-pointed star arrangement that made them easy to identify, and the installations in Vietnam were being built in the same arrangement. Navy RF-8A Crusader reconnaissance plane from aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea brought back photography of the first positively identified SAM. ![]() The People's Army of Vietnam, with the aid of the Soviet Union and China, took defense measures as a response to the American-led Operation Rolling Thunder. ![]() The tactics employed on the Iron Hand missions were primarily designed to diminish the threat of SA-2 missiles to a bombing strike force. The "Iron Hand" is a metaphor to the steady hand and nerves of steel it took for pilots to fly directly at the radar-emitting anti-aircraft missile sites while the radar-seeking missiles flew down to destroy the target. "Iron Hand" refers both to the development of the tactics and equipment, and the numerous individual "Iron Hand missions" that generally accompanied strike packages of the USAF and USN. It was a type of Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) mission, primarily intended to suppress Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems in North Vietnam, although neutralizing radar-directed anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) was important as well. Operation Iron Hand was a joint United States Air Force (USAF) and United States Navy (USN) operation conducted from 1965 to 1973 during the Vietnam War. JSTOR ( August 2014) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: "Operation Iron Hand" – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. ![]() This article needs additional citations for verification.
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