The Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile was already well known to US intelligence when the Vietnam War began. It had brought down Francis Gary Powers in a CIA U-2 spyplane over the Soviet Union in 1960 and an Air Force U-2 during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The SA-2 had a range of about 25 miles and accelerated to Mach 3.5 as it closed on the target. It was deadly against aircraft at medium and high altitudes. Its NATO code name was Guideline, but to the airmen who faced it in Southeast Asia, it was simply “the SAM,” or sometimes “Sam.”
The first SAM sites in North Vietnam were detected in April 1965. US military commanders wanted to destroy them right away, but Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara refused permission, fearing that Soviet technicians might be killed and the conflict would escalate. John T. McNaughton, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, ridiculed the need to strike the SAMs. “You don’t think the North Vietnamese are going to use them!” he scoffed. “Putting them in is just a political ploy by the Russians to appease Hanoi.”
McNaughton’s surmise was soon discredited. On July 24, 1965, an SA-2 shot down an Air Force F-4C, the first of 110 USAF aircraft lost to SAMs in Southeast Asia. The White House approved a retaliatory air strike, but by the time it got there, the SAM batteries were long gone. Instead, dummy missiles had been placed at the site as a “flak trap.” The attacking aircraft were lured within range of concealed air defense guns, which shot down four of them.
