Arc Light

Concussion will suck the air out of your damn lungs

The U.S. weapon most feared by both VC and NVA troops was an attack by B-52 long-range bombers (code named “Arc Light”). The internal radar of B-52s combined with the AF TPQ-10 and MSQ-77 ground radar systems enabled them to bomb area targets (not point targets) in zero visibility from 35,000 feet with a 100-yard margin of error. Three-plane cells, flying unseen and unheard at an altitude beyond sight and sound on the ground, located their area target by radar and simultaneously released all their bombs on it.

With no warning, an area 3 miles long and half a mile wide suddenly erupted in the rippling shock waves of more than 300 simultaneous explosions from one cell of three B-52s. Anyone above ground was suddenly obliterated by hurricane-force storms of hot metal, wood, dirt, and rock shrapnel. Even those protected from the shrapnel in deep trenches and bunkers were not safe from an Arc Light attack.

Hundreds of high-explosive bombs detonating almost simultaneously in the same area cause temporary vacuums in the air. Air molecules rushing into the vacuums at 900 miles per hour create winds moving in the opposite direction at the same speed. The whiplash wind forces can burst eardrums, collapse lungs, explode bladders, compress spleens, destroy neural networks, and tear blood vessels in the face, eyes, ears, and brain. The destruction of blood vessels in the lungs alone can cause the victims to drown in their own blood.

- Bait: The Battle of Kham Duc

I felt sorry for those Taliban fighters, I really did. Just sitting in their trenches. Trapped. Uncomprehending. Waiting to be bombed. I was right about that, right about what they’d felt. I saw the Taliban prisoners afterwards, dirty and frightened, and all they talked about were the bombs. For the Taliban, the waiting was the worst. A B-52 would appear in the sky, drop a bomb or two and then begin its great U-turn toward its home on Diego Garcia. The B-52s took forever to make that turn, arcing slowly and grandly, turning like an aircraft carrier. And just when I thought the B-52 was finally headed south, headed home, it would keep turning, keep circling back, and then I knew that it was coming back for another run. Sometimes it would take half an hour. And then I’d imagine the Taliban guys in their trenches, fiddling with their prayer beads, looking up, waiting. 

In the end they just ran.

....

The whole war was about the B-52s, at least in the beginning. A few weeks later, at the siege of Kunduz, the last of the Taliban units started surrendering, driving out of their own front lines, and all their trucks were smeared with mud. Doors, hoods, even windows, covered with mud. To hide them from the B-52s. Driving across northern Afghanistan soon after, I saw the wreckage everywhere: the Hi-Luxes and the old Soviet Kamaz trucks, the tanks and the Toyotas, overturned inside the craters, shoes and shreds of clothing splayed in every direction. Boom.

- The Forever War