On Tue, 02 Feb 2021 23:18:31 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Wed, 03 Feb 2021 09:58:26 +0700, John B.
wrote:

On Tue, 02 Feb 2021 18:06:26 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 15:47:16 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

There were NO Airforce personnel around where the B52's were dropping
bombs so why are you lying yet again? There were NO Air bases anywhere
near front lines. Also you haven't a clue about the bombing altitude.
When you're stupid you should stop showing it so plainly. There was
a river valley on the 17th parallel and The SAM sites were in that
Valley. Give us some more of your stupid bull**** about what altitude
we bombed from when a B52 was supposed to drop nuclear weapons from
those altitudes and didn't need pinpoint accuracy. A SAM missile
couldn't even reach that high moron.

I don't have a number for the Vietnam Ware era B-52F ceiling. The
earlier B-52B ceiling was 47,300 ft while the later B-52H ceiling was
50,000 ft. Bombing altitude seems to have been around 30,000 ft.
https://www.boeing.com/defense/b-52-bomber/#/technical-specifications

Various V-750 / SA-2 SAM missiles and systems in use had maximum
altitudes of 23,000 meters (75,400 ft) to 35,000 meters (114,000 ft).
I can't tell which V-750 version was in use in Vietnam, but my
guess(tm) is the early ones went to at least 25,000 meters (82,000
ft):
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/S-75_Dvina
It scored the first destruction of an enemy aircraft
by a surface-to-air missile, shooting down a Taiwanese
Martin RB-57D Canberra over China, on October 7, 1959,
hitting it with three V-750 (1D) missiles at an altitude
of 20 km (65,600 ft).

A missile with a maximum altitude of 82,000 ft should have no trouble
hitting an airplane with a ceiling between 47,300 and 50,000 ft.

As for B-52 models I think that they were B-52D's and maybe F's. At
least in the early '60's the ones from Barksdale AFB were B-52F models
if I remember correctly.

Thanks. There was probably considerable overlap between B-52 models
in service with various suffixes being in service at the same time. A
2,700 ft difference in ceiling altitude is only a 10% difference in
SAM range since all the various B-52 models were operating around
30,000 ft.

However, between researching the topic and writing this reply, I
realized that I wasn't considering slant range and mountain heights. I
read that the North Vietnamese tried to locate their SAM sites on
hills and mountains. My guess(tm) is that had something to do with
the ultimate range of the SAM missile or maybe shorten the flight
time. It would be a rare day when the B-52 bombers flew directly
overhead for the missiles to have the shortest range. More likely,
there was horizontal range involved. 30,000 ft is about 5.7 miles. If
the SAM launch sites were 5.7 miles away, the flight path of the
missile would be 1.4 times longer. My guess(tm) is that the missile
maximum firing altitude was based on the burn time of the rocket and
unlike the bomber, had nothing to do with insufficient air for the
engines at high altitudes.

Is missile "firing range" and "firing altitude" are the same thing?
The article at:
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/S-75_Dvina
seems to use these terms interchangeably. Or, are they the horizontal
or vertical components of the ultimate range of the missile based on
rocket burn time? This has no major effect on whether a SAM can shoot
down a B-52, but does shorten the range at which it might be
accomplished.

Well, I'm not a missile man but my understanding is that "range" means
how far away will the rocket reach, i.e. a line drawn from the launch
pad to wherever and "altitude" would mean how high the rocket could
reach, probably fired straight up.
--
Cheers,

John B.