McNamara refused permission, fearing that Soviet technicians might be killed and the conflict would escalate. US military commanders wanted to destroy them right away, but Secretary of Defense Robert S. The first SAM sites in North Vietnam were detected in April 1965. Its NATO code name was Guideline, but to the airmen who faced it in Southeast Asia, it was simply “the SAM,” or sometimes “Sam.” It was deadly against aircraft at medium and high altitudes. The SA-2 had a range of about 25 miles and accelerated to Mach 3.5 as it closed on the target. 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 Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile was already well known to US intelligence when the Vietnam War began.
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