RIPPLE SALVO… #591… WHAT’S GOING ON IN HANOI? WHAT ARE THEY THINKING? PEACE? or WAR?…but first…

Good Morning: Day FIVE HUNDRED NINETY-ONE living in the glorious past and the “central blue” of North Vietnam…

18 OCTOBER 1967… HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a drizzly Wednesday in a big city with a rainy night coming…

Page 1: “Soviet Capsule Is Reported On Venus–Signals Coming From Surface”... “British scientists said early today that the Russians had scored ‘a tremendous’ success in space by landing an instrumented capsule on the surface of Venus… a Soviet spacecraft had ejected the capsule as it neared the planet this morning.”… Page 1: “$5-Billion Slash In President’s Budget Gaining In House–Democrats Hint Support of G.O.P. Plan On Spending–Military Raise Is Backed”…”House to order President to cut non-defense spending.”… Page 1: “Catholic Lay Leaders Endorse Birth Control”... “A resolution endorsing birth control was approved early today by The Assembly of the Heads of Delegations, the central body of the Third World Lay Catholic Congress meeting in Rome.”… Page 1: “United States Plans to Sell Third Generation F-5 Tactical Jets To Latin American Nations–Planes Capable of Flying at Supersonic Speeds–Policy Switch Denied”… (“Third Generation” of tactical aircraft since WWII).”…

Page 9: “War Critic Maps ‘Peaceful” Rally–Says Blockade Of Pentagon Will Be Weekend Tactic”… “The chairman of a group planning a mass protest against the Vietnam war said today that it intended ‘a peaceful demonstration.’ At a news conference Dave Delinger, chairman of the National Mobilization Committee to End the Vietnam War said that if there was violence during the demonstrations next Saturday and Sunday (Oct 21-22) it would be violence ‘launched against us.’ “… Page 1: “Police Rout 3,000 at Oakland Rally” … “Helmeted policemen using clubs and chemical sprays, cleared about 3,000 antiwar demonstrators from the Northern California Draft Induction Center today.”… Page 17: “Ike Back In Hospital”... “…at Walter Reed with undiagnosed ailment of the urinary tract.”…

VIETNAM: Page 5: “Use of New Defoliant in Laos Studied”... Tactic of using defoliant in concert with electronic detection devices long the Ho Chi Minh Trail. …Defoliation of patches of enemy held Laotian jungle has been tried by aircraft flying from South Vietnam. The chemicals used so far no more than weed killers. They often only turn the leaves brown and leave some cover…. What is now under consideration us the use of a different chemicals that more decisively strip away the jungle cover and ‘poison the ground so that new foliage will not quickly sprout.”… Page 4: “Some Specialists Say U.S. Aides Exaggerate Peking Threat”… “Several leading academic specialists on Asia contend that the Johnson Administration, in defense of American intervention in Vietnam, has been exaggerating the threat of Communist China.”…

18 OCTOBER 1967…The New York Times (19 Oct reporting 18 Oct ops) Page 1: “U.S. PILOTS DOWN MIG INTERCEPTOR AND RAID HAIPHONG—Bridge 19 Miles Northwest of Foe’s Capital Is Also an Air Force Target–85th Enemy Jet Falls”… “United States fighter-bomber pilots shot down a MIG interceptor north of Hanoi yesterday and raided a shipyard and military barracks in the port city of Haiphong. The details were reported in a communique here this morning. The MIG ‘kill’ was credited to an Air Force F-1105 Thunderchief in a series of raids on targets in Haiphong and the Dailoi railroad bridge 19 miles northwest of Hanoi.

“Air Force planes flew the missions against the Dailoi bridge. Navy jets bombed Haiphong, destroying five buildings at the Lachtray shipyard, 1.7 miles southwest of the center of the city. The shipyard was first attacked on October 12. Navy pilots returning to aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin reported heavy damage at the Haiphong military barracks. It was described as an assembly point for Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles and helicopters. The United States command said that the downed MIG was the 85th Soviet-made jet to fall to American pilots in the war. The headquarters report listed 25 American jets downed by MIGs, but no losses were  reported in the raids yesterday.”… Page 3: “Hanoi Claims 2 U.S. Planes”… “Two United States aircraft were shot down at Haiphong today, the North Vietnamese press agency said. It also said 2,409 United States planes had now been downed in North Vietnam.”…

“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were two fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 18 October 1967…

(1) MAJOR NICHOLAS A. PISHVANOV was flying an RF-101C of the 20th TRS and 432nd TRW out of Udorn on a reconnaissance mission in Southern Laos at 500-feet and 480-knots when hit by ground fire. MAJOR PISHVANOV was forced to eject from his faltering Voodoo and was rescued by an Air Force helicopter to fly and photo again…

(2) LCDR JOHN FREDERICK BARR was flying an A-4E of the VA-164 Ghost Riders embarked in USS Oriskany and participating as a flak suppressor in a Carrier Air Wing 16 strike on the Haiphong shipyards (Lachtray) and while attacking a SAM site was hit by AAA and the aircraft exploded. LCDR BARR died on his shield on the battlefield fifty years ago this day. His remains were returned to the United States in 1989 and identified in 1995. He rests in peace and is remembered as one of the brave… This was the 22nd aircraft lost by CVW-16 on this deployment…

“The following is a 388th TFW draft new release reporting the 388th wing strike on the Lang Dang railroad storage yard and Northeast rail line on 18 October 1967…

“F-105 Thunderchiefs of the 388th TFW struck two railroad yards in the China buffer zone south of Lang Son, about half way between Lang Son and Kep airfield complex.

“The mission commander, CAPTAIN LAWRENCE G. HOPPE, 34TFS, said in his mission debrief: ‘The weather was clear, which was a change from usual. It’s usually cloudy and pretty overcast. Target acquisition was very simple–you can always find a railroad. There’s a whole slew of them along that northeast rail line. We rolled in on it and saw some strings of bombs going into the yards. We saw one exceedingly large secondary just off the yard. It was rather a large, brilliant white flash, several hundred feet in diameter, I’d say, and a good cloud of smoke coming off of it. It wasn’t POL–there was no black smoke. It was probably munitions storage of some sort. coming off target the reaction flak wasn’t as fast as usual.They started shooting and 37/57 was going off around everybody. They’ve got a lot of guns up there and they used them all today. Our flak suppression troops got some guns. They had 85s up there. There were quite a few sites going off. It was quite a bit slow in reacting, quite surprisingly. I think we got them a little bit by surprise. We used a little different approach this time and it seemed to work. Nobody got hit, which is nice. It seemed to be a rewarding mission. We had secondaries and good bombs. We got all our planes in and all of them out. I think it was a good mission. There was a train with about 40 cars sitting down there. We just walked our bombs through. they had apparently unloaded it already–there weren’t any secondaries (from the train). There are a few less rolling stock in North Vietnam today.

“There were a few MiG calls. They didn’t press the attack on the strike force. Nobody in the strike force saw any MiGs. The calls were mostly about the MiGs being around but quite a distance away. Our MiG CAP did a pretty good job. It was a smooth mission.”… It was CAPTAIN HOPPE’s 78th counter.

RIPPLE SALVO… #591… Humble Host found the following summary of the air war cogitation and decision making in the Oval Office a superb snapshot of where Rolling Thunder was in October 1967… (take heed; this material will be on the final exam)… Source: Edward Drea’s Volume VI of the Secretary of Defense Historical Series, “McNamara, Clifford and the Burdens of Vietnam, 1965-1969,” page 219-20…

“On 3 October Hanoi rejected the president’s offer as ‘a faked desire for peace’ that contained ‘nothing new.’

“His patience exhausted even before Hanoi’s announcement, Johnson now considered eliminating all targeting constraints. Moving in the opposite direction McNamara, even more convinced that the bombing was ineffectual, inclined toward stopping it unilaterally. After Rusk and Rostow challenged this position at a 3 October meeting, the president requested the opponents to present in writing their respective views on a continued bombing campaign. This served as the origin of McNamara’s controversial 1 November draft memorandum initially seen only by the president.

“With domestic support for the bombing declining, Johnson ignored the polling numbers and on 4 October overrode McNamara’s objections in an effort ‘to pour the steel on and hit everything except Hanoi’s restricted zone (10-mile diameter zone). In response to the president’s 12 September call for ‘imaginative ideas’ to end the war, the JCS completed their reply on 17 October; McNamara forwarded it to the White House the next day (18 October, 50 year ago today). It recommended 10 additional actions, all against North Vietnam or its operations in Laos and Cambodia.

“The proposal was put on hold while senior administration officials and outside advisors (longtime trusted friend Justice Abe Fortas, Clifford and Kissinger) debated the fate of the Pennsylvania (peace negotiation) plan. Deep-seated mistrust of the communists and fears that Hanoi would take advantage of a bombing halt to attack U.S. troops and installations effectively countered arguments for ending the bombing to induce negotiations. Clifford opposed any bombing suspension because he doubted the North Vietnamese were serious about negotiating and regarded Pennsylvania as a dead end. McNamara argued just as fiercely that if the bombing ended, talks would start quickly. Johnson had previously reminded his advisors, ‘If we cannot agree among ourselves we sure cannot get them to  agree.’ Three weeks had passed and consensus still proved as elusive as ever.

“It may seem that the U.S. disarray caused the breakdown of the Pennsylvania initiative, but it is just as apparent that Hanoi had little genuine interest in negotiations.  (They were thinking and doing WAR, not Peace) While not rejecting either Pennsylvania or the San Antonio formula (LBJ restated the formulas in a speech in SA) outright, Hanoi anticipated meaningful negotiations only after its attempt to win the war with a smashing military blow (and they nearly did). Ignorant of all this (Why?), the president reluctantly agreed to one more attempt by Kissinger to start serious discussions. The North Vietnamese representative in Paris held stubbornly to the official line (The official line: nothing until the US unilaterally, unconditionally and without any reciprocal action on the part of NVN stops bombing NVN) with predictable results. On 20 October North Vietnam closed down the channel (Total Silence).

“In the wake of Pennsylvania’s demise and large scale protests and demonstrations on 21-22 October at the Pentagon, a riled president reconvened his advisors on the 23rd and asked: ‘Are we now ready to take the wraps off the bombing?’ They discussed the latest 10-point recommendation from the JCS, leading off with with the proposal to hit Phuc Yen in retaliation for three aircraft recently lost to MIG fighters. The president noted that the airfield had already been authorized for attack subject to the winding up of the Pennsylvania talks. ‘Now we have gotten rid of all excuses. Let’s go with it.’ All present, including Rusk, Wheeler, and a conflicted McNamara, agreed that Phuc Yen plus numerous targets within the 10-mile Hanoi restricted zone should be struck. The president then lifted the ban that had been in effect since 24 August (and since 1965!!). Attacks on Phuc Yen on 24 and 25 October severely damaged the field and its MIG interceptors.” end quote from Drea…

This concludes the first semester of American History 404: Vietnam and the Rolling Thunder Campaign. Final Exam next week… the second semester will cover the Rolling Thunder Campaign 1 November 1967 to 1 November 1968, the date Operation Rolling Thunder became history.

RTR QUOTE for 18 October: EDMUND BURKE, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent: “To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.”

Lest we forget…      Bear