Across the Wing-Stories of Navy Carrier Combat Squadrons in the Vietnam Theatre



ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED 16 DECEMBER 1967

RIPPLE SALVO… #649…PART VII of a review of Operation Rolling Thunder for the year 1967… “Denying Access to External Assistance” was established as the first of three basic tasks to be pursued in the bombing campaign. The report of CINCPAC and COMUSMACV published in June 1968 states: “Our operations in Vietnam have been conducted to block Communist aggression in Southeast Asia…”… The air campaign– Rolling Thunder– was the principal operation to take the fight to the enemy heartland. Today’s Ripple Salvo reviews the first of the three basic objectives of the campaign: “Impeding the movement of men and supplies.”…but first…

Good Afternoon: Regret the delay in delivering for the 16th… Internet problems and hiccups in the Rockies cost me a good start and sent me to bed. Here we go again… Day SIX HUNDRED FORTY-NINE of remembering the events and brave participants of Rolling Thunder a 40-month period of the air war fought over North Vietnam fifty years ago…

16 December 1967… HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a cold and windy Saturday in New York City…

Page 1: “OHIO RIVER SPAN CRASHES; HEAVY DEATH TOLL FEARED”... Point Pleasant, West Virginia…”A towering suspension bridge collapsed during rush-hour and Christmas shopping traffic today, sending the estimated 75 cars and trucks 80-feet down into the Ohio River. Five bodies were recovered and estimates were that the death toll might go higher when daylight permits searching the river. ‘The whole bridge is in the river,’ a policeman said at Galipolis, near the Ohio end of the 1,750-foot-long bridge. ‘There isn’t any bridge any more.’ “… Page 1: “Congress Clears Four Major Bills And Ends Session–Votes Social Security Rise, Poverty and Foreign Aid Funds and School Help–Will Return on January 15–Mansfield Plans to Take Up a Civil Rights Bill Then, Assuring a Filibuster”... Page 1: “Dirksen and Ford Rebut President Johnson–On TV They Decry Attack on G.O.P. and Denounce Johnson on Inflation”… “The Republican leaders of Congress went on television tonight to defend their colleagues against political charges leveled by President Johnson earlier in the week. Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois voiced dolorous resentment over the Presidents’ characterization of Republican House members as ‘wooden soldiers of the status quo.’ The Senator: ‘Generally speaking the wooden soldiers have not only been supporting the commander-in-chief, but we have been sustaining the live soldiers in Vietnam, which is infinitely more important.'”… Page 1: “Western Powers Rebuff Greek Bid for Recognition a Junta Leader Invites King to Return at Will–Subject to ‘Certain Procedures’ “…. Page 4: Picture of General William W. Momyer, Chief of Seventh Air Force receives fourth star from General Creighton Abrams, deputy commander U.S. Forces Vietnam… Page 1: “Johnson Lights the Nation’s Christmas Tree…Message Takes Note of War and Americans Overseas”… “…voiced the conviction that ‘peace will come on earth and permit us to give our lives completely to building, instead of destroying.'”Page 10: “Senator Sherman Cooper Urges Johnson Not To Widen the War”... “…the Kentucky Senator led Senate critics of the Administration’s Vietnam policy today in urging the President not to extend the war into Cambodia or Laos. Such a military step, Senator Cooper said in a Senate speech, ‘could only lead to a further and more dangerous expansion of the war’ and make a negotiated settlement more difficult, if not impossible.”…

State Department Office of the Historian, Historical Document #439, and Editorial Note, 15 December 1967… This document reports the results of an Institute of Defense Analysis JASON Division study on the effectiveness of the Rolling Thunder campaign: “As of October 1967, the U.S. bombing campaign has had no measurable effect upon Hanoi’s ability to mount and support military operations in the South.” Read the note at:

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v05/d439

GROUND WAR (“War is a killing business.”) Page 1: “In the ground war, fighting erupted in two places in Binhdinh Province near Bongson along the central coastal plain where troops of two United States First Cavalry (Airmobile) reported killing 510 North Vietnamese soldiers in a six-day battle that ended Monday (11th). Three American companies, about 500 men, fought through the day with about 150 of the enemy. At last report a mechanized infantry company had joined the fight which was continuing. An interim report said that 47 enemy soldiers had been killed. A few miles to the south American and South Vietnamese troops killed 55 enemy soldiers after a Government outpost manned by a militia platoon of about 30 men had been attacked and overrun. On the southern edge of the demilitarized zone near Conthien American marines fought for 3 1/2 hours and reported having killed 46 North Vietnamese. A spokesman said three marines had been killed and 31 wounded seriously enough to be hospitalized.

16 DECEMBER 1967… Operation Rolling Thunder… New York Times (17 Dec reporting 16 Dec ops)… Page 1: “HANOI AREA HIT 3D DAY IN A ROW–U.S. Pilots Return to Bomb Road and Rail Targets”… “American pilots took advantage of continuing good weather over North Vietnam today (16th) today to hit rail and road targets in the Hanoi area for the third consecutive day. The main target was the railroad yard at Yenvien, six miles east-northeast of Hanoi, the key yard for all rail traffic into the North Vietnamese capital. Air Force pilots reported having cut rails at both ends of the yard and having destroyed 59 boxcars. A United States spokesman said that pilots in F-4 Phantom jets had exchanged missile and cannon fire with at least six MIG-17s and MIG-21s, but that no damage had been reported.The spokesman said that no American aircraft had been reported lost during the day.

“The pilots who attacked the Hanoi area reported having encountered heavy antiaircraft fire and numbers of surface-to-air missiles that landed six miles southeast of the city and two others that collided in midair. United States pilots have taken advantage the last three days of an unseasonable break in the monsoon weather and have made the first heavy strikes in the Hanoi and Haiphong area since November 20. Air Force pilots  yesterday (15th) damaged the northern end of the bridge over the Canal des Rapides, five miles northeast of Hanoi, cutting all road and rail traffic between the North Vietnamese capital and Communist China.

“Navy carrier pilots destroyed a span in the Haiphong highway bridge in the northwest part of the city. They also reported that had scored a direct hit on the Kienan highway bridge, a mile and a half southwest of Haiphong.”

“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were two fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 16 December 1967…

(1) MAJOR JAMES FREDERICK LOW and 1LT HOWARD JOHN HILL were flying an F-4D of the 555th TFS out of Ubon were shot down by a MIG-21 air-to-air missile in a dogfight over Kep. Both aviators were able to eject and were subsequently captured and interned as POWs. MAJOR LOW accepted an early release contrary to American POW policy and returned home with a group of American peace activists in July 1968. 1LT HILL rejected early release, took the five years of torture and deprivation to be released with honor in March 1973.

(Webmaster note: One cannot help but wonder if Major Low, from the time of his early release until Operation Homecoming in early 1973, thought of all the comrades he abandoned in the Hanoi Hilton and other NVN prison hellholes. That answer rests between Low, his conscious, and God.)

(2) LCDR DUKE F. HERNANDEZ and LTJG S.L. VANHORN were flying an F-4B of the VF-21 Freelancers embarked in USS Ranger as a flak suppressor in support of a wing strike on a bridge near Kienan and Haiphong when hit by enemy ground fire exiting the target area. They made it to the sea before ejecting. Both aviators were rescued by a Navy helicopter to fly and fight for many another day…..

From Howie Plunkett’s compilation of “34TFS/F-105 History” page 43…

16-Dec-67 “F-105s from the 388th TFW struck the Yen Vien railroad classification yard (JCS-19)… in RP-6A North Vietnam…The 44th TFS Wild Weasel crew of Major Robert S. Beals and EWO Captain Paul John Mongillo supported this mission and were both awarded the Air Force Cross. Both award citations credited each man with braving “…many concentrations of heavy antiaircraft artillery fire and eighteen surface-to-air missiles as he successfully led his missile suppression flight in diverting the hostile defenses away from the main strike force. He contributed to the destruction of one missile site only three miles from the center of a heavily defended target area and damaged at least one other missile complex. As a result of his actions the main strike force suffered no losses, encountered only four missiles and successfully destroyed the vital target.”

The 34th TFS also participated in this strike. Major Sam Armstrong led a flight of four. This is from his log… “Another Downtown mission. This time it was the Yen Vien RR yards just north of the bridge across the Canal des Rapides. We went up the water route (over the Gulf of Tonkin) without incident and turned westward over the ‘Wart’. One of the Iron Hand flights with a MIG CAP flight came up the delta the same way we had come the two previous days. They drew some 24 SAMs. We only saw three the way we came in. Takhli was coming in from the west and they drew all the MIGs. They wound up aborting for weather but it cleared the air of MIGs. I was leading the flak suppression flight and we rolled in second on the target. We were in bad position to roll-in. There were quite a few sites shooting at us but they were bursting above us. The following flights got quite a bit of flak hurled at them. We got in and out with nobody hit. One of the MIG CAP F-4s was shot down leaving the target…” (see Major LOW above)…

RIPPLE SALVO…#649… Part VII of a review of the 1967 Rolling Thunder Campaign… From the CINCPAC/COMUSMACV “Report on the War in Vietnam” of July 1968… “Impeding Movement of Men and Material”

“Men and material needed for the level of combat prevailing in South Vietnam continued to flow despite our attacks on LOC’s, but we made such movement increasingly costly. In the complementary naval gunfire program, our offensive operations involved 1,384 ship-days on station and contributed materially toward reducing enemy seaborne infiltration in southern North Vietnam and in the vicinity of the Demilitarized Zone. During 1967 attacks against North Vietnam transport system resulted in destruction of logistic carriers and their cargo as well as personnel casualties. Air attacks throughout North Vietnam destroyed or damaged 5,260 motor vehicles, 2,500 pieces of railroad rolling stock, and 11,500 watercraft. …The enemy suffered additional material losses from destroyed rail lines, bridge, ferries, railroad yards and shops, storage areas, and truck parks. Some 3,700 land targets were struck by naval gunfire…Through assistance from other communist countries the enemy was able to replace or rehabilitate many of the items damaged or destroyed, and logistics carrier inventories thus were roughly at the same level they were at the beginning of the year. Nevertheless, construction problems and delays caused interruptions in the flow of men and material, caused a great loss of work hours, and restricted movement, particularly during daylight hours.

“A major effect of our efforts to impede movement of the enemy was to force Hanoi to divert the efforts of 500,000 to 600,000 civilians to full-time or part-time war related activities, in particular for air defense and repair of the LOC’s. This diverted manpower from other pursuits, particularly from agriculture. The estimated lower food imports in 1967, indicated that agriculture had difficulty adjusting to this smaller work force. (Imports in 1967 were some six times those of 1967, but an unusual drought was partly the reason.) The cost and difficulties of the war to Hanoi had sharply increased and only through the willingness of other Communist countries to provide maximum replacements of goods and material had North Vietnam managed to sustain its war effort.”

RTR Quote for 16 December: JOHN PAUL JONES: “He who will not risk, cannot win.”…

Lest we forget…       Bear

 

 

 

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