ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED 5 MARCH 1966

Good Morning…Day FIVE of our long look back to Operation Rolling Thunder.

5 MARCH 1966 (NYT)… ON THE HOMEFRONT … A football Saturday—Duke ranked #3 beat North Carolina, 21-20. The score at half-time was 7-5. Page one of the NYT headlined the blizzards in the Dakotas and the lethal tornadoes in Mississippi, where more than 500 were injured, There was a little story on a back page that reported that the United States was buying back frag bombs from NATO (Germany) to send to Vietnam…bomb shortage? Ah, I remember (we were down to MK-81 Lady fingers)…Our United Nations Representative Arthur Goldberg gave a speech in London (Mar 4) that is worth remembering. The speech was delivered to the Pilgrim Society, a U.S.-British fellowship.

Ambassador Goldberg said: “My view is that America is not fighting to win a war. We are fighting to give application to an old Greek proverb, which is, that the purpose of war is not to annihilate the enemy but to get him to mend his ways. And we are confident we can get the enemy to mend his ways.” ….”The United States and Britain share moral ground and judicial values. It is for this faith that we do battle today, as you have done in the past and will in the future.”

NYT reported on the same page that the Air Force and Navy planes had flown 501 “raids” into North Vietnam. Ranger F4 Phantoms made the news for attacks on motorized junks ( we called them Wiblics, short for Water Borne Logistics Craft –WBLC ) 24 miles SE of Haiphong, the closest to Haiphong of any Rolling Thunder Ops since Dec 65. Also reported was action along the Cambodian border and a “battle” 320 miles north of Saigon, in which the Marines reported “possibly 200-300 North Vietnamese killed.”

On a back page: two hundred protestors were arrested on the Alcorn University campus. Charles Evers was among those arrested.

5 MARCH 1966 …ROLLING THUNDER. A break in the weather, which can be expected to be bad for bombing – low overcasts and monsoonal rains — until April, permitted a moderate tempo of operations by both the Air Force on the west and north, and the Navy on the east. The only reported combat loss for the day was an A-IH Spad from VA-215 and USS Hancock. The squadron commander went down while leading a strike near Ha Tinh, south of Vinh. COMMANDER ROBERT CHARLES HESSON was Killed in Action. His remains were found and returned to the United States in 1994. The Joint Recovery folks are unsung heroes whose work will never end as they give meaning to the pledge: “No warrior left behind.”… There were two other aircraft losses In South Vietnam. USS Kitty Hawk, operating out of Dixie Station, lost an F-4B from VF-114 piloted by LCDR MAL GUESS and RIO LT R.E. PILE. The plane suffered damage coming off a target in the Mekong Delta area and the crew ejected. They were both picked up by and Army helicopter and returned to duty. The other loss was an Air Force F-100D from the 415th Tactical fighter squadron operating out of Tan Son Nhut and piloted by CAPTAIN P.W. McCALLAM, who ejected and survived. The mission was Close Air Support 20 miles north of TSN. “There are no easy days.”

Ripple Salvo: For the next three years I will be reliving every day of the Rolling Thunder era. I will be “eating the elephant one bite at a time.”

A good house is built on a good foundation. So here is a good place for me to review how we got to Operation Rolling Thunder. Before there was Rolling Thunder there was Barrel Roll and Steel Tiger, the conduct of “very limited air and covert ground operations” in attempts to stabilize a small war in Laos. The strategy was to apply limited American air and ground forces in support of South Vietnam in their struggle with the Viet Cong. North Vietnam was using routes through Laos and Cambodia to support the Viet Cong. The thought was, if enough hurt could be applied, the North Vietnamese would rethink their strategy, which was to enable the Viet Cong to defeat the South Vietnamese and affect a reunion of all of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh’s communist flag. This was the beginning of a long war of testing the will of the enemy to continue to fight. A war that began for American troops in 1961 and involved American troops until April 1975. Fourteen years. Talk about long wars. I also note here that this was a subset of the greater contest: the “Cold War” that began in the ashes of World War II in 1945 and continued until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and a tad longer to get Gorbachev and President Reagan to shake hands. We “Cold War” warriors served during the forty five years our country spent looking the Soviet Union in the eye, around the world, and staring him down. Talk about a long war. What is the “longest war in American history?” I digress.

Our early Vietnam strategy failed to yield the desired stability in Southeast Asia that was the intent, as the North Vietnamese stepped up attacks on our bases and personnel in South Vietnam. Here begins the escalation. Then in August 1964 our Navy is “attacked” by PT boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. We retaliate. Congress passes a “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution” empowering the President to do whatever he deemed necessary to “prevent further aggression in Southeast Asia.” Three more attacks on American bases in South Vietnam followed. It is March 1965 and our President, the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon begin producing a series of restricted and carefully controlled series of numbered JCS Rolling Thunder target lists. These Rolling Thunder programs dictated the number of sorties that could be flown and the number, type and location of the targets to be struck. The first Rolling Thunder mission to attack the North was flown in March 1965 and was called “Flaming Dart.” Rolling Thunder was born. It would have a four year life and change the history of the world. We were there.

History is the teacher. The question: did our Rolling Thunder contribution to history yield any beneficial lessons for our progeny, the “Boomer Generation”(b,1946-!963), or the other generations coming after the “Silent Generation” ( b.1925-1945), who led the fight in Vietnam at the direction of “The Greatest Generation.”(b.1905-1924).

“Lest we forget.” … Bear Taylor, Ogden, Utah