Good Morning: Day TWELVE of our long look back to Operation Rolling Thunder…Fifty Years Ago…
12 MARCH 1966 (NYT) ….ON THE HOMEFRONT … Rainy, drizzly Saturday in New York and a cloudy, balmy 64 in Washington… Lead news was a “peaceful coup “ in Indonesia with the Generals ousting, but still talking to, President Sukarno. LGEN Suharto emerging as the spokesman for the Generals… On page 3, stories about A Shau and the feat of Major Bernie Fisher… Coverage of General Maxwell’s testimony for the Foreign Relations Committee the previous week with his estimate that the North had committed 22 Battalions of the people’s Army to fight in the South… Friday’s Asian Development meeting with the President, SecState, SecDef and top aides for Vietnam was held to discuss plans for assistance to allies in the theater….LBJ also met with 15 Senate Committee Chairmen to discuss domestic and international issues on Friday. Today the President was meeting with State Governors to discuss the ”Vietnam situation.” A small paragraph on an inside page announced the Army draft call for April 1966 of 21,700 men. Thirty-two thousand voluntary enlistments had reduced the monthly call. March call was for 22,400 for the Army with the other services meeting requirements by voluntary enlistments. I wrapped up my scan of the NYT with the sports pages and noted that Kermit Zarley was in the lead at the $100,000 Doral Open…
12 MARCH 1966… ROLLING THUNDER… There were no Rolling Thunder losses and the only loss in Southeast Asia was an A-1E from the First Tactical Aircraft Squadron at Pleiku. After taking crippling enemy fire in a strafing attack on a gun position near the Laotian border, the pilot was able to get clear of the area and bail out. He was recovered by helicopter uninjured. Otherwise, it was a day as quiet as that on the home front.
RIPPLE SALVO… replacing the bland “Commentary” header… I have been in the ripple salvo mode all my life. The same will apply here. As strike pilot readers know, most, if not all, rocket pods we use have an option switch that the pilot selects during pre-flight. Singles position on the pod fires one rocket for every squeeze of the trigger on the control column, and in the ripple salvo setting, one squeeze starts a rippling salvo that empties the rocket pod. Ripple Salvo in this space will work the same – one squeeze and let everything fly. Don’t bring any ammo home.
On deck is a moving story from Yankee Station, 6 November 1967, forwarded to me today by as smooth a storyteller as anybody who ever put on a g-suit…Doctor Dick “Brownbear” Schaffert, a near neighbor here in Northern Utah. Brownbear remembers – in vivid detail and color. Thanks, old friend for setting the bar on my, our, commitment to remember the human beings who were Rolling Thunder…
Bear…Lest we forget…