RIPPLE SALVO… #708… IS A POLITICAL AND MILITARY STALEMATE THE UNAVOIDABLE OUTCOME OF THE VIETNAM WAR?… but first…
Good Morning: Day SEVEN HUNDRED EIGHT of a return to after-year, by 50 years, to the days of ROLLING THUNDER…(and nights, oh, the colorful nights) …
11 FEBRUARY 1968… HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a fair but very cold Sunday in New England…
Page 1: “JET BOMBERS SEEN AT BASE IN NORTH VIETNAM DURING U.S. RAIDS–AIRFIELD STRUCK ANEW–SOVIET BUILT IL-28s–COULD HIT KHESANH, BUT ATTEMPT IS VIEWED AS UNLIKELY–A VIETCONG FORCE ASSAULTS A DELTA PROVINCIAL CAPITAL AND BURNS 1,000 HOMES”... “Twin-jet bombers have been seen at the Phuc Yen Air Base 18 miles northwest of Hanoi, an American spokesman said today. the air base is within striking distance of the United States Marine stronghold at Khesanh. the Air Force said several months ago that the North Vietnamese might have six of the airplanes…causes little concern to the American command… Of somewhat greater concern according to a senior United States officer, is the possibility that the North Vietnamese have hauled enough steel matting down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to a point in eastern Laos within 100 miles of Khesanh to build a railway that would be used by MIG-21s.”… Meanwhile…”Saigon was put on an alert tonight for a Vietcong attack…Organized enemy strength in city is put at a maximum of 1,000. According to an informed to an informed official, the diehards are mainly Chinese textile workers, not infiltrated Vietcong. Air strikes and cannon fire continued on the edges of the city into the early morning, but there were no reports of ground fighting other than the 25th Division action, or of enemy attacks inside the capital. The entire strategic reserve of the South Vietnamese Joint General staff has been committed to the Saigon operation. For reasons of prestige, the government his asked to do the job itself, but it is understood that dissatisfaction has been expressed by the American command at the pace with which the operation is being conducted…… Ten miles north of the city a battalion of the United States 25th Infantry Division reported killing 278 guerrillas in two engagements in the Giadinh Province. Forty-five miles south of Saigon, two Vietcong battalions attacked Tanan…the onslaught was driven off with 122 guerrillas counted as dead. Eight south Vietnamese policemen and three militiamen were killed and four Americans were killed and 48 wounded in the headquarter assault…deeper in the Delta near Mytho units of the Ninth Division that had been rushed to the area to meet the Vietcong threat reported 86 enemy soldiers in a battle on Thursday…
KILLED IN ACTION– AS OF YESTERDAY MORNING, the totals from 6 P.M. on January 29 through Friday (9 Feb–12 days) were 920 American troops killed in action and 4,561 wounded; 1,733 South Vietnamese troops killed and 6,721 wounded, and 54 other allied soldiers, mainly South Koreans–killed and 237 wounded. The enemy toll was put at 27,706 killed and 5,019 suspects taken prisoner… The count of captured enemy weapons was put at 6,298 individual and 1,063 crew-served. In Saigon, the United states mission established estimated that 345,000 south Vietnamese had become displaced.”…
Page 1: “HUE TO DANANG: A PERILOUS BOAT RIDE”… “The only thing that seems worse than staying in Hue is trying to leave it. With the skies above the battle-scarred city still overcast, helicopters whir in only sporadically, and then just to evacuate critically wounded soldiers.”… Page 2: “CIVILIAN HEROES OF WAR–No Word Is Sent Back From Vietnam On Some Who Did Not to Serve”... “The last week has been agonizing for all Americans and especially those with loved ones or friends serving in Vietnam. It has been painful to watch on television and read in the newspapers of death and destruction from north to south and east to west. No part of Vietnam has been spared… Throughout history, missionaries have always borne the brunt of this kind of situation. Most recently it has been in China, the power struggles in the Congo and now Vietnam.”... Page 2: “RUSK SAYS CLIMATIC PERIOD MAY BE NEARING”… “Secretary of State dean Rusk warning there are indications of a second Communist attack on some South Vietnamese cities ‘in the near future,’ said tonight the ‘climatic period’ of the struggle in Southeast Asia may be approaching.”… Page 3: “Damage in Saigon Is Limited So Far–Fighting Has Leveled Some Relatively Small Areas”… page 3: “SAIGON’S AUTHORITY BELIEVED TO BE IN CRITICAL STAGE”… “There is a growing feeling in this tense city that the South Vietnamese Government must react swiftly to cope with the confusion and disappointment that have swept the country since the Vietcong staged daring raids on Saigon, Hue and other major cities.”…One South Vietnamese journalist said: ‘With the attacks the discouraging gap between the city and the countryside was substantially narrowed, something that can only be beneficial to the Government if it knows how to exploit it. Now, with the war brutally and unexpectedly brought to their doorsteps, most city people are forced to think over their traditional indifference and make a choice between the Government and the Vietcong. If a choice has to e made the city people are more likely to opt for the Government because they know their lives would be much more miserable under Communism.'”…
PUEBLO INCIDENT: Page 8: “NEW TALKS AT PANMUNJOM–Cyrus Vance Arrives At Seoul And Receives Military Report”… Page 9: “4 of 10 Favor Force On Pueblo–Gallup Funds 45% Think Issue May Lead To War”… “A survey by the Gallup Poll of public reaction to North Korea’s seizure of the USS Pueblo indicates that four out of ten Americans favor using fort if necessary to get the ship back.”Page 2E: “SOUTH KOREA RESENTS THE EMPHASIS ON PUEBLO”…
Page 1: “NEWARK RIOT PANEL CALLS POLICE ACTION EXCESSIVE”... “A special commission studying last summer’s riots in New Jersey charged today that Newark police, state police and National Guardsmen used ‘excessive and unjustified force’ against Negroes. The commission implied that innocent bystanders had been killed by ‘indiscriminate’ shooting and found ‘evidence of prejudice against Negroes during the riot on the part of various police and National Guard.”... Page 1: “Social Ills Challenge City’s Protestants”… Page 7: “Expatriot Draft Evaders Prepare Manual to Immigrate to Canada”… Page 36: “Orangeburg, S.C., Asks Why Riot Erupted–Carolina City sets Up Board to Avert Violence”… Page 56: “The Rights Story ‘No one Cares’–Liberals Say Pressure From Public Is Lacking Now”… “As Senate civil rights debate drones inconclusively through its third week, a liberal Democratic leader wearily observed this week: ‘The trouble is no body cares anymore.”...Page 3E: “CIVIL RIGHTS: STRONG CHALLENGE BY KING”… “Not since hundreds of his followers marched from Selma to Montgomery almost three years ago has the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. produced a crusade of national dimensions against racial discrimination. But last week, while he was in Washington for a two-day antiwar mobilization of 2,500 Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam–which included a silent prayer vigil at Arlington National cemetery--Dr. King was making plans for a massive civil rights demonstration in the nation’s capital this April, and he indicated that the protest might move later to Chicago and Miami Beach for the national political conventions during the summer.”…
11 February 1968…STATE DEPARTMENT, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations, 1964-68, Volume VI, Vietnam: Document 67. Notes of meeting of the President, Rusk, McNamara, Wheeler, Clifford, Taylor, Helms, Rostow and Tom Johnson to take and write-up the notes for posterity… Great conversation (2 1/2 pages) dealing with a situation report from General Westmoreland.
Document 67. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d67
11 FEBRUARY 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…New York Times…Only air war in the North was on Page 1: “United States bombers struck the Phuc Yen airfield where the Soviet-made bombers had been sighted, Reuters reported.”…
“Vietnam Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were four fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 11 February 1968, all to Vietcong mortars and rockets. three aircraft were destroyed and 26 damaged as 16 rockets fell on the flight lines at Bien Hoa. One O-2A was destroyed at Binh Thuy by a volley of nine enemy mortar rounds….
From the Compilation “34TFS/F-105 History” by Howie Plunkett: 11-Feb-68: “Pilots from the 388th TFW out of Korat struck Yen Bai airfield using Commando Club radar signals…Airborne spare from Commando Club dropped in Route Pack V. Trailed the strike force as extra MiG CAP. No MiGs airborne. Turned around and radar dropped on alternate target.”… “Major David C. Dickson, Jr. from the 34th TFS was in the F-105 flight from Korat that struck Kep airfield. It was his 83rd mission and his 33rd and last mission in Route Pack 6, North Vietnam.”…
RIPPLE SALVO… #708… HUMBLE HOST turns to the New York Times editorial staff for their best guess on what’s next?…
AFTER THE TET OFFENSIVE (NYT, 8 Feb 68, Page 42)…
“The Administration’s organized optimism over the ‘failure’ of the Vietcong’s Tet offensive is unfortunately ill-founded. It compounds the harm already done by what has been a rude if temporary setback to both the political and military position of the United States in Vietnam. The United States Command may be right, as all Americans hope, in its assertion that Government control has been restored in almost all the invaded cities and towns. But major street fighting has entered its second week in Saigon, and in Dalat as well. General Westmoreland’s intelligence chief says that the enemy has the capability to mount new urban attacks equal to those against 35 population centers last week. The expanded fighting in Saigon could be its precursor.
“Moreover, it still is not certain that the Marine fortress at Khesanh is the chief communist objective. It may yet turn out that Khesanh was the diversion from the urban attacks, rather than the reverse, or that the enemy is still weighing his choice. And even if the military side of the Communist ‘general offensive’ achieves little against American power–as is to be expected–the more serious political, administrative and psychological effects have yet to be assessed.
“The administrative structure of the new South Vietnamese Government in 26 of 44 provincial capitals seems to have been the main target of the Vietcong’s countrywide assault. The damage done to the redevelopment program and Saigon’s control of the provinces will not be quickly repaired.
“The psychological damage, too, is tremendous. Secretary McNamara has said that the people of the cities and towns of South Vietnam, surprised and impressed by the Vietcong incursions, have been dealt ‘a heavy blow.’ Exposure of the inability of the allied forces to shield the country’s urban centers, long isolated from the fighting war, has certainly made the blow even heavier. Furthermore, in many instances it is proving to be exceedingly painful to be rescued. The casualties and rubble produced by the heavy weapons of the American and South Vietnamese forces unquestionably leave a legacy of bitterness.
“The political consequences are likely to be mixed. While Secretary McNamara believes that the Vietcong , their brutality exposed, are retreating from the cities ‘with less support than when they entered,’ the Saigon Government and it’s Army have been exposed in all their weakness. The failure of the population to warn the Government forces of the substantial Vietcong infiltration that preceded the urban attacks does not prove, however, that the people of South Vietnam are pro-Communist. The Vietcong expectation of a popular uprising was disappointed and its exhortations to revolt proved futile.
“What this suggests is that South Vietnamese towns and cities are characterized neither by Marxist ‘revolutionary situation’ that would favor the Vietcong nor the widespread support for the Saigon regime which normally governs them. The two armed factions that are contesting power in what remains essentially a civil war, despite North Vietnamese and American intervention, probably both represent minorities in a population whose majority is war-weary and apathetic.
“Politically as well as militarily, stalemate increasingly appears as the unavoidable outcome of the Vietnam struggle. Neither side is entitled any longer to illusions about military victory, nor is there evidence that either side is achieving political ascendancy. A negotiated settlement seeking a political accommodation under international supervision remains the alternative to a prolonged war of attrition, a war that neither side can win.”…
RTR Quote for 11 February: ADMIRAL C.R. BROWN, USN: The Principles of War, 1949: “The objective…is unquestionably the most important of all the principles of war. It is the connecting link which, alone, can impart coherence to war…Without the objective, all other principles are pointless. It gives the commander the ‘what.’ the other principles are guides in the ‘How.’ ” (And, in Vietnam: what were the U.S. objectives?)
Lest we forget… Bear