RIPPLE SALVO…#73… 1 DOWN, 3 TO GO… but first…
Good Morning: Day SEVENTY-THREE of a look back of fifty years to Operation Rolling Thunder…
11 MAY 1966 (NYT)…ON THE HOMEFRONT… New York a cool 56 and sunny…
Page 1: “Johnson and Aides Meet With Lodge On Vietnam Policy” and review(ed) political, military and economic situations in South Vietnam in an all day muster at the White House. The President was brief in his post meeting remarks stating only that he had received reports from “very wise men.” Included in the meeting: Vice President Humphrey; General Maxwell Taylor; SecDef McNamara; Secretary of State Rusk; William Bundy (Asst Sec State); Walt Rostow; General Wheeler, CJCS; Henry Cabot Lodge, Ambassador to South Vietnam; Farris Brant, Director of Emergency Planning; Leonard Marks, Director, U.S. Information Agency; and William Guad, Deputy Director of AID. Ambassador Lodge announced that he would remain on post for an additional year and stated that Ky “will remain in power” for a year as well, even with the election of a constitutional assembly in SVN. Lodge: Ky will not allow a transformation of the government into a legislature and thus create a civilian government. the ongoing conference of 34 is only drafting a constitution…”Saigon Gunfire Killing 6 Attributed To Jittery GIs”… A bomb was detonated in the proximity of the Military Police barracks and the American troops came out shooting. Six Vietnamese left dead with 8 Americans and 21 Vietnamese injured (OOOPs)… Page 2: “American Units Find No Enemy in area Flooded With Tear Gas”… the Division Chemical Officer led a tear gas attack on a suspected Vietcong area. Three helicopters dropped 7200-pounds of tear gas in 80-gallon drums from 3000 feet with a delay for an air burst. The target area was covered with a tear gas cloud… The Chemical Officer said: “Had the enemy been in there we could pretty well have knocked out his will to fight before we went in there. The whole purpose for using riot control agents is to reduce casualties.”…
Page 3: “Adam Clayton Powell Charges Draft Test Bias”… The Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee held a news conference and called the draft deferment exams “a hold over from the days of Hitler and the foundation for a racial aristocracy and a device to send a disproportional number of Negroes to the Vietnam slaughter house. Implicit in the draft deferment tests is the Aryan superman and the belief that rare great minds alone are fit to direct the destinies of a nation and to dispose of untutored masses…First, we provide inferior education for black students. Next we give the a series of tests which many will flunk because of an inferior education, then we pack these education failures off to be Vietnam to be killed.”
Page 4: “Two Starfighters Crash”…in a midair over the North Sea during a NATO exercise. The loss of two Luftwaffe F-104s brings to 54 the number of F-104s lost in the five years of service with the German Air Force. A total of 30 pilots have been killed. Thirty-eight of the F-104s have ben lost in the last year and a half.”…”42nd anniversary of the FBI”… A routine day for J. Edgar Hoover… Short notes…Gemini 9 one week from launch; “Big Brothers of America Man of the Year” award presented to Billy Graham by LBJ at the White House; and, Senator Ev Dirksen, age 70, fell and is at Bethesda Naval Hospital with a broken hip.
President’s (TS-sanitized) Daily Briefing 11 May 66: “South Vietnam…Ky today announced that the directorate will continue to lead the government until the elections of a new legislature are held, possibly in mid-1967….. Meanwhile, prominent Buddhist monks have been visiting provincial capitals and giving anti-war, anti-American speeches urging Buddhist troops to obey Buddhist leaders rather than Americans.”… Soviet Union: “The late April U.S. reconnaissance satellite missions continue to provide us with information on Soviet space and missile systems.”…
11 MAY 1966… ROLLING THUNDR OPS… One Thunderchief downed…
CAPTAIN FRANK JAMES FENELY, Killed In Action while flying an F-105D from the 333rd TFS of the 355th TFW at Takhi on his last Rolling Thunder mission before returning to the States. CAPTAIN FENELY was strafing a bridge 20 miles south of Dong Hoi in route package II. He was seen to be hit by ground fire causing the F-105 engine to seize and the aircraft plunged into the sea five miles off shore. No chute or beeper. “One Hundred Counters” can be, and sometimes is, a lifetime. CAPTAIN FENELY gave his life for his God, country and family 50-years ago today…RIP… No further word on the recovery of his remains… Still missing?
An Air Force flight of two F-4s observed two SAMs in flight near Mugia Pass… The Air Force and Navy flew 84 missions in a very good weather day. The 56 in one day by the Navy were the most since the bombing of the North resumed in January… Intel reports that MIGs have started using air-to-air missiles… The helicopter rescue of F-105D pilot CAPTAIN MAHRT (see yesterday’s RTR post) 80 miles North of Hanoi was the deepest helicopter rescue of the war to date. Pilots CAPTAIN ROBERT FURNEAU and CAPTAIN DALE HARDY saw their duty and did it… ooohrah…
RIPPLE SALVO… 11 MAY 1966… The Four Phases of Rolling Thunder… as defined by Robert A. Pape in “Bombing to Win”…
“Rolling Thunder was conducted in four phases, distinguished by differing strategies. Driven by swelling congressional and public pressure to find coercive leverage over North Vietnam, all three of the strategies advocated by Johnson’s civilian and military advisors were tried in turn. At first the bombing followed the civilians’ “lenient Shelling strategy;” next the Army’s strategy of denial by interdiction; and, finally the Air Force’s genteel Douhet. The evolution can be identified by tracing the changes in targeting and timing considerations guiding the campaign.”
Pape defines the “perfect Schelling’ strategy as an interdiction strategy that applies steady pressure at the highest sustainable level to grind down the enemy’s military capacity and …”The Perfect Douhet strategy would destroy as many targets as possible in a sudden, vicious thunderclap for maximum psychological effect.” With that defining note, here then are the four phases of Rolling Thunder…
Phase 1: The “lenient Schelling” strategy wherein armed reconnaissance would not be included as the application of air power was applied gradually from fixed military targets northward toward economic targets. The first phase of RT (spring and summer 1965) was dominated by the “lenient Schelling’ model that presented an obvious intent to escalate the use of air power. The bombing focused on a list of fixed JCS targets for 56% of the bomb tonnage delivered, with armed reconnaissance missions dropping 42% of the total effort. RT 8 in March 1965 concentrated on the panhandle; RT14 and 15 in May included targets up to the 20th parallel; and RT 21 in July moved north to strike targets well above the 20th parallel.
Phase 2: Began in the summer of 1965 and lasted through the winter of 1966-67. Interdiction with the main objective of reducing and disrupting the flow of men and material from the north to the south. Author Pape uses the period August 1965 to September 1966 to demonstrate how the focus of the campaign shifted. During this time only 7% of the bombing effort was directed at JCS targets with 93% of the effort directed at armed reconnaissance. Only 22 JCS fixed targets were struck for the first time, mostly POL. JCS contended that cutting the oil supplies would slow the pace of replenishment of men and supplies to the South. Pape calculates that the POL campaign was successful with 73% of the POL storage capacity destroyed. In Phase 2, 70% of the sorties were concentrate in the panhandle south from Thanh Hoa to the DMZ. Only 7% were flown in the northeastern areas of Hanoi and Haiphong.
Phase 3: The spring and fall of 1967 saw the application of the Douhet model. All the fixed targets in the panhandle had been destroyed and the only options left to the President to increase the pressure on North Vietnam to enter negotiations for an end of the war was to move north and pound major fixed targets. The President removed all political constraints on the bombing of the North. Douhet: “a sudden, vicious thunderclap for maximum impact.” The campaign shifted to the industrial and transportation targets in the Hanoi and Haiphong areas, as well as some in the Chinese buffer area. Main targets included the electrical power system, steel, cement explosives and chemical plants. In the transportation category the concentration was on bridges, roads and the railroad system. Pape writes: “following this assault, few options for increasing the bombing pressure against the North remained because nearly all the targets had been destroyed.” Pape quotes another study (Littaur and Uphoff’s “Air War in Indochina”): “…the only remaining possibilities for increased military action against the North were mining and bombing of ports, bombing dikes and locks, and a land invasion of the North.”
Phase 4: The fourth and final phase of Operation Rolling Thunder ran from April to November 1968. The bombing in this phase followed a strategy of de-escalation. Bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong was rolled back to the 20th parallel and then the 19th parallel. However, during the period, the number of sorties devoted to interdiction and armed reconnaissance was increased (I was there for this phase and thoroughly enjoyed the freedom to find, fix, and destroy targets that needed destruction. We were flying more, enjoying it more, and destroying more). After November 1968 the bombing of North Vietnam was limited to a small area above the DMZ. Rolling Thunder was over.
Pape concluded: “As a whole, the campaign largely satisfied the fundamental requirements of each strategy.”
Lest we forget…. Bear ……… –30– ……..