RIPPLE SALVO… #224… “and SEEK OTHER MEANS of achieving our objectives.” …… but first…
Good Morning : Day TWO HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR of “THE ROLLING THUNDER DIARY”……
11 OCTOBER 1966… WHAT THE HOME FOLKS WERE READING in the New York Times… A fair Tuesday with cool breezes for Central Park walking….
Page 1: “President Meets Gromyko In Move To Ease Tensions”…”President Johnson added personal emphasis to his diplomacy courtship of the Soviet Union today at a White House conference with foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Although little is known about the course of the discussion, which lasted 1 3/4 hours, the President is thought to have stressed his interest in the kind of East-West accommodation he outlined in a New York speech Friday. Presumably he also pressed his plea for the early signing of a treaty to insure the peaceful use of space. Behind this approach is a desire to draw Moscow toward the West, away from Communist China, and to eventually enlist its help in negotiating a Vietnam settlement.”… Page 1: “Marines Move North To Counter Build-up Near Buffer Zone”…”The United States military command has shifted major forces northwest to counter a possible North Vietnamese push across the demilitarized zone separating North and South Vietnam. A military spokesman announced here today that Lieutenant General Lewis Walt, commander of the 57,000-man Third Marine Amphibious Force, had moved his two divisions north, while an Army airborne battalion had moved into Danang to reinforce the Marine base there. It was the fist such shift in the five province I-Corps area, which now includes four major marine enclaves on the rich coastal plain that runs 168-miles south from the DMZ. It was also the first time that Army infantry units had been co0mmitted to the Marine sector. But the shift and some sort of outside reinforcement had long been expected by high ranking marine officers. General Walt’s forces have become stretched thin in countering a growing enemy concentration just south of the demilitarized zone.”
Page 1: “Hanoi Bars Part of Thant’s Plan“…”Nhan Dan, the organ of the North Vietnamese Communist Party has rejected Secretary General U Thant’s proposal for de-escalation of the ground war while endorsing his call for a cessation of the bombing. The article in the Communist newspaper was regarded by United Nations officials as the first authoritative response by President Ho Chi Minh’s government to Mr. Thant’s three steps for peace. In Peking, the Chinese announced the recent peace proposals of the United States, Britain, the Vatican, and Mr. Thant and asserted that American troops must be withdrawn immediately and completely.”… Page 1: “Pope Turns Down Cardinal Spellman’s Offer to Resign”…”Cardinal Spellman has offered to reign as Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York but has been turned down by Pope Paul VI. The 77-year old Cardinal disclosed yesterday that he wrote a letter to the pontiff on September 21 complying with a recent request from the Vatican for Bishops who are 75 or older to offer their resignations. He said: ‘Just this morning I recieved word from the Holy Father that he wishes me to continue for the present as Archbishop of New York and Military Vicar. I accept the decision as God’s Will for me and I shall carry on in these responsibilities as long as I am able, to the best of my ability.’…”…Page 1: “High Court To Weigh Dr. King Conviction In ’63 Rights Case”…”The Supreme Court agreed today to review the contempt of court conviction of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and seven other leaders of the desegregation demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. In its review the court will be ruling on the legality of the civil rights leaders defiance of a state court injunction against demonstrations while racial tensions are high in the Alabama city. It will be confronted with a problem posed by Dr. King’s ‘civil disobedience’ doctrine. Dr. King insisted that the injunction against demonstrations parading without a license was void because it infringed constitutional rights of free speech and assembly.”….
Page 46: “Inherited Poverty”…”Of all the human tragedies embodied in welfare, the saddest is the steady rise–through the longest period of prosperity in America’s history–in the number of children growing up on relief, most of them in families without fathers. In New York City alone, the number receiving public aid to dependent children has gone up by one-third in the last two years from 236,000 to 316,000–more than the population of Omaha or Akron”…
Page 1: “It Had To Happen: A Space Collision”…”With all the traffic in space nowadays, A collision was bound to occur–and it did. Two unmanned United States spacecraft bumped each other in orbit 18-months ago, it was disclosed here in Madrid today at an international conference on space. As far as anyone knows, it is the only collision to have occurred in space…Two naval research laboratory communications satellites with long antenna like booms had drifted together and crossed booms.”…
Page 2: “McNamara In Saigon”… and was asked for a substantial request for more troops. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara heard a request today from military officers that substantially greater numbers of United States troops be sent to fight in Vietnam. Mr. McNamara will be unable to answer the request himself during his current visit to Vietnam. Instead, he was expected to carry the request and the military arguments for it back to Washington for a decision by President Johnson.”…
11 OCTOBER 1966…The President’s Daily Brief…CIA (TS sanitized) North Vietnam: (lead in paragraph still classified)…the atmosphere in Hanoi as uncompromising. The Hanoi leadership (blanked out) committed to along war which would require further sacrifices by the population, but confident the country could with stand any U.S. attacks. Hanoi plans to fight, however, with its own forces, calling only for material aid. (blanked out)the Vietnamese wished to avoid Chinese intervention. (blanked out) the Vietnamese were “more inflexible than ever” in insisting on their four points as a basis for a political settlement…
11 OCTOBER 1966… THE ROLLING THUNDER DIARY… New York Times (12 Oct reporting 11 Oct ops) Page 4: “In North Vietnam yesterday United States pilots flew 116 attack missions of several planes each through misty, overcast skies over the Red River valley and the long slender panhandle in the southern part of the Communist country. The attacks’ focus remained on supply and transportation facilities of North Vietnam. United States Air Force and Navy pilots together reported having seen 62 trucks and destroying 31 of them. Navy pilots said their 2.75 inch rockets had damage one of two surface-to-air missile sites near the coastal city of Thanh Hoa and they had knocked down a major bridge on a major highway between Thanh Hoa and Vinh to the south with 500 and 1000-pound bombs.”… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft lost on 11 October 1966″… oohrah…
RIPPLE SALVO… #224… The Secretary of Defense was in South Vietnam fifty years ago on this date and he was taking notes from which he wrote a trip report memo to the President upon his return to the States… Here is the section concerning Rolling Thunder and the bombing program as recorded in the Pentagon Papers (Gravel Edition) pages 125-26…I quote (highlighting is mine)… “The section of the memo on bombing follows.”
Stabilize the ROLLING THUNDER program against the North. Attack sorties in North Vietnam have risen from about 4,000 per month at the end of the year to 6,000 per month in the first quarter of the year and 12,000 per month at present. Most of our 50 percent increase of deployed attack-capable aircraft has been absorbed in the attack on North Vietnam. In North Vietnam, almost 84,000 attack sorties have been flown (about 25 per cent against fixed targets), 45 percent during the past seven months.
Despite these efforts, it now appears that the North Vietnamese-Laotian road network will remain adequate to meet the requirements of the Communist forces in South Vietnam–this is so even if its capacity could be reduced by one-third and if combat activities were to be doubled. North Vietnam’s serious need for trucks, spare parts and petroleum probably can, despite air attacks, be met with imports. The petroleum requirements for trucks involved in the infiltration movement, for example, has not yet been enough to present significant supply problems, and the effects of the attacks on the petroleum distribution system, while they have not yet been fully assessed, are not expected to cripple the flow of essential supplies. Furthermore, it is clear that, to bomb the North sufficiently to make a radical impact upon Hanoi’s political, economic and social structure, would require an effort which we could make but which would not be stomached either by our own people or by world opinion, and it would take a serious risk of drawing us into a war with China.
The North Vietnamese are paying a price. They have been forced to assign 300,000 personnel to the lines of communication in order to maintain the critical flow of personnel and material to the South. Now that the lines of communication have been manned, however, it is doubtful that either a large increase of decrease in our interdiction sorties would substantially change the cost to the enemy of maintaining the roads, railroads, and waterways or affect whether they are operational. It follows that the marginal sorties–probably the marginal 1,000 or even 5,000 sorties per month against lines of communication no longer have a significant impact on the war.
When the marginal utility of added sorties against North Vietnam and Laos is compared with the crew and aircraft losses implicit in the activity (four men and aircraft and $20 million per 1,000 sorties), I recommend, as a minimum, against increasing the level of bombing of North Vietnam and against increasing the intensity of operations by changing the areas of targets struck.
Under these conditions, the bombing program would continue the pressure and would remain available as a bargaining counter to get talks started (or to trade off for talks). But, as in the case of a stabilized level of US ground forces, the stabilization of ROLLING THUNDER would remove the prospect of ever-escalating bombing as a factor complicating our political posture and distracting from our main job of pacification in the South.
At the proper time, as discussed on pages 6-7 below, I believe we should consider terminating bombing in all of North Vietnam, or at least the Northeast zones, for an indefinite period in connection with covert moves toward peace. ….end quote…
So, as the Northeast monsoon rolled into the Gulf of Tonkin right on schedule to take the starch out of our air attacks on North Vietnam, except for the A-6 Intruders and the Red River Rats coming in from the northwest, ROLLING THUNDER was put on light duty until further notice. A fair assessment?…
Lest we forget… Bear ……… –30– ……….