RIPPLE SALVO… #403…Humble Host is proud to call to your attention the Medal of Honor story on Clyde Lassen and the Deb Clay poem “Gold Star“…both are well worth reading…
Good Morning: Day FOUR HUNDRED THREE of the long look back to the air war over North Vietnam of fifty years ago…
12 APRIL 1967… HEAD LINES and LEADS from The New York Times on a fair and cool Wednesday in NYC…
Page 1: “U.S.-Latin accord Fixes Time Table For a Trade Bloc”...”The United States and Latin Americans nations represented here have found basic agreement on the ways to establish a functioning Latin American common market no later than 1985.”… Page 1: “Johnson and Other Chiefs Gather Without Fanfare... they came one-by-one, almost furtively, so that the biggest of all was virtually sneaked onto the continent whose love he covets the most. No crowds, no cheers for the Presidents of the Americas–and without them the bands and empty artillery rounds were merely routine–President Johnson and all the rest as they assembled at the Montevideo airport near here, there were only officials with attache’ cases and raincoats, reporters with notebooks and cameras, and security men by the hundreds with guns.”… Page 1: “Soviet-Chinese Accord On Aid to Hanoi Reported”… “United States officials said today that the Soviet Union and Communist China had apparently worked out an understanding to speed the flow of Soviet military supplies across China to North Vietnam. These officials, citing reports from countries with good diplomatic contacts in Communist China believe that an arrangement has been made in the last six weeks. One reported method of side stepping previous Chinese-Soviet friction…was for North Vietnam to take title and charge of the Soviet shipments as they reached China’s border with the Soviet Union and then to safeguard them as they pass by rail across China.”… Page 1: “Congress Votes Delay Of 20-Days On Rail Walkouts”... “Congress gave the President the special legislation he had requested to delay a nationwide railroad strike deadline for 20 days. The Senate and the House acted swiftly this afternoon on a joint resolution to postpone the walkout and sent the measure to Uruguay for the President’s signature. Mr. Johnson asked the workers and the railroads to ‘use every hour’ of these 20 days to negotiate a settlement.”… Page 1: “Trucking Accord Reached After three-Day Walkout”… “The teamster’s union and major trucking companies announced this morning a tentative agreement on a new labor contract that would end the industry’s three-day shutdown. The impact of the three-day shutdown left many stores short of stocks but impact was light.”... Page 1: “Doctors Quitting Medicaid In City”... “Perhaps half of the still small number of physicians participating in the Medicaid program have quit because of the payments have been delayed, the Citizens Committee on Medicaid said yesterday…in one East side area 23 of 30 physicians…only 5,500 of the city’s 15,000 physicians have enrolled in the Medicaid program…”... Page 3: “Dr. King Takes High Post in Peace Group Clergy”... accepted a position to become Co-Chairman of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, a national peace organization that is composed of about 8,000 Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish clergy and lay ministers.”
12 APRIL 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (13 April reporting 12 Apr ops)…No coverage of operations over North Vietnam... “7 Lost In Plane Crash”...”A United States Air Force transport plane crashed on take-off early today and plunged into the water of Cam Ranh Bay 180-miles northeast of Saigon. Two of the nine passengers aboard were injured and seven were missing.”…(More on this tragedy tomorrow)… (Bear#57mk81RPIIIbridge)…
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) One fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 12 April 1967…
(1) CAPTAIN WILLIAM CLIFTON CLAY was flying an A-4E of the VMA-211 Avengers and MAG-12 out of Chu Lai and participating in a bombing attack on a VC base camp near Tam Ky and apparently suffered an early detonation of one of his bombs. The explosion engulfed his aircraft and there was no ejection. CAPTAIN CLAY was Killed In Action and is remembered on this day, fifty years after his “final flight.”….
Readers are enjoined to submit appropriate items for inclusion in this one-of-a-kind journal of Rolling Thunder… send it to the webmaster by email or through the contact form and he will pretty it up for posting and archiving…We will be here, God willing!
Lest we forget… Bear