RIPPLE SALVO… #195… “VIETNAM: AIR WAR” — A CLASSIC… but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED NINETY-FIVE of a day by day revisit to a great battlefield– the air over North Vietnam…
12 SEPTEMBER 1966… THE NEWS AS REPORTED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES… A sunny pleasant Monday to start the week…
Page 1: “Turnout Is Heavy In South Vietnam Despite Vietcong”…”Despite attempts by the Vietcong to intimidate them, South Vietnamese voters turned out in large numbers today to choose an assembly to draft a constitution. South Vietnamese officials announced that 71.5 per cent of the 5,288,512 registered voters had cast ballots…later figures were 4.3 million voters or 81 per cent, and counting, continues…The government said the Vietcong had staged 132 harassments and terrorist activities today and yesterday and that 19 soldiers and civilians had been killed and k120 wounded.”… Page 44 (OpEd) “Saigon’s Electoral Victory”…”The Elections in South Vietnam were a success for Marshall Ky’s Government and indirectly for the Johnson Administration. According to present available figures, three quarters of eligible voters cast ballots. This far exceeds Vietnamese and American hopes before election day. The victory deserves full acknowledgement, but its effects should not be exaggerated. Candidates were merely elected to an assembly which will draw up a constitution leading to another election in 1967 or 1968 for as representative a government as the situation and political backwardness of the people will permit…The war goes on, but it has been proved that three out of four of those who could vote in South Vietnam braved danger and future risk to do so, and thereby expressed either support for, or acquiescence in, what the Saigon government is trying to do…
Page 1: “Red Guard Foes Warned By Peking”…”Chinese Communist party officials and Government bureaucrats have been warned not to oppose the young Red Guards whose fierce campaign against feudal and foreign influence has brought terror and violence to China’s cities and countryside. An editorial in the Peking newspaper…acknowledged that the Red Guards had made certain mistakes, but it reserved its worst scolding for local officials telling them to cooperate with the young vigilantes. More bloody clashes were reported between Red Guards and their intended victims (The Red Guards are the enforcers of Mao’s thoughts and the cultural revolution–Peking’s term for a purge that began early last year.)…”…
OpEd Essay by Harry Schwartz…”Mao, Confucious, and the Red Guards”…”Mao Tse-tung’s Red Guard rowdies have been vindicating his assertion that ‘a revolution is not the same as inviting people to dinner or writing an essay or painting a picture or embroidering a flower.’ The immediate targets of this latest Chinese revolution are all the persons, ideas, and things that stand in the way of realizing Mao’s Spartan version of the Communist Great Society: the members of China’s ‘New Class’ who have come to enjoy the privileges of power; the old religions and the old culture that offer alternatives to Mao’s ideology; and the influence of an outside world that breeds non conformism even within China… “Today’s rampaging Red Guards, each clutching fiercely his copy of a pamphlet containing the essence of Mao’s wisdom, are using force and the threat of force against all real and suspected dissenters. They are an army of missionaries assigned to make Maoism the universal secular religion of all Chinese. Opposition to them is now suicidal…Suggesting that Mao’s real goal is to establish himself as the successor to Confucious, the harsh truth is that Mao’s problem is insolvable. His power rests on his guns and bayonets. so long s he commands these weapons he can send riotous Red Guards to impose his doctrines upon the fear stricken masses. But once death has removed him from the levers of power, other rulers and their ambitions must inevitably erode his standing. Stalin’s fate will be his; only the timetable will be different.”…
Page 17: “Gemini 11 And Agena Target Are Poised For Space Flight Today”…”The twice interrupted countdown of Gemini 11 was resumed tonight ticking away smoothly for the launching tomorrow morning of an ambitious three-day rendezvous mission. As the astronauts, Charles Conrad and Richard Gordon, went through final briefings, harried technicians hoped that their troubles and suspected troubles were behind them. A false alarm led to the 48-hour postponement yesterday. Last Friday the problem was a fuel leak.”… Page 36: “Tower Opens Campaign By Calling Himself Target of Johnson”…”Senator John Tower a nationwide campaigner for Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964 opened his bid for reelection this weekend by proclaiming himself a ‘progressive’ who favors peace and prosperity. The conservative Republican called himself President Johnson’s number one target in this fall’s election. He succeeded the President in the Senate in 1961…”
12 September 1966…The President’s Daily Brief…CIA (TS sanitized)… South Vietnam: The Saigon embassy estimates that only two percent of the ballots cast were not valid. However, in the Buddhist strongholds of hue’ and Da Nang some 10 per cent of ballots are said to have been invalidated… Communist China: the teen-age mobs which make up Mao’s Red guards are now being permitted to attack local and regional party offices in various parts of the country. This activity is explicitly endorsed by the top leaders in Peking as part of their effort to downgrade the authority of the regular party apparatus…Guatemala: The Communist guerrillas reiterated their goal of seizing power through violent revolution. This came in response to President Mendez’ latest call for reconciliation….
12 SEPTEMBER 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…NYT (13 September reporting 12 September)…Page 1: “171 U.S. Missions Over North Vietnam Set Record For the War”…”The United States sent a record number of fighter-bombers over North Vietnam yesterday, continuing its gradual increase of pressure. Conforming to a policy stated earlier, a United States spokesman would not disclose the number of sorties involved but said 171 multi-plane missions had been carried out…it was August 26 when American pilots set the previous record with 156 missions…and an estimated 400 planes participated on that day. Yesterday the pilots concentrated on transshipment and supply depots and transportation facilities, striking around Hanoi and the major port of Haiphong, but hitting hardest in the thin strip of North Vietnam called the panhandle, which extends down to the demilitarized zone that divides North and South. The planes also hit two targets in the DMZ. Most of the attacks near Hanoi were aimed at the principle highway and railway line heading northwest into China, but pilots also bombed anti-aircraft guns and a radar site. Twenty-six miles east of Haiphong in the Gulf of Tonkin, Navy pilots severely damaged two North Vietnamese patrol boats and moderately damaged a third. The pilots left one of the boats beached and burning. Targets around Vinh, the hardest hit area, included boats, trucks, trains, fuel depots and military camps. Vinh is 160 miles south of Hanoi. Although American fighter-bombers have been attacking the DMZ since July, the first official announcement of their activity there came today. The returning pilots reported having counted 53 ground explosions after bombs ripped into a pair of ammunition dumps in the zone. This morning B-52s smashed a troop concentration in the southern portion of the buffer zone. The fighter-bombers have been concentrating in the northern portion. A military spokesman belatedly today reported the loss of two Air Force planes Saturday (10 Sept). The two crewmen of an F-4 Phantom which crashed 40 miles northeast of Hanoi, were listed as missing and the pilot of an observation plane that went down in the jungles 240 miles northeast of Saigon was reported killed.”…. “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) Page 73: Three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 12 September 1966…
(1) CAPTAIN ROBERT FROST WAGGONER was flying an F-105D of the 469th TFS and 388th TFW out of Korat on a strike on a storage area near Quang Lang, 35 miles northwest of Vinh when struck by 85mm ground fire that destroyed his aircraft. He was able to eject but came down in a very hostile enemy area and was captured immediately. He was released from captivity on 4 March 1973. Hobson reported that a Bright Light guerrilla rescue team from a newly created Joint Recovery Center was inserted in the area on 26 September in an attempt to rescue CAPTAIN WAGGONER but came out empty handed…
(2) MAJOR STANLEY GEORGE SPRAGUE was flying an A-1E of the 602nd ACS and 14th ACW out of Udorn was participating in a Barrel roll strike mission when downed by ground fire. He was killed in the crash. His remains were returned to the United States in 1990 after resting in a grave near the border between Laos and North Vietnam for 24 years. MAJOR SPRAGUE died a warrior’s death and was returned to his homeland on his shield. He is remembered on this 50th anniversary of his death…
(3) LCDR WILLIAM FRANCIS COAKLEY was flying an A-4C of the VA-153 Blue Tails embarked in USS Constellation on a night armed reconnaissance mission on the coast 15 miles south of Thanh Hoa. LCDR COAKLEY’s flight lead sighted a suspected target and dropped flares for LCDR COAKLEY to make the initial attack. The flight lead next observed “a long streak of flame” as LCDR COAKLEY’s Skyhawk impacted the ground under the flares. His remains were returned to the United States and identified in 1989. BILL COAKLEY was among the bravest of light attack pilots: fearless. He perished carrying the fight to the enemy fifty years ago this day. Your Humble Host will have more on the mission of “night attack by light attack” in RIPPLE SALVO #196, tomorrow (13 Sept).
RIPPLE SALVO… #199… FRANK HARVEY’s “VIETNAM: AIR WAR”… For less than four bucks you can buy a used copy of Harvey’s tales from the battlefields of Vietnam in 1966. abebooks.com … It is a page turner and even if you read it decades ago, a reread to mark the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, including Rolling Thunder, would be appropriate. Here are a few paragraphs of Frank Harvey’s weeks with the Air Force in Thailand (“Outcountry”) (Pages 180-81)…I quote…
It has been said that “Thailand breathes through Bangkok,” which is its main city located 27 miles up the silted Chao Phraya River from the Gulf. As many as 35 ships at a time must wait to unload in this choked setup. But the U.S. has committed $200,000 as ante money for what may become an aerial second front in Asia. It’s not a peanut operation. It’s very big, and the out-country war, as raids against North Vietnam out of Thailand are called, is of crucial importance. That means that the F-105s are not just another little rinkydink out in the boondocks. They are bearing the brunt of stopping the flow of men and supplies from North Vietnam into the hot battle zones to the south!
Did you know that on some “black days” they’ve lost six F-105s? Did you know that pilots have been so short that men have had to stay on and fly two tours into what are generally recognized as the most deadly flak defenses in history? The Red River Valley from the Chinese border down through Hanoi and Haiphong to the coast of the Gulf of Tonkin, is one massive asparagus bed of guns: automatic weapons so thick they simply shoot straight up and form a vertical wall of steel for low flying planes to fly through; 37mm cannon for planes above 5,000 and under 15,000 feet; 57mm for planes around 15,000; 85mm and 100mm for planes up to 40,000 feet!! And SAMs are so thickly spotted around North Vietnam that no F-105 pilot is out of range of some site, from the moment he crosses the border on a raid until he leaves. Did you know that SAMs themselves (they hadn’t been very effective at first, thanks to our countermeasures) are now accurate and deadly? Formerly you could dodge them. They didn’t start “hunting you” with their radar control until they’d been roaring along for 1,500 feet or so. Now they start hunting you as they leave their launching pads.
Finally, did you know that if an F-105 pilot is shot down north of the Red River (most of the raids must go north of the Red) he is in a pretty hopeless position to be rescued? The rescue choppers, known as Jolly Green Giants, are the bravest men we’ve got. They’ll settle down to make a pickup in the face of murderous ground fire. But even the Jolly Greens usually don’t try to cross that flak forest that fills the air with steel over the Red River Valley. They cruise at 130 knots. They’d probably never make it.
This then, is the kind of situation (Jim) Kasler and the other F-105 pilots flying out of Ta Khli and Korat faced for many months. So many of have been killed that they’ve been referred to as the “bloody hats.”…. Unquote…
Frank Harvey spent his long life flying and writing. This read is a journal of one of his most interesting walkabout–flyabout–and sailabouts — he went where we went… Four stars….
Lest we forget.. Bear ……….. –30– ………..