RIPPLE SALVO… #287… THE LINES ARE DRAWN FOR 1967+…but first…
Good Morning: Day TWO HUNDRED EIGHTY-SEVEN of a return to an air war called ROLLING THUNDER fought fifty years ago…
14 DECEMBER 1966… HEAD LINES from NEW YORK TIMES on a Wednesday with rain turning tosnow…
Page 1: “Kiesinger Holds Paris-Bonn Link is Vital to Peace and says constiuents harmony depends upon close and trusting relationship. Hails friendship with United States but asserts arms buying depends on ability to pay. Chancellor Kurt George Kiesinger told the Bundestag that a peaceful order in Europe ‘is untinkable without close and trusting relationship between Germany and France’…He served notice that future agreements for purchases of American military equipment to offset the local cost of maintaining more than 200,000 American troops in West Germany.”….Page 1: “Mansfield Urges Wider Cease-Fire…wants to seek a truce to February 12 to give enemy a chance to act on talks. Senator Mike Mansfield, the Majority Leader, urged Johnson administration today to propose a cease-fire and a freeze on troop reinforcements in Vietnam between Christmas and the Vietnamese New Year in early February. Such a standfast would show whether any recoonciliation of the war aims of both sidess was possible through negotiations. ‘We have nothing to lose. All, hopefully, may have something to gain.’…”
Page 1: “Soviet Says U.S. Bombed Residential Areas of Hanoi.” …”The Soviet Press agency TASS said today that for the first time in the 22-month air campaign against North Vietnam the United States pilots attacked residential areas within the city limits of Hanoi. The Hanoi radio declaring both suburbs and the city itself were hit, that four planes were shot down, and the pilots were captured.” The TASS report said: ‘American fighter-bombers streaked over the town at low level and dropped their bombs on worker’s districts situated along the Red River enbankment. Scores of buildings were destroyed in the fire that ensued. Smoke from the fires hangs over the city. Scores of ambulances are taking the wounded to hospitals and first aid centers. At about the same time Americans bombed the Hanoi suburb of Gialam and the southwest outskirts of the capital….The fliers strafed as well as bombed and TASS reported that a strong protest was filed with the ICC ‘as this extremely serious escalation in the war of aggression.’ Hanoi is living through difficult hours. The air war of the American aggressors had now become a reality for the inhabitants of Hanoi as well as other North Vietnamese. But there are no signs of panic.”… Page 2: “U.S. Comments On Charges” …”Responding to the TASS reports, Pentagon officials said: United States policy is to attack military targets only. The only targets scheduled for attack in the Hanoi area during the past 24-hours were military targets which have been attacked before…there has been no escalation in the war whatsoever.” …”The State Department added that there is always a possibility of an accidental release … The Pentagon brief for newsmen: ‘…the weather was cloudy and rainy with low ceilings throughout nost of North Vietnam and contribute to possible errors and preclude or impede reconnaissance for bomb damage assessments.’…”
14 DECEMBER 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…New York Times (15 December reporting 14 Dec ops)… Page 3: “Air Force and Navy pilots had clashed with MIG-17s and MIG-19s in yesterday’s attacks, but there were no details on the dog fights. One Air Force F-105 Thunderchief jet was shot down 50 miles southwest of Hanoi but the pilot was picked up by rescue teams. Another F-105 was downed on Tuesday (13th) and the pilot was listed as missing. The raid yesterday followed the same pattern as Tuesdays. Navy pilots from the carriers Ticonderoga and Kitty Hawk hit the Van dien truck park five miles south of Hanoi and Air Force aviators struck the big Yenvien railroad yard and complex six miles north of Hanoi…Air Force pilots reported heavy damage to the Yenvien railyard, one of the key links between China and Hanoi. Extensive damage: the roundhouse and coal storage bunkers and cuts to rails in several areas of the target complex. Navy pilots reported extensive damage to the Van Dien truck park where rockets and bombs touched off several secondary explosions. Hanoi said four planes were shot down Tuesday and eight yesterday by heavy (‘an insurmountable barrage’) anti-aircraft fire and missiles.”… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were seven fixed wing aircraft downed in Southeast Asia on 14 December 1966…
(1) LT MICHAEL THOMAS NEWELL was flying an F-8E of the VF-194 Red Lightnings embarked in USS Ticonderoga was a combat air patrol cover for a major Alpha Strike on the Van Dien vehicle depot and was hit by an SA-2 in the target area. LT NEWELL was able to fly his aircraft several miles to the southwest before losing control of the F-8 due to hydraulics failure which he reported to the rest of the flight. There were no further transmissions, or beeper, and no ejection was observed as his aircraft decended from 17,000-feet to impact with the ground 30 miles west of Thanh Hoa. LT NEWELL is presumed to have been Killed in Action and died at the crash site… no further information on recovery of his remains…
(2) LT CLAUDE DAVID WILSON was flying an A-4E of the VA-72 Blue Hawks embarked in USS F.D. Roosevelt was an Iron Hand support for the Van Dien coordinated Alpha strike when hit by an SA-2. He was subsequently observed at 5,000 headed for the coast when hit solidly by a second SA-2. His aircraft was seen to disintegrate and LT WILSON was Killed in Action at that point. His remains were returned to the United States in 1989.
Note: Between July 1965 and 31 December 1966 a total of 48 U.S. aircraft were downed by SA-2 Guideline missiles in 203,000 sorties (Hobson)…
(3) CAPTAIN D. J. SEYER was flying an F-102A of the 64th FIS and 405 FG out of Danang on a routine CAP mission when hit by small arms fire shortly after take-off and flying at 1,000-feet. He was able to turn the aircraft seaward and eject three miles off-shore. He logged a 1 minute combat sortie. He was rescued unharmed by a Navy ship.
(4) CAPTAIN R.B. COOLEY was flying an F-105D of the 357th TFS and 355th TFW out of Takhli on the Rolling Thunder strike on the Yen Viein railroad yard and exiting the target area with his flight when several MIG-21s jumped the flight and his aircraft was hit by an Atoll missile. The aircraft disintegrated around him. He found himself holding the throttle as he descended in his parachute into hostile country. Badly injured, he was fortunate to have an HH-3 and four A-1Hs on scene to rescue him before North Vietnamese troops could reach him. CAPTAIN Spade COOLEY was returned to the United States for medical care…
(5) LCOL ALBERT R. HOWARTH, LT J.D. BELL and an un-named crewman were flying an A-26A of the 603rd ACS and 634th CSG out of Nakhon Phanom on a dusk armed recconassance mission on the Ho Chi Minh trail when hit by ground fire. LCOL ALBERT lost one engine but was able to fly the aircraft 20 miles toward NKP before having to bailout of the failing aircraft. All three in the crew of one of the last seven A-26As operating in Southeast Asia were rescued by Air Force helicopter…
(6) CAPTAIN E.R. MAXSON was flying an A-1G of the 1st ACS and 14th ACW out of Pleiku and executing a close air support mission near Ap Thien 50 miles south of Phan Rang delivering napalm on called targets–bunkers– when hit by ground fire. He abandoned the aircraft and was rescued by an Army helicopter…
(7) LTJG GERALD ALLEN HOLMAN, LCDR EDWIN LEE KOENIG, LTJG RICHARD LYNN MOWREY and two others were flyin a E-1B of the VAW-12 Bats embarked in USS F.D. Roosevelt on an electronics intelligence gathering mission when they lost an engine. Unable to maintain altitude the aircraft was ditched in the South China Sea with the loss of three lives–LTJG HOLMAN, LCDR KOENIG and LTJG MOWREY… 3 KIAs and two surviors rescued by Navy heliocopter…
RIPPLE SALVO… #287… Pentagon Papers (pgs. 137-8) “The summary CIA assessment was that Rolling Thunder 1966 had not helped either to reduce the flow of supplies south or to shake the will of the North: The evidence available does not suggest that ROLLING THUNDER to date has contributed materially to the achievement of the two primary objectives of air attack….So long as the aid (from Russia and China) continued, CIA said, NVN would be able and willing to persevere ‘indefinitely’ in the face of the current ROLLING THUNDER program.” USCINCPAC in Hawaii, Admiral U.S.G. Sharp had a few days to ponder this CIA assessment and conclusions before hosting a 12 January 1967 briefing with General Wheeling in Honolulu. Here is the Pentagon Papers (Gravel edition) record of that brief… I quote…
The military view of why ROLLING THUNDER had failed in its objectives in 1966 was most forcefully given by Admiral Sharp, USCINCPAC, in a briefing for General Wheeler… Admiral Sharp described the three tasks of the air campaign in achieving its objective of inducing Hanoi to “cease supporting, controlling and directing” the insurgncy in the South: (1) reduce or deny exterban assistance; (2) increase pressures by destroying those resources that contributed the most to support the aggression, and (3) harass, disrupt and impede movement of men and materials to South Vietnam.’ CINCPAC had developed and presented to the Secretary of Defense an integrated plan to perfom these tasks, but much of it had never been approved. Therein lay the cause of whatever failure could be attributed to the bombing in Admiral Sharp’s view.
The rest of the briefing was a long complaint about the lack of authorization to attack the Haiphong harbor in order to deny external assistance, and the insignificant number of sorties devoted to JCS numbered targets (1% of some 81,000 sorties). Nevertheless, CINCPAC was convinced the concept of operations he proposed could bring the DRV to give up the war if ‘self-generated U.S. constraints’ were fitted in 1967.
Thus as 1966 drew to a close, the lines were drawn for a long fifteen month internal Administration struggle over whether to stop the bombing and start negotiations. McNamara and his civilian advisors had been dissillusioned in 1966 with the results of the bombing and held no sanquine hopes for he ability of air power, massively applied, to produce anyhing but the same inconclusive results at far higher levels of overall hostility and with significant risk of Chinese and/or Soviet intervention. The military, particuarly CINCPAC, were ever more adamant that only civilian imposed restraints on targets had prevented the bombing from bringing the DRV to its knees and its senses about its aggression in the South. The principle remained sound, they argued; a removal of limitations would produce dramatic results. And so 1967 would be the year in which many of the previous restrictions were lifted and the vaunting boosters of airpower would be once again proven wrong. It would be the year in which we relearned the negative lessons of previous wars on the ineffectiveness of strategic bombing… end quote…
Lest we forget…. Bear -30-