My computer just ate my first 1000 words… so here is the short version and the meat without the gravy aNd potatoes..
14 September 1966: Operation Rolling Thunder New York Times “In North Vietnam yesterday, United States planes flew 150 multi-plane missions. Most of their bombs fell in the panhandlw region along the southeast coast of North Vietnam, but the pilots also hit a railroad yard and an anti-aircraft site 44 miles southwest of Haiphong. Eighty-one of the 180 targets blasted yesterday were near the coastal city of Vinh and included fuel dumps, surface-to-air missile sites, troop staging areas, railroads, highways and bridges. Navy pilots striking 36 miles southwest of Thanh Hoa said they had destroyed or heavily damaged 41 to 48 boxcars. enemy gunners brought down an Air Force F-105 Thunderchief and a Navy A-4 Skyhawk during yesterday raids. The F-105 pilot who crashed 40 miles south of Vinh was rescued by helicopter. The navy pilot was listed as missing. Another plane, an F-100 Super Sabre crashed 153 miles southwest of Saigon in an attack on the Mekong Delta. The pilot was rescued by helicopter….
“Vietnam Air Losses” (Hobson) four fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 14 September 1966…
(1) Captain C.W. Findlay was flying an F-105d of the 510th TFS and 3rd TFW out of Bien Hoa on a strike in the Mekong Delta and was hit by 12.7mm gunfire on his first pass. He ejected immediately and was rescued by helicopter.
(2) Commander Clarence William Stoddard was flying an A-1H of VA-25 Fist of the Fleet embarked in USS Coral Sea (on her third day on the line of a second Vietnam cruise) and led an attack on a storage facility near Vinh when taken under attack by three SAMs. Commander Stoddard, CO of VA-25, was nailed by a direct SAM hit. Commander Stoddard was killed in action fifty years ago and perished in the Tonkin Gulf off Vinh. This was the 30th sam kill of the air war.
(3) 1LT J.R. Casper was flying an F-105D of the 421st TFS and 388th TFW out of Korat on a strike on a bridge 15 miles northeast of Hanoi and was hit by ground fire at 6, 000-feet. LT Casper, who had ejected from an F-105 and been rescued on 8 August, was able to cruise his heavily damaged aircraft 80 miles and over the Tonkin Gulf before he had to abandon the aircraft. He was rescued by a navy heliccopter…
(4) 1LT Howard Eugene Knudsen was flying an F-4C of the 389th TFS and 366th TFW out of Phan Rang on a mission in Ninh Thuan Province in South Vietnam when the airfraft flight controls failed and the uncontrollable aircraft crashed. LT Knudsen was unable to eject and was killed in action. A second pilot (unidentified) ejected and was rescued.
Ripple salvo…switches safe … I gotta work on my computer…
Lest we Forget…. Bear…