RIPPLE SALVO… #289… NO WARRIOR LEFT BEHIND… but first…
Good Morning: Day TWO HUNDRED EIGHTY-NINE of a 1000-day look-back to the airwar over North Vietnam…
16 DECEMBER 1966…HOMELAND HEAD LINES from the New York Times on a cloudy Firday in the Big Apple…
Page 1: “U.S. Saigon Aides Assert No Bombs Fell Inside Hanoi”… “Westmoreland’s office says raids this week struck only military targets. Pilot’s reports being studied. Washington produces map to show what was hit. Mistake still a possibility. ‘A complete review of pilot reports and photographs of the 13 and 14 December air strikes on the Van dien truck depot and the Yenbien railroad classification yard showed that all ordnance expended by U.S. strike aircraft was in the military target areas. None fell in the city of Hanoi.’ On December 14 pilots reported seeing a SAM misslile hit a North Vietnamese junk.” … Page 1: “Walt Disney, 65, Dies On Coast; Founded an Empire on a Mouse…$100 million a year entertainment empire. Died of acute circulatory collapse after having a lung removed a month ago… RIP … Page 1: “Soviets Increase Defense Spending for ’67″… “Rise for ’67 is second in a row and linked to cost of arms for Hanoi. Rise is 8.2% over last year. Finance Minister:…the aggressive monopolistic circles of the United States have recently sharpened international tensions and increased the danger of a new world war.”… Page 1: “Kennedy Book Fight Prompting Feelers to avoid court test. Senator Robert Kennedy working to avoid a public confrontation between Manchester and Mrs. Kennedy.”… Page 1: “Democrat Governors Link Loss To Johnson” …”Meeting of Democratic governor’s at National Governor’s Conference in West Virginia concludes that Democratic losses in 1966 election were directly attributable to a growing national hostility toward the Johnson Administration.” … Page 5: “Student Poll Reports Ignorance of Vietcong”… “A pool of Washington area college students showed today that 54% of them believed the United States could do more to achieve peace in Vietnam. It also showed that almost four out of five did not know who the Vietcong were, and 66% opposed bombing North Vietnam.”…
Page 4: “Pessimism of Warsaw” (a 5 column, 40 column inch story) “Soviet and Poland Condemn American Bombing in Hanoi”…”Polish pessimism is based on two factors: North Vietnamese and Vietcong faith in their military capacity, and a conviction recently arrived at, that Presiden Johnson is unwilling to make any concession to arrive at the conference table. This highly placed Pole says, is a combination that precludes hope of a peace conference in the near future. ‘Even if North Vietnam is being badly hurt by the air war, Poland feels the Vietcong’s guerrilla-war fighting capacity has not been diminished appreciably.'”…
16 December 1966… The President’s Daily Brief…CIA (TS sanitized 2o15) JORDAN: Relative calm has prevailed for several days, but there are indications of preparations for new moves against Hussein (Husayn)… (the rest is still redacted)…
16 DECEMBER 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (17 December reporting 16 Dec ops) Page 2: “Bad weather kept United States planes away from the Hanoi region Thursday but 58 missions were mounted against other areas of North Vietnam. air force ans Navy jets raked supply lines and staging areas.” … “Vietnam:Air Losses” (Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 16 December 1966… oohrah!!!…
RIPPLE SALVO… #289… Two days ago RTR reported the loss of F-8 warrior LT MICHAEL THOMAS NEWELL of VF-194 and Ticonderoga who was shot down by a SAM while flying CAP for an airwing strike on the Van dien Truck Complex six miles south of Hanoi. I wrapped up my comment on the loss with “LT NEWELL is presumed to have been killed in action and died at the crash site…no further information on recovery of his remains.” Wrong. I found the folowing “further information.” I quote from a Navy News article dated June 01, 2007…
“Washington, D.C.– the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced on May 30 that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified.
“He is Lt. Michael T. Newell, of Ellenville, N.Y. His remains were returned to his family and he was buried with full military honors May 30 (2007) in Arlington Nationl Cemetery near Washington.
“Newell was flying an F-8E Crusader aircraft as wingman in a flight of two on combat air patrol over North Vietnam on Dec. 14, 1966. During the mission, the flight leader saw a surface-to-air missile explode between the two aircraft. Although Newell initially reported he had survived the blast, his aircraft gradually lost power and crashed near the border between Nghe An and Thanh Hoa provinces in south central North Vietnam. The flight leader did not see a parachite nor did he hear an emergency beacon signal (beeper). He stayed in the area and determined that Newell did not escape from his aircraft prior to the crash.
“Between 1993 and 2002, joint U.S./ Socialist Republic of Vietnam (S.R.V.) teams, led by the Joint POW?MIA Accounting Committee (JPAC), visited the area of the incident five times to conduct investigations and survey the crash site. They found pilot related artifacts and aircraft wreckage consistent to an F-8 Crusader.
“In 2004, a joint U.S./R.S.V. team began excavating the crash site. The team was unable to complete the recovery and subseuent teams re-visited the site two more times before the recovery was completed in 2005. As a result, the team found human remains and additional pilot related items.
“Among the forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC also used dental comparisons in the identifcation of the remains.” end quote….
LT MICHAEL T. NEWELL, at long last accounted for, now rests in peace in the hallowed ground of Arlington. Tonight, 50 years after the young Naval Aviator died in combat, Killed in Action, he lies among the honored dead, his final resting place marked by a beauiful Christmas wreath. He is rememberd on this day…
The relentless efforts of the JPAC to find and recover our missing is nothing short of extraordinatry, as this recovery demonstrates… Thank you, JPAC. Merry Christmas and “good hunting” and recovering in 2017… Your service –fulfilling our nation’s promises to it’s warriors– is greatly appreciated…
Lest we forget…. Bear -30-