RIPPLE SALVO… #78… A FOUR STAR REFLECTION…
Good Morning: Day SEVENTY-EIGHT of a long look back to Operation Rolling Thunder…
16 MAY 1966 (NYT)… ON THE HOME FRONT… Mostly sunny Monday with rain showers in the afternoon…
Page 1: “Ky Forces Hold Danang; Buddhists Fear Civil War; U.S. Appeals For Accord”… Ten rebels killed in all day shootout and the survivors take refuge. Neil Sheehan reporting from Danang: “In a surprise move Premier Nguyen Cao Ky and the other junta leaders flew 1000 Vietnamese Marines to the air base on the outskirts of the port and garrison city before dawn. At dawn the Marines supported by tanks and VNAF airplanes, which buzzed the town, moved into the city and began systematically seizing vital points.” These forces were later reinforced by 500 Rangers and paratroopers to face a disorganized force of 300-500 rebellious troops.”… meanwhile…”Washington Is Concerned And Surprised By Ky Step”…The State Department instructs American leaders in Saigon to attempt to bring both sides together, while the President musters Rusk, McNamara, Rostow and Lodge at the White House and later at Camp David to deal with the growing crisis in South Vietnam. The President said he was “gravely distressed” toward the move made by Premier Ky. “The whine of bullets and clank of tank treads probably erased the possibility of a harmonious transition from the military to civilian government in South Vietnam. The concern is that Ky has taken an irreversible step and will have to continue to do what he did today,” wrote Richard Elder in the NYT…
Page 1: “8000 In Capital Picket For Peace” …”The moderate wing of the ‘American Peace Movement’ staged a large demonstration here today to increase congressional opposition to President Johnson’s policies in Vietnam.” The 8-10,000 participants circled the White House for two hours and brought the President 73,000 pledges saying they will work for the candidates for public office who will work for peace. Dr. Martin Luther King sent a telegram that was read to the demonstrators. “The confused war has played havoc with our domestic destiny. Despite protestations to the contrary the promises of the Great Society top the casualty list of the conflict. The pursuit of widened war has narrowed domestic welfare programs making the poor– white and Negro — carry the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home.”… There were few counter pickets to the rally.
Page 2: “Schlesinger Scores Vietnam Protests“…Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur Schlesinger said, “…one hates to see liberals and intellectuals preparing the way for a new McCarthyism by degrading the level of public discussion and substituting slogans for sense and rage for reason.” The author of the John F. Kennedy biography, “One Thousand Days,” was speaking to an audience of 350 gathered at a Roosevelt Day Dinner in Newark sponsored by the “Americans for Democratic Action.”… “If we are to have competition in hysteria and demagoguery, the other side always wins. President Johnson deserves understanding and sympathy.”…Page 3: “200 Vietcong Reported Killed In Clash With Government Unit”… the Vietcong guerrillas were subdues in the swamps of the Mekong Delta at the scene of a freighter offloading weapons for the VC. In the fight 6 battalions of SVN troops engaged 2 battalions of Vietcong….In another engagement 15 miles west of Danang forty U.S. Marines surprised 150 Vietcong who were in the process of setting up an ambush and killed 37 of the VC…
Page 4: Kennedy Decries Tests For Draft”…”The ranks of critics of the draft deferment tests for college students gained two supporters yesterday, Senator Edward F. Kennedy and the Chancellor of City College of New York, Dr. Albert Bowker. Senator Kennedy said: “I think that one of the gravest problems with the draft at the present time is that those who are in the lower economic groups are the ones being called on.” He defended the right of the students to protest.
Page 36: OpEd… “The Danang Coup”…”The seizure of Danang by the Ky government means a determination to fight it out with the dissident political elements of the United Buddhist Church. Unless the struggle is quickly stopped this would mean an end to the hopes, expectations and promises of an election by September 15 for a constituent assembly and later an elected government.”
16 MAY 1966…ROLLING THUNDER OPS… NYT 17 May reporting 16 May ops… “Although severe thunderstorms swept through North Vietnam yesterday Air Force and Navy pilots were able to fly 52 multiple plane missions dropping most of their bombs by radar control. Air Force raids in the Mugia Pass resulted in the loss of an F-105D west of Dong Hoi and the pilot is listed as MIA. Navy pilots attacked a bridge north of Thanh Hoa but weather precluded damage assessment. B-52s struck and enemy base camp 70 miles north of Saigon… CAPTAIN H. LEWIS SMITH of the 602ACS and the 14 ACW out of Udorn was forced to abandon his badly damaged A-1E 25 miles southwest of Dong Hoi. He was rescued by HH-3. He was hit by ground fire while attacking trucks in Laos and chose to fly east rather than west back to Udorn. Lucky lucky.
RIPPLE SALVO #78… GENERAL MERRILL A. McPEAK, former Chief of Staff, USAF, put his heart, soul and favorite memories into his autobiography, “Hangar Flying,” and I prize my signed copy. Thanks, General. In the final chapter of his log of flying stories and the life of a warrior leader and fighter pilot, the General shares some of his conclusions on the Vietnam War. This is a good time in my review of Rolling Thunder to insert some wisdom and candor from General McPeak, who logged 269 combat sorties in Vietnam and marinated his observations and experiences for forty years before penning the following few paragraphs for “Hangar Flying.” I quote (pgs. 337-340…
“It is an article of faith with airmen that air warfare is of a piece. In application, an air campaign can have various phases or aspects, such as establishing control of the air, deep bombardment, or close air support for surface forces, but the instruments of air power–the pilots, aircraft, and munitions–have the inherent flexibility for rapid concentration and re-tasking. Therefore, the highest and best use of airpower is achieved only when it comes under central direction. Had we acted in accordance with this view, we would have considered all air operations in Southeast Asia part of a system and organized (as) an integrated air campaign, led by a senior airman.
“In fact, we fought several separate air wars, MACV, under Westmoreland and later Abrams, ran the in-country air war, using a 1920s model in which the Air Force served an Army auxiliary–sort of winged artillery. In practical terms, our presence meant the Army couldn’t be defeated militarily, a live possibility if we hadn’t been there. As for the more purposeful uses of airpower, MACV was clueless.
“The second air war, the on-and-off bombing of the North, was run by the White House, reaching through the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Adm. Ulysses S. Grant, head of the Pacific Command. Because of inability or unwillingness to conduct coordinated air operations, the North Vietnam landscape was subdivided by Admiral Sharp into ‘route packages,’ each package assigned to either the Air Force or Navy.
“Chopping up the real estate in this way was a classic mistake. Air operations enjoy considerable freedom from the constraints of geography, including those synthetic lines people draw on maps, a fact accounting for much of the leverage air power brings to the fight. Sadly we gave away this edge, increasing our exposure and driving up losses. But in the end it probably made little difference, the mistake overshadowed by even more important shortcomings in technology and especially, strategic direction.
“For instance our bombing was interrupted 16 times by pauses designed to give the North an opportunity to rethink its convictions. As it happened, conviction was their strong suit. The breaks in the action did little to enhance our negotiating position, but each time we went back the air defenses were rested, repaired and improved. In the end, nearly 1,100 aircraft were shot down in the North (North Vietnam staked claims to 3,399) and more than 800 aviators killed or captured.
“The third and fourth of the air wars were fought in Laos. It’s difficult even to describe the dog’s breakfast of command arrangements which anyway evolved in the ebb and flow of time. Seventh Air Force, answering to MACV, called the shots in Steel Tiger, the campaign to stop traffic down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Farther north in Laos Seventh Air Force was also involved in the attempt to tilt the odds in favor of a weak Royal Laotian government in the civil war it would eventually lose. This effort, called Barrel Roll, was in principle under the control of Pacific Command but during the most critical period real authority was in the hands of our embassy in Vientiane. Ambassador William H. Sullivan (known as Field Marshall) was especially forceful in exercising this responsibility. Meanwhile, Strategic Air Command retained authority for B-52s flying into Laos from Guam and U Tapao, Thailand. In addition, Air America flew combat sorties under the separate auspices of the CIA. The resulting air operations in Laos could scarcely be described as ‘joint.’ let alone ‘integrated.’ Thus, if our strategic direction was defective, command arrangements were, if anything, worse.
“The Air Force spent as much time in Southeast Asia as any other service (and more money), deploying a third of our airplanes and losing 2,357 of them. We dropped nearly three times as much bomb tonnage as we had in World War II. In the end, 2,700 airmen did not come back. Lacking a single air command concept of operations, the undertaking was a fiasco.
“Why were we losing? That was the easy one. Our strategic operational and technical defects were everywhere visible: inaccurate weaponry, zero capability at night, Army mismanagement, valueless intelligence, the lack of a sane integrated air campaign–all these factors present and obvious at first hand. But in the middle of the in-country war and at the height of our military presence, there was a harder question, one that has echoed over the years: Why are we here?
“You could make a case for intervention, and successive American administrations tried. We might prevent a Communist take over of the South, just as Truman had kept North Korea from swallowing its southern neighbor. It was clear that if we could do this, success would have wider, potentially very important consequences. But we were on the wrong side of history, fighting a national independence movement intent on dissolving the residue of French and Japanese imperialism. It would be a stretch, but we could imagine a South Vietnamese government that was competent and honest. Even so, the mere fact of our support would undermine its legitimacy with its own people. There was really no way we could rescue the Saigon regime.
“Moreover, it was obvious from the beginning that the outcome was far more important to the other side than it was to us, conditions strategically lopsided in their favor. Throughout the conflict, our design was to fight a limited war with a limited aim–the preservation of the South–against an enemy who fought an all-out war with the single-minded goal of reuniting the country, no matter how long it took or how much it cost. In the end, the North did lose more than one million dead and 300,000 missing–staggering numbers, something like 5 per cent of the population it controlled. But the North Vietnamese believed, correctly as it turned out, that they could endure punishment longer and more stoically than we could dish out.”
LEST WE FORGET…… Bear ………. –30– ……….