RIPPLE SALVO… #199… PHASE III– next year… but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED NINETY-NINE of marking the 50th anniversary of Operation Rolling Thunder…
16 SEPTEMBER 1966… HEADLINES AT HOME…NEW YORK TIMES… A fair and cool Friday …
Page 1: “Computer Guides And Controls Gemini Reentry And Splashdown”…”The Gemini 11 astronauts let their computer take over today to steer them to a safe and accurate splashdown in the Atlantic 700 miles east of here (Cape Kennedy). On previous flights Gemini astronauts have relied on computer guidance data but have fired braking and maneuvering rockets themselves. Commander Charles Conrad, Jr. and Lieutenant Commander Richard Gordon, both 36-year old Navy pilots, ended their successful three day space flight at 9:59 AM EDT. They had been around the world 44 times in 71 hours. Gemini 11, suspended from an orange striped parachute, floated to its ocean landing about two and a half miles off its aiming point, and two and a half miles ahead of USS Guam, a helicopter recovery ship.”… Page 1: “U.S. To Continue Opposition In U.N. To Seating Peking”…”The Johnson Administration, confident that the United States continues to have a majority support in the United Nations will renew its opposition to the admission of Communist China at the forthcoming meeting of the General Assembly. Officials disclosed today that the Administration had decided against adopting a two-China policy, which would favor membership by both Communist China and Nationalist China…The proposal to admit China last year was defeated on a 47 to 47 tie vote with 21 abstentions.”… Page 1: “19 Lost As West German U-Boat Sinks”…”The West German submarine Hai (Shark), a once scuttled Nazi U-Boat that never saw service in World War II action disappeared beneath the storm lashed North Sea last night. Nineteen of the small training submarines 20-man crew are presumed drowned. The lone survivor…was rescued by a British trawler St. Martin after he had drifted in rough seas for 13-hours. He was the last of eight who were able to leave the submarine before she sank like a rock.”…
Page 1: “Britain Is Striving To Keep Doctors”… “An Illinois hospital has lured a neurosurgeon from a major hospital in the north of England by offering him a salary of $18,000 a year, which it said would quickly be doubled. At the age of 38 with a fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons and 15 years of specialized training since receiving his medical degree the neurosurgeon was earning $5,600. But there was more than money behind the decision. Despite his qualification, the neurosurgeon had not reached the top grade of consultant in Britain’s free health service. He was worried that when an appointment finally came, it would be in a poorly equipped hospital.”… Page 2: “Buddhist Leader (Thich Tri Quang) Ends 100-Day Hunger Strike”…”The militant Buddhist monk announced today he was ending his hunger strike so he could continue his struggle against the Saigon government. He said he was ending his strike on the orders of the ‘Supreme Patriarch’ of South Vietman’s Buddhist Church, Thich Tinh Khiet.”… Page 7: “Red Guards Told To Keep Up Drive”…”Lin Piao, Defense Minister, right hand man of Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Chinese Communist party, encouraged the young Red Guards yesterday to continue their drive against party officials who have fallen out to favor with the hierarchy. Piao: ‘The Red Guards had scored brilliant results by acting correctly and done well.’ Lin Piao spoke at the rally of one million Red Guards, the army of the great proletarian cultural revolution.”…
Page 1: “Big Marine Force Lands In Vietnam Near Buffer Zone” Fifteen hundred United States Marines went ashore in South Vietnam’s northern most province before dawn today only three miles south of the demilitarized zone. Leaving their landing craft and helicopters, the marines met no opposition. Shortly after noon as the special landing force from Seventh Fleet moved inland through rice paddies and swamps, three enemy soldiers were killed in a brief encounter.(In Washington the Defense Department announced that American deaths in combat in Vietnam since 1961 had passed 5,000) As the marine force landed in Quang tri province, thousands of other marines were searching for enemy troops 20 miles to the west. In all 298 enemy soldiers have been killed since the sweep began just south of the demilitarized zone on August 3. In July the marines killed 900 North Vietnamese soldiers in the same area.”…
As of September 10 the Allied Force troop strength stood at 346,000 and U.S. forces at 308,000…Army: 188,000; Marine 55,000: Air Force 44,000 and Navy 21,000. Total Americans KIA at 5,064 with 71 KIA in week ending 10 September.
16 September 1966…The President’s Daily Brief…CIA (TS sanitized) Communist China: The mammoth Red Guard rally in Peking (see NYT above) yesterday featured a call by Lin Piao for continued action by the guards against opponents in local party committees throughout the country. There was no hint of any let up but Chou En-lai urged the youthful militants to stay away from the farms and factories. The notes struck by Lin and Chou suggest concern in Peking over the disruptive effect of rampaging Red Guards on economic production. The present leadership seems to be trying to redirect energies against the “main targets,” its enemies among the party bureaucrats.
16 SEPTEMBER 1966…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… NYT (17 September reporting 16 September)…Page 2: “U.S. Pilots Shoot Down MIG-17 In North Vietnam”…”A United States Air Force pilot shot down one of 14 Communist MIGs that were sighted by American fighter-bombers yesterday as they attacked northeast of Hanoi. The 14 MIGs was believed to be the greatest number ever seen in one day over North Vietnam by American pilots. First reports indicated that at least six of the Communist jets exchanged fire with American planes. It was not clear whether any American jets had been hit, but none were lost. (not true. See Hobson below) The downed Communist plane, a MIG-17 was the 19th credited to American pilots in action over North Vietnam since June 1965. The Air Force pilot who fired a heat seeking Sidewinder missile into the MIG said he saw the pilot parachute to earth. The MIG was one of four that attacked a trio of faster F-4C Phantoms as they hit targets 45 miles northeast of the North Vietnamese capital. The three remaining MIGs fled. Moments after the first engagement, two other MIGs attacked four F-105 Thunderchiefs. The Americans turned and fought briefly until the enemy aircraft turned and fled. Other pilots reported seeing another four MIGs late in the afternoon. In strikes in the coastal region north of the demilitarized zone, Navy pilots from the Constellation reported damaging or destroying 20 to 30 of about 60 trucks 25 miles from Thanh Hoa. North of Dong hoi, Air Force pilots attacked 50 small cargo boats. They said they had damaged or destroyed 15. Three enemy surface-to-air missile sites were damaged during yesterday’s raids, one of them eight miles southwest of Hanoi. Air Force F-105s attacked and sank 2 armed cargo barges 60 miles east of Haiphong. Navy fighter-bombers destroyed 10 boxcars and damaged 6 more near Thanh Hoa. Air Force B-52s carried out saturation bombing of suspected enemy storage areas and troop concentrations in the so-called demilitarized zone. A United States Marine fighter pilot was killed yesterday when he fell from the sling of a rescue helicopter. The pilot was bombing a Vietcong position 240 miles northeast of Saigon when his A-4 hit a tree on a low pullout. He ejected safely but was killed in the rescue attempt.”…
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson)…Page 74: Three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 16 September 1966…
(1) 1LT THOMAS HOWARD HAWKING was flying an A-4E of the VMA-311 Tomcats and MAG-12 out of Chu Lai in support of an Army operation (Seward) in Phu Yen province and hit several trees recovering from an attack on a Vietcong position. He was able to eject and safely parachute to the ground. Unfortunately, he was killed when an Army UH-1 Huey attempted to rescue him with a makeshift sling that failed, dropping 1LT HAWKING from 1,000-feet to his death…1LT HAWKING was Killed in Action fifty years ago and is remembered today as brave and bold, but very unlucky young Marine who died in the service of his country… I got tears on this one…
(2) 1LT B.D. GIERE and 1LT H.J. KNOCH were flying an F-4C of the 557th TFS and 12th TFW out of Cam Ranh Bay on a strike mission on an enemy storage area in the demilitarized zone and was blasted by ground fire. The two aviators ejected and landed safely in the buffer zone. They were rescued by an Air Force helicopter that “swooped (Hobson) in” and plucked them out of the heavily contested “demilitarized” no-man’s land…
(3) MAJOR JOHN LEIGHTON ROBERTSON and 1LT HUBERT ELLIOT BUCHANAN were flying an F-4C of the 555th TFS and 8th TFW out of Ubon on a strike on the Dap Cau bridge. Their flight was jumped by MIG-17s while en route to the target and in the melee MAJOR ROBERTSON and 1LT BUCHANAN were shot down by MIG-17 cannon fire and crashed about 15 miles from Kep. 1LT BUCHANAN was immediately captured and would see the inside of seven different POW prisons before being release in March 1973. The remains of MAJOR ROBERTSON were returned by the North Vietnamese in 1990, but the remains turned out to be those of an animal. MAJOR ROBERTSON perished fifty years ago and only God knows where he rests in peace today…
RIPPLE SALVO… #199… ROLLING THUNDER HAD FOUR PHASES… Fall 1966 HOWGOZIT?…
Phase I… began in the summer of 1965 and attacked the funnel for the movement of troops and war fighting materials from China, Hanoi and Haiphong through the lower half of North Vietnam to the ground war in South Vietnam. The strategy was to gradually increase the intensity of the bombing and expand the targeting in measured steps moving closer to the heartland–Hanoi and Haiphong in the Red River Valley… always with the hope that North Vietnam would see the hopelessness of their fight with a superpower and choose to negotiate a peaceful settlement…
Phase II… was delayed for about eight months while the debate on how to proceed was waged in Washington. The JCS submitted a plan in the winter of 1965-66 that was a full strategic bombing plan to destroy North Vietnam’s industrial and economic resources. Concern for civilian casualties delayed the decision and led to a reduced plan to limit the expanded plan to the destruction of North Vietnam’s POL target system (petroleum, oil and lubricants in storage facilities and a full range of transportation targets, especially bridges and the rail system)… The Phase kicked off on 29 June 1966 and by August was declared a bust. Despite the destruction of 70% of North Vietnam’s storage capacity, the flow of men and material continued at a pace that was good enough to support the guerrilla war being fought in the south. Back to the drawing boards… and that’s where we are in late September 1966… more debate, more assessments, more advice, including this from the Assistance Secretary of Defense John McNaughton… who wrote in support of his recommendation that the U.S. do what ever it takes to come to terms and cut our losses…
“The present U.S. objective in Vietnam is to avoid humiliation. The reasons why we went into Vietnam to the present depth are varied; but they are now largely academic. Why we have not withdrawn from Vietnam is, by all odds, one reason: to preserve our reputation as guarantor, and thus preserve our effectiveness in the rest of the world…at each decision point we have gambled; at each point, to avoid the damage to our effectiveness of defaulting on our commitment, we have upped the ante.” (Pentagon Papers, Bantam, 1971) page 491.
Phase III… Spring of 1967… the President opens up the target list and the increased tempo is sustained for nearly one year…
Phase IV… April 1968 …the President draws the line at 20th parallel, one of the options discussed in the Spring of 1967… this phase lasts until 1 November 1968, the end of Rolling Thunder…
“We have just begun to fight!” As of 10 September 1966 the total Vietnam War KIA was 5,064… By war’s end there will be 58,000 names to be memorialized on a wall on the Washington mall… Does anybody think that LBJs decisions made in 1966 would be the same if he had known then that another 53,000 young Americans and hundreds of thousands of other human beings would perish in the process of “saving face”…???
History is the teacher. Our Vietnam War provides a painful set of history lessons we should put to use in dealing with the current and expanding array of challenges to out national survival. One of those lessons is the high cost of “saving face.” I blog with the hope that my daily posts will lead others to come to the realization that sometimes it is better to accept humiliation than to war-on for the sake of “saving face.” For the lives of those whose names are on The Wall, as well as all the rest of us who were there and came home, the Vietnam War, including Rolling Thunder, MUST be a lesson clearly understood by the current generation of decision makers. Our leaders must adjust our reach to match what can be grasped.
The paramount purpose of a nation is survival. On our present course our survival is an issue. A course change is imperative. I suggest that our Vietnam decisions to “save face” at any cost provides a lesson for choosing a new path for our country: a strategic and honorable withdrawal to what can be grasped is in order.
Lest we forget… Bear ……… –30– ………