RIPPLE SALVO… #171… THE LAST CHANCE FOR PEACE IN VIETNAM…but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-ONE of remembering a forgotten campaign in a forgotten war… ROLLING THUNDER…
19 AUGUST 1966… STATESIDE NEWS FROM THE PAGES OF THE NYT… Another hot Friday, but cooler after Happy Hour…
Page 1:…”Johnson Weighs CivilIan Service As Draft Option”…”President Johnson indicated today that he was considering a ‘practical system of non-military alternatives to the draft.’ He also hinted that major revisions were planned to make the Selective Service System more ‘just’ and that the views of students and younger citizens — those most directly effected by the draft — would be taken into account. In a separate development today, the Senate Approved 86 to 0 a record $56 billion military appropriation bill, including an authorization for the President ‘to call up about a half-million reservists on an individual basis for possible use in Vietnam.’ The authorization on reservists, which the Senate approved yesterday by a vote of 66 to 21, as an amendment to the appropriations bill, empowers but does not bind the President to call up the reservists. The President did not ask for the legislation. Mr. Johnson addressed about 14,ooo students who are here as summer interns working or studying in government offices. He addressed them at a morning ceremony at the Washington Monument. The President called for the ‘ancient ideal of citizen soldiers who answered their nations call in time of peril.’ Mr. Johnson said that there were many openings for ‘volunteers for the Teacher’s Corps in the Peace Corps, and on many fronts and in many ways for young people eager to serve their country.’… Page 1: “Moscow Discloses 1942 Atomic Project” three years before the United States exploded the world’s first atomic bomb, Soviet scientists were engaged in an urgent program to develop such weapons, according to a Russian physicist who had a role in the program.” …. Page 1: “Lunar Orbiter Sends Pictures On The Moon”…”A United States spacecraft sent to earth today the first pictures of the moon’s surface taken from a vehicle in lunar orbit.”…
Page 2: “Senate By 86 to 0, Approves $58-Billion For Defense”…”The Senate approved today President Johnson’s request for a record ‘peacetime’ Defense Department budget. It also bid for a larger say in how the military machinery operates. In voting 86 to 0, for $58 billion to operate the department in the current year, the Senate raised Administration requests by $525-million but still was $12.6 million under the total already approved by the House. In seeking to assert a larger role in military management the Senate took actions that either were not requested or were opposed by the Administration…The Senate barred the use of the F-111B aircraft being developed by the Navy…this signaled another round in the continuing battle over the TFX all purpose aircraft. Senator McClellan and Secretary McNamara have feuded for years over Mr. McNamara’s decision against the advice of an evaluation panel to let the General Dynamics Corporation build this all-service aircraft rather than give the contract to the Boeing company. The House version does not include such a ban and the Administration is expected to seek its removal in conference…The largest share of money goes to the Air Force, which would receive well above $20 billion to maintain 74 wings, including missiles, as well as 13,785 aircraft. The Army would get more than $17 billion to maintain 17 divisions and lesser units and 9,268 aircraft. Nearly $17 billion would go to operate 939 vessels, including 416 warships and submarines, four Marine Corps divisions and air wings and 8,315 aircraft.”…
Page 6: “Israel asked Not to Let West See MIG-21″… “The Israeli newspapers suggested today that the Government prevent Western governments from inspecting the MIG-21 whose Iraqi pilot recently defected to Israel. The plane is one of the Soviet most advanced jet fighters. It is understood that so far the MIG has not been scrutinized by Western attaches’ or aviation expertS.”…
19 AUGUST 1966… THE PRESIDENT”S DAILY BRIEFING…CIA (TS sanitized 9/2015)… SOUTH VIETNAM: Prime Minister Ky has signed an agreement meeting the major demands of the montagnard tribal autonomy movement. Ky has also extended the period during which the montagnards can name candidates for the September election. These measures will pave the way for the return of montagnard special forces to government control, and will probably remove the treat of montagnard boycott of the elections…..
PDB…NORTH VIETNAM: A senior Polish official believes Hanoi’s price for coming to the conferene table might be open to some negotiation–if, as a down payment, we stop bombing. Talking with Ambassador Gronouski yesterday, the Pole said he thought the North Vietnamese would agree to sit at the table with the Ky government. He also thought Hanoi would perhaps be less insistent that the Viet Cong’s program be the exclusive base for the negotiations. In times past the Poles have not been too adept at second guessing North Vietnam. In fact, the official talking to Gronouski made a trip to Hanoi during the January halt in bombing–and he failed to bring home any sign that the North Vietnamese were willing to move toward negotiations. SEE RIPPLE SALVO FOR MORE.
19 AUGUST 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (20 s=August reporting 19 August ops),,,Page 3: “In the war in the air, American pilots reported three engagements with MIG-17s within 35 minutes yesterday and said they shot down one of the MIGs. It was the 18th downed by Americans in North Vietnam. In the 96 missions flown by American pilots yesterday over North Vietnam, Air Force pilots attacked two surface-to-air missile sites north of Hanoi, destroying one. Other pilots reported they had cut the highway roads and railroads leading northwest from Hanoi to China in several places. Navy A-4 Skyhawk pilots destroyed 15 boxcars and a locomotive in a raid on the Thanh Hoa railroad yard.”… “7 Oil Depots Bombed”…”United States fliers attacked seven oil -storage depots in southern North Vietnam yesterday and touched off numerous secondary fires and explosions. A spokesman said weather over North Vietnam curtailed strikes in the Hanoi and Haiphong areas and in the Red River Valley.”… “Vietnam: Aircraft Losses” (Hobson)… Three fixed wing aircraft lost over southeast Asia on 19 August…
(1) LCDR J.K. THOMPSON and LTJG G.I. PARTEN were flying an RA-5C of the RVAH-6 Fluers embarked in USS Constellation on a photo reconnaissance mission covering roads and bridges 17 miles northwest of Vinh when hit by intense ground fire. LCDR THOMSON was able to maintain control of the Vigilante and as fire spread the crew ejected 10 miles off-shore. LCDR THOMPSON was rescued by a Navy helicopter and LTJG PARTEN was rescued by a Navy destroyer…
(2) CAPTAIN E.T. HAWKS and 1LT RICHARD M. MILIKIN were flying an RF-4C of the 16th TRS and 460 TFW out of Tan Son Nhut on a night photo reconnaissance mission in the southern panhandle of North Vietnam 30 miles north of Donghoi. The aircraft was hit by ground fire and almost immediately crashed. CAPTAIN HAWKS ejected successfully and was rescued six hours later by Navy helicopter. 1LT MILIKIN did not survive the crash and was Killed In Action on this day Fifty Years Ago… So young, so brave. …His remains were returned for burial.
(3) An F-102A of the 509th FIS and 405th FW crashed on a night landing and the pilot survived. The Air Force deployed 22 F-102As to Southeast Asia.
RIPPLE SALVO… #170… “Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam” (James G. Hershberger)… One of the Vietnam War’s enduring and unresolved controversies concerns a secret Polish-Italian peace initiative that came to nothing. The effort wouda, coulda, and shouda worked is argued persuasively in “Marigold.” Which was also the codename of the August to December 1966 diplomatic dance that fizzled. Note the President’s Daily Briefing above. The President was alerted (again) to the start of something on 19 August. Defenders of the Polish-Italian initiative make the case that the President blew an opportunity to get peace negotiations started in December 1966. He blew it by “bombing Hanoi on the eve of a planned historic secret US-North Vietnamese encounter in Warsaw.” The claim of a missed opportunity on the basis of an LBJ fumble, was hotly denied then, and probably always will be. The Washington position remains that the Hanoi never authorized Poland to open direct contact between Hanoi and Washington, and that Hanoi was never interested in negotiating an end to the war. But author Hershberger brings new evidence to the controversy in his “Marigold.”
Here is what his book is all about: (Page XV)…
“This book challenges the conventional wisdom. It establishes that Warsaw was, in fact, authorized by Hanoi to open direct contacts with Washington, and that North Vietnam’s did commit themselves to entering direct talks. It reveals LBJ’s personal role in bombing Hanoi, at a pivotal moment, disregarding the pleas of both Poles and his own senior aides. It argues not only that Marigold, far from a ‘nonevent,’ was truly a ‘missed opportunity’ but also that the initiative’s failure tilted Hanoi against negotiations and set it on the path toward the Tet Offensive in early 1968.
“The book’s historical implications are thus immense. It contends that Washington (and LBJ) could have entered into talks with Hanoi late in 1966 rather than in 1968, and in far more auspicious circumstances. Marigold might thus not only have considerably shortened the war (or at least the massive U.S. military involvement in it), but also drastically altered American political history, for LBJ’s failure to open talks with Hanoi fostered the rise of anti-war challenge that led him to abandon his quest for reelection.”…
Page xvii…”At the book’s heart…is the dramatic story–part mystery, part thriller, and ultimately Shakespearean tragedy with a few dashes of farce tossed in –of a few men who tried against long odds to change history for the better, and who in late 1966, at the height of the Vietnam war, came closer to succeeding than has previously been realized. ‘No episode in our history, I believe, will baffle our posterity more than the Indochina war,’ the historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote in 1971, as the fighting still ground on. ‘Many, perhaps most Americans already find it incredible that we ever considered our national interests so vitally engaged in Vietnam as to justify the death of 50,000 Americans and God knows how many Vietnamese in the longest war Americans have ever fought.”
“Marigold” is a 2012 Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press publication of about 900-pages. Pack a lunch.
Lest we forget…. Bear ………. –30– ……….