RIPPLE SALVO… #245… “THE AMERICAN CRISIS IN VIETNAM”… but first…
Good Morning: Day TWO HUNDRED FORTY-FIVE of a review of a history lesson paid for in blood and treasure fifty-years ago…
2 NOVEMBER 1966… THE NEWS AT HOME by the New York Times… A partly cloudy and drizzly Wednesday in Brooklyn… not pretty…
Page 1: “Brezhnev Defying Peking Defends Ties With West”… “Leonid I. Brezhnev today defended the Soviet Union’s interest in funding ways to cooperate with Western governments, thus defying Chinese criticism that such efforts amount to collision with enemies of Communism. In a survey of Kremlin’s policy, the Communist party leader had no kind words for the United States but his strongest charges were directed at Chins. His references to possibilities for East-West cooperation seemed positive by contrast.”… Page 2: “Cuba and North Korea Ask World Red Force In Vietnam”…”Cuba and North Korea have called on all socialist countries to send an international force of troops to help North Vietnam and the Vietcong fight against ‘Yankee Imperialism.’ The call appeared in a joint communique issued after a previously unannounced visit to North Korea by…Deputy Premier Raul Castro and published in today’s Cuban Press.” … Page 3: “Key Stride Seen In Chinese Test”… “Communist China again used enriched uranium as the weapons material for its fourth atomic test last week. The fact that China has been able to produce enough enriched uranium for four atomic explosions indicates that it has mastered the technologically demanding task of producing the material in quantity.”…
Page 13: “New G.I. Bill Aids 250,000 Students” …Nearly 250,000 veterans have gone to college this fall with the aid of a new G.I. Bill. Under the measure signed by President Johnson on March 3 honorably discharged veterans with more than 180-days active military service since January 31, 1955 are eligible for educational housing and other benefits…All told an unmarried veteran may receive $3,000 from the Government to help finance his education. A married veteran may get up to $5,400.”… Page 1: “Autopsy Photos Put In Archives By the Kennedys”…”Photographs and x-rays taken of President Kennedy’s body at the autopsy were turned over to the National Archives yesterday by the Kennedy family. This was disclosed by the Justice Department which said that under an agreement with the family the 65 x-rays, color slides and black and white negatives would be available to federal law enforcement agencies. However, for the next five years access by scholars and other unofficial investigators will be granted only with the consent of the family.”
Page 1: “U.S. Jet Patrol Boats Smash A Vietcong Flotilla”…”United States Navy patrol boats intercepted a Vietcong battalion attempting to cross the Mekong River last night and sank 35 sampans and junks in a two-hour battle. Navy helicopters sank 15 other sampans that the patrol boats herded into the narrow, twisting waterways along the bank. It was the most spectacular victory the American patrol boats had won since they went into action in Vietnam in June. Most of the fighting was done by one four-man crew of a 31-foot fiberglass patrol boat commanded by a bluff-bald boatswains mate first class James E. (Willie) Williams of Darlington, South Carolina. Also cited for heroics was a gunner Seaman Rubin G. Binder.”… oohrah… Navy Cross?…
2 NOVEMBER 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…NYT (3 Nov reporting 2 Nov ops) Page 15: “Air Raids Stepped Up”…”The skies cleared over North Vietnam yesterday and United States pilots flew 122 bombing missions, each involving two planes or more. It was one of the heaviest attacks in four weeks. The pilots smashed at targets on the fringe of Haiphong, the major port, Hanoi, the capital, and through the long slender panhandle region adjacent to South Vietnam. Ground fire downed a Navy A-4 Skyhawk and its pilot was listed as missing. (LT ALLAN RUSSELL CARPENTER, POW) The Skyhawk was the 414th plane lost over North Vietnam. One flight of A-4s carrying rockets attacked a surface to air missile site five miles from Haiphong destroying two missiles and launchers and inflicting other damage. Six flights of Air Force F-105 Thunderchiefs and F-4Cs bombed the Viet tri railroad yard 30 miles northwest of Hanoi, cutting rails and destroying several military buildings. United States Air Force pilots said today (Nov 3) they devastated a missile site in…North Vietnam in strikes that began in daylight and continued into the night. The sites are 3 miles north-northwest of Dong Hoi and flights of F-105s, F-4Cs and F-104s struck the area with 500-pound bombs. Three missiles and four launchers were destroyed and three other launchers were heavily damaged. During the night F-4C Phantoms returned to hit the site and set off secondaries.”…
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were two fixed wing aircraft downed in Southeast Asia on 2 November 1966…
(1) MAJOR ROBERT EARL KLINE was flying an F-105D of the 421st TFS and 388th TFW out of Korat on an armed reconnaissance mission along the railway running northwest out of Hanoi and was strafing a train 30 miles northwest of Yen Bai when hit by ground fire and flew into the ground. MAJOR KLINE had been downed and rescued a week earlier. On 2 November 1966 MAJOR KLINE was Killed in Action on the attack and is remembered on this day fifty years later…
(2) CAPTAIN R.F.LOKEN was flying and F-105D of the 421st TFS and 388th TFW out of Korat on an armed reconnaissance mission along the same route and was downed on a strafing run 25 miles northwest of Yen Bai. CAPTAIN LOKEN was able to fly his damaged aircraft back into Laos before it became un-flyable. He ejected and was rescued by helicopter to fight again another day… tough day for the 421st…
RIPPLE SALVO… #245… History 101, “Professor” Vance Hartke on the Cost of the Vietnam War… (Page 106-107) of his 1968 book: “The American Crisis in Vietnam”)…
“From 1929 until the early 1950’s Americans were preoccupied with a succession of major crises: the depression, World War II, the rise of the cold war, the Korean War, the McCarthy controversy. The remainder of the 1950’s was a time of complacency, a turning away from these disagreeable involvements of the recent past and a time of concern with narrower personal affairs.
“But in the 1960’s we began to perceive that a whole range of domestic problems required urgent attention. The period of complacency was ending our society began to look at itself more critically. The American people agreed that there was much to be done to improve the conditions of American life, to bring its realities closer to its potentials.
“In other words, there were many problems which had been brought about by the changing patterns of life in the mid-20th century. Previously, our energies had been involved elsewhere and were not available to be channeled to meet the problems. The period 1960-1965 was distinguished by the growing awareness of the importance and magnitude of these problems. Also, there was a growing agreement, until 1965, that our society should attempt to resolve these problems.
“This movement reached its peak in the election of 1964 and carried into 1965. Here was the clear and ringing commitment to repair the malfunctions in American society. Here was the sanction by the voters that the basis for American leadership was the sterling example of the quality of American life. Here was the promise that we should not and could not send American boys to do the job that Asian boys should be doing.
“The energies devoted to fighting this war, the divisive splits among Americans, the promises broken, these are the costs of the Vietnam War. These conditions categorically preclude the patient and expensive task of improving the domestic environment.
“The riots during the summer of 1967 (and 1965 and 1966 before that) were namely the most striking and frightening symptom of the failure to meet the pressing domestic needs. The dilemmas of both urban and farm societies do not riot. Higher taxes do not riot. Air pollution and water pollution do not riot. The critical shortages in social, educational, and health services do not riot. If they did, perhaps more people would come to realize the mounting costs of the war in Vietnam.
“We have been told again and again by the administration that the United States is rich enough to pay for both Vietnam and domestic improvements. However appealing this may be as a theory, the realities demonstrate that such an idea is pure nonsense.
“Most people who examine the past and the facts will comprehend that American society will not undertake two efforts of such magnitude simultaneously. Walter Lippmann put this idea succinctly when he wrote that advocating the sentiment that our society ‘can have two overwhelming preoccupations at the same time is the mark of an amateur.’
‘It is a paradox and a tragedy that skilled and talented leadership has come to rightfully deserve being judged as ‘amateur.’ This is the cost of the Vietnam War.”
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History lesson is over. Learn anything? The amateurs we have put in charge of our Democratic Republic, with only one exception in the last fifty years I can think of, have been experts at “kicking cans down the road,” and little else. So next week we get to choose between two very poor choices to lead us out of the “magnitude of problems” piled up by fifty years of ignoring the lessons of history. Buckle up… in fact, I heard a very wise and respected sage say on TV tonight: “The civil war begins the day after the election.”
Lest we forget….. Bear ……… –30– ………..