RIPPLE SALVO… #215… AN LBJ STAFFER SHARES SOME SECOND THOUGHTS…but first…
Good Morning: Day TWO HUNDRED FIFTEEN of a return to the air war over North Vietnam fifty years ago…
2 OCTOBER 1966… FRONT PAGE NEWS AT HOME–NEW YORK TIMES… A partly cloudy Sunday–good day to read a 500-page newspaper…
Page 1: “Soviet Bloc Aides Stage A Walkout At Peking’s Parade”…”Soviet Bloc diplomats walked off the reviewing stand at today’s National Day parade in protest against a speech by Defense Minister Lin Piao charging the Kremlin with plotting with Washington over Vietnam. Mr. Lin Piao, the second ranking party leader, told a crowd of 1,500,000 that the Chinese would carry through to the end their struggle against ‘revisionism,’ the term applied by the Chinese to the Soviet brand of Communism. Today’s ceremonies marked the inauguration of the People’s Republic of China in Peking in October 1949 during the collapse of Chinese Nationalist armies to Communist armies. The Nationalists were totally expelled from the mainland of China by early 1950 ending a civil war that had flared in the aftermath of World War II. Mao Tse-tung and other party and government leaders reviewed the parade of teenage Red Guards from the balcony of the golden roofed Tienanmen (Gate4 of Heavily Peace). The Communist diplomats who walked off represented the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Mongolia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The representatives of Rumania, North Korea, North Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Cuba and Albania were among the envoys who stayed…About 5,000 troops took part in the parade. It was the first time since 1959 that troops had taken part in the parade. After the troops came the Red Guards. Young shock troops of the current campaign against bourgeois tendencies, each having Mao’s Little Red Book in hand. A few portraits of Chairman Mao bobbed above the huge column, which took more than four hours to pass. According to official estimates, two million Red Guards marched past taking up the entire width of the main thoroughfare through Peking.”... Lin Piao speech notes: “China is not flinching from maximum national sacrifice, we are determined to give firm support to the fraternal Vietnamese people in carrying the war of resistance against the United States aggressors and for national salvation through to the end. He said China ‘would carry the struggle against modern revisionism, with the leadership of the Soviet Union party at the center through to the end…Our national defense has never been so strong.”…
Page 1: “67.5 Of Negroes Fail Draft Test”…”Two thirds of the 18-year old Negroes who took armed forces qualification tests in an 18-month period failed them on mental grounds. Among non-Negro 18-year olds tested in the same period, the failure rate was 18.8 per cent. These statistics were provided by the Defense Department from the tests it administers to all candidates for induction, both draftees and enlistees.”… Page 1: “Haiti Fears 1,000 Die In Hurricane”…”Hurricane Inez churned out of flooded Cuba tonight and drew a bead on Southern Florida. It left behind an estimated total of at least 1,000 dead in Haiti and more than 200 in other parts of the Caribbean. But the weather service said Inez was growing weary after five days of onslaught and by midnight had been reduced to a tropical storm and headed for the Florida Keys. Inez will be abeam Miami midday Sunday.”… Page 3: “Population Data On China Studied”…”The State Departments Chief geographer has suggested that Communist China’s population may now exceed 800-million and may even be approaching 900 million…Chinese officials sometimes refer to the population as 700 million.”… Page 3: “Eisenhower Asked To Detail War Review”…”Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana suggested today that former President Eisenhower explain to President Johnson what he believes is needed to win the Vietnam War…Senator Mansfield, who has oppose escalation of the war, said he was sure Mr. Johnson would receive any Eisenhower suggestions ‘most gratefully and consider them seriously and with great respect.”… Page 6: “Stunting Plane Kills 5 In a Crash In Saigon”…”A South Vietnamese Air Force fighter-bomber that failed to pull out of a barrel roll during a Vietnamese Boy Scout air show crashed in the heart of the heavily populated Tan Son Nhut airport. At least five persons including the pilot were killed and 25 injured as 25,000 watched the tragedy unfold.”…
2 OCTOBER 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… NYT (3 Oct reporting 2 Oct ops) Page 7: “In North Vietnam yesterday overcast skies held American fighter-bomber pilots to 111 attack missions involving more than one aircraft. Fifteen waves of Navy jets hammered at the Phuly railroad bridge and railyard 35 miles south of Hanoi yesterday. Smoke and debris from bombs of 250 to 1,000 pounds prevented a detailed assessment of the damage, but at least two of the spans of the 235-foot bridge had been collapsed. The raids were another in a series of concentrated attacks on transportation facilities by the Navy. The bridge is on the main rail line leading to Hanoi. An F-4B Phantom pilot assigned to protect the pilots attacking the bridge against enemy jets said he picked some type of jet aircraft on his radar, gave chase and fired on air-to-air missile that missed. An F-105D Thunderhief crashed during yesterday’s raids bringing to 389 the number of American planes lost in the air war over North Vietnam. The pilot was listed as missing.” … “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson)… Four fixed wing aircraft lost in southeast Asia on 2 October 1966… (pages 77-78)…
(1) CAPTAIN N.R. LOCKARD was flying an F-104C of the 435th TFS and 388th TFW out of Udorn on an armed reconnaissance mission in Barrel Roll eight miles southeast of Sam Neua and in the process of executing a strike rolling in from 10,000-feet on a truck park when hit by a surface-to-air missile. CAPTAIN LOCKARD ejected in the target area and was snatched from the ground by a USAF or Air America helicopter just ahead of enemy troops…
(2) CAPTAIN J.W.LACASSE and 1LT A.L. WORKMAN were flying an F-4C of the 497th TFS and 8th TFW out of Ubon on Night Owl reconnaissance mission over the Ho Chi Minh trail and in the attack on an enemy base camp when hit by AAA 20 miles northwest of Dongha. CAPTAIN LACASSE was able to fly the stricken Phantom to a point 10-miles off Hue before ejecting. CAPTAIN LACRASSE was picked up by an Air Force helicopter. 1LT WORKMAN was rescued by a Navy ship.
(3) CAPTAIN JEROME JOSEPH SMITH, 1LT JAMES HOWARD GRAFT, 1LT DAVID ALBERT THORPE, SSGT RAYMOND LEE WHEELER, and A1C BILLY JACK CLAYTON were flying a C-130E or the 776th TCS and 314th TCW out of Ching Chuan Kang and went down 16 miles south of Cam Ranh Bay, possibly as the result of combat action. The Herc was on an in-country airlift mission. There were no survivors. CAPTAIN SMITH, 1LT GRAFT, 1LT THORPE, SSGT WHEELER and A1C CLAYTON perished, Killed in Action, 50-years ago this day in the service of our country. We are all so fragile…
(4) LT CHARLES CELLAR, LT LARRY SHARP, ADJ2 DALE CLARK and an unidentified sailor who was on board the aircraft as a result of extraordinary performance of duty, were flying an A-3B of VAH-2 (detachment A) on USS CORAL SEA. As the aircraft was catapulted, the bridle parted from the aircraft and the aircraft went over the side and hit the water inverted. All five aboard escaped the sinking aircraft and were rescued by the Coral Sea plane guard helicopter. Now, there is something for a young sailor to write home about…
RIPPLE SALVO… #215… ON SECOND THOUGHT… Fifteen year ago when I retired a second time, I went to work on my “bucket list.” At the top of the list was a month of finding out what was in the archives of our country, including the Presidential libraries. My specific area of interest was the history and development of dive bombing and everything I could scoop up about Rolling Thunder. The Presidential Libraries are exciting repositories for the details of history and I spent several days reading and copying (unclas) material made available by dedicated archivists at each of the libraries of Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ and FDR on a six week swing in 2002. I came back to Ogden with 600-ponds of raw material… A mother lode of nuggets and dust… like this one….
From the LBJ Library at Austin: I was searching for the details of what LBJ was doing during those months when I was having fun removing bridges and such in a little agrarian country in Southeast Asia. Box after box of folders went across my table in the research library. I swam in the history of the mid and late 1960s. A folder containing the records of an LBJ “presidential assistant” William Blackburn holds this testimonial for all of time… I quote…
“I unfortunately display (in my oral history) a rather cavalier attitude toward our involvement, and while I think that that is more superficial than my views at the time, I must admit to having formed that attitude while working in the highly, and obviously biased, atmosphere of the White House. During the following decade, I have been influenced by discussions pro and con, over our involvement in Viet Nam, and by the revelation of facts unknown to me, and to most of my associates at the White House during the period of 1967 and 1968….Unquestionably, one of the aspects of this ‘Greek tragedy’ was the assumption that our people, our political climate, and our economy could sustain both a full commitment in Viet Nam and the unparalleled commitment to social problems proposed by the Johnson Administration. These difficulties, combined with the moral questions raised by the many citizens who were concerned over the war, especially the new breed of young people with whom we in the Administration had no dialogue, inevitably led to disillusionment and discord.” (“new breed”=Baby Boomers)…
What an important lesson the LBJ years left for our consideration. “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”
LBJ had two loves: his dream of a Great Society where everybody had a job, a college education, a house, and a quality life in a society where poverty was a thing of the past. LBJ also believed with all his heart that America would go anywhere and do anything necessary to defend freedom wherever in the world it was threatened, like Viet Nam in the 1960s. LBJ wanted Guns AND Butter, and wound up with neither.
Here we are, fifty years later, ignoring the lessons of history, mired in the same unrealistic reach and dreams of the progressives relentlessly striving for both “a great society” and a world where freedom reigns, thanks to the American worker. It ain’t going to happen. In the words of LBJ Staffer Blackburn: …” one of the aspects of the “Greek tragedy” was the assumption that our people, our political climate, and our economy could sustain both a full commitment in Viet Nam and the unparalleled commitment to social problems proposed by the Johnson Administration.” Guns AND Butter. 2016: A reprise of the LBJ Greek tragedy!
Lest we forget… Bear ………. –30– ……….