RIPPLE SALVO… #472… THE FLIGHT DECK OF A “27 Charlie” AT YANKEE STATION IN LATE JUNE… but first…
Good Morning: Day FOUR HUNDRED SEVENTY-TWO of remembering an air war fought fifty years ago by great guys who gave a lot and some who gave all…
20 JUNE 1967… HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a cloudy, cool Tuesday on a Staten Island Ferry…
THE SIX DAY WAR AFTERMATH… “Kosygin Bids U.N. Penalize Israel–Eban Says Moscow Fosters War–Johnson Asks Arab-Israeli Talks–Russia Assails U.S. As Meddler Citing Policy in Vietnam”... “Premier Aleksie Kosygin asked the General Assembly today to demand Israel reparation for war damage to the Arab states, to condemn Israel as the aggressor and to call for the withdrawal of her victorious forces from Arab territory…He also called for an end to United States bombing of North Vietnam… “Arabs In Gaza Get Ultimatum To Turn in Weapons”…”The Israeli military governor of this occupied city threatened today to disband the local government and curtail services unless the Arab population began to turn in weapons.”… Page 19: James Reston: “Few Signs of Hope- first days of debate on the Mideast is mostly some harsh exchanges.”... “Nasser Heads Party, Takes Premiership“… “Thant Bars View of Dag Hammarskjold...that U.N. must hold to an agreement to maintain forces on the 1956 armistice live with Israel”…
Page 18: “President Johnson Address to National Foreign Policy Committee Conference for Educators in Washington…the excerpt concerning Vietnam…”I regret that this morning I cannot report any major progress toward peace in Vietnam. I can promise you that we have tried every possible way to bring about either discussions between the opposing sides, or a practical de-escalation of the violence itself. Thus far there has been no serious response from the other side. We are ready, and have been ready, to engage in a mutual de-escalation of the fighting. But we cannot stop only half the war, nor can we abandon our commitment to the People of South Vietnam as long as North Vietnam attempts to seize South Vietnam by force we must, and we will, block its efforts so that the people of South Vietnam can determine their own future in place. We would very much like to see the day come soon, where we can cooperate with all the nations of the region, including North Vietnam, in healing the wounds of a war that has continued, we think, far too long when the aggressor ends then that day will follow.”…
Page 20: “Romney Discerns Flop By Johnson”… “Governor George Romney said tonight that ‘President Johnson’s Great Society is a great flop.’ He spoke at a Republican fund-raiser and that followed a two-hour meeting with former President Eisenhower at his home in Gettysburg. He said: ‘The prevailing sentiment of the Democratic Party remains that every problem facing every person can be cured by government and money.”… Page 26: “Clay Draft Trial Opens in Houston–All-White Jury Impaneled–Rights Activists Arrive– Questioning of 84 Prospective Jurors Ongoing… H. Rap Brown On Scene:’Black people everywhere will retaliate if Clay was convicted.’ “… Page 26: “Goals Outlined For CORE Meeting”... “Floyd McKissick described the CORE concept of Black Power as ‘black people determining for themselves the course of action they will take toward gaining real power; political and economic power; a Black consumer bloc; the enforcement of federal laws, and the development of black political leaders and a positive black image.”…. Page 23: “Police In Atlanta Quell Negro Mob.”… “The police fired pistols an shotguns in the air tonight to disperse a mob of rock throwing Negroes that gathered near a shopping center after a fiery speech by Stokely Carmichael. A scene of racial disorder lasted for the two days.”…
20 June 1967…The President’s TS Daily CIA Brief… UNITED NATIONS:”Preliminary reaction to President Johnson’s speech yesterday has been generally favorable among UN representatives–other than the obvious exceptions. ARAB STATES: “Syria has issued what appears to be a call for guerrilla warfare against Israel. Radio Damascus yesterday urged Palestinians in Jordan’s West Bank and the Gaza strip to unite in a secret armed struggle to paralyze the Israeli economy and spread confusion until the Arabs can inflict a “final defeat” on Israel. CHINA-INDIA: India’s embassy in Peking is under the fourth straight day of siege. The round-the-clock Red Guard demonstrations on the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi last week. There is no telling at this point how long this will go on, but the Indians raised the ante again yesterday by sealing off the Chinese in their New ?Delhi compound.
20 JUNE 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (21 June reporting 20 June ops) Page 3: “In the air war American planes continued their steady pressure against North Vietnamese rail yards and lines near Hanoi. Air Force and Navy pilots flew 122 missions under clearing skies. Anti-aircraft fire was heavy but no aircraft were lost. Raids have now been made against railroad targets in the Hanoi area on 13 of the last 19 days. Thailand based F-105 Thunderchiefs blasted the Bacgiang generator plant and boiler house and other buildings in the plant complex were heavily damaged… (bear#106zunisniteBenthuy)
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chis Hobson) There was one fixed wing aircraft downed in Southeast Asia on 20 June 1967…
(1) MAJOR CHARLES LIGON CRONKITE, USMC was flying an F-8E of the VMF(AW)-232 Red Devils and MAG-11 out of Danang on a combat mission when the aircraft engine failed. Unable to get a restart, he was forced to eject over the Gulf of Tonkin. Inexplicably MAJOR CRONKITE did not survive and perished at sea fifty years ago this date.
RIPPLE SALVO… #472… SUMMER HAS ARRIVED: it will hit 120-degrees today in Southern Utah and here on Mount Ogden 60 miles south of Idaho we will see 100 for the first time this year. A good time to recall what real heat and summer discomfort was at Yankee Station fifty years ago. I was on Enterprise living in relative comfort. Life was bearable. Life was not the same on the smaller, older, fossil fuel burning Bon Homme Richard, Intrepid, Oriskany, Ticonderoga and Hancock. How miserable was it? Here is the way LTJG STEVE GRAY of the VA-212 “Rampant Raiders” described the flight deck on Bonnie Dick in June 1967… (page 245-6 of his super journal “Rampant Raider“)
“The fourth and final line period of the 1967 cruise began on 28 June. VA-212 was back to its normal airplane complement with battle damage repaired and the receipt of four refurbished A-4Es. We began by flying cyclic operations the first day….
“The oppressively hot weather made life on Yankee Station miserable. Summer was in full swing in the Gulf and many days were dead calm with little or no prevailing wind, forcing the ship to accelerate to nearly 30 knots to get the wind across the deck necessary for launch and recovery. The maximum-speed steaming ate up the ship’s available sea room in a hurry, so between launches the ship would steam dead slow with just enough way on to sustain rudder control. These between launch periods were the worst of ll–no breeze across the deck, temperatures in the high nineties, and relative humidity close to 100 percent. Adding to the sweaty misery of the flight deck crews were the emissions from the ship’s smokestack and galley exhausts, which blanketed the flight deck with no breeze to dissipate them. Choking stack gas would make the eyes water and saliva taste like copper. The flight deck crews had to perform hard physical labor at a frenetic pace in these conditions to ready the flight deck for launches and recoveries. Ordnance men loaded iron bombs, missiles, ammo cans, and the myriad other airborne tools of war using human muscle alone. Airplanes had to be shoved around the deck by hand, tie-down chains and chocks had to be carried from plane to plane, heavy refueling hoses had to be dragged to and from airplanes, and a hundred other things had to be done against the ticking clock before the next launch and recovery–heat, humidity, ans stack gas be damned. And damned they were, often and fluently by the sailors toiling in these unglamorous and unsung jobs.
“The ship would still be wallowing in the greasy troughs of the gentle swells when the pilots manned their airplanes. The relief of the breeze created when the ship began to accelerate to launch speed was indescribable as sweat-soaked flight suits gave up some of their moisture to evaporation. The relief was short-lived, however, when engines were started and the flight deck was bathed in jet fumes and heat from exhausts. The F-8 fighters were usually launched first, and when they were carrying external stores they had to use afterburners for launch. This made life on the flight deck even more miserable. Planes waiting for launch would have to lock their canopies down tight–not even a small crack between the canopy rail and canopy for ventilation–when the F-8s were using burners for takeoff. The greenhouse effect of the sun beating down on the Plexiglas would raise the temperatures in the cockpit to 130-degrees within minutes. The air conditioning on the A-4 was a compression-expansion type system that depended on engine RPM for volume of output. At idle RPM only a whisper of cool air would emanate from the cockpit’s eyeball vents.”
End quote.
The whisper of cool air would become a blast as you climbed away from the carrier after a cat shot, and for the next hour and forty-five minutes an A-4 driver lived in another world. Personal air conditioning. Back on the ship there was never any relief. Air conditioning? Not so as you would notice. In the engineering spaces the temperatures never got below 90 degrees and there were watch stations (upper level boiler watches) where the temperatures were 130-140 degrees. Young Firemen would put down one or two #10 cans of iced tea or water in a 30-minute watch, surviving by standing in a small column of cooler (90 degree) air piped in from an upper deck intake.
On our older carriers, the 27Charlies and the Midway class, the demand for air conditioning far exceeded the ability of the ship to supply much more than what was required to keep the electronics within temperature limits. The troops just had to grin and bear it. Life on a small deck at Yankee Station was no place for sissies.
RTR Quote for 20 January: ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.”...Humble Host suggests you ponder that message for a few moments.
What Brzezinski was saying, with a smile, was the Soviets chose an equivalent experience to ours in the quagmire that was Vietnam when they went to war in the quagmire that was, and always will be, Afghanistan. So why did we close our eyes and ignore both our Vietnam quagmire lesson and the Soviets quagmire experience in Afghanistan??? Why are we currently ignoring three vivid, undeniable and painful lessons: (1) more than a dozen years and 58,000 lives in Vietnam,; (2) the decade of the Soviets experience in Afghanistan; and, (3) our current lack of success in Afghanistan over the last 15 years… Are we stupid, or what?…
Lest we forget…. Bear