RIPPLE SALVO… #627… President Johnson’s Thanksgiving Day, 1967 Proclamation of 9 November 1967…
Good Morning: Day SIX HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN of a review of the years of Operation Rolling Thunder…
23 NOVEMBER 1967… HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a drizzly Thursday Thanksgiving Parade Day with afternoon clearing…
Page 1: “U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL VOTES BRITISH PROPOSAL ON MIDEAST CRISIS–Unanimous Move is First Concrete Step Since June to Open Door To Talks–Outlook Is Still Poor–Israelis And Arabs Indicate They Will Adhere to Old Standards”… “…a resolution establishing an even-handed framework for peace-making between Israel and the Arabs.”… Page 1: “Cyprus Tension Reaches Climax–West Seeks Calm–Turks Reject Greek Reply to Note–Envoys of Other Countries Offer Plans”... “The Cyprus crisis which put Greece and Turkey on a war footing for a week, reaching a climax tonight despite redoubled Western efforts to ease it.”... Page 1: “Johnson Dispatches Cyrus Vance To Consult Greeks and Turks”… Page 1: “Gold Buyers Aim Attack At Dollar–In London, Pool Finally Meets Huge Demand for Metal–House of Commons Backs Wilson”… Page 1: “Dakto Hill Falls to U.S. Soldiers–Battered Paratroops Struck By Heavy Mortar Barrage i Area Near Cambodia–4-Day Death Toll is 110–More Than 200 Wounded–900 North Vietnamese Reported Killed”…
23 November 1967…The President’s Daily Brief… SOVIET UNION: The long-waited space shot failed shortly after lift-off yesterday. We believe this was to have been an unmanned circumlunar mission. The Soviets could try again in the next day or so, but they probably want to wait and find out what went wrong…Next window: 20 December.
23 November 1967…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…New York Times (24 Nov reporting 23 Nov ops) Page 3: “In the air war bad weather over North Vietnam prevented strikes against Hanoi and Haiphong areas. A total of 108 strikes of multiple aircraft were flown. Most of them were directed at transportation targets and routes in the southern part of North Vietnam.”… 1LT Earl Henderson of the 469th TFW led one of these strikes. It was his 44th mission and he commented: “Led flight pretty good mission. I had real good bombs but no real results. Came back low-level again. We just missed a radio tower. Happy thanksgiving. R&R to Hawaii tomorrow.” The target was a POL storage area in Laos. Pilots from the 34th TFS attacked a target in RP I. Captain Jake Shuler was on the flight and recalled: “…it was apparently a secondary target about 10 miles northwest of Dong Hoi…we joined up with Misty 11, Captain Paul Magill and he led us to the target Working with the Misty FACs was enjoyable in that the performance of the F-100F was similar to the F-105 and these guys were experienced fighter pilots who knew target areas well.”…LCOL Rufus Dye of the 34th TFS flew his 15th mission and was controlled to a radar drop on the Ban LoBoy ford in southern Laos. “Combat Sky Spot–no BDA, Weather”… (Source “34/F-105” compiled by W.H. Plunkett)
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There was one fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 23 November 1967…
(1) MAJOR BRENDAN PATRICK FOLEY and LT RONALD MICHAEL MAYERCIK were flying an RF-4C of the 11th TRS and 432nd TRW out of Udorn on a night weather reconnaissance flight over North Vietnam and perished in the night. No voice or emergency beepers were ever heard. No radar contact was possible. No wreckage or remains have ever been found and they are listed as “presumptive finding of death” and killed in action fifty years ago this Thanksgiving… Our most somber thoughts are with the families of these two warriors, who remain where they fell.
RIPPLE SALVO… #627… THE PRESIDENT’S THANKSGIVING DAY, 1967 PROCLAMATION…
“The first American tradition grew out of gratitude for survival. It began–long before independence was a dream–with families responding on an even deeper human impulse. They had suffered the rigors of winter in a new world–and they had endured. They put aside their plows and thanked God for the harvest’s bounty.
“Over the years, we have made Thanksgiving a unique national occasion. Thanking God for his goodness, we thank him as well for the promise and the achievement of America. Our reasons for gratitude are almost without number. We are grateful for the endurance of our Government for one hundred eighty years. We are grateful that the founding fathers planned so wisely for the generations that followed them. We are grateful for a material abundance beyond any mankind has ever known. In our land, the harvest have been good.
“Much as we are grateful for these material and spiritual blessings, we are conscious, in this year, of special sorrows and disappointments. We are engaged in a painful conflict in Asia, which was not of our choosing, and which we are involved in fidelity to a sacred promise to help a nation which has been the victim of aggression. We are proud of the spirit of our men who are risking their lives on Asian soil. We pray that their sacrifice will be redeemed in an honorable peace and the restoration of a land long torn by war.
“We are grateful for the tremendous advances which have made in our generation in social justice and in equality of opportunity regardless of racial background. But we are saddened by the civil strife which has occurred in our great cities.
“Recognizing the trials we have endured and are enduring. I have turned to the Thanksgiving proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln faced, with equal emphasis, both the blessings and the sorrow’s of the people. He recommended to his fellow citizens that, ‘while offering up the ascriptions justly due to him for such singular deliveries an blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who here become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged.’
“In a similar spirit I ask my fellow citizens to join their thankfulness with penitence and humility. Let us implore Almighty God that, to all our other blessings of wisdom and perseverance that will lead us to both peace and justice in the family of nations and in our beloved of nations and in our beloved homeland.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, in consonance with Section 6103 of Title 5 of the United States Code designating the fourth Thursday of November in each year as Thanksgiving Day, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 23, 1967 as a day of national thanksgiving.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this ninth day of November in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred sixty-seven, and of the independence of America the one hundred and ninety-second.”… /s/ Lyndon B. Johnson
Have a happy Thanksgiving….
RTR Quote for 23 November: SENECA: “Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart”…
“God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over path and pine–
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget–lest we forget!”….. Bear…