RIPPLE SALVO… #932… NEW YORK TIMES correspondent Bernard Weinraub reporting from Saigon. But first…
GOOD MORNING… Day NINE HUNDRED THIRTY-TWO of recall of the forty-four months of the bombardment of North Vietnam in an air campaign coded OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER.
HEAD LINES from The New York Times on Monday 23 September 1968…
THE WAR: Page 1: “FOE SLAYS PRISONERS OF WAR REFUSING TO FLEE–VIECONG SAID TO HAVE SHOT 20 WHO CHOSE TO STAY IN RAIDED COMPOUND”… “Twenty prisoners of war were shot to death early today by a Vietcong force seeking to rescue them from a South Vietnamese prisoner of war camp, according to a South Vietnamese spokesman for the South Vietnamese military command. He said the prisoners were killed after they had refused to leave the camp with the soldiers who attacked it after a heavy mortar assault drove the South Vietnamese guards away. The incident occurred at the POW compound at Binhson, 18 miles north of the city of Quangngai….70 civilians in the nearby town were wounded in the mortar attack..nine South Vietnamese soldiers in the camp were killed….. Ground fighting throughout the country was light and scattered. Two American helicopters were shot down 19 miles north of Pleiku as they were trying to land. Both craft were destroyed and nine crew members were injured. Near the Rockpile, the Marine artillery base just south of the DMZ, a Marine helicopter on a supply mission was brought down by enemy ground fire. The fate of the six persons aboard was not known….ENEMY REGIMENTAL CAMP DESTROYED… Dongha… United States Marines rummaged through a North Vietnamese regimental base camp in the DMZ today, counting equipment and supplies and blowing up bunkers. Officers of the Marine Corps headquarters 10 miles below the DMZ said that no fighting had been reported at the base. The marines worked in a driving monsoon rain that sometimes limited visibility to 2100 yards and sharply reduced the use of helicopters.”…
PEACE: State Department. Office of Historian. Historical Document. Foreign Relations, Vietnam, 1964-68, Volume 7. Document 30 is a telegram from Walt Rostow to the President at his ranch in Texas. Rostow summarized the status of the Peace talks in Paris, drew some tentative conclusions and submitted a draft of a “Contingency Presidential Statement” that laid out the elements of an agreement to cease the bombardment of North Vietnam. This is a four-star history lesson… Read at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v07/d30
Page 1 Head Lines: … “HUNDREDS SEIZED IN MEXICO CLASHES–ONE KILLED AND DOZENS INJURED DURING A NIGHT OF FIGHTING BY STUDENTS AND POLICE”… “RUSSIAN ADVISORS POUR INTO PRAGUE–Long Stay Seen–Most Are Expected To Be Assigned To Ministers Of Defense And Interior–Many Families Arriving–Czechs Hope For Autonomy In Domestic Affairs Dims–Soviet In New Attacks”– “HUMPHREY IN OHIO SEES HOPE DESPITE DIM OUTLOOK“… “SOVIET GUIDES LUNAR SHIP TO INDIAN OCEAN LANDING–UNMANNED CRAFT TOOK ON ‘VAST’ DATA IN CIRCLING MOON— Feat May Stir Pressure For a More Ambitious Early U.S. Mission”…
23 SEPTEMBER 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (24 Sept reporting 23 Sept ops) Page 4: “Over the North, American pilots, still hampered by bad weather, carried out 76 missions against suspected enemy targets. This was about 40 multi-aircraft missions fewer than are usually flown daily.”…
VIETNAM: AIR LOSSES (Chris Hobson) There were two fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 23 September 1968…
(1) LCDR DALE H. OSBORNE was flying an A-4F of the VA-55 Warhorses embarked in USS Hancock and participating in an armed reconnaissance mission when downed by 37-mm ground fire. He was executing a Zuni Rocket run oon a barge in a waterway 10 miles north of Vinh when hit in the cockpit. He was unable to control the aircraft–the shell burst disabled his right hand, arm, and his left leg. He lost consciousness briefly, and with difficulty was able to eject from the crippled aircraft. He was captured immediately upon touching down by a group of approximately 15 Vietnamese. In his words: “After an extremely torturous trip North, I finally arrived in Hanoi on the 10th of October. I was completely desiccated, emaciated, and in moribund state. I was incarcerated with Cdr. Brian Woods and I credit him with saving my life. I was confined in several prison camps in the Hanoi area during my 4 and 1/2 years of captivity. I was listed as Missing in Action for over a year. I was released to the American authorities at Gia Lam Airport, Hanoi, Vietnam on 12 February 1973.”… COMMANDER OSBORNE was awarded the SILVER STAR, LEGION OF MERIT with VALOR V, the BRONZE STAR with VALOR V and two PURPLE HEARTS among other combat awards during the period of his gallant service in Vietnam.
Humble Host snipped the following from a July 1998 Salt Lake Tribune article by Jon Ure… “Osborne remembers his missiles screaming toward their target. While veering his fighter away from the ground fire, anti-aircraft flak plastered his cockpit. His right hand was shattered. His left arm and legs were peppered with shrapnel and blood was oozing from a head wound. He slipped in and out of consciousness. ‘I nailed them better before they got me but it was a terrific ride. I had about 50 holes in me…’he explains. ‘I remember thinking calmly that I was close to the ground–tht I ws going in. I thought, I’ve got to get out of here, but my right hand wouldn’t work. I ejected using my left hand. I came to and I lay stripped naked on the ground. Thankfully, the military surrounded me.’ Osborne fears civilians would have tortured him to death on the spot. Instead he lived for the next 4 and 1/2 years in a nightmare purgatory. He barely escaped death on a seemingly endless march to the ‘Hanoi Hilton.’ Once, he awoke in a hole while enemy soldiers, thinking he was dead, shoveled dirt on him. the battered airman was nearly left for dead two more times. And on several occasions he woke to find rats feeding on his open wounds. ‘It was an ungodly 17-day trip,’ Osborne recalls. ‘They would take me from village to village and kids would hit me with their sticks.’…. In 1969, a fellow POW got caught trying to escape. ‘They beat him to death,’ Osborne explains. ‘All night I could hear him moaning and groaning in the next cell.’ Guards would revive the injured prisoner only to pound him back to unconsciousness. ‘The next morning, the cell was cleaned out,’ Osborne says. ‘I don’t see how anybody can do that. Some of the guards were compassionate though.’… “
There is another article in Commander Osborne’s cloud of information. He pounded on a University of Utah antiwar dissident who was burning an American flag… The cops held Dale back and took him away… Don’t mess with a Utah Light Attacker…. oohrah…
(2) LCDR DAVID FRANCIS CALLAGHAN was flying an A-4E of the VA-106 Gladiators embarked in USS Intrepid and suffered a generator failure while on a test flight over the Gulf of Tonkin. He returned to the ship to make a precautionary landing. He executed a long straight-in approach and was “on the ball” until close-in when the aircraft suddenly dropped a left wing and crashed into the port side of the flight deck and the LSO platform. The inexplicable accident killed LCDR CALLAGHAN and LT ROBERT W. HARRIS, who was among the LSOs on the platform. AN3 BOBBY L. SPENCER, the LSO phone talker on the platform, was seriously injured and died shortly afterward in the ship’s operating room.
Humble Host salutes three young Americans who perished this day 50 years ago in a disastrous carrier deck accident while conducting combat operations. But is dismayed to discover that while LT ROBERT HARRIS and AIRMAN SPENCER are on the “Wall of Faces,” LCDR CALLAGHAN has been overlooked– “Died while flying (accident)”??? No name on “The Wall”? Somebody tell me I’m wrong, please…
(Webmaster note: While LCDR CALLAGHAN is inexplicably not on Wall of Faces, the record of his loss is on Vietnam Air Losses)
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) ON THE FOUR 23 SEPTEMBER DATES FOR THE FOUR YEARS OF THE OPERATION OVER NORTH VIETNAM…
1965, 1966, 1967… NONE…
1968… LCDR DALE H. OSBORNE, USN… (POW)…
RIPPLE SALVO… #932… THE NEW YORK TIMES of Monday, 23 September 1968, Page 1:
“ENEMY STRATEGY IN VIETNAM A PUZZLE” by BERNARD WEINRAUB…
“Saigon, South Vietnam, Sept. 22 — Each morning and evening in Saigon, the United States command announces the combat actions and losses in Vietnam. With grinding and undramatic repetitiveness, the actions continue and the losses mount. The week before last, 217 Americans were killed in Vietnam–a figure neither unusually high nor low in a week of sporadic violence.
“To some knowledgeable Americans here, the war since the enemy offensive during Tet, the Lunar New Year in late January, and especially in the last few months, has slurred into a series of holding actions and abortive enemy attacks with aims that are unclear and confusing. To others, the substantive enemy losses since Tet, the sharpened allied tactics, the apparent–but torturously slow–improvement in the South Vietnamese Army, the unrelenting pressure of helicopter gunships, tactical aircraft and B-52 strikes have clearly blunted the efforts of the North Vietnamese, who are now, in a favorite military term, ‘hurting.’
“What is the enemy seeking? How badly hurt are the Vietcong and North Vietnamese?” Have the tactics of both sides changed since the Tet offensive”. The contradictions of the war since the shock of the Tet offensive puzzle even the more optimistic military officers. On the one hand, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong have sustained heavy casualties this year. Since Jan. 20–10 days before the first of the nationwide attacks of the Tet period– nearly 140,000 have been killed according to official allied figures. During all of 1967 about 90,000 were killed. On the other hand, the infiltration from North Vietnam has replenished the losses and there appears to be endless stream of manpower ready to fight the allied troops.
“The enemy troops are now young, appear inexperienced and are hampered by the loss of experienced officers over the last year. But the enemy’s weapons dazzle American officers. ‘The newer weapons they have are damned good,’ said one Army captain several days ago outside Saigon. ‘And don’t believe anyone who tells you that they have an ammunition or food problem. They don’t.’ A large proportion of the enemy troops now have AK-47 and AK-50 automatic weapons, while last year many of them were equipped with bolt-action carbines. In addition, the enemy is now using, in increasing numbers, wide ranging 82-mm mortars–as well as 75-mm instead of 57-mm recoilless rifles.
“There are other contradictions and certainly confusions since Tet. The enemy vows to fight, but moves through protracted periods of lull. He promises to liberate cities but attacks Special Forces camps. He proclaims close ties to the peasant and urban worker, but over the last month terrorism is cities and refugee camps has intensified.
TERROR AND ROCKETS
“‘I honestly think they’re limited in what they can do now, said an American official who often takes a pessimistic view. ‘If they could have had another major offensive, they would have. They’re reduced now to terror and rockets.’ There appears little doubt that the enemy had planned a ‘third wave’ assault on the cities as a follow-up of the Tet attacks and the offensive of May, which had considerably less impact.but despite the threats of the enemy and the nervous warnings of attack by Americans and South Vietnamese, major coordinated assaults have not materialized since Tet. There are some Americans who now feel that the North Vietnamese and Vietcong–aware tht attacks on the major cities will not touch off popular uprisings as they had hoped during Tet–are shifting their aims from a massive assault on the cities to scattered attacks on civilians and military targets in the hope that prolonged period of such fighting will keep American casualties high during the Presidential campaign in the United States and thus spur antiwar sentiment. It would also help the North Vietnamese to bargain from a position of strength in the Paris talks.
“Still other American officials insist that the recent quickening of enemy activity–aimed, once again, at the American public and the Paris talks–is designed to draw American and South Vietnamese troops out of their defenses near the Saigon area and into the countryside. This would open up routes into Saigon. For nearby two months, from June until the middle of August, the war had settled into an uneasy lull. On August 17, the lull ended.
“The North Vietnamese began an aborted assault on the city of Tayninh, 50 miles northwest of Saigon. there followed enemy attacks at the Duclap Special Forces camp and in Locninh, near the district headquarters of Trangbang, northeast of Saigon and in the villages near the city of Danang. There were mortar and rocket attacks in the northern provinces, the Mekong Delta and, briefly, in Saigon. ‘In both Tayninh and Locninh that had the advantage of the Cambodian sanctuary nearby,’ said one military officer. ‘In both cases they tried to pull some American troops out of Saigon to open a wedge into the city. ‘Well we wouldn’t play their game,’ the officer went on. ‘We would take a whole brigade of the 25th (United States) Division and send them up to Tayninh.’
“A similar enemy tactic was used according to some military officers, at the Duclap Special Forces camp. The outpost is about 40 miles south east of the key central highlands city of Banmethuot. Some defending troops were moved out of Banmethuot in response to the Duclap thrust, but most remained in the city. ‘If you accept the premise that they want to draw troops out of the vital centers and then sweep behind them into these attacks make sense,’ said another military officer. ‘Other than that, the ultimate reasons for some of these attacks are confusing and we argue like hell about what they’re up to and what they’re capable of really doing.’
“In the view of many American military officers, the Tet offensive and the fighting that followed clearly altered the political-military balance of the war. Said one officer, ‘Since Tet, it’s more and more a straight military war with ultimate political objectives.’
MORE NORTH VIETNAMESE
“The major reason for the enemy emphasis on military activity is the sharply increased number of North Vietnamese fighting the Americans and the South Vietnamese. In the critical III Corps area around Saigon, for example, there were about 25,000 enemy combat troops and 25,000 local guerrillas fighting the allies before Tet. Virtually all the troops were Vietcong–guerrillas recruited in South Vietnam. Since Tet, the numbers of enemy troops in III Corps has not diminished. But nearby 85 percent or 21,250 of the combat troops are now North Vietnamese who have replaced the Vietcong, many of whom were killed or wounded.
“Some American officers think that the influx of North Vietnamese into Vietcong units since Tet has led to rivalry and anger. Even more relevant, however, is the impact of the northern troops on the military struggle in the south. ‘The increase of the N.V.A. (North Vietnamese Army) is counter-productive, just as too many Americans here would be counter productive, too,’ said a civilian official.
UNSURE OF TERRAIN
“‘They’re not too sure of the terrain, of the people, and they’ve got to operate in large units, unlike the VC,’ the official continued. ‘In many ways, this is to our advantage.’ Fighting carefully, the enemy appears to have altered some basic military tactics since Tet. Possibly because the North Vietnamese have taken over a large share of the fighting. American officers say, the enemy is clearly ‘more selective and less rigid. He’s not just blindly following orders,’ a military official in the Saigon area said. ‘Before Tet he apparently got orders to, say, ambush a convoy and he would just barge in and try to attack the convoy. Now he’ll wait for a smaller convoy or attack from, the rear. He is far more skillful.’
“Officials say that in many fights now the enemy is favoring a particular tactic: A heavy attack by mortars and rockets followed by a light ground p[robe. ‘They’ll send in one of two company-sized units to attack and then hope we’ll react sdo they can ambush us and get us to fight on their terms.’ The United States military effort since Tet appears in many ways, smoother and more effective that in previous years. A combined South Vietnamese and American intelligence effort, which began developing soon after Tet, appears headed for sure success. At least one result of the intelligence effort is the uncovering of huge weapons caches in recent weeks–week before last more than 90 tons of ammunition, weapons and rice were found. last week other substantial ammunition, mortar, rocket and food caches were uncovered in northern I Corps and in the Saigon area.
“General Creighton W. Abrams, Commander of American Forces in South Vietnam, has also stressed more flexible tactics in sweep operations, including the ‘pile on,’ in which units rush into an area when an engagement with the enemy begins and attempt to crush or cut off any enemy withdrawal. Possibly the single most important change as a result of Tet, however, was the decision by American commanders to try harder to reduce civilian casualties and avoid the destruction of towns and cities that the enemy had infiltrated. Such destruction was severe during Tet, especially in the Mekong Delta.”… End quote…
RTR Quote for 23 September: MAO TSE TUNG, Principles Of Operation, #9: “Replenish our strength with all the arms and most of the personnel captured from the enemy. Our army’s main sources of manpower and materiel are at the front.”…
Lest we forget… Bear