RIPPLE SALVO… #536… THOMAS POWERS: “It was hard to avoid a certain sick feeling of doubt about the nature of the country that could cause so much suffering and destruction, to itself, to its friends, and to the enemy in a cause it could not even define.”… but first…
Good Morning: Day FIVE HUNDRED THIRTY-SIX of remembering and recognizing the great and unrestrained sacrifices made following the orders of the officers appointed over us…
24 AUGUST 1967… HEAD LINES from The New York Times, “The Gray Lady,” on a drizzly Thursday in NYC…
SUMMER IN AMERICA 1967: Page 1: “20 U.S. OBSERVERS GOING TO VIETNAM TO WATCH VOTING–GROUP NAMED BY JOHNSON INCLUDES GOVERNORS, CIVIC LEADERS AND CLERGYMEN–FULBRIGHT DECLINES BID–FURTHER ACCEPTANCE LIKELY TODAY–ALL WILL FUNCTION ON INDIVIDUAL BASIS”… “…observers to go to South Vietnam to check on fairness of the political campaign and elections there… will leave on Monday (Aug 28) and return about September 6, three days after the election.”… Page 1: “Meany Endorses A Tax Rise To Let All Share In War–But Labor Leader Calls For Equity of Sacrifice Based On Ability to Pay–Differs With Johnson–Tells House Hearing Levy On Business Should Be Twice That On Individual”... “The AFL-CIO endorsed a tax increase today as a means of averting a new period of high interest rates and of enabling all Americans to share the sacrifice involved in the war in Vietnam… Page 7: “New GI Benefits Clear Congress; 5 Million Covered”... “New $285.6-million GI Bill covering 5-million GIs who have served since 1955…Sent to the White House with 88-0 vote. Vietnam veterans–those in service since August 5, 1964 will get a little more than others. They or their widows and children will be entitled to wartime level pensions, medical benefits, and burial allowances.”... Page 1: “Priorities Sought On Aid To Cities–Urban League Puts This Effort Ahead of Vietnam War”… “…the problems of poverty and urban blight comes first, says Whitney Young. …a matter of guns or butter. ‘Our first commitment is to people here that takes preference over commitments to any foreign wars.”…
VIETNAM: Page 1: “Soviet Warns U.S. Of Escalation Peril”… “The Soviet Union warned the United States today that the current intensification of American military action in Vietnam would bring inevitable retaliation. Moscow gave no hint however of who would take the retaliation steps, or what that might consist of. The ominous but cautionary worded warning contained no explicit threat of direct Soviet military intervention.”… Page 2: “Pentagon Says Jets Downed In China Were Fleeing MIGs”...”The two U.S. Navy A-6 Intruder downed in Communist China on Monday were last seen maneuvering into clouds to escatpe from North Vietnamese MIG-s. The pilots were identified as LCDR Jimmy Buckley, LCDR Robert J. Flynn, LTJG Dain Scott and LTJG Forrest Trembley. All four are carried as “missing or dead.”… Page 5: “In the ground war North Vietnamese gunners hit USMC with 100 rounds of mortar near Camp Carroll, 10 miles south of the DMZ killing two Marines and wounding 16. There were no reports of enemy casualties.”…
24 AUGUST 1967…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…New York Times (25 Aug reporting 24 ops) Page 1: “13th U.S. Jet Lost In North Vietnam In a Week–6 aircraft Downed Near Hanoi In One Day–At Least Two MIGs are Destroyed”… “Air attacks on the Hanoi region Wednesday (23 Aug) cost the United States six warplanes and only one of the eleven crew members on the aircraft was rescued. One F-105 has been shot down by ground fire during raids on North Vietnamese rail lines. It was the 660th plane lost in the air war in North Vietnam…. Six planes were shot down Monday (21 Aug). Two Air Force F-4 Phantoms were shot down by MIG-21s during seven dogfights Wednesday (23rd) as pilots met some of the heaviest opposition of the war from MIGs, anti-aircraft fire, and surface-to-air missiles..
“An Air Force pilot, First Lieutenant David B. Waldrop, 25-years old, of Nashville shot down two MIG-17s in one engagement. Major Billy R. Givens,35 of Dunmore, KY., scored hits on another MIG-17 and was credited with a probable kill. (1LT Waldrop’s second kill was not approved, even though Colonel Robin Olds was on the flight and endorsed the claim, but that’s another story for a slow RTR news day).
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There was one fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 24 August 1967…
(1) CAPTAIN JAY CRIDDLE HESS was flying an F-105D of the 357th TFS and 355th TFW out of Takhli on a strike on the Lang Dang railway marshalling yards 25 miles northeast of Kep and was hit by ground fire in his dive on the target. He was able to keep the heavily damaged Thunderchief airborne for the time required to safely eject . He was captured immediately and held as a POW until released in March 1973.
RIPPLE SALVO… #536… Humble Host goes to Thomas Powers’ “Vietnam: The War at Home” for an assessment of the national mood in our divided country in the summer of 1967, and an assessment that matches mine. I was at Lemoore, California preparing to return to Yankee Station for a second cruise in VA-113 flying brand new A-4Fs off the spacious deck of USS Enterprise. Walter Cronkite was in our living room every night to spin the news….
Powers gets his assessment done in two paragraphs… (Oh, by the way. Could this be an accurate description of USA Summer 2017???) Page 228…
“In the fall of 1967 the number of people convinced beyond doubt that the war was militarily hopeless or morally unjustified was far smaller than the number uneasily wondering if it would ever solve anything, or ever end. The number of people who opposed the war was far smaller than the number worried about its effects on the emotional climate of the United States. This huge, uneasy public probably would have preferred to forget the whole business, but they were not allowed to forget. It was slowly becoming apparent that the war was exacting a terrible cost, not one of the usual sort, perhaps, since the United States was far too large, distant, and powerful to be threatened by North Vietnam, but a cost of a subtler kind.
“The vast public which had been ready to let the President act as he thought best in the summer of 1964, supporting him when he bombed North Vietnam and supporting him when he promised no wider war, was beginning to turn away, wondering if the country could rally afford the war. it was worried by the alienation of its children, the violence of the cities, the bitterness between the races, and the fearsome questions raised by the sort of war we had chosen to fight. It was hard to avoid a certain sick feeling of doubt about the nature of a country that could cause so much suffering and destruction, to itself, to its friends, and to its enemy, in a cause it could not even define.”
RTR QUOTE for 24 August: EPICTETUS, Discourses: “We should do everything cautiously and confidently at the same time.”…
Lest we forget… Bear