RIPPLE SALVO… #356… SHIFTING FROM PARK TO DRIVE… but first…
Good Morning: Day THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-FIVE of a return to the world of 1967 and the air war called Rolling Thunder… we are marking the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War one day at a time…
24 FEBRUARY 1967… HEAD LINES and a few sentences from The New York Times on Friday with light snow…
Page 1: “25,000 Men Start Big Allied Drive On Vietcong Area”…”American troops have begun what appears to be the largest offensive operation of the war in Vietnam. They drove today through swamps and jungles near the Cambodian border in search of secret headquarters of the Vietcong. More than 25,000 men, including two battalions of Vietnamese marines, were committed. They encountered only scattered sniper fire during the first 48-hours of the action, which began yesterday under a security blackout and suffered very light casualties, meaning that the units ability to carry out their mission is unimpaired. The operation bears the code name Junction City. It follows another massive drive, Operation Cedar Falls executed last month, and marked a quickening of the American effort to oust the Vietcong and their North Vietnam allies from a wide area north of Saigon. The Commander of the Second Field Force, LGEN Jonathan O. Seaman, said, ‘Our objective is to hit them wherever we can and as hard as we can.’ The area of the operation is a 144 square miles of swamp and jungle in Tayminh province….The first wave of the attack included an assault by 250 helicopters; 13 were hit by enemy ground fire and 2 were destroyed. four B-52 raids supported the operation.”…...Page 1: “Meany Endorses Johnson for ’68. Labor Union Hails Record of Congress and President”…
Page 1: “U.S Studies Cut in Army in Europe”... “The United States, pressed by financial strains in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is considering the withdrawal of an American division from West Germany by the middle of 1968. The unit is one of six divisions in Western Europe.”…
Page 2: “Senators Debate Vietnam Bombing”... “An Administration bill to authorize almost $4.5-billion in additional military expenditures touched off a huge debate in the Senate on the bombing of North Vietnam. Senator Joe Clark, Democrat of Pennsylvania, provided the means of keeping the debate going for several hours when he offered an amendment against continuing the bombing of North Vietnam or increasing United States military forces in South Vietnam beyond 500,000 without a declaration of war. The bill was almost sure to pass probably next week without the Clark amendment attached. But if the Senator insists on bringing his proposal to a vote, it is expected to intensify disagreements in Congress over the war. Senator Clark said he had offered the amendment as a means of ‘Congressional protest’ against the conduct of the war. ‘I was looking for something more we could do than write letters to the President or deliver speeches,’ said Senator Clark, who contends that the bombing is both ‘immoral’ and of little military value. Also on the Democrat side of the aisle, Senator Richard B. Russell, Democrat of Georgia, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told the Senate the bombing was necessary for the United States to stay in Vietnam. He urged additional ‘bombing’ of North Vietnam from cruisers in the Gulf of Tonkin.”
Page 2: “Soldier Receives 2-Year Sentence For Anti-War Act”…”A conscientious objector who said he can not serve in Vietnam because he loved peace more than America, was sentenced to two years at hard labor for ‘the kind of conduct that loses wars and countries’… Eight man Military Court tried the case. The soldier’s guilty plea came as a surprise. He had been expected to fight the charges on Constitutional grounds.”…
24 February 1967… The President’s Daily Brief… CIA (TS sanitized) Selected notes… SOVIET UNION: Moscow seems to be having some trouble getting its lines straight on the question of anti-ballistic missile deployment. Last week’s shift of emphasis in Pravda on the issue has not yet been clarified. So far only the editorial writer has been reprimanded; no revision of the “mistaken piece” has appeared. This week the Soviet military leaders have been talking boastfully about Soviet air defense prowess. But most admit that they cannot guarantee the destruction of all incoming missiles in a nuclear war. Just what all this means we cannot tell for sure. It does, however, seem that Moscow has decided to keep all its options open, at least until it has a better idea of what the US might be willing to offer in any talks on the question.
24 February 1967…Operation Rolling Thunder… New York Times (25 Feb reporting 24 Feb ops) Page 2: “The bombing of two North Vietnamese power plants Friday, one 30 miles northeast of Hanoi by American carrier based Navy planes were the first North Vietnamese power plants struck in five months… The pilots used radar to control their bombing. The Navy all-weather A-6A Intruders struck at the Tha Hongai plant and the Bac Giang plants, both northeast of Hanoi. In other raids yesterday, Navy pilots reported having damaged coastline and inland waterways. Three aircraft were lost in South Vietnam: an F-4, and 0-1 and one helicopter.”… (Bear/#38/trucks/Happy Valley)…
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were two fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 24 February 1967…
(1) CAPTAIN D.B. HUDSON and 1LT H.G. FLOYD were flying an F-4C of the 391st TFS and 12th TFW out of Cam Ranh Bay and were downed on their fourth strafing pass on sampans and buildings at the southern tip of South Vietnam five miles north of Kien Long. They ejected and were rescued by an Air Force helicopter.
(2) CAPTAIN HILLIARD ALMOND WILBANKS was flying an O-1G of the 21st TASS and 504th TASG out of Nha Trang supporting South Vietnamese Rangers in the Central Highlands… and… Here is how Chris Hobson reported this heroic flight by CAPTAIN WILBANKS…
“CAPTAIN WILBANKS was tasked with patrolling a line between Di Linh and Bac Lac in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam as the 23rd South Vietnamese Ranger battalion and their US advisors swept the area for VC. The South Vietnamese troops were about to walk straight into an ambush but CAPTAIN WILBANKS spotted the VC foxholes and trenches and warned the ground troops. Their trap discovered the VC opened up on the South Vietnamese soldiers causing heavy casualties. CAPTAIN WILBANKS fired white phosphorous rockets at the VC positions os that three accompanying Army helicopter gunships could lay down covering fire. However, the gunships retired after one was hit by ground fire. A flight of fighters was on the way but the ARVN troops were taking heavy casualties as the VC advanced, so CAPTAIN WILBANKS kept diving at the enemy positions firing marker rockets in an attempt to keep them pinned down. When he was out of rockets he stuck his automatic rifle out of the aircraft’s side window and swooped down firing at the VC. On his third pass firing his rifle CAPTAIN WILBANKS was hit by enemy ground fire and his Bird Dog crashed a few yards from the South Vietnamese troops he had skillfully defended. He was pulled unconscious from the wreck and after a flight of F-4s plastered the hillside where the VC were dug in, a helicopter came in to evacuate CAPITAN WILBANKS to Bao Lac. Sadly, HILLIARD WILBANKS died in the helicopter on the way to the hospital. His outstanding bravery and devotion to duty was recognized by his country with the posthumous award of the Medal of Honor…”
CAPTAIN HILLIARD ALMOND WILBANKS was Killed in Action on his 488th combat mission….oohrah…
RIPPLE SALVO… #356… My partner Mighty Thunder has posted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 25 February 1967 speech that put his civil disobedience and civil rights crusade on a different path. With this speech he combined the civil rights cause with another mounting protest movement– the anti-Vietnam war protesters who were uniting from all over the United States for that cause. Dr. King shifted support for the war to a combined civil rights/Great Society/anti-war stance on the basis of his conclusion that there were multiple reasons to protest our involvement in Vietnam. The 25 February speech identifies these reasons and was the foundation for his modifications to make it his clarion call through 1967, including major speeches in New York and Los Angeles. He created a “coalition of causes” with mutual support to swell the multi-cause movement and provide a core of tens of millions of war and other protesters that would not and could not be stopped.
As I return to the day-to-day review of the 1967 air war over North Vietnam, the world-wide protests of what we, of ROLLING THUNDER, were doing –bombing North Vietnam– will be a part of my daily posts. A superb summary of the “Anti-War Movement in the United States” is at: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/vietnam/antiwar.html
Humble Host submits that this is pertinent history for review now. Millions of our citizens, some legal others not, in our beloved country are being organized to protest our government policies in the same fanatical way that divided our nation fifty years ago. Coalitions are being formed and reason is being lost as irrational leaders and firebrand fanatics take charge of legitimate dissent and convert it into chaotic civil disobedience that has as its goal: anarchy. The model for this 2017-2018 attack on our government found its bearings in the protests of the 1960s and 70s as radicals like Saul Alinsky perfected the “rules for radicals.” Here is Saul Alinsky’s battle cry…
“The human cry of the second revolution is one for a meaning, a purpose for life–a cause to live for and if need be die for. Tom Paine’s words, ‘These are the times that try men’s souls,’ are more relevant to Part II of the American Revolution than the beginning. This is literally the revolution of the soul.
“The great American dream that reached out to the stars has been lost to the stripes. We have forgotten where we came from, we don’t know where we are, and we fear where we may be going. Afraid, we turn from the glorious adventure of the pursuit of happiness to a pursuit of an illusionary security in an ordered, stratified, striped society. Our way of life is symbolized to the world by the stripes of military force. At home we have made a mockery of being our brother’s keeper by being his jail keeper. When Americans can no longer see the stars, the times are tragic. We must believe that it is the darkness before the dawn of a beautiful new world; we will see it when we believe it.” (“Rules for Radicals,” page 196)…
Civil disobedience in America is about to shift out of Park into Drive…
CAG’s QUOTES for February 24: MAO TSE-TUNG: “Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.”… PATTON: “If if should be necessary for us to fight the Russians, the sooner we do it, the better.”…
Lest we forget… Bear