RIPPLE SALVO… #120… GET ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, WHOA… but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED TWENTY of stirring tales and details of Operation Rolling Thunder 1965-1968…
28 JUNE 1966…ON THE HOME FRONT…NYT… Another sunny pleasant day, a Tuesday, in New York City…Page 1: refer to RTR #119… Page 2: “Vast U.S. Firepower Arrayed In Vietnam Against Guerrillas”… A several column article by Charles Mohr covered page 2…”The weapon’s sound is terrifying and stupendous like a chorus of kettle drums played by giants. Its sight is equally stunning with hundreds of incandescent bursts of light winking their way up a South Vietnamese mountain ridge. This is ‘C.B.U.,’ a military abbreviation that stands for ‘cluster bomb unit,’ one of the United States weapons that are tending to invalidate some of the axioms of guerrilla warfare. Military spokesmen in Vietnam are forbidden by Washington to discuss this and other unusual weapons, but journalists in the field know about them from witnessing their use and talking to combat soldiers. Now a new and more devastating CBU has been developed. It spews both napalm and lethal steel pellets from bomblets.The weapon has been used to silence antiaircraft positions in North Vietnam.” Other snippets from the Mohr article…”most impressive arsenal of conventional firepower ever brought to bear in warfare…”…”B-52s are dropping showers of 500 and 750-pound bombs that the enemy never hear or see…”…”Fighter-bombers are delivering more ordnance per sortie than the B-17s and B-24s did in WWII…”…”artillery is moved by helicopter”…”troops are equipped with star-light scopes.” Mohr writes: “Guerrilla doctrine is to avoid contact on unfavorable terms and to concentrate and strike where overwhelming force against weaker enemy units when time is ripe. This is becoming increasingly difficult for the Vietcong. There have been no VC victories for eight months and their most effective weapon is the shovel. One trooper called the VC, ‘the damndest diggers I ever saw.’ That said, the enemy has proven to be a tough adversary in the jungles of South Vietnam. In less than six months since the beginning of 1966 American troops have suffered 15,000 casualties with 2,000 KIA, with the prospect of 39,000 casualties and 5,000 KIA by the end of 1966.”…
Page 23: “Rights March Disunity”… the campaign and march in Mississippi emphasized a new “Black Consciousness” force…Gene Roberts writes: “The civil rights march through Mississippi has made it clear that a new philosophy of black consciousness is sweeping the civil right movement. When the march began the philosophy was only an idea in the mind of Stokely Carmichael and other members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. But when the three week old march ended yesterday the new philosophy had given rise to a distinct movement within a movement. It had Mr. Carmichael as its leader and the late Malcolm X as its prophet. It also had a battle cry, ‘Black Power’ and a slogan directed at whites, ‘Move on over, or we will move over you.’ Just how many adherents the black power consciousness movement has is a matter of heated debate, but there appear to be hundreds in Mississippi with hundreds more fascinated with it. Its principal appeal is for Negroes between the ages of 15 and 30, but also provides an emotional release for all Negroes. For all its appeal to younger Negroes however the movement is potentially the most disruptive force in the civil rights movement. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and his aides in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference are alarmed that the ‘black power’ chant might alienate white supporters from the rights drive and make it more difficult to get new legislation through congress and financial and moral help from Northern white liberals. It is an angry movement and no Black Panthers/Muslims will work with whites unless whites will work under movement terms. Civil rights is entering a stormy period.”…
28 June 1966… PRESIDENT’s DAILY BRIEF…. CIA (TS sanitized)…South Vietnam: slim pickins” due to redaction of all but “…the government will probably announce its new cabinet Friday…” from whatever the CIA had to say to the President that day 50 years ago…
28 June 1966…ROLLING THUNDER OPERATIONS… New York Times (29 June reporting operations on 28 June) Page 4: “U.S. Jets Bomb 2nd Fuel Dump in North Vietnam”…”United States Navy pilots bombed a fuel dump near Vinh in North Vietnam yesterday (28th), the second attack on a fuel dump in the area in two days. The planes in the raid, four A-4 Skyhawks, dropped 500 and 1,000 pound bombs setting off two large explosions that sent smoke to 5,000-feet into the air. Military spokesmen described the target 12 miles south of Vinh as lucrative, but said it did not compare with the fuel dump attacked Sunday 35 miles northeast of the port city. In another raid Navy A-6 Intruders attacked a rail yard 17 miles north of Thanh Hoa destroying 16 box cars. Twenty-seven miles south of the city two flights of Skyhawks attacked a string of 50 barges with rockets, bombs and cannons. Five barges and 4 buildings were hit and heavily damaged. For the first time in several days the skies over the Red River Valley in North Vietnam cleared and the Air Force pilots attacked the Yenbay communications and storage complex 80 miles northwest of Hanoi. At Yenbay, where on May 31 the Air Force carried out the most intense raid of the war, F-105 Thunderchiefs dropped 15 tons of bombs and knocked out two bridges and two anti-aircraft sites.”…”Vietnam: Air Losses,” page 64: One aircraft lost in Southeast Asia…
(1) CAPTAIN CHARLES GLENDON DUDLEY, 1LT ANTHONY FRANK CAVALLI, MAJOR ROGER WILLIAM CARROLL and CAPTAIN THOMAS HUBERT WOLFE were flying an A-26 of the 603ACS out of the squadrons Nakhon Phanom detachment on a Steel Tiger mission 10 miles east of Ban Phakat when hit by ground fire and crashed killing all four Air Force Officers, including CAPTAIN WOLFE, an O-1 Bird Dog FAC who was providing the Invader pilots an area indoctrination. On this day fifty years ago four brave warriors were Killed in Action carrying the fight to the enemy… they rest in peace, and today we remember them specifically…
RIPPLE SALVO…#120 … EXECUTE THE POL PLAN… NOT SO FAST… The attack on North Vietnam’s POL system was the last major escalation of the war during Secretary McNamara’s tenure as SecDef. It got off to a bad start. Here is the story. (Source: Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume Four, page 106).
“The emphasis on striking Hanoi and Haiphong POL targets on the same day and trying to achieve operational surprise reflected an acute concern that these targets were in well-defended areas and U.S. losses might be high. The concern about merchant shipping, especially tankers which might be in the act of off-loading into storage tanks, reflected anxiety over sparking an international incident, especially with the USSR.
“With the execute message out, high level interest turned to the weather un the Hanoi/Haiphong area. The NMCC began to send Secretary McNamara written forecasts every few hours. These indicated that the weather was not promising. Twice the strikes were scheduled but had to be postponed. Then on 24 June 1966, Philip Geyelin of the Wall Street Journal got hold of a story that the President had decided to bomb the POL at Haiphong, and the essentials details appeared in a Dow Jones news wire that evening. This was an extremely serious leak, because of the high risk of U.S. losses if North Vietnam defenses were fully prepared. The next day an order was issued cancelling the strikes.
“The weather watch continued, however, under special precautions. The weather reports, plus other messages relating to the attack, continued, handled as Top Secret Special Category (SpeCat) Exclusive for the SecDef, CJCS, and CINCPAC. (It is not known whether the diplomatic scenario which involved informing some countries about the strikes ahead of time was responsible for the press leak; in any case, the classification and handling of these messages kept them out of State Department channels). The continued activity suggests that the cancellation of the strikes on the 25 June 1966 may have been only a cover for security purposes.
“On the 28th of June 1966 Admiral Sharp cabled General Wheeler that his forces were ready and the weather was favorable for the strikes; he requested authority to initiate them on the 29th. General Wheeler responded with a message rescinding the previous cancellation, reinstating the original execution order, and approving the recommendations to execute on the 29th. The message informed Admiral Sharp that preliminary and planning messages should continue a SpeCat Exclusive for himself and SecDef…. (Humble Host note: They are doing every thing they can to keep the State Department out of the loop. I wonder why?)
“The strikes were launched on 29 June 1966, reportedly with great success. The large Hanoi tank farm was apparently completely knocked out; the Haiphong facility looked about 80% destroyed. One U.S. aircraft was lost to ground fire. Four MIGs were encountered and one was probably shot down. The Deputy Commander of the Air Force in Saigon called the operation ‘the most significant, the most important strike of the War.'”
This is what was making history 50 years ago this week…Watch these RTR spaces for the next twenty months of RTR and Ripple Salvo for my take on some of the most exciting events of our time. Rolling Thunder, the ground war in the south, as well as the historic events on the home front and around the world are the sea in which I will swim and report… 600 Ripple Salvos to go…God willing….
Lest we forget… Bear ………. –30– ……….