ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED 28 MAY 1967

RIPPLE SALVO… #449… “A profound message to friend and foe alike…”…but first…

Good Morning: Day FOUR HUNDRED FORTY-NINE of another look at the air war named OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…

28 MAY 1967…HEADLINES from The New York Times on a cloudy Sunday in New York City…

Page 1: “Thant Bids U.N. Reaffirm Right to Police Mideast”… “Secretary General Thant asked the Security Council today to remind Israel and her Arab neighbors that under existing resolution the Council could use a blockade or other measures to suppress any violations of their 1949 armistice…US delegate to the UN Arthur Goldberg calls it a matter of urgency. Security Council to meet Monday… Page 1: “Cairo Prepares Economy for War”… “United Arab Republic is putting its economy on a war footing and pulling its troops from Yemen to deploy on the Sinai Peninsula. Both actions were apparently intended to gird the Egyptians for protracted military confrontation with Israel.”…

Page 1: “Marines Say Foe Lost 172 Fighting South of Danang”... “United States Marine forces said today that they had killed 172 enemy soldiers in an operation that ran into stiff opposition within a half an hour of the start…More than a thousand Marines of the 5th Regiment and 2,000 South Vietnamese infantrymen and rangers were committed yesterday to Operation Union II in parched rice paddies and rolling hills 20 miles south of this major Marine base…The attacking Marine battalion lost 33 men killed and 76 wounded, including the commanding officer…Meanwhile, 100 miles to the north Marines occupied Hill 117 inside the DMZ after a fight that killed 14 Americans and wounded 102.”…

Page 12: “East Meet West In Aid to Afghans”... ” ‘We may not be backward,’ an Afghan Foreign Minister official said, ‘but at least competitive co-existence between the United States and the Soviet Union works in Afghanistan.’ The officials who administer aid programs of US and USSR in the country are cooperating openly. Soviet aid is mostly in military arms. US aid is in grants, mostly concentrated on agricultural improvements.”… Page 64: “Church ‘Renewal’ Finds Resistance”... “The Renewal Group, a loose association of some 45 Episcopal clerics and laymen formed two years ago to prod the Episcopal Church toward a more progressive stance is finding the going difficult. ‘All of us feel the structures of our church are dated and ineffectual,’ the Reverend Raymond Ferris, chairman of the group said last week. ‘We think the church can become a cutting edge for change only if a group like ours, parallel to the official structure, is constantly pounding at it to move.”’

Page 63: “Slackening Winds Delay Chichester”... “The wind blowing Sir Francis Chichester homeward slackened to little more than a puff today, spoiling his plan to reach  Plymouth Harbor at 11AM tomorrow and thus end his solo voyage round the world…He is 146 miles from Plymouth and the wind has dropped to 2-knots. Chichester is in his 119th day at sea having left Sydney, Australia on January 29. He left Plymouth on August 27, 1966. The total trip for Gypsy Moth IV is about 28,500 miles.”…

28 MAY 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…New York Times (29 May reporting 28 May ops)…Page 1: “U.S. Jet Attacks Cut 3 Rail Lines Leading to China”... “United States fighter-bombers cut three-rail lines in North Vietnam yesterday, cutting one at a point about 40 miles from the Chinese border…gunfire brought down one United States plane. It was also announced that North Vietnam shore fire had hit the destroyer Edson off the demilitarized zone. 40 American seamen were wounded. Edson returned fire and silenced the North Vietnam gun position.The United States flew 102 combat missions in North Vietnam. The downed aircraft was an F-105, the 562nd American aircraft lost in North Vietnam. The pilot is reported missing. In other air action planes from the 7th Fleet carriers Enterprise, Hancock and Bon Homme Richard hit coastal waterways shooting up 42 barges.”

“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft losses on 28 May 1967… The F-105D loss reported in the New York Times was Captain Gordon Blackwood (KIA) was reported downed on 27 May in Hobson and reported here in RTR yesterday (RS #448)…

RIPPLE SALVO… #449… On this day 50 years ago Caroline Kennedy was in Philadelphia to christen the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy. The whole Kennedy clan was on hand including Jackie Kennedy. President Johnson gave a short speech on the occasion and used the opportunity to reinforce his position that he and President Kennedy shared their readiness to use force to sustain freedom when and where ever it was necessary. Then he said this of the new carrier, USS John F. Kennedy: “We pray that her years will be years of peace, but if she must fight, both the flag she flies and the name she bears will carry a profound message to friend and foe alike.”

That said, his main message was to call on Americans…to be strong, patient and ready to sacrifice for a common cause… (stay the course in Vietnam?)

“It has often been our strength and our resolve which have tipped the scales of the conflict against aggressors or would be aggressors. That rule has never been easy. It has always required not only strength, but patience– the incredible courage to wait where waiting is appropriate to avoid disastrous efforts to shortcut history. And sacrifice–the tragic price we pay for our commitment to our ideals.”

And for the record…our Navy sent about 25 carriers from both Atlantic and Pacific fleets to fight North Vietnam from Yankee Station. Only one carrier failed to take a turn: USS John F. Kennedy. At one point she was scheduled to go, then was not… I wonder why?…

CAG’s QUOTES for 28 May: “KARL VON CLAUSEWITZ: “Knowledge of war is very simple but not very easy.”… (He means his book, “On War” is tough to read!!!) PATTON: “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.”…

Lest we forget…        Bear