RIPPLE SALVO… #211
Good Morning: Day TWO HUNDRED ELEVEN of recollections from fifty years ago and the air war called ROLLING THUNDER…
28 September 1966… THE NEWS AT HOME FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES… A cloudy Wednesday morning, then clear…
Page 1: “Vatican Mission Sent to Saigon; Peace Aim Hinted”…”Pope Paul VI sent a close friend and associate to explore the prospects for peace. Officially Msgr. Sergio Pignatoli…will go to Saigon to preside over a meeting of Vietnamese Bishops called to study the decisions of the recent Ecumenical Council. He was carrying, he said, at Rome Airport, ‘a message of love and peace’ given to him by the Pope…He said he was going to a country with more than two million Roman Catholics where the ‘episcopate must study with greater urgency and necessity the relations of the Catholic Church with other religions.’…” Page 1: “U.S. Raid Kills 28 In Vietnam Error” …”Two United States Marine Corps planes bombed a friendly village in South Vietnam by mistake yesterday killing 28 mountain tribesmen and wounding 17. The bombing also destroyed 100 houses in the village, which is in Quang Tri province about 350 miles north of Saigon. The village was under the control of the South Vietnamese government and was outside the target area assigned for the attack mission to which the two Marine planes had been assigned. The victims were montagnards–the nomadic hill people who furnish large numbers of fighters to help the allied cause. An investigation was begun. In a somewhat similar incident 10 days ago a Marine jet pilot who thought he was attacking North Vietnamese regulars dropped a 500-pound bomb on a Marine unit killing 3 and wounding 4.”… Page 1: “Johnson Accepts Asian Invitation To Vietnam talks”…”Senator William Fulbright immediately criticized the acceptance as a politically motivate gesture The Senator said the better course would be to ‘suspend the bombing and await a similar response from North Vietnam.”…
Page 2: “Soviet People Get A Johnson Appeal”…”President Johnson appealed to the Soviet people today for a new era of friendship and understanding between the Soviet Union and the United States. The 10th anniversary issue of the magazine Amerika, which contained the President’s statement was sold out on Moscow’s newsstands in one hour. We have more in common than we sometimes realize. Our people are more naturally friends than enemies. I would like to see us exchange goods and ideas and technology–all of the means to achieving common progress and prosperity. Amerika, an illustrated monthly printed on glossy paper is distributed under terms of a Soviet-American cultural exchange agreement.”… Also part of the President’s appeal: “We Americans believe that democracy and our system of a mixed economy works with a wide scope for free enterprise works best for us. But we support and respect the right of all people to choose their own system. We oppose the practice of imposing one’s system on others. If everyone would abide by the principle of self-determination and reject aggression and subversion, the world would be a happier place.”… Page 20: “Bonn and U.S. Set Defense Review”…”President Johnson and Chancellor Ludwig Erhard of West Germany agreed here today to undertake a ‘searching reappraisal of the needs and costs of European defense’…the two leaders agreed to take account of the changes in technology and mobility that might permit a reduction of American forces in West Germany.”…
Page 24: “San Francisco Negroes Attack Police After Boy Is Fatally Shot”…”Hundreds of Negroes, mostly teenagers, set fires, broke store windows and threw rocks at the police tonight a few hours after a white patrolman fatally shot a Negro youth. Three policemen were hurt by flying rocks and bottles. Two television camera cars were overturned and burned. An assistant fire chief said that fire bombs and other incendiaries caused the blazes and that onlookers had thrown rocks…at the firemen. The sixteen year old Negro was shot and killed by a 51-year old patrolman who shouted repeatedly for the fleeing youth to stop and fired three warning shots into the air before firing one time at the running youth who was hit in the back by the fourth shot. He was running from a stolen car.”…
28 SEPTEMBER 1966… THE PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF… CIA (TS sanitized) Soviet Union: The Soviets want to avoid overflying Chinese territory on their flights to Hanoi. The Soviets charge’ in Laos told Premier Souvanna this morning that for this reason Moscow would like to route these flights by way of New Delhi, Rangoon, and over Laotian territory to Hanoi. Souvanna said he would consider the Soviet request, which he told ambassador Sullivan he presumed would involve Soviet commercial, not military, aircraft. Only a small quantity of the aid Moscow provides Hanoi comes by air. The bulk of it comes overland through China, where it has been subjected to delays and harassment. One effect of a new air route circumventing China would be to obviate the kind of embarrassment to which high soviet officials have been subjected during their refueling stops in China en route to and from China.
28 SEPTEMBER 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… NYT (29 Sept reporting 28 Sept ops) Page 2: “In North Vietnam American pilots bombed near Hanoi and Haiphong and through the southern coastal strip in 137 missions of more than one aircraft. Navy pilots said that during an attack on four North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Gulf Of Tonkin they saw enemy anti-aircraft shells exploding with apparently delayed fuses at altitudes of less than 200-feet and at times when the shells hit the sea. They suggested these shells may be the answer to the issue of hits on foreign freighters.”…. “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) there were no fixed wing aircraft losses in Southeast Asia on 28 September 1966…… BUT THERE WAS ONE CLOSE ONE… read on…
Wednesday, 28 September 1966. Dick Perry emphatically demonstrate what combat was all about for Naval Aviators on Yankee Station: He led a “quick reaction” flight of four A-4 Magic Stone (VA-164, USS Oriskany) Skyhawks that were diverted from an armed reconnaissance mission searching for trucks, to a newly discovered SAM site, a “lucrative target,” near the heavily defended Thanh Hoa Bridge. The sun had set and fading light complicated the mission, but Dick found the site and commenced the attack through the intense flak always present at Thanh Hoa. Dick took some direct hits just as he rolled in. His Skyhawk’s radome was blown away, as was a portion of the Skyhawk’s nose. Shrapnel penetrated the floor of the cockpit and tore into his foot. Debris struck the A-4’s vertical stabilizer and was also ingested into the engine, giving him indications of an engine fire. Ignoring a cockpit filling up with smoke, Perry focused on quickly delivering his weapons on the SAM site; which was destroyed by him and his wingmen. The flight became separated while evading the heavy flak and lost sight of each other in the failing light. Radio out, navigation aids shot away, flight instruments failing. Dick Perry went feet wet and flew dead reckoning towards Yankee Station, 120 miles ahead in the darkness. With his engine running rough, he spotted the lights of a carrier that turned out to be the USS Constellation. He then flew to an area where he started looking for the deck lights of Oriskany while checking out his Skyhawk’s performance in the landing configuration. His airspeed indicator was unreliable and his angle of attack probe had been blown away. Engine roughness became severe when changing power settings. Unable to find the Oriskany, he returned to Constellation and began flying landing approaches to the Constellation, which responded to the situation and quickly made a “ready deck” to recover Dick and his heavily damaged Skyhawk. Shazam: “There were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 28 September 1966″… but a near miss, for sure… Not just your average night landing at Yankee Station…
Lest we forget…. Bear ……… –30– ……….