RIPPLE SALVO… #181… DAVE LEUE’ and the BLUE TAIL FLIES… but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY-ONE retelling and remembering the events of Operation Rolling Thunder…
29 AUGUST 1966… FRONT PAGE NEWS FROM THE HOME FRONT…NYT… A fair and very warm Monday in the Big Apple…
Page 1: “Strategists See Need In Vietnam For 600,000 G.I.s”…”Top military strategists here, engaged in long range planning of the war effort, are thinking in terms of expanding American forces in Vietnam to about 600,000 over the next 18-months. That would double the number of troops here. A third to half of the American troops would devote most of their efforts to ambitious ‘nation building’ projects in the densely populated areas of Vietnam. The rest would attack harder and in greater numbers the principle enemy base areas, in which the Vietcong have traditionally trained men, stored supplies, planned attacks, and then recuperated after each fight. Significantly larger forces are required, the thinking goes, regardless of whether the enemy continued to form division size units and seek big victories or decides to break up into smaller units and revert to hit and run harassing attacks. Concurrent with the projected build-up of ground forces the Air Force would assign about five new squadrons of tactical fighter-bombers to the 18 it now operates in South Vietnam and would vastly expand its airlift capacity to haul daily thousands of tons of ammunition, food, and other supplies from coastal ports to combat units in the interior. The Navy would add a number of coastal units in the interior.”….. Page 1: “Moscow Training Fliers For Hanoi”…”The Soviet Union disclosed that it is training North Vietnamese fighter pilots at a Soviet Air Base to fly supersonic interceptors against United States aircraft. Articles published in a leading Soviet Union newspaper report that at least one detachment of Vietnamese pilots had completed the combat flying course and returned to North Vietnam. Another group is being instructed in air combat techniques by Soviet battle-tested veterans.”
Page 1: “Milwaukee Wisconsin Troops Hold Back Whites”…”National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets held back a surging, heckling crowd of white youths tonight as civil rights demonstrators marched through the predominantly white suburb of Wauwatosa. The 500 members of Wisconsin’s 32nd Division called out today by Governor Warren Knowles kept the crowds in control and about 100 Guard members escorted the demonstrators back to Milwaukee after the demonstration. It was the first time the National Guard had been called out since 1934.” …Page 1: “Illinois Negroes Set Cars Ablaze”…”Roving mobs of Negro youths attacked cars and stores with rocks and Molotov cocktails here (Waukegan, Ill.) tonight. At least 10 persons were burned, five of them, including a 6-year old girl, were burned critically. Helmeted policemen fought to cordon off a two-mile stretch of Illinois 42 on the south side of town 40 miles north of Chicago. White youths attempted to enter the area. A number of cars and stores were set ablaze.”…Page 1: “Truman Discerns Peril In The Economy In Rising Interest”…”Former President Harry S. Truman issued a public announcement today expressing alarm about rising interest rates. He warned that they could lead to a ‘serious depression.’…” …..
Page 1: “Javits Blames President For Confusion Over War”…”Senator Jacob Javits said at the 48th Annual Convention of the American Legion today that President Johnson was steadily and inexorably foreclosing his freedom of action on Vietnam by not telling the American people the facts about the nature and probable duration of the guerrilla war. ‘Unless the President acts to clear the air of current misunderstandings,’ the New York Republican said, ‘he may soon discover that the American people will accept nothing but total victory. Until he prepares us for the long haul, he may find his options have been reduced to one–more force. Unless he leads the way, he may make it for public officials who want to support the Vietnam effort in a sensible way to do so.’ Mr. Javits urged the convention through it’s national security committees, which he addressed this morning, at the Statler-Hilton Hotel, ‘to spurn a call for more bombers, they are waiting for you to be the hawks. I do not believe the Legion will want to sound hawkish just because people expect it. It is time once again for the Legion to demonstrate it’s acknowledged sophistication about war.’…’The fact is that for a time at least, there is little likelihood of a negotiated settlement because the Communists want more than we can possibly give; nor is it likely that they can be forced to the negotiating table in the foreseeable future. Increasing doses of force in North Vietnam have apparently not been effective in halting infiltration of men and supplies into the south. But they do heighten the possibility of Soviet and Chinese countermeasures…By not educating the American public to the rigors of guerrilla war, of quick results, the President risks erosion of domestic support for the U.S. position in Vietnam. We can already see the beginnings of this development in the slogan: ‘Win Or Get Out.’ We cannot and should not withdraw from Vietnam because we do have important interests at stake, but neither can we expect a total and decisive military victory.’ The Senator suggested a new Congressional resolution to replace the resolution of 4 August 1964, which gave the President virtually a free hand to prosecuting the war. He said the new resolution should ‘lay the problems on the line’ and explain to the American people that they can expect a long war.”…
29 August 1966…The President’s Daily Briefing…CIA (TS sanitized)…South Vietnam: The Mekong River is flooding badly upstream in Laos. The flood waters could reach the delta area in South Vietnam in a week or ten days and be a disruptive factor on election day (Sept 11)… (only pertinent note)
29 AUGUST 1966…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (30 August reporting 29 August ops)… Page 1: “U.S. Aircraft Sink Two Enemy Boats”…”United States Navy planes sank two North Vietnamese patrol boats and damaged two others in the Gulf of Tonkin early today. A-6 Intruders pulling away from a strike on a petroleum depot 34 miles southwest of Haiphong in a heavy thunderstorm, detected three of the boats on their radar about 70 miles southwest of Haiphong. When the fighter-bombers swooped low to identify the boats, gunners on deck opened fire on the planes with 37mm cannons. Having used their bombs on the oil depot the A-6 pilots radioed their position and two flights of A-4s attacked the boats with their rockets and 20mm cannon fire…The driving rain made complete evaluation of the attack impossible, but it appeared the A-4 pilots had sunk one and damaged two others. Later in the morning two flights of A-4s were fired on by another boat about 30 miles north of the site of the earlier battle. The pilots retaliated and reported they had left the boat engulfed in flames and apparently sinking. No American planes were lost over North Vietnam today… One plane crashed during yesterday’s 103 strike missions which were confined by bad weather to supply and transportation targets in the panhandle and along the coast.”… “Vietnam: Air Losses”(Hobson)…Two aircraft lost in SEAsia on 29 August 1966…
(1) CAPTAIN NORMAN LOUROSS WELLS was flying an F-105D of the 354th TFS and355th TFW out of Takhli on an armed reconnaissance and was strafing trucks near Donghoi when hit by ground fire, forced to eject, and was captured on his 78th mission. This was the 19th F-105 downed in August 1966. CAPTAIN WELLS had been shot down and rescued on a Rolling Thunder strike on an oil depot at Kep on August 21, eight days earlier. CAPTAIN WELLS was released from captivity in March 1973 and continued his Air Force career…
(2) CAPTAIN KENNETH DALE ROBINSON and 1LT SAMMIE DON HOFF were flying a Wolfpack F-4C of the 497th TFS and 8th TFW out of Ubon on an night armed reconnaissance mission north of Donghoi. They were downed and killed while attacking trucks with napalm. 1LT HOFF ejected and had brief radio contact with other aircraft in the area, but a rescue never materialized and neither CAPTAIN ROBINSON or 1LT HOFF were ever heard from again. They were Killed in Action on this day fifty years ago. Their remains were turned over to the United States by the North Vietnamese in 1989 and identified as those of these two valiant warriors…
RIPPLE SALVO… #181… VA-153 BLUE TAIL FLIES versus NORTH VIETNAM TORPEDO BOATS… The following is filched from one of two little books by Captain Dave Leue’, who rests in deserved peace, that captured dozens of his best flying stories from his two wars–Korea and Rolling Thunder. With North Vietnamese PT boats in the news in late August and into September 1966, this is a good spot for me to insert a couple of Dave’s tales from his VA-153 A-4 squadron embarked in USS Constellation during this period of the fight. What follows may or may not match up with the NYT report above. I await a yes or no from Len Giuliani, who was there, or not… I quote pages 127-129 of Dave Leue’s “Vietnam Combat: An Attack Pilot’s Diary, The Four Freedoms Denied, Volume Two.”
“VA-153s involvement with North Vietnamese PTs took place in August and September 1966. Both of these incidents revolved around Lieutenant Dick Coleman, our squadron Operations officer.
“AUGUST 1966. First PT Blood. Lieutenant Commander Coleman was in the intelligence debriefing spaces (in Constellation) looking for good targets, when he heard that two North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats had been spotted leaving Haiphong harbor. They were reportedly heading for our northern search and Rescue (SAR) destroyer at high speed.
“Dick ran toward the ready room pell-mell with his briefing cards trying to be the first to launch. He was a big man and he hit his head on a hatch coaming, gashing it open, and knocking himself down. His roommate, Len Giuliani happened upon the bloody scene. Len determine that Dick would live, grabbed Dick’s kneeboard briefing cards and rushed to the ready room to take Dick Coleman’s flight. He didn’t know what the target was.
“Len Giuliani manned Dick Coleman’s aircraft, which was loaded with six MK-82 5oo-pound bombs, his wingman, Gary Starbird, had eight 5-inch Zuni rockets. After Giuliani started his aircraft a crewman handed Len a paper with coordinates and no other info. Len looked up at the Air Boss pointing to the paper with a ‘what the..?’… hand signal. Now what? Both he and Gary Starbird were quickly taxied to the catapult and launched. Len was not really sure of what the target was and what were his orders. They switched to strike control after launch. Strike vectored them northwest at max speed. Giuliani and Starbird intercepted the wakes coming from the direction of Haiphong harbor at very high speed, heading directly for the SAR destroyer.
“Giuliani and Starbird intercepted the wakes, identified them as PTs about ten miles from the SAR destroyer. Flying through the 37mm fire from the PT’s guns Giuliani’s first pass bracketed the lead PT boat with a pair of MK-82s, severely damaging it. Gary Starbird followed up by hitting the lead PT in the screws with two Zuni rockets. Great hits!.
‘They made multiple runs succeeding in stopping all three PT boats, leaving them dead in the water and sinking. Len recalls that about 20 North Vietnamese survivors were picked up after the attack and we received excellent intelligence from these captives. Both LCDR Len Giuliani and LT Gary Starbird were recommended for and received Distinguished Flying Crosses for this outstanding mission.
“Of course, Dick Coleman claimed Giuliani stole his DFC.” Unquote…
Tune in tomorrow for Dave Leue’ s engagement with four PTs on 11 September 1966.
Your Humble Host is proud to be able to say I flew with all three of the these brave hearts — Leue’, Giuliani and Starbird…”Legends in their own time!”…
Lest we forget… Bear ………. –30– ……….
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