ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED 29 JUNE 1966

RIPPLE SALVO… #121… A LEAKY WHITE HOUSE… but first a bit of “old” news… 50 Years Old…

29 JUNE 1966… ON THE HOME FRONT…NYT…A hot, 91-degree “Hump Day” in the “Big Apple.”

Page 1: “Argentina Junta Ousts President Put Generals In”… “A three man military junta overthrew the civilian government of President Arturo Illia today and named Lieutenant General Juan Carlos Ongania, a retired Army Commander, as Provisional President of Argentina. Concurrently, the High Command, as the junta is known, dissolved Congress, the Supreme Court and all political parties and began appointing military and civilian substitutes to important posts. A brief manifest made no mention of any intention to hold elections or return the government to civilian hands. It said the military could no longer tolerate the state of anarchy brought about by the fragmentation of national life and political squabbling or the economic mismanagement of the Illia regime… Page 1: “U.S. Suspends Ties With Buenos Aires“… “The United States moved quickly today to express its disapproval of the military ouster of President Illia, but appeared undecided over what if anything to do about it. The State Department in response to questions, issued a statement at noon saying that all relations with Argentina had been suspended. In accordance with a procedure approved by the Inter-American Conference in Rio De Janeiro last year, the statement continued, the United States will discuss its next move with other nations in the hemisphere…and regrets the break in continuity…” Page 1: “Ky Weighs A Series of Cabinet Changes”… “The last major cabinet realignment which resulted in the dismissal of Lieutenant General Nguyen Chanh Thi as Commander 1 Army Corps took place March 10. It started a period of internal turmoil that is now only ending.”

Page 3: “HAIPHONG REPORT ANGERS U.S. AIDES”…but they do not confirm or deny leaks on bombing… “Administration officials apparently reflecting the feelings of President Johnson described themselves as angry and upset by reports that the United States was about to bomb oil storage depots near Haiphong, which is the port for Hanoi. They did not confirm or deny such a decision to extend the bombing raids in North Vietnam closer than ever before to a major population center. Nor did they comment on a new report that the attack was postponed because of the NEWS LEAK (see Ripple Salvo #120 of 28 June 2016–yesterday). It appeared to observers here that if an attack had been scheduled it had been delayed until American planes could strike with some surprise. The indications over the last week have been that President Johnson has decided to extend the list of targets and is only waiting for the right moment. Security investigators here believed to be looking for sources of leaks in Washington and Saigon. No one would discuss the situation in definitive terms and officials appeared to be  under even stricter orders than usual not to speculate about military operations. PRESIDENT JOHNSON HIMSELF ALERTED MANY NEWSMEN to the likelihood of new types of attacks with a statement on June 18. A review of tactics persuaded him, he said, that “we must continue to raise the cost of aggression at its source.” The word source clearly meant North Vietnam. In view of the known recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff many assumed that the Haiphong oil depots would soon be among the targets…More severe air attacks would be designed to damage the will of the North Vietnamese as well as the means of waging further war against the south.” …The strikes were “called off because of flagrant security breaches.”

(Humble Host will be back to this subject in Ripple Salvo #121 with Master Arm On. Don’t go away.)

29 June 1966…PRESIDENT’s DAILY BRIEFING…CIA (TS sanitized) North Vietnam: First-day world press and propaganda reactions to the US raids on the Haiphong-Hanoi-Do Son petroleum handling facilities seem a little less strident than might have been expected, although Peking has not yet commented editorially. The general reaction is so far following well-beaten lines. Both the Soviets and the North Vietnamese, however, predictably described the attacks as a serious escalation of the war. Hanoi has not publicly specified the actual nature of the targets. (portion redacted) …at the time of the raid at Haiphong, eight Soviet ships, including two tankers and six dry cargo vessels, were in the port area. None were alongside the petroleum unloading jetty, and none were damaged. Free world reactions have so far followed predictable patterns….South Vietnam: (major portion still redacted after 50 years of time and change)…General Ky told Ambassadors Lodge and Unger in a conversation on Tueday evening that Tam Chau said he would boycott the elections next September…(followed by a full page of redacted whatever)…

29 JUNE 1966… ROLLING THUNDER OPERATIONS…NYT (30 June reporting 29 June operations) Page 15: “Eyewitness Account of Bombing by a TASS Reporter”…”An air raid alarm was given at noon today. Six American F-105D Thunderchief fighter-bombers appeared over the city. Anti-aircraft guns opened fire. The American planes made turns over the eastern suburbs of the city to dive bomb objectives in Dalama, a suburb of Hanoi. A giant column of black smoke rose there and hung over the city. The piratical actions of the American pilots did not go unpunished. I saw an American plane go down trailing smoke. At about the same time, American planes have subjected a barbaric bombing of the suburbs of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s biggest port of Haiphong. Today’s events are proof of the further criminal escalation of the air war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.”… “Captured Pilot Displayed”… “TASS reported that North Vietnamese authorities drove a captured U.S. pilot through the streets of Hanoi in an open vehicle lit by searchlights today while angry crowds shouted ‘Down with American imperialists.’ The agency identified the flier as Captain Murphy Neal Jones of the Air Force, 28 years old of Louisiana, and said he had piloted on the seven United States planes TASS said had been shot down during the raids on oil installations at Hanoi and Haiphong.”… same page:”Forty-six Navy and Air Force strike aircraft today inflicted heavy damage on North Vietnam’s major petroleum storage facilities at Haiphong, Hanoi and Do Son.” Carriers Ranger and Constellation participated…one MIG-17 was probably shot down…one F-105D was lost…anti-aircraft fire was heaviest at Hanoi…”Vietnam: Air Losses”… page 64: two aircraft downed:

(1) CAPTAIN N.J. BAKER was flying an A-1E from the 602nd ACS and 14th ACW at Udorn on RESCAP and armed reconnaissance in the southern portion of North Vietnam when hit by ground fire and was forced to bail out in the mountains 25 miles west of Dong Hoi. He was rescued by an Air Force HH-3…

(2) CAPTAIN MURPHY NEAL JONES, USAF, 333rd TFS, had an exciting day…Here is how Chris Hobson described it and the events of the day…”POL storage had become a regular target by the end of the month and on the 29th the heaviest raid so far on a POL target was made in two simultaneous strikes by 46 USAF and USN aircraft. Navy aircraft from the Constellation and the Ranger hit a storage site on the outskirts of Haiphong, while Air Force struck storage sites close to Hanoi. This was the closest that raids had come to North Vietnam’s two major cities. Major James H. Kasler, the operations officer of the 354th TFS planned and led the USAF strike force that consisted of F-105s from both Takhli wings. Some of the Thunderchiefs made more than one pass over the target and it was on CAPTAIN JONES’ second pop-up to attack that his aircraft was hit by 85mm AAA. The aircraft quickly became uncontrollable and the pilot ejected just one mile north of Hanoi’s Gia Lam airport. CAPTAIN JONES was wounded in the leg by shrapnel from the flak burst. He also sustained a compression fracture of his spine and a severely broken left arm when he ejected at a very low altitude and was not able to assume the correct ejection posture before his seat fired. (He was captured immediately). Despite his injuries he was paraded through the streets of Hanoi in the back of a truck and like most of his fellow prisoner was tortured by the North Vietnamese, He was on his third tour of duty when he was shot down. He was released back to the United States on 12 February 1973…Three other F-105s sustained battle damage on the strike at Hanoi.

RIPPLE SALVO… #121… YOU BE THE JUDGE… Here’s what I have to make the case that: if you can’t keep a secret, you don’t belong in the White House and if you don’t take care of your people first, you don’t deserve to lead anything more than a drove of ducks. And as you consider this dated material from 1966 I ask you to apply your 1966 conclusions to what is happening in our current world.

(1) Refresher. GEN Pete Piotrowski wrote the following in his book “The Secret War and Other Conflicts.” pages 246-247: “…I saw former secretary of state Dean Rusk being interviewed by Peter Arnett on a CBS Documentary Called ‘The Thousand Day War.’ Mr. Arnett asked, ‘It has been rumored that the United States provided the North Vietnamese government the names of the targets that would be bombed the following day. Is there any truth to that allegation?’ To my astonishment and absolute disgust, the former secretary responded, ‘Yes. We didn’t want to harm the North Vietnamese people, so we passed the targets to the Swiss embassy in Washington with instructions to pass them to the NVN government through their embassy in Hanoi.’ as I watched in horror, Secretary Rusk went on to say, ‘All we wanted to do is demonstrate to the North Vietnamese leadership that we could strike targets at will, but we didn’t want to kill innocent people. By giving the North Vietnamese advanced warning of the targets to be attacked, we thought they would tell the workers to stay home.” The General’s last line on his recollection was…Peter Arnett opined that this would be a treasonous act by any one else… I wrote about this in an earlier Ripple Salvo and you can check it out on the fact checkers…

(2) In RS #120 (yesterday) I cited the breach of security that led the Wall Street Journal to publish “the essential details” of the June 1966 POL strikes. The strikes were postponed a few days, and further plans were covered by Top Secret SpeCat in order to deny the leaker any opportunity to provide a heads up to the North Vietnamese.

(3) NYT 29 June 1966 Page 46, James Reston “Vietnam and the Press”…”Public discussion of the wisdom or stupidity of extending the bombing to the population areas of these two cities is fair enough, but public disclosure of the timing of the operational military plans is not. Inevitably it puts the enemy on tactical alert for a military exercise that depends largely for its success on tactical surprise, and if the carrier based pilots and bombardiers have protested this disclosure they ar3e well within their rights. Most of the North Vietnamese anti-aircraft equipment supplied by the Soviets is mobile. With a few days advance notice it can be moved into position to defend the critical targets around Hanoi and Haiphong, plus raising the risk to the American planes, which have had enough trouble with the enemy’s surface-to-air missiles and radar controlled anti-aircraft guns, in the past…Some of us think it is a tragic mistake to extend the bombing to Hanoi and Haiphong, but the right to dissent does not extend to publishing operational plans that help the enemy increase the risk to our own fliers.”

(4) NYT 10 July 1966…OpEd… Arthur Krock: “In the Nation: Revising the Art of War”….

“The bombing of the chief industrial components of the war making potential of North Vietnam is not the only shift of tactics of President Johnson’s pursuit of his immediate objective to halt world communist territorial expansion at the borders of South Vietnam. Another shift is the resort to official news conferences to try out experiments in the strategies of war.

“Since news conferences became a fixed institution of the United States government, they have regularly been used to stimulate a favorable public option of its record, and to forestall spreading dissent when an act or policy has come under critical attack. But it is an innovation to make mass press interviews a vehicle of waging war as the President did on June 18 and July 5. He used the first presumably to soften the international and domestic attack on Hanoi and Haiphong that soon followed. He used the second news conference to create a psychology of certain victory, with the purpose of quieting down the critics at home and discouraging expanded aid to the enemy by Moscow and Peking.

“His pronouncements on both of these occasions departed from maxims which have been followed by governments in the conduct of war. One is military: never increase the risk potential by a complete tactical change by even an implication to the enemy that is impending. The second which isdeeply imprinted in both military and diplomatic manuals, is always leave an adversary room for a face-saving retreat from battle to negotiate in good faith, particu;arly when the negotiation is a stated policy objective of the other adversary. The value of the first axiom in terms of limiting casualties, has been repeatedly demonstrated in war. The value of the second is a recurrent factor in history.

“Never-the-less, the President, after what was surely careful deliberation, virtually warned the North Vietnamese on June 18 of the imminent end of the period in which he had spared vital enemy supply plants adjacent to urban masses in Hanoi and Haiphong. “We must,” he said, “continue to raise the cost of aggression at its ‘source.’ A word which had only one meaning in combat.”

General Pete Piotrowski: “No wonder all the targets were so heavily defended day after day! The NVN obviously moved as many guns as they could overnight to better defend each target they knew was going to be attacked. Clearly, many brave American Air Force and Navy fliers died or spent years in NVN prison camps as a direct result of being intentionally betrayed by Secretary Rusk and Secretary McNamara and perhaps President Johnson himself. I cannot think of a more duplicitous and treacherous act of American government officials.”

The General says it for all of us ….”…when approaching the target, the sky would turn black with burning flak. It seemed that all the AAA in the NVN inventory was protecting your specific target on any given day.”

There is no room in the White House war room for arrogance, stupidity, ignorance or political correctness. Especially at the head of the table. And the Commander-in-Chief who doesn’t consider the need to “take care of the troops” as a very high priority, or is willing to add incalculable risk to their survival by placing political considerations first, is undeserving of the opportunity to command, anything. Looking ahead, our country is on the verge of putting another doozie in the War Room saddle… if so, expect more of the same… Don’t any of these progressive types study history?…Question??

Lest we forget….               Bear             ………  –30–  ………..