RIPPLE SALVO… #637… The New York Times laments his departure and calls him the most effective Secretary of Defense since that office was created twenty years ago… Clark Clifford, who took the job, put it another way:…”More than any of the men who had preceded him, he moved the military establishment toward what we had intended it to be at the time of the struggle over military reform in the late nineteen forties–a struggle in which I participated. It is not an exaggeration to say that the history of the Department of the Defense will always be divided into the pre-McNamara and post-McNamara eras. Bringing modern management techniques to the Pentagon’s sacred fiefdoms represented a revolution, and, like all revolutionaries, McNamara made many enemies, especially in the uniformed services, who saw their private domains threatened by his drive toward increased efficiency and centralized management. Almost to man, they were delighted to see him go.”… but first…
Good Morning: Day SIX HUNDRED THIRTY-SEVEN of a return to years of the air war with North Vietnam called Rolling Thunder…
3 December 1967…HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a rainy Sunday with snow tonight…
Page 1: “CARDINAL SPELLMAN DIES OF STROKE AT 78–FUNERAL ON THURSDAY”... “Preparations for final tribute to the Cardinal were being made in the great St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, New York.”… (Webmaster note: Cardinal Spellman had made visits to US forces in-theatre, the latest having been a visit to Enterprise on Yankee Station in Christmas 1966) Page 1: “Johnson Invites World Inspection of Atomic Plants–Offers Access to All Defense Centers in Bid To Get Nuclear Arms Pact–Speaks At Anniversary Ceremony at Chicago Marking 25th Year of Age of Atom, Begun By Fermi’s Chain Reaction.”... Page 1: “U.S. Hopes To Clear Last Major Hurdle to Nuclear Treaty”…”By offering to place all civilian atomic plants under international inspection the Johnson Administration hoped today to remove the last major obstacle to a treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.”… Page 1: “Rusk Urges Closer NATO Ties–He Asserts That U.S. Would Welcome A European Caucus On Alliance”... “…would like to see its European allies develop a common position so they could function within the Western alliance as an equal parties in the quest for peace.”… Page 1: “Agreement To End Cyprus Crisis Is Still In Doubt”… Page 1: “U.N. Is Expected to Ask Vietcong To Security Council Talks”… “Invitations would also be given to Hanoi and Saigon on meeting to discuss the war.”… Page 2: “Draft Law Suit is Set Up By College Student Group”… Page 4: “Thieu Would Allow Pursuit in Cambodia”… “South Vietnamese troops should cross into neutral Cambodia in pursuit of fleeing Vietcong.”… Page 6: “Guerrillas In South Vietnam Get More Modern Soviet Arms”… including 175 long-range 122mm rockets….
Page 3: R.W Apple article: “F-105s Vanishing From the Air War–Pilots in Vietnam Will Miss Plane Being Replaced.“…Picture of F-105 and caption: “Pilots Will Miss It”… “The F-105 Thunderchief has been one of the hardest working planes in Vietnam but Republic Aviation Corporation, which built about 850 in the late 1950s and early 1060s, is building no more.”… Page 82: TV Section...Review of movie: “Same Mud, Same Blood,” under headline: “A Negro in Vietnam.”… movie tries to show how racism evaporates in combat.”…
GROUND WAR: Page 2: “Vietcong Shells Pound U.S. Unit–Military Camp Also Attacked at Budop, Near Cambodia”… “The Vietcong shelled a United States infantry battalion and an adjoining American-led militia camp at Budop late last night. An American military spokesman reported that eight United States soldiers had been wounded and the Vietnamese militiamen had sustained light casualties. Budop, 88 miles northwest of Saigon and three miles from the Cambodian border, was a scene of heavy Vietcong attacks last week. A battalion, about 600-men, of the United States First Infantry Division moved to the area with South Vietnamese reinforcements to support the local camps. The camp that was struck last night was run by a 12-man team of Special Forces…the camp had been hit with 30 mortar rounds. The infantry battalion, half a mile west of the camp’s airfield, was assaulted with about 100-rounds after sunset. The attack on the camp lasted an hour, but the mortar fire at the American positions lasted more than four hours.”…
3 December 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (4 Dec reporting 3 Dec ops) Page 1: “Poor weather over North Vietnam limited United States pilots to 58 missions, the lowest number since October 20 when 51 were flown.”... Pilot logs report many missions were diverted to radar drops near and in the DMZ… “Vietnam” Air Losses” (Hobson) There was one fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 3 December 1967. An F-4B of the VMFA-122 Crusaders and MAG-11 out of Danang blew a tire on takeoff, swerved off the runway and incurred Alpha damage. The crew survived…
NYT, Dec 3, Page 1: “Peking Says U.S. Bombed Ship in Port of North Vietnam”... “Communist China charged today that United States planes ‘dive bombed’ a Chinese freighter in the port of Hongay in North Vietnam last Saturday (25 November), wounding eight crew members and damaging the ship in more ‘than 20 places.’ The Foreign Ministry ‘strongly protested against the ‘piratical attack’ and declared that it was ‘a wild provocation by United States imperialism against the Chinese people,’ the official press said. In Washington, the Defense Department declined to comment. A statement of protest issued by the Chinese Foreign Minister warned the United States ‘you will certainly be punished for the crimes you have committed.’ It said that what it called the United States objective of blockading and isolating North Vietnam was a ‘sheer daydream.’
“The press agency, in an earlier dispatch from Hanoi, identified the Chinese freighter as the Hongqi No. 154 and said bombs had exploded off the freighters starboard side. ‘The crew fought back firmly against the savage attack displaying dauntless spirit,’ he added. The Foreign Ministry statement said:
“‘ United States imperialism has incurred another debt of blood to the Chinese people. United States imperialism imagines that bombing and attacking Chinese freighters it can cow the Chinese people, prevent them from aiding the Vietnamese people and sabotage the normal trade between China and Vietnam, thus achieving its objective and isolating Vietnam. This is sheer daydream. United States imperialism will never succeed in its criminal scheme.’
“After a description of the excellent situation prevailing ‘in the Vietnam battlefield’ the statement said: ‘No amount of threats can shake the Chinese people’s determination to aid the Vietnamese people.’ Furthermore, it said, the ‘Chinese people are entitled to take all necessary measures to safeguard the security of Chinese freighters, and United States imperialism must beheld fully responsible for all the consequences therefrom.'”….
RIPPLE SALVO… #637… 3 December 1967 New York Times OpEd, Page 46: “McNamara Leaves Pentagon”…
“The resignation of Robert S. McNamara deprives President Johnson of the ablest member of the Cabinet and deprives the nation of its most effective Secretary of defense since that arduous office was created twenty years ago.
“When Secretary McNamara took over in January 1961 many informed observers had begun to despair that a man could be found who would translate the constitutional requirement of civilian supremacy over the military into a contemporary practical reality. The military services were essentially autonomous, impenetrable and self-contained entities warring with one another for the biggest share of the budget and resistant to direction from their nominal superiors.
“Mr. McNamara’s success has not been merely a triumph of personal leadership. The far-reaching managerial revolution that Mr. McNamara and his associates brought about in the Pentagon made civilian control of military affairs genuine because for the first time in a generation it provided the men at the top with the necessary information
“Some of Secretary McNamara’s ambitious efforts systematize procurement–as in his insistence that the Air Force and Navy agree on the same fighter plane–were subject to the legitimate criticism. But the broad outlines of his accomplishment are beyond dispute. He takes his place as one of the great public servants in the history of the Republic.
“Secretary McNamara’s success was also due to his ability to see military issues in a broad context. In his moving plea to Premier Kosygin at the Glassboro conference last June to avoid an antiballistic missile race that would be futile, costly and dangerous. Mr. McNamara spoke as a humanist rather than a narrow spokesman of military interests. He well understood as he remarked in his brilliant Montreal speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, that the ‘purely military posture is not the central element in a nation’s security.
“MR. McNamara’s departure from the Pentagon at this time appears not to be due to any specific disagreements with President Johnson or the Joint Chiefs of Staff over Vietnam. Those disagreements have either been compromised or, as in the case of the intensified bombing of North Vietnam, to have been resolved some time ago against Mr. McNamara. But there are new projects developing in the defense field, such as the ‘thin’ antiballistic missile defense to be deployed against Communist China, for which the President may have wished to find a new spokesman. Certainly, for the last several months Secretary McNamara has himself recognized that he has served long enough in a wearying, punishing job. His lack of enthusiasm for almost unlimited bombing of North Vietnam and his belief that the war is susceptible only to a diplomatic rather than a military solution have forced him into an ambiguous role as defender of Administration policies with which he seemed no longer in full agreement.
“His move to the World Bank further diminishes the circle of original Vietnam policymakers still advising the President. The question now is whether Mr. Johnson will turn for a successor to the band of true believers in the war or seek a man of Mr. McNamara’s broad-gauge outlook. As the options narrow in Vietnam, it is important that the President’s advisors include a strong independent voice.”…
Humble Host has another column on Mr. McNamara’s departure — from the Chicago Tribune a few days earlier in November. The heading for that sendoff: “Good Riddance to McNamara”…The Chicago Tribune: “Perhaps a more open-minded successor, willing to listen to the professional military men whose business it is to fight wars, offers the hope of bringing the war to an end by defeating the enemy. Perhaps military counsel will again be heard in erecting defenses that will assure the preservation of the nation. The Tribune had sufficient doubts about McNamara’s performance to have suggested as long ago as July 22, 1965, that he should resign. We trust that he will take his computers to the World Bank and that he will keep as firm a hand on the cash drawer as he did on his uniformed subordinates at the Pentagon.”
Finally, McNamara’s successor Clark Clifford wrote this about his predecessor for the New Yorker in 1991:
“Under his controlled exterior, Bob McNamara suffered as much as any man I have ever known. I cannot think of what he went through without feeling an intense sadness–for his pain, for his sincerity and commitment, for the dreadful cost in lives and national treasure, or the policies that he and his colleagues followed for too long. From late 1965 until the end of 1967, I myself, after opposing them at the outset, had supported those policies as a private citizen and a personal advisor to the President. I was about to discover how wrong I was.”
RTR Quote for 3 December: Field Marshall Erwin Rommel: “The commander must try, above all, to establish personal and comradely contact with his men, but without giving away an inch of his authority.”…
Lest we forget… Bear