RIPPLE SALVO… #664… James Reston of The New York Times sums up 1967… but first…
Good Morning: Day SIX HUNDRED SIXTY-FOUR of consecutive daily posts remembering and honoring the valiant American aviators of Operation Rolling Thunder, who alone, carried the Vietnam war to the enemy’s heartland and the home of Ho Chi Minh…
31 DECEMBER 1967… HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a Monday full of clouds with snow in the forecast…
GROUND WAR: Page 1: “FOUR HELICOPTERS DOWNED”... “Four United States helicopters supporting a South Vietnamese infantry operation were reported to have been shot down in the Mekong Delta yesterday as fighting continued beyond 1 A.M. when a New Year’s cease-fire declared by the Viet Cong was to begin…The four helicopters were struck by ground fire, crashed and burned killing one American crewman and injuring three others. Three of the helicopters had been taking Government troops into action. The fourth was evacuating wounded…. Other clashes were in the area where bitter fighting between United States marines and North Vietnamese had left at least 70 marines dead in the last four days. In a delayed report, the marines announced Operation Badger Tooth along the border of Quangtri and Thuathien Provinces and said 27 of the enemy were killed there yesterday in ‘close-range fighting’ along the coast of the South China Sea. In the fighting that began in the area Wednesday, the command listed 45 marines killed and 81 wounded.”…
Page 1: “Saigon Announces 12-Hour Addition to Holiday Truce–36-Hour Cease-Fire Begins Today–Move Stirs Talk of Peace Offensive–Actions Please Pontiff–Washington Says Rumors of a New Johnson Peace Effort Are Just Speculation”… Page 1: “Johnson Popularity On The Upswing, Year-End Gallup Poll Discloses”... “…The latest nationwide survey shows 46-per cent of adults approving the way he is handling his job… Experience gained over a period of three decades shows that an incumbent President can generally expect a tight election if his popularity rating falls below the 55 per cent line.”… Page 2: “Restraint By U.S. On Cambodia Seen–William Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State, Says Border Areas Future is Up to Hanoi”… Page 1: “Hanoi Again Offers Talks if U.S. Bombings End”... “Prime Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh said last night that Hanoi would sit down to talk with the United States if bombing and all other acts of war stop unconditionally…. President Johnson’s September 29 speech has made the U.S. position clear…‘As we have told Hanoi time and time again, the heart of the matter really is this.: the United States is going to stop all aerial and naval bombardment on North Vietnam when this will lead promptly to productive discussions. We of course, assume that while discussions proceed, North Vietnam would not take advantage of the bombing cessations and limitations.’ “…
Page 2: “President Johnson At Ranch To Discuss Cambodian Policy–Rusk Invited to Talks on Foreign Problems–Work Will Continue on Budget”… Page 4: “Turkish Delegate Assures Thant Cyprus Action Is No Real Change”… “…establishment of 11-man ‘executive council ‘ by the Turkish community on Cyprus wold make no practical change.”… Page 5: “White House Says that Draft is Not a Way to Punish Dissenters”... “The White House declared yesterday that the Selective Service System ‘is not an instrument to repress and punish unpopular views.’ The system does ‘not vest in draft boards the judicial role in determining the legality of individual conduct,’ Joseph Califano Jr., special assistant to President Johnson, told Ivy League college Presidents.”… Page 46: “Private Flying Challenge in ’68–Aviation Industry is Hoping Growth Will Be Matched By Sound Regulation”…
31 December 1967: President’s Daily Brief…COMMUNIST CHINA: The most serious outbreak of armed violence since at least summer erupted in the important south China city of Kun-ming earlier this week…. NORTH VIETNAM: Hanoi radio yesterday broadcast a Nhan Dan editorial promising strong support to Cambodian Chief of State Sihanouk. The editorial, evidently written before Sihanouk’s recent interview with the Washington Post reporter, said US reports of Communist use of sanctuaries in Cambodia were ‘brazen slanders,’ as might be expected, it went on to claim that it was all a plot to set up the war to extend it to the whole of Indochina. NhanDan declared the Vietnamese people were fully behind the Cambodian people in their struggle and took the stock Hanoi line about “legitimate right toc all when necessary for assistance from friendly countries to defeat the US.”…
State Department Office of the Historian…Two Historical Documents worth a look… 450. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson of 29 December 1967 concerning “Prisoners of War in Vietnam”. A list of initiatives informing the President “what we have done” to gain the release and improved treatment of our imprisoned warriors.” the second document is 451. Editorial Note of 29 December 1967 includes a statement “that categorically affirmed the single condition under which (North Vietnam) would enter into discussions on peace in Vietnam.”… Read at…
450. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v05/d450
451. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v05/d451
31 DECEMBER 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (1 Jan 68 reporting 31 Dec 67) Page 1: “Fog and mist shielded much of North Vietnam from air attack yesterday (31) and Saturday (30), but strikes were made against the railroad yards and Yen Bai 78 miles northwest of Hanoi, and a highway bridge at Thainguyen, 39 miles to the northwest of Hanoi.(Humble Host surmises these were Air Force Commander Club radar vectoring to area targets for radar drops)… American strikes were directed against secondary targets in the panhandle area from Vinh southward.”…. “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on the last day of 1967…
(1) MAJOR JAKE I. SORENSEN and 1LT JOHN C, AARNI were flying an F-4C of the 390th TFS and 366th TFW out of Danang as an escort for a Ranch Hand defoliation flight of C-123s. After completing the mission near Dak To they were vectored to provide Close Air Support for an Army unit in contact with the enemy. On their second attack they were hit by ground fire eventually resulting their need to eject from their burning Phantom. They were rescued by an Army helicopter to fly and fight again…
(2) 1LT GLENN ARTHUR BELCHER was flying an A-1E of the 1st ACS and 56th ACW out of Nakhon Phantom on a New Year’s eve strike on vehicle targets near Ban Hanoy 40 miles southeast of Nakhon Phanom when hit by ground fire. The Spad rolled over into the ground and exploded killing the young aviator. A joint US-Lao recovery team excavated the site in 1994 and 1995 to recovery the remains of 1LT BELCHER for subsequent identification and burial in the UnitedStates… 1LT BELCHER was killed carrying the fight to the enemy and died on the battlefield heroically… He is remembered on this 50th anniversary pof his sacrifice for our country…
(3) LCDR JOHN DARLINGTON PEARCE and LT GORDON SAMUEL PERISHO were flying an A-6A of the VA-75 Sunday Punchers embarked in USS KITTY HAWK on a daylight strike on a cave storage facility a few miles east of Vinh in the face of active SAM opposition. The Intruder and her crew disappeared amid the SAM warnings. Subsequent searches for the aircraft were unsuccessful and LCDR PEARCE and his young B/N LT PERISHO were killed in action and remain where they fell fifty years ago on New Year’s eve 1967… Left behind, but remembered as they continue to rest in peace…
From the Compilation “34TFS/History of F-105” by Howie Plunkett… 31-Dec-67:
“The 34 TFS at Korat launched the four-ship ‘Gator’ flight against a target in Laos. The flight took off at 1430 and returned after flying 2 hours and 20 minutes. The flight line-up: #1. Major Sam Armstrong; #2, Captain Robert Elliot; #3, Captain Sam Morgan; and, #4, Major William Blakeslee… It was Major Armstrong’s 44th combat mission. From his ‘100-Mission Combat Log.’ “…
“This was a Commando Club mission on a target 20 miles east of Sam Neua. the weather was undercast. We carefully selected as our I.P. to be in the ‘Fish’s Mouth so that we could automatically get a ‘counter.’ The weather was completely undercast so we coundn’t see where see where the bombs hit. No post-strike refueling since we still had gobs of fuel. We did some airwork on the easy home. Very uneventful.”…
RIPPLE SALVO… #664… James Reston’s Washington: “So Long to 1967, and Good Riddance!”…NYT, 29 Dec 67, page 26…
“Nineteen sixty-seven had a bad press and even the obit writers weren’t sorry to see it go. In addition to it’s wars and riots, it almost managed to give prosperity a bad name, and yet, despite its disappointed expectations, there were a few consolations. For twelve long months, we risked a war with China that never came. That is something we couldn’t be sure about, and probably wouldn’t tolerate if China had a large bomber force on our borders. The truth is that we have not really had control of the issue of war with China all year long, but we got away with the risk and that is obviously a plus. The minus, of course is that we lost more men in Vietnam in 1967 than in all the other five years since the military intervention in that tragic country. That is a burden on our conscience, but it is not as bad as the slaughter of the big war we have escaped.
THE SPIRITED DEBATE…
“Also there has been a revival of spirited political debate in the country in 1967, which on the whole is also a plus. We are deeply divided about what to do in Vietnam, but at least we are arguing and even thinking about it, which is more than can be said of the years before when we stumbled needlessly into the conflict.
BENEFICIAL FALLOUT
“No doubt this sharp and often vicious debate has sometimes gone too far, but at least it has made the country pay attention to public policy, forced discussion on the purpose, cost and limitations of modern war, and occasionally provoked some reflections on the two larger questions on what kind of society America is, and what its relations should be to the rest of the world. This discussion has at least made one point clear. It has made the leading antagonists on both sides of the Vietnam argument, and many others, think about the rising power of the American President. Both the hawks and the doves, and a lot of birds in between, now know after the arguments of 1967 that it is the President personally who decides in the end whether to bomb or not bomb, to negotiate or not to negotiate, to pursue the enemy into Cambodia or even China or to stop short. At a time when the American people are preparing to pick a President, this is a useful reminder of the relationship between character and Presidential power. Neither the Congress, which has the power of the purse and of impeachment, nor the Cabinet, which serves the President–as the McNamara incident dramatized–is likely to restrain a President in critical decisions on foreign relations, even if they involve the risk of fighting a major war. This, of course, has been true ever since the invention of nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles. The major difference is that we are more conscious of it after the events of the last year.
PURPOSE AND PRIORITIES…
“Even so this conflict over priorities is not without its advantages. It is forcing a long delayed debate on what is primary and what is secondary in the allocation of resources. It is reviving discussions on the purpose and limitations of our policies at home and abroad. These are imponderables, to be sure, and they are not likely to resolve the mess in Vietnam or in the cities, but they are not unimportant. For if there had been a clearer vision of our priorities and purposes in the years before, the problems of 1967 might not have been as intractable as they proved to be.”…
RTR Quote for 31 December: ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN: “Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One would like to ask: by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?”…
Lest we forget….. HAVE A GREAT 2018.… Bear