RIPPLE SALVO… Rolling Thunder 50
Good Morning: Day THIRTY-FIVE of a long look back to Operation Rolling Thunder …”the air war”…
4 APRIL 1966 (NYT)… ON THE HOMEFRONT… Page 1 headline: “Ky Says Troops Will Go to Danang To Restore Order.” Ky also threatened to shoot the Mayor and any others who encourage the dissidents…units of the SVN army were moving to Danang…Protests are ongoing in Hue following a student leader who said “…the regime must change.” …The top Marine in Danang reported that all is calm and in Washington the Commandant, General Wallace Greene, told the press that the Danang situation was “…not a state of revolt.”…Also on page 1: Soviet satellite orbiting the moon playing music for the 23rd Communist Party Congress in Moscow… Headline: “Rising Hispanic Migration Heightens Tensions,” and demonstrators were presenting demands that the Mayor consider better living and working conditions for Hispanic migrants. City agreed to create a General Assembly of Hispanic Groups to discuss education, housing and jobs with Mayor John Lindsay…On page 2 “NVN Steps Up Infiltration into South,” and the flow of men and material was reported to be vastly increased in the last two months. Rate of infiltration increased from 4500/month to 5000/month. Interesting little story on page 4 reporting “Crank Calls Harass Families of G.I.s Serving in Vietnam.” It was a rainy Monday in New York…
4 APRIL 1966… ROLLING THUNDER… A major effort was directed to targets in the Mugia Pass with B-52s in numbers pounding the pass and other fighter-bombers taking on backed up truck traffic on the north side of the 15 mile long pass. Two aircraft were lost in SVN. An 0-1F of the 19 TASS in Bien Hoa crashed with unknown casualties. Also, An F-100D of the 510TFS in Bien Hoa on a test flight became uncontrollable and the pilot ejected and was recovered. Two operational losses, no combat losses….
RIPPLE SALVO… Rolling Thunder 50… In late March 1966, while the admirals and generals in the PACOM (Admiral Sharp) chain of command were pressing hard for more aggressive targeting going north, and the President was standing pat with little interest in increasing the crawl of his “gradual escalation” strategy, General Westmoreland in command of the ground war as MACV had another idea. He asked that the focus of the air war in April and May be shifted to the infiltration routes through Laos. Westmoreland requested five actions: (1) he wanted more analysis of the vulnerability of the transportation link between China and the battlefields in SVN; (2) more armed recce in the lower portion of North Vietnam and the four mountain passes coming from North Vietnam into Laos, and the area around and in the DMZ; (3) he wanted command of the “extended battlefield” of the southern portion of North Vietnam shifted from PACOM to MACV; (4) he wanted to be able to use napalm in Laos, which was prohibited, and the B-52 targeting more strikes in the eastern portion of Laos; and (5) destruction of POL targets in North Vietnam, which he called the strategic rear (for PACOM the strategic rear was the PRC), that had not yet been struck. Admiral Sharp was resistant to most of the MACV requests. Secretary McNamara was “highly supportive of Westmoreland” since he was disappointed in the “little effect” Rolling Thunder was having on the infiltration rates. Therefore, Sharp agreed to shift primary responsibility for route package 1 but not route package 2. This allowed MACV to conduct armed recce in the lower package with VNAF and U.S. Air Force air assets. Sharp also reassigned the route packages with the Air Force covering 5 and 6A and the Navy 2,3,4, and 6B. This division of the pie of opportunity and responsibility did not please the Air Force. There were a lot of ruffled feathers going into Rolling Thunder 50 on 1 April 1966. A “turf war”…?
Lest we forget…. Bear
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