RIPPLE SALVO… #517… NYTs Tom Buckley versus Lieutenant General Lewis Walt… FOOFARAW, HULLABULOO AND BLATHER... but first…
MIGHTY THUNDER posts a Brown Bear Schaffert beauty today: “Must-Pump Replacement Pilots at Yankee Station”... draw a cup of coffee and enjoy a page of history…
Good Morning: Day FIVE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN of a taste of the past–the years of Rolling Thunder in North Vietnam…
4 August 1967: HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a cloudy Friday in NYC…
SUMMER IN AMERICA 1967: Page 1- Banner Headline: “Johnson Asks For 10% Surcharge On Personal and Business Taxes; 45,000 More Men To Go To Vietnam–Inflation Feared–Message to Congress Seeks Withholding Increase October 1–Congress Likely to Delay Effective Date of Tax Rise–Troop Goal Now 525,000–Troop Action Reflects Compromise–Rise In Spending Seen”... (Troop compromise: Westmorelnd wanted 70,000 and McNamara recommended 15,000 to 30,000).
Page 1: “Lindsay Forming Group to Assist Slum Businesses–Leaders of Corporations and Unions Are Recruited As Members of Coalition–Loans Needs Stressed–Mayor Says Banks Are Not Sufficiently Involved In Negro Section In New York City”...”A new organization proposed–New York Coalition–to unite corporations, unions, churches and other private organizations in an attack on the problem’s of the city’s slums.”… Page 1: “U.S. Aided School Held Anti-White–Police Official Says Negroes In Nashville Teach Hatred in the Name of Liberation”... “A Nashville police captain testified today that the Federal Government was subsidizing a ‘liberation school’ in his city that taught ‘unadulterated hatred’ of whites and was run by an official of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee…appearing before Senate Judiciary Committee.”… Page 1: “Newark College To Help Negroes–Willing to Set Aside Site For a Slum area Complex”… “The Newark College of Dentistry and Medicine has agreed in principle to use a major part of its proposed Newark Campus for an urban welfare center in the Negro slums. The complex that is envisioned would contain low-income housing childcare and health centers and facilities for employment and welfare.”... Page 1: “New York Air Pollution Worst of Nation’s Major Urban Areas”...”Public health is threatened in 65 urban areas, says report by Public Health Services National Center for Air Pollution Control. Chicago is number 2, Philadelphia is number 3 and Los Angeles and Long Beach is 4th. Cleveland is #5.”…
VIETNAM: Page 1: “U.S. Combat Loss In Vietnam Drops to Six Month Low”...”…during the week 114 soldiers were killed and 893 wounded down from 164 and 1,442. Enemy casualties were 1,399 killed an 1,790 the prior week. The casualties on USS Forrestal are not included in these totals (Forrestal: 131 dead and 62 injured).”… “Ground fighting continued to be light with only three engagements, only one of the three reported any significant contact. 1st Marine division conducting n operation 2 miles south-southwest of Danang reported killing 77 enemy soldiers since august 1 with the loss of eight Marines killed in action and 57 wounded… In a heavy clash 20 miles southwest of Danang a Marine squad and engineer mine sweeping team were wiped out by a large enemy force–15 Marines were killed and one wounded.” (Also a picture on Page 1 of the C-7 Caribou crashing in South Vietnam reported in RTR yesterday)…
4 August 1967…The President’s TS Daily CIA Brief… NORTH VIETNAM: Cargo deliveries by foreign flag ships dropped off in July. Only about 70,000 tons arrived compared to an average of 128,000 tons during the previous six months. This decline was reflected in most categories of cargo…. URUGUAY: The government is eyeball-to-eyeball with the Communist dominated labor movement in a situation that can only add to the country’s serious political and economic woes. Public employees are being egged on by the Communists demanding a 40-per cent raise…. LIBYA: The Libyan radio announced yesterday that the British have agreed to evacuate their Libyan bases within six months. We have not heard any details, but we know talks are underway. We still feel, however,that the Libyan Government is not panting to us out of Wheelus….
4 AUGUST 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (5 Aug reporting 4 Aug 0-s) Page 1–Banner Headlines: “197 Missions sets Record For Raids on North Vietnam–Targets From Hanoi south to Border Hit in Busiest Day Since October 14, 1966–One Plane Shot Down–Loss of F-105 Said to Bring Toll of Downed Jets In North to 635–Sweep in Delta Ends”… “American war planes flew the largest number of missions of the war against North Vietnam yesterday as the ground war continued in a lull… The United States flew 197 missions striking widely at targets around Hanoi and Haiphong to the demilitarized zone…number of missions of little significance except to indicate the weather was good and aircraft were available…One Air Force F-105 Thunderchief was reported down in the southern part of North Vietnam and the pilot was reported missing…??? ( This is probably Captain W.G. Newcomb, downed on 3 August and a (POW)
Although the DMZ remained quiet, United States pilots scored significant hits north of the area separating North and South Vietnam…Air Force Phantoms flying from Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam attacked a troop concentration 18 miles north of the zone. Pilots reported destroying three artillery pieces, including a 155mm gun, a bunker, and damaging two half-tracks and a tank. They reported destroying five trucks and setting off an explosion that threw off an orange fireball (SA-2s?)…. Phantom pilots from Danang air base set off a large explosion and five fires in a petroleum storage area near Dong Hoi, 40 miles north of the demilitarized zone. The pilots also attacked a truck park reporting 14 trucks destroyed and 14 more heavily damaged. Thunderchief pilots from Thailand hit the Bacgiang railroad and highway bridge 27 miles northeast of Hanoi with 3,000-pound bombs.”…
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) there was one fixed wing aircraft downed in Southeast Asia on 4 August 1967…
(1) LTJG RALPH CAMPION BISZ was flying an A-4E of the VA-163 Saints embarked in USS Oriskany in a strike formation enroute to asssault the petroleum storage site at Luc Nong eight miles northeast of Haiphong when challenged by a volley of four surface-to-air missiles. LTJG BISZ put his A-4 Skyhawk in an evasive maneuver but was hit squarely by an SA-2 at 10,500-feet. As Chris Hobson reported the incident, the aircraft “became a mass of flames and falling debris.” LTJG BISZ was declared captured and put in POW status. He was not returned with the POWs in 1973. His remains were returned to the United States in March 1988 and identified in April 1988.
RIPPLE SALVO… #517… KERFLUFFLE: “A state of noisy confused activity.” U.S. Marine casualties and tactics were the subject of a NYT August 4 article by Tom Buckley. His story rattled USMC Headquarters. . The following report headlined on page 1 of the 31 July NYT was what got Buckley’s attention.
Page 1: “23 Marines Dead In Enemy Ambush in Buffer Zone—191 Wounded–Column On Way Back From Zone”... “A battalion of marines was ambushed yesterday (29th) as it was withdrawing from a sweep of the demilitarized zone. a spokesman said 23 men had been killed and 191 wounded…near the Marine strongpoint of Conthien. Two miles below the buffer zone a traps sprung by a force estimated at battalion strength of 500 men. The ambush was launched from concealed positions on both sides of a narrow dirt road the marines were following back to Conthien. The ambush begn with a mortar attack then a charge fragmenting the marines who were spread out for nearly a mile…forty of the attackers were killed in the four-hour battle. Marine air and artillery were not available due to the intermingling of friend and foe in the battle area.”…
The Buckley story on 4 August, Page 2:
“The Fight To Seal the Buffer Zone–Marine Tactics Seem To Be Failing To Block Foe In Demilitarized Strip”... “Early in July an exhausted Marine infantryman–a survivor of an ambush near the demilitarized zone in which nearly 100 of his companions were killed and more than 200 were wounded–shook his head and said,’Man, we need help.’ Last Saturday…another ambush…twenty-three Marines were killed and 191 wounded. By official count more than 2,000 Marines have been killed and more than 2,000 Marines have been killed and more than 14,000 Marines have been wounded in combat since the first of the year, about 40%of all American casualties in Vietnam during the same period. This total of 16,000 casualties is the equivalent of 16 full strength infantry battalions. the Marines have 22 battalions in Vietnam. …10,000 of the Marine losses have incurred in or near the demilitarized zone…. The Marines, some military and civilian observers believe, have failed to contain the enemy threat. Why?
Their collective inputs included: “…serious short comings in Marine equipment, tactics and command flexibility…not enough helicopters (and what they have are ‘old and obsolete’)… Tactics: moving down a road with thick vegetation on all sides, under strength units, not enough tanks. Another factor: the enemy has improved and their weapons are more lethal, especially use of mortars…
“The Marine Response: Page 2: “Walt Asserts Foe Was Repulsed”... “Lieutenant General Lewis W. Walt, until recently Commander of the Third Amphibious Force in South Vietnam insisted today that the Marines were successfully dealing with the North Vietnamese problem in the demilitarized zone…. ‘Marines repulsed a concerted enemy effort between February and May to seize control of the two northern provinces…The enemy has not achieved a single objective he sought out to achieve.’ The General cited operations on February 18 and 19, where they encircled and killed 812 of the enemy as they were breaking out…General Walt said: ‘Reports of 10,00 Marines killed and wounded since the beginning of the year are highly misleading… 1,875 Marines have been killed, and although 14,788 have been wounded, 70% of them have not been evacuated. Of all wounded Marines, only 10% cannot be returned to duty.’ “
The kerfuffle between the media and the Generals will continue and so will the unwinnable war in South Vietnam until another 46,000 men– mostly Marines grunts and Army infantrymen; hospital corpsmen; and a few thousand aviators– are expended in a war of attrition where the body count score-card was the measure of our strategy’s success.
Humble Host hopes Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster and the three Marine Generals in the war room now –August 2017–who are advising our President, have reviewed the lessons 58,000 young Americans paid for with their lives. After twelve years in the Vietnam quagmire–nothing gained, everything lost. That is the paramount lesson that must be put to use in deciding what to do in the Afghanistan quagmire. Sixteen years of failed strategy. What now? More of the same?…
What would the 58,000 who died in Vietnam and the millions of others who served and came home advise the President, General McMaster and his three Marine generals”?... IMHO 95% would tell the four generals in the pilot house that: “You got to know when to hold ’em, and you got to know when to fold ’em”… it is time to fold ’em!!! A quagmire is a quagmire.
RTR QUOTE for 4 August: GEORGE ELIOT: “Iteration, like friction is likely to create heat rather than progress.”
Lest we forget… Bear