RIPPLE SALVO… #187… OF THE WARRIOR” –NAPOLEON… but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY-SEVEN in the corner of the laboratory called “the air war in North Vietnam”…
4 SEPTEMBER 1966… THE NEWS OF THE DAY…NEW YORK TIMES… on a cloudy, rainy Sunday on the Hudson…
Page 1: “President Calls 100-Nation Talks On Lack Of Water”…”President Johnson ranged inland today from the dry and crowded Eastern Seaboard to proclaim two more battles in his war on poverty–to quench the world’s thirst for water and to save America’s small towns. For the third consecutive weekend, Mr. Johnson fled the conditions of the capital to solicit cheers and support of the country. In a now established pattern, he did a combining lofty Presidential purpose with earthy partisan politics. ‘We’re on the move, we’re on the go,’ the President asserted with passion at his first stop in Charleston, West Virginia this morning. ‘People have high hopes. People are working, people are eating. we are doing what a democratic President , a democratic government ought to be doing for a democratic people,’ In nearby Summerville, before a crowd of 25,000, the President dedicated a dam by invoking the blessings of water and the dread of drought. Taking this theme from on of West Virginia’s major local issues, he warned that all of mankind is in a race with disaster over the lack of water and called for an International Water for Peace conference in Washington next spring. The White House said invitations would be sent to 100 countries.”… Page 1: “TWA to Purchase 28 Jet Airliners for $410 Million”…”Trans World Airlines announced yesterday that it had placed the largest order in its history, with Boeing– $410 million for 28 new airliners, including 12 Boeing 747s that will carry 327 passengers apiece on trans-Atlantic routes.”…
Page 1: “Critical Shortage of Teachers Hits Nation’s Schools”… “The most critical teacher shortage in a decade confronts the nation’s classrooms at the start of a new school year. Whr scarcity, which is reported from Maine to California, has taken local school systems and state education authorities by surprise. It comes after several years of steady improvement in the supply of teachers. In contrast with indications in recent years that teacher shortages were a thing of the past, a check by the New York Times found public schools desperately trying to staff their classrooms. Many staes are resorting to the use of greater numbers of teachers without professional credentials. Emergency calls are going out to enlist college educated house wives and to bring teachers out of retirement. ‘It is the most serious shortage we have had since the nineteen forties,’ said Dr. Harry Sparks, superintendent of public instruction in Kentucky…The State of New York is short 12,000 full time teachers. ‘Areas we thought we had covered in terms of people available–male physical education teachers, elementary school teachers, and industrial arts instructors are short; said Dr. Vincent Gazette of the New York State Education Department.”… Page 1: “Negroes In Poll Ask for More Police”…” A survey of Negro attitudes in Halem and Watts suggests that ghetto dwellers are concerned more about police protection than police brutality. Although the survey found considerable evidence among Negroes of angst toward police, it also discovered many Negroes sympathized with police problems and wanted more instead of fewer policemen in the neighborhood.”… Page 2: “Military Hopes to Help Rejects”…”The Armed Services appear receptive but somewhat uninformed about how Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s special program will be carried out, but they hope the Defense Department will provide details soon. Special training of the rejects is scheduled to begin in October. More than a week ago Mr. McNamara announced that up to 100,000 men a year previously disqualified for duty would be taken into service and brought to military standards”…
4 SEPTEMBER 1966…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… NEW YORK TIMES…(5 September reporting 4 September ops)…Page 23: “United States fighter-bomber pilots yesterday flew 136 missions each involving more than one aircraft, over North Vietnam. They struck a storage area southwest of Dienbienphu and only five miles from the Laotian border, and a surface-to-air missile site and petroleum depot near Haiphong. Navy pilots attacking along the coast and in the panhandle destroyed barges, trucks and railroad cars.”… “Pilot Saved Under Heavy Fire”…”A United States Air Force HU-16 Albatross piloted by Captain Duane Miller of Seymour, Wisconsin landed off the coast of North Vietnam under heavy fire today (September 3) to rescue a downed Air Force pilot. The Air Force said that shore batteries tried to sink the rescue craft as it picked up Captain Edward Skowron off the water. ‘Our rescue man was so fast he practically walked on water getting to the down pilot,’ said Captain Harold King of Crestview, Florida, navigator of the Albatross. The rescue man was TSGT William Sutton of Goldsboro, North Carolina.”… (Captain Skowron was included in RTR 3 Sept and erroneously reported picked up by helo) … “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson)…Three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 4 September 1966..
(1) 1LT RAYMOND PAUL SALZARULO and 1LT JOHN HERBERT NASMYTH were flying an F-4C of the 555th TFS and 8th TFW out of Ubon on a strike on the petroleum facilities at Thai Nguyen and were hit prior to roll-in by a SAM. 1LT NASMYTH was able to eject and was captured. 1LT SALZARULO died in the aircraft. 1LT NASMYTH was a POW until released on 18 February 1973 and 1LT SALZARULO’s remains were returned to the United States on 13 September 1990. 1LT SALZARULO was Killed in Action facing the enemy and died going forward. He is remembered with respect on this 50th anniversary of his death.
(2) 1LT RONALD GLENN BLISS was flying an F-105D of the 357th TFS and 355th TFW out of Takhli on a strike on the POL storage area six miles north of Hanoi and was hit by 57mm anti-aircraft fire as he started his attack over the target and was forced to eject from his ablaze aircraft 40 miles away from the target but was captured before he could be rescued. He spent six and one half years as a POW before being released on 4 March 1973…
(3) 1LT THOMAS MITCHELL McNISH was flying an F-105D of the 354th TFS and 355th TFW out of Takhli on a strike on the same target about 20 minutes behind 1LT BLISS’ F-105D and was also shot down performing the standard F-105 popup from the very high speed low altitude approach, then climb at the target area to achieve about 12,000 feet of altitude to roll-in on a 45-degree dive attack. AAA scored direct hits on the F-105D and 1LT McNISH (on his 45th counter) was forced to eject in the target area. He was captured, interned for six and a half years and released on 4 March 1973.
4 September 1966… RIPPLE SALVO #187…. “HISTORY IS THE TEACHER” and I am still learning. I have taken the advice of Napoleon who said, “History is the laboratory of warriors.” He also said “the study of the great military captains is the study of history.” Thomas Carlyle said much the same thing when he wrote, “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” He would never have made it in a PC world. My RTR undertaking is and will be my laboratory. While my foremost purpose is to honor the memory of the fallen aviators from our years in Vietnam, especially those who carried the war to North Vietnam in his homeland, I am pursuing support for my hypothesis (“..an assumption made especially in order to test its logical or empirical consequences..”).
In his inaugural address on 20 January 1969 President Richard Nixon noted that : “Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. But some stand out as moments of beginning, in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries.” My hypothesis, or “leap in the dark,”or “act of guessing,” or conjecture, if you wish, is that the myriad of events coinciding with Operation Rolling Thunder (March 1965 to Nov 1968) constitute a “moment of beginning” that put our great nation on the path to another revolution, from which a new nation will evolve that will be very unlike the democratic republic established by our founding fathers 240 years ago. I appreciate the wisdom of one of my mentors that the “moment of beginning” for the destiny I foresee occurred much earlier than the mid-1960s with the rise to authority of the Baby Boomer Generation (Boomers). My mentor tells me the “moment of beginning” dates to the Wilson/ TR Roosevelt years and the birth of progressivism in the United States. I concede that the seeds of our national destruction came into existence with this line of political thought. And I recognize the seed had many moments of nurturing during the years of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. But it wasn’t until Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society” and the rise of a generation of anti-individualism, anti-capitalism, and anti-private wealth that progressives got their bearings in the mid-1960s and “our course was finally set.” The new course was set when: the disastrous Vietnam War; the big government Great Society (Welfare State); the benching of “rugged individualism”; and, the progressive dominated Boomer generation, fused. That was the “moment of beginning” for our reformed country.
Thus, with this mindset, I am dissecting day-by-day the events of those years most critical to “supporting” my hypothesis. My task is to identify: the breaks from our past that have put our society and nation on a new course and reformed nation; to identify the seeds of revolution that are now maturing (Sal Alinsky, a favorite of the progressives, writes: “History is a relay of revolutions.”); and, to better understand the future I will not live to see. I am six months into this project and I am enjoying swimming in some of the great years of American history that the warriors of Rolling Thunder helped write, for better or worse. As Victor David Hanson says: “…studying history remains the only way to understand who we were, are, and will be.”
Your comments by post or email are invited….
Lest we forget, Bear ………. –30– ………..