ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED 5 JULY 1966

RIPPLE SALVO… #127… TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE… but first….

Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN of the forgotten “air war” — ROLLING THUNDER…

5 JULY 1966… ON THE HOME FRONT… NYT…  Ahhh, relief– a sunny, but mild Tuesday…finally…see

Page 1: “Air From Canada Ends Heat Wave After 3rd Day of 98+”… “A mid-afternoon invasion of cool Canadian air yesterday rescued the city from a third consecutive day of 100-degree temperatures, arriving just in time to ease the discomfort of homebound Fourth of July weekend crowds from a high of 98-degrees at 2:35 PM, temperatures rapidly falling 11-degrees in two hours as fresh winds came down from the north. Overnight low was in the 60s.”

Page 1: “Million Refugees Listed By Saigon”… “Government statistics made public today indicated that more than a million South Vietnamese fled from their homes in the last two years. As the war has grown, the figures show 6-per cent of the countries population of 16 million has been uprooted. This is about 100,000 more than the number or refugees that poured into the country after the partition of 1954.  Finding homes for refugees of the nineteen-fifties was one of the main accomplishments of the late Ngo Dinh Diem when he was President. But the government of Nguyen Cao Ky is having a harder time resettling those who seeking sanctuary from bombings, ground fighting and the Vietcong.”…Page 2: “Gains By Ky Seen In Wake of Crisis”… “Nearly three and a half months of political crisis that halted in late June have worked subtle but important changes in the character of South Vietnam’s ruling military junta. the personal position of Premier Nguyen Cao Ky has been considerably strengthened.”… Page 2: “Peking Charges U.S. With Plan To Send Ground Forces To Laos”… “The foreign ministry of Communist China today charged the United States with ‘making active preparation for sending ground forces into Laos.’ The accusation…was coupled with a fresh burst of invective over the United States air raids on fuel depots at Hanoi and Haiphong.”

Page 1: “CORE Will Insist On ‘Black Power'”… “A convention of the Congress of Racial Equality adopted resolutions yesterday in Baltimore, to make ‘black power’ a new factor in American life, opposing American involvement in the Vietnam War. The action occurred at the 23rd annual CORE convention which adjorned today. The rejection of the established procedures for achieving full equality for the nation’s 22 million Negroes was put this way by Floyd B. McKissick, CORE’s new national director: ‘The black masses have not been elevated by the (anti-poverty) program. as long as the white man has all the power and the money, nothing will happen because we have nothing. The only way to achieve meaningful change is to take power.’ The resolutions on Vietnam and the draft were outlined by Lincoln Lynch, associate national director. He said one resolution called for the immediate withdrawal of United states forces. James Farmer, who was national director, then took the floor and successfully pleaded that the resolution be tabled. Mr. McKissick replaced Mr. Farmer, who resigned in March. The other resolution said that the Selective Service System ‘places a heavy burden on the poor and the minority groups.’ The resolution pledged to support anyone who refused to serve in the armed forces because of the Vietnam war and pledged to explain the immorality of the war to Negro youths. In the opinion of observers here, CORE’s new orientation, which parallels the line laid down by Stokely Carmichael, chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, opened the possibility of class conflict within the Negro communities throughout the nation. The resolution implied open opposition to other civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League and an undeclared war on civil rights and anti-poverty programs of the Johnson Administration. McKissick: ‘LBJ made a brilliant speech at Harvard University–a speech that would make a rattlesnake cry…LBJ is the Great White father to whom the Toms always appeal for help.’ Symptomatic of the new approach to ‘black power’ was the appearance at the Masonic hall rally last night of large numbers of uniformed Black Muslims and Muslim ‘sisters.’ One of the invited speakers was Lonnie X, the Muslim minister. Lonnie X talked of the Negroes image. He contended that the white man had instilled in the black man deep self-hatred and dislike for all things black by exposing him to the idea from childhood that every thing black was inferior and everything worthwhile was white.”… Page 232: “Wilkins Defines Term”… “Roy Wilkins, Executive director of NAACP, said today his organization differs from other civil rights groups on the concept of “black power.” He said: “The trouble with ‘black power’ is it implies ‘anti-white.’ We (NAACP) can’t have anything to do with it. We are loath to talk about it. We believe in the legitimate use of power. It ought never to be ethnic or racial. Our whole situation is inter-racial, not anti-racial.”

5 July 1966…President’s Daily Brief…CIA (TS sanitized)…South Vietnam: Late yesterday the government released, in two separate ceremonies, a total of 282 persons arrested in recent weeks for participation in the “struggle.” In both ceremonies the detainees were handed over to Tam Chau with only one other Buddhist Institute leader present–an apparent attempt by the government to build up Chau’s prestige at the expense of Tri Quang and extremist wing of the institute. Today, the 79-member Peoples-Army Council was installed. Its mission is to advise the government on political, economic, cultural, and social welfare matters. Until it elects its officers and we can learn more about its important m,embers, we cannot say whether this council will be any more effective than the many similar ones that have come and gone in recent years.”

5 JULY 1966..OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…NYT (6 July reporting 5 July ops)…Page 4: “U.S. Plane Lost In Raid On Boats”…”a United States fighter-bomber crashed into the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam early today during an attack on two boats suspected of enemy torpedo craft. The pilot was recovered after five hours in the water. It was the second encounter in five days between U.S. planes and small boats in the Gulf. Last Friday Navy planes sank three torpedo boats when they headed toward a United States destroyer (USS Coontz) in an apparent attack. The plane lost today, an A-4 Skyhawk, was one of two launched from the Constellation to investigate possible torpedo boat activity 5-10 miles off the coast of North Vietnam.”…”In 31 strike missions on North Vietnam yesterday flown by a group of planes in each mission, Navy pilots bombed three petroleum storage areas in the vicinity of Vinh, Haiphong and Thanh Hoa and a number of highways, railroads, bridges and shipping facilities. Damage assessment was not available. Commander Bob Mandeville, who led the attack on the fuel storage depot at Bai Thong, 25-miles west of Thanh Hoa, said, ‘the target was literally covered with bombs.’ Air Force pilots flew 60 multiple aircraft missions and reported they have damaged or destroyed 27 military trucks near Dong Hoi and struck barges, bridges and storage areas elsewhere in the panhandle. “Vietnam: Aircraft Losses”… there were no losses on 5 July. The loss reported above in the NYT was a 4 July loss reported in RTR #126, yesterday (pilot Neil Holben, a Lemoore neighbor of mine).

RIPPLE SALVO … #127… “GRADUALISM IN VIETNAM”… One of the enduring points of contention about our war with North Vietnam was the President’s choice to start the “air war’ at low RPM and gradually increase the power as we went along as opposed to the choice of the JCS and others who repeatedly recommended that we use our air power advantage full force, high RPM, right up front, including mining the harbors. It is sort of a, What If? argument. If, in retrospect, we had applied Linebacker forces, which we had ready to go, in early 1966 against an enemy whose Order of Battle, at that time, was half of what it would become with time, the enemy would have been overwhelmed. The strategy of gradualism allowed the enemy to put the most sophisticated air defense system–a gauntlet of radars, SAMS, MIGs and tens of thousands of gun barrels–in place that matched the IADSs of the major powers. Our air power advantage was heavily discounted, especially when the ROE for employment added limits to our conduct of Rolling Thunder. As noted in the last few Ripple Salvos, the lives of innocent civilians in the battle space was more important to the administration than pilots lives.

On 2 July 1966 Hanson Baldwin wrote the following for the New York Times… “Gradualism in Vietnam”… I quote

    To many United States military men the tragedy of bombing of the Hanoi and Haiphong oil installations was not that it was done, but that it had been deferred too long.

The facilities at Haiphong for unloading oil from vessels–the only such facility for deep sea tankers in North Vietnam–and the large tank farms there and near Hanoi have been a priority target of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since the bombing of North Vietnam began in 1965.

The tank farms and distribution facilities not only accounted at one time for, by far, the major amount of storage capacity in North Vietnam, but enabled it to fuel the trucks used to supply the forces in the South. In the opinion of most high ranking military men, these tank farms would have been destroyed last summer or fall are at least, after the end of the Christmas bombing pause last January. The North Vietnamese have also been able to bring in large numbers of Soviet and Chinese trucks (and road graders and other highway maintenance equipment). Truck movement to South Vietnam doubled in the first five months of 1966 as compared with 1965, according to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. It also enabled them to install anti-aircraft guns and missiles. thus, while the destruction of the fuel tanks is an important factor in what has become in many ways a war of attrition, it is not so important militarily or psychologically, as it would have been six months (or a year) ago.

  The military men believe that President Ho Chi Minh counts not on victory on the battlefield but on outlasting the United States and winning a victory before public opinion. Some of them fear that the American public will not have the patience or the staying power to win this kind of war a policy of gradualism entails and that the war must be won as quickly as possible or will be lost slowly. The technical and military magazines (media) are increasingly reflecting the view that the United States must wage a war both in Vietnam and at home. Aviation Week and Space Technology (June 27,1966): “The military booms and commercial booms coupled with the effects of a shortsighted Defense Department procurement policies during the past four years are producing shortages of every description in the aerospace industry. There are shortages of engineers, machine tools, production facilities, labor, sub-contractors, and suppliers. All of these shortages have been aggravated by the persistent refusal of the Administration to establish any effective system of priorities of controls that might cut into the civilian economy.” Army magazine is bitterly critical of the Administration’s failure to call up the Reserves. The entire structure of the Army is based on partial mobilization at a minimum. The magazine 1qustions the thesis that time is on the side of the United States and that the Vietnamese war is so small that the reserves are not needed. Since the late 1940s the West has underestimated the Communist threat in Southeast Asia. Those years are littered with reputations destroyed because the war was small. Can history be learned from a slide rule?

The conviction is reinforced by the knowledge that military power always yields the best results when it is applied in mass as quickly as possible. some officers believe the United States has applied too little to late. Most of them are still convinced that a victorious, or from a satisfactory conclusion of the war is still possible, but nearly all would agree that greater power must be applied quickly if the pressures of impatience and dissatisfaction are not to become politically overwhelming.      (end quote)………

“In Hot”… with a Ripple for the record…If “war is too important to leave to the generals,” then the civilians, who oversee the uniformed military and make all the decisions, should be required to complete a curriculum of tough courses at the National War College to qualify for admittance to the War Room in the basement of the White House. James Clavell, a prolific author (Sho Gun, Tai-Pan, Whirlwind…), ran across Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” while researching one of his books (King Rat). After reading the words and wisdom attributed to Sun Tzu, Clavell (who published his own translation) concluded that every officer or civilian in the business of overseeing military matters at any level, to include the Commander-in-Chief, should be required to score 100 on an annual exam of fifty questions on the Sun Tzu “Art of War” and the “principles of war” that history has made paramount axioms and guides for the conduct of military planning and operations. In fact, Sun Tzu’s principles are being applied across a spectrum of enterprises. More than twenty books on how to apply the Sun Tzu principles to practically every activity known to man are in my library. Unfortunately, our nation has no requirement that a President know what he or she is doing when he or she assumes the title of Commander-in-Chief. All a poor citizen can do when that CinC staffs his or her war room with cronies from academia, and avoids the Joint Chiefs, or in some cases swears at them and calls them stupid and dummies, and holds his military advisors in low esteem, is hope for the best. Hanson Baldwin’s essay written at the end of the first quarter of the Vietnam Air War went unnoticed by the President and his car making Secretary of Defense and the “strategy of defeat,” gradual failure, moved into ever more bloody killing fields.

War is too important to be left to an arrogant politician who disdains senior military officers…     will we ever learn?

Lest we forget…              Bear               ……….  –30–  ……….