RIPPLE SALVO… #852… ON 5 JULY 1968 A FORMATION OF F-4D PHANTOMS OF THE 433rd TFS and 8th TFW OUT OF UBON WAS SENT TO BOMB A GUNSITE NEAR HA LOI, 20 MILES NORTHWEST OF DONG HOI. LCOL CARL BOYETTE CRUMPLER WAS IN THE FRONT SEAT…. 23-YEAR-OLD 1LT MICHAEL THOMAS BURNS IN THE BACK SEAT … and he tells the story much later … but first …
GOOD MORNING… Day EIGHT HUNDRED EIGHTY-TWO of a flashback –ONE DAY AT A TIME– to the 1960s and the air war called OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…
HEAD LINES from The New York Times on Friday, 5 July 1968…
THE WAR: Page 1: “FOE INVADES G.I.’s BUNKERS AT BASE BUT IS HURLED BACK”… “American infantrymen, joined cooks, clerks and drivers in close quarters fighting, hurled back an attack on a major United States base camp yesterday, turning small arms and machine guns on enemy commandos who advanced into their bunkers. The assault on the 25th Infantry Division’s base camp at Dutieng, about 40 miles northwest of Saigon, began with a 500-round barrage of mortars and rockets. The battle continued for two and a half hours when the force of North Vietnamese and Vietcong in two reinforced companies broke off the attack. …the bodies of 10 enemy soldiers were found after the action ended. Five Americans were reported killed and 56 wounded, 18 seriously enough to require medical evacuation… U.S. CASUALTIES DECLINE… “United States casualties dropped last week to the lowest total since last January, but the military authorities here continue to believe that the recent lull in the fighting is only temporary. ‘We know the enemy is going to hit us hard,’ a high-ranking officer said. ‘We don’t know when or where.” The enemy death toll for the week was put at 1,193…. 851 American servicemen had been wounded and hospitalized in the week and 1,077 had been treated and released to return to duty…187 Americans died in combat in the week ending last Saturday… In war action, a transport helicopter with 10 persons aboard was shot down and fell into the Vancadong River and sank. Seven of ten perished…In the ground action nearby U.S. Infantry reported having killed 254 enemy while only 2 Americans were wounded.”…
PEACE TALKS: Page 5: “TWO NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT OFFICERS SET-UP PARIS OFFICE”… “…they slipped into Paris almost unnoticed to set up an office for the front, the political arm of the Vietcong, and presumably to establish the Vietcong’s presence at the fringe of the Vietnamese negotiations in preparations for the time when hard bargaining begins.”…
Page 5: “CAO KY BESIDE THIEU IN PUBLIC SESSION–U.S. Officials Heartened by Evidence of Stability”… “President Nguyen Van Thieu and his chief political rival, Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, made a joint public appearance today to give their support to new ‘national unity’ organization.”… Page 1: “RICKOVER CHARGES LAG IN SUBMARINES”… “…Rickover was asked by Senator Symington whether Dr. Enthoven on the SecDef staff had circulate directives throughout the Pentagon stressing that ‘price is more important than performance.’ He replied,’That is correct.’ Did you ever know anything like that in either private business or government? Senator Symington asked. ‘I have heard of bankrupt businesses,’ Admiral Rickover replied.”… Page 1: “NASSER REPORTED READY TO ACCEPT U.N. SINAI FORCE–U.N. TALKS NOW CENTER ON TERMS OF PEACEKEEPING– 1967 Pull-Out Led to War–Egyptian Move Is Linked to An Over-all Settlement–Israelis Are Skeptical”… Page 1: “BRITON ALEC ROSE AND THE ‘LIVELY LADY’ SOLO SAIL AROUND THE WORLD–Grocer-Yachtsman Arrived Portsmouth Yesterday After Year’s Trip”… “36-foot Ketch…. Sir Chichester welcomed Rose Home.”…
5 JUNE 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (6 Jun reporting 5 June ops) Page 4: “While the B-52s concentrated their strikes on the gun positions and bunkers in or near the DMZ, American fighter-bombers ranged across the North Vietnamese panhandle bombing within the 120 by fifty mile stretch of the North between the 17th and 19th Parallels.”
VIETNAM: AIR LOSSES (Chris Hobson) There were four fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 5 July 1968…
(1) LCOL CARL BOYETTE CRUMPLER and 1LT MICHAEL THOMAS BURNS were flying an F-4D of the 433rd TFS (see Ripple Salvo below)
(2) COL P.B. HANDY and CAPTAIN D.W. JENNY were flying a MISTY FAC F-100F of the 614th TFS and 365th TFW out of Phan Rang directing a mission against SAM sites just north of the DMZ when hit by 37mm in the tail. COL HARDY was able to pilot the damaged aircraft south of the DMZ before having to eject. Both aviators were rescued by helicopters to fly and FAC again…
(3) MAJOR HERMAN SMITS and MAJOR B.F. HILL were flying an O-1G Birddog and crashed in South Vietnam. MAJOR SMITS was Killed in Action, MAJOR HILL was rescued… The mission was in support of the Republic of Korea Tiger Division in Phu Yen province. MAJOR SMITS was a “Tom” FAC and had served 190 days in combat…. He is remembered on this 50th anniversary of his last flight for his country…
(4) MAJOR EDWARD R. SILVER and 1LT BRUCE E. LAWRENCE were flying an F-4C of the 55th TFS and 12th TFW out of Cam Ranh Bay on a night armed reconnaissance mission and attack on the ferry at Mi Le, 20 miles southeast of Dong Hoi. Hobson writes: “Maj silver’s Phantom burst into flames and exploded as it approached its target. the wingman did not see an ejection nor could he make contact on his survival radio. It was presumed that the aircraft had been shot down by ground fire and that both men had been killed. Later a returning POW remembered seeing a North Vietnamese propaganda film that showed a dead airman with the name Silver on it.”… The bodies of both warriors were eventually returned for burial. LCOL SILVER was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on 7 June 2011 and MAJOR LAWRENCE was buried in September in his home town of Easton, PA…. They rest in peace on the 50th anniversary of their death in the service of their country… Glory gained, duty done… THE RECOVERY OF SILVER and LAWRENCE: In 1993 a Joint Recovery Team investigated a possible crash site in harsh terrain. Safety concerns limited access to the location of the aircraft but interviews of indigenous North Vietnamese were interviewed from 1998 to 2000 about several crash sites in the area led to excavations of several of those crash sites and the recovery of human remains. It was confirmed that both SILVER and LAWRENCE were in the F-4 when it crashed. Scientists from the Joint POW? MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used mitochondrial DNA to positively identify the two aviators… (Find the crash site, id the aircraft with remains in the cockpits in 2000, and the burial is in 2011 … What’s wrong with that picture?)…
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) ON 5 JULY FOR THE FOUR YEAR OF THE OPERATION OVER NORTH VIETNAM…
1965… NONE…
1966… NONE…
1967… MAJOR DEWEY WAYNE WADDELL, USAF… (POW)… and …CAPTAIN WILLIAM VANDERVOS FREDERICK, USAF… (KIA)… and …MAJOR WARD KENT DODGE, USAF… (POW)…
1968… LCOL CARL BOYETTE CRUMPLER, USAF… (POW)… and … 1LT MICHAEL THOMAS BURNS, USAF… (POW)… and … MAJOR EDWARD R. SILVER, USAF… (KIA)… and … 1LT BRUCE E. LAWRENCE, USAF… (KIA)…
RIPPLE SALVO… #852… THE ODYSSEY OF 1LT MICHAEL THOMAS BURNS from the archives of the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, excerpts from his oral history: “Experiencing War: Stories From the Veterans History Project”… Quoting 1LT BURNS…
SHOT DOWN… We were on an armed reconnaissance with one other F-4. We were two, lead was out about one mile ahead of us and we would look at the maps before we would go out and decide exactly where we’d fly up and down that rivers, so we were driving up and down this road at about 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon and my front seater Major Crumpler, said he saw some guns at the base of this hill, down to our right, so we jacked up the airspeed and we rolled in at about 5,000 feet and as we came down lining up on the gun, we got pretty low, the guns were at the base of the hill and there was…the hill was probably about a thousand feet. anyways, we released the bombs about that time. All the tracers came up and they were red and they say the red ones are 37mm, so they all came up and I could feel this thumping on the bottom of the airplane. We pulled out well over five hundred knots, right over the tees, right over that hill and we pulled out and banked, I looked back to see where a bomb hit. The last two-thirds of the airplane was a ball of fire. I couldn’t see the tail and I don’t think Crumpler notice that we were burning…I mean he was getting ready to make another bomb run. So I told him that we were hit and head for the South China Sea and out there to the right, to the east. So we headed for the south China Sea and started driving that airplane and when we got about eight thousand feet, at one point, one of the engines died, it was just zero. the other engine was on after burner and we got real slow, about two hundred knots, and then the airplane jerked down real hard and jerked up real hard, threw us around in the canopy and then it just fell out of the sky. I mean it just fell, because I could see the earth go by, then the canopy, then the blue sky, then the earth. Then we ejected an I came down through the clouds and I came down in a wide open field. Should I keep going? (to the interviewer R.J. Stuart who said “Yes, Sure.)
CAPTURED… So I came down in a wide open field. It was a perfect parachute landing roll. I rolled up my chute and hid it. And as I was down there I could hear this rat-a-tat-tat-tat. It was coming from all around. It was gunfire way out in the distance and they were shooting in my direction, so I couldn’t see anybody. It was the fields, scrub fields, there wasn’t there weren’t any trees so I started… so once I hid the chute, I got my radio out and pulled out the antennae. I called the other airplanes up there someplace, there were some low clouds now, I said,’This is Burns, I am on the ground and I am OK.’ And the voice came over and said we didn’t see your chute. Give us a reading from that smoke in the hills. I looked over at the hills that we were bombing at one time and there was a black column of smoke burning and that was our F-4 burning. So I took my compass out and dropped it on the ground and it said 045. So I said 045 about 2 miles. He said head west we will try a pickup in the morning. So I started running toward the west and if you run for two weeks day and night, 24 hour a day, you might get into the hills but it was hope. So I started running to the west and at some point I got real tired and I looked down and I still had my G-suit on, the fast pants we call them. So I had to unbuckle that, throw it in the weeds and I kept running. I could hear gunfire, this rat-a-tat-tat, from different directions and so I saw this one bush, a huge stand of bushes, so I crawled into it and I pulled all the weeds up behind me that I had bent like they teach us in survival school, and I sat there. It got all quiet as this room. And I could see the sun sort of going down, you know slowly going down. Time is passing. I took our my .38. We carry these loaded and I figured if there is someone between me and that helicopter I’ll use it. But I didn’t need it. So I put in the dirt next to me and I just waited. Then, I don’t know how much time went by…some, and then I heard this crackling noise behind me. So as I turned around to look there was this little Vietnamese man, looked about 60, with a black t-shirt, black shorts. He would take two cautious steps into the weeds coming right towards me and then he would bend down and look through the reeds, through the stems of the bushes, and he didn’t see me. And he would take a couple more steps and finally his eyes met mine. He was about ten feet way and his eyes get real big and he fell backward and started screaming and as I turned around about five guys, Vietnamese, piled through the bush. They had crept up to me and were standing right on the outside of it. They had jumped through the bush and I was looking up the barrel of four or five AK-47s. They have great big barrels like a nickel or a quarter. So that is how I got captured….
GOING DOWNTOWN THE HARDWAY… I got captured. Crumpler got captured. My friend, see they took us. There was a couple of days where I didn’t have enough water or something. I thought I was in a dream. We walked through the night. Walked and walked. Then they tied us up and we would have to wait and then we would get up and walk some more. They took us to a hooch and all, in a lot of those communities… this community where I was held for twenty days, right near where I was shot down, every building seven feet deep because I could stand up without a problem. Well, this one hooch I had a cave about five feet deep and three feet high. And that is where I stayed for twenty days and Crumpler had a cave on the other side of the building. I do remember there was a little family of frogs back there and they sat right up over my shoulder (hand motions). They sat up there. I was about six inches from them. We were eyeball to eyeball. They were my only friends for twenty days. They dragged me out and tied me to this pole, same as Crumpler. They would have a show-and tell. The whole village would walk through and that went on for about twenty days. We had different guards. They took turns guarding us. Somebody was supposed to keep us alive and I remember this one guard came in, and I have to tell you about this guy, came in, he was like what I thought a Vietminh soldier, like a professional jungle soldier. He had these spindly legs like a runner, shorts, blue T-shirt, he had a rice sack, a roll of rice, they wear over one shoulder, that was his food, an AK-47, shock of black hair, high cheek bones. His eyes were just barely open, just slants. And he came in to this place, where I was held. I saw him coming in. He threw everybody out. He would just shoo them all out. And threw them out. I was back in my cave. I was watching this and then he came over to my cave, got down in front and he motioned me out. And so I came to the opening of the cave, and he took out a bar of tobacco. It was just a hard bar, and some white paper and he took out a big knife and he scraped off tobacco in this piece of paper. He actually took two pieces of paper and he scraped off tobacco in both. He took mine. He took one rolled it up like an ice cream cone, kinda licked it, glued it and handed it to me. Then he made his. Rolled it up, ice cream cone, licked it, then he found a match, lit my cigarette, lit his, and we stood there smoking and just looking at me, wasn’t evil, wasn’t mad. He was just looking at another soldier. It was quite a moment. Then we were finished with the cigarette, he kind of went, kind of in a sense, like OK. Everything OK? I said OK. He said get back in there. Then he let everyone come back down. He was my guard for a couple of days, then after twenty days, they loaded…well no, another guy came down, F-105 pilot Grover James. He bailed out at about 600 knots and his leg was broken. It was stiff and he looked like he had been burnt. I thought he was, I didn’t know what happened to him. He looked awful, but the three of us started north. And we …could only drive at night because there are F-4s and F-105s up there driving around trying to blow up trucks on the roads and that is where we were now. So we came to a village after two days and they stopped and they took me off the truck and pushed me into this one village. They kept pushing and everyone was screaming and it was dark and there were torches and they shoved me into this hooch and it was all dark and smokey. I could see a lot of forms in there and they pushed me over to the side of it and there was a body on the ground and they kept shoving me down and it was an American. And he had a cast on his one leg and a cast, a cast on his left arm I think, and a cast on his right leg. (It was opposite)…And he was lying and his other hand was covering his eyes. He was lying on his back and they wanted me to take care of him, so they shoved me down to him and I got down and close to him and people outside screaming and kind of forming up and he mumbled something. I got closer, I said are you OK? And then he mumbled something else and I said I can’t hear you buddy. I said are you OK? He said, “Do you like parades?” and he was referring to…he thought we were going to be paraded through the village. And that was the first words out of his mouth. Bobby Fat…he became a very close friend. He just had a way of looking at doom or looking at disaster and have or coming up with these one-liners. He was great! So we didn’t get into a parade. They just wanted me to wipe his butt, to clean him up. He was just a mess. He was lying in his own shit and they didn’t want to touch him and that is what I did. I nursed him for a couple of years really. And he was a prisoner for five years like me. When he got back (home) his fiancée that he left was waiting for him, and I was best man about a month after we got back, if you could believe that. But then the four of us, they trucked us up to Hanoi and we arrived at the Hanoi Hilton, downtown Hanoi, thirty-five days after I was shot down…. End Burns interview clips…
RTR quote for 5 July: EVERY ROLLING THUNDER WARRIOR WHO LOGGED MISSIONS LOOKING DOWN THE BARRELS OF THE NORTH VIETNAMESE: “There but for the Grace of God, go I.”
Lest we forget… Bear