RIPPLE SALVO… #249… KRUSHCHEV ON STALIN… but first…
Good Morning: Day TWO HUNDRED FORTY-NINE (of 1,000) revisits to the era of Red River Rats and Yankee Air Pirates…
6 NOVEMBER 1966… NEW YORK TIMES HEADLINES on a light drizzly Sunday in Brooklyn…
Page 1: “McNamara Plans Reduced Build-up In Vietnam In ’67“…Draft calls to be cut back for the next four months if present trend continues…He talks with Johnson…Secretary says enemy’s morale has deteriorated as attacks increase”… “Toll Of Vietcong KIA put at 150 in a battle near Cambodia”… “Giant Blackouts Still Possible…U.S. study finds, but report to Johnson cites steps taken to prevent another 1965 failure”… “Republican Gains In The House likely to be moderate…Major rise found blocked by strength of 28 of 48 democratic freshman…Nationwide report shows GOP will pick up a net of five Governorships”… “Brown Pressing To Catch Reagan in California…Trailing in polls he pins hope on last minute aid from undecided”…Page 1: “College Football Scores: Duke 9 Navy 7; Army 20 George Washington 7; NC State 24 Maryland 21; Ohio State 7 Indiana 0; Nebraska 24 Kansas 13; and, SoCal 35 Cal 7.”
Page 2: “New Soviet Arms Viewed as increasing military treat to Western Europe”… Page 12: “6 Navy Fliers bodies found-from the carrier Independence…recovered from sea South of Island of Crete”… Page 28: “Stokely Carmichael Held by Selma police…seized with five others as Negroes stage protest”… Page 30: “Lunar Orbiter 2 Going Up Today…spacecraft to begin orbit of moon on Thursday.”…Page 35: “Hanoi Said To Have Soviet Power Units…several hundred small Soviet supplied power units are helping to keep North Vietnamese factories humming despite the repeated bombing of key power stations.”… Page 42: “10,000 War Critics Stage Rally here (New York)…three hour march moves from Greenwich Village to Times Square”…
Selected Segments of Joint (President and SecDef) News Conference… Secretary McNamara: “One year ago we were in the midst of a very rapid troop expansion in South Vietnam. Today a slow down in our rate of troop deployments to that country is planned…Looking ahead to 1967…these major points seem clear…Fourthly, I expect that this same trend towards stabilization will govern our air operations, and the deployment of air units to South Vietnam and the levels of our air activities…We have been flying, for example, more than 25,000 attack sorties per month. No sharp increases in that level of activity are planned for the future.”
Question and Answer portion: Q. “Mr. Secretary. How effective has been the bombing of North Vietnam on the military and on the military objectives?”… A. “I think you have to, in answering that question, remember the three objectives we had when we started bombing. The first was to increase the morale of the South Vietnames military forces and civilian population. The bombing started in 1965. That nation was under intense pressure from the North at that time. This was a major act by the United States, indicating to them that they could expect continued support from this country. Surely we have achieved that objective. A second objective was to reduce the flow of men and equipment from the North to the South and/or increase the cost of that infiltration of men and equipment from North to South. Very clearly we have increased the cost. How much we have reduced the flow, we can’t say. but it is very clear that North Vietnam has diverted 300,000 men from other activities in their society to the repair of lines of communication over which they are infiltrating men and equipment from the North, and which lines of communication have been the primary targets of our bombing in the North. The third objective, of course, was to make clear to the political leaders and the people of North Vietnam that as long as they continued to seek to subvert and destroy the independence of the people of the South, that they would have to pay a price in the North. I think it is very clear they are paying a price. We never intended, and we don’t believe now, that the bombing of the North will, by itself, lead to termination of the enemy activity in the South.”
6 NOVEMBER 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… NYT (no coverage)…”Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) Three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 6 November 1966…
(1) 1LT G.K. BANKUS was flying an F-100D of the 416th TFS and 3rd TFW out of Bien Hoa on strafing mission to create and clear a helicopter landing zone in South Vietnam. 1LT BANKUS was hit by ground fire and ejected from his disabled Super Sabre (an Ex-Thunderbird aircraft) and was rescued by an Army helicopter…
(2) CAPTAIN W.G. CAREY was flying an F-105D of the 357th TFS and 355th TFW out of Takhli on an armed reconnaissance mission and was hit by ground fire attacking a anti-aircraft site 3 miles south of Vinh. CAPTAIN CAREY was able to fly the damaged aircraft to make an emergency landing at Da Nang but the aircraft was too damaged to repair… (F-105D parts shelf)…
(3) CAPTAIN VICTOR VIZCARRA was flying an F-105D of the 354th TFS and 355th TFW out of Takhli on an strike mission as part of a Wild Weasel flight consisting of Two f-105F Shrike Shooters and three F-105Ds to complete the destruction of the AM site. As the flight closed the assigned target, AAA hit CAPTAIN VIZCARRA’s aircraft about 20 miles southwest of Cap Mu Ron. He was able to fly the aircraft twenty miles toward the Gulf of Tonkin. He ejected just short of his goal and spent two hours on the ground in North Vietnam before he was rescued by a Navy helicopter… oohrah…
RIPPLE SALVO… #249… For the past two years the citizens of the United States have been subjected to a meltdown of civility among our politicians and the candidates for Commander in Chief. And for the past two months we have lived in the muck of a battle between two very imperfect persons, one of whom will accede to the exalted position of President of the United States. Both have exhibited the traits of a cult leader. History is replete with famous leaders who used their positions to “support the glorification of their own persons.”
In fact, there are a few such leaders on the current scene. This evening, I read a Krauthammer essay that had this to say about one of our two choices for President: “At a time of such tectonic instability, even the most experienced head of state requires wisdom and delicacy to maintain equilibrium. .X. has neither. .X’s joining of supreme ignorance to supreme arrogance, combined with a pathological sensitivity to any perceived slight, is a standing invitation to calamitous miscalculation.” (guess who)
Our grim path ahead is coming into focus. The future of our beloved nation will be guided by one of these Xs, neither of whom will be able to overcome their entrenched habits of self glorification. Having concluded such, I reviewed the bios of some of the world’s most famous cult leaders and found this applicable wordage. Nikita Khrushchev included this evaluation of Josef Stalin in a speech he gave to the Soviet Communist party’s 20th Congress in 1956, wherein he denounced Stalin: I quote…
“The negative characteristics of Stalin, which in Lenin’s time, were only incipient, transformed themselves during the last years into a grave abuse of power by Stalin, which caused undo harm to our party….Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed his concept or tried to prove his viewpoint, and the correctness of his position, was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation…
“Mass arrests and deportations of many thousands of people, execution without trial and without normal investigation created conditions of insecurity, fear and even desperation. In practice, Stalin ignored the norms of party life and trampled on the Lenist principle of collective party leadership… Stalin was a very distrustful man, sickly suspicious…
“The threatening danger which hung over our fatherland in the first period of the war (World War I) was largely due to faulty methods of directing the nation, the party and Stalin himself…. Even after the war began the nervousness and hysteria which Stalin demonstrated, interfering with actual military operations, caused our army serious damage… The cult of the individual acquired such monstrous size chiefly because Stalin, himself, using all conceivable methods, supported the glorification of his own person…
“Comrades, we must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all…”
Your Humble Host will let you ponder the possibilities of our nation returning to the norms of bipartisan government and adherence to the laws of the land and the Constitution, given the choices we the people we must choose from next Tuesday…
Lest we forget… Bear -30-