RIPPLE SALVO… #190… INDECISION, DISCORD AND ESCALATION…PART ONE… but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED NINETY of a return to the three year air war with North Vietnam that was Rolling Thunder…
7 SEPTEMBER 1966… 50 YEARS AGO THIS WAS THE NEWS… NYT… A fair and pleasant Wednesday for a float plane trip from the East River to Fire Island and back …
Page 1: BIG HEADLINES and pictures: “Verwoerd Is Slain By Assassin In South African Parliament”…”Henrik K. Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa and architect of apartheid was stabbed to death on the front bench of the South African Parliament today. The assassin was identified as a white South African about 45-years old. He was a temporary parliamentary messenger. His co-workers said he had complained that Dr. Verwoerd, who advocated strict apartheid and separation of races, was not doing enough for ‘poor whites.’…Dr. Verwoerd died en route to the hospital 10 minutes after the knife attack. The assassin was disarmed and wrestled to the floor by Frank Waring, Minister of Sport and former rugby football star…”…Page 1: “Economists Doubt U.S. Faces Crisis”…”The country’s economists for a financial panic or depression but they would welcome action now by the Johnson Administration to ease the strain on financiual markets. They do not all prescribe the same remedy. But almost all believe that Government action can prevent major trouble and they believe it will be taken. The current situation is charactrizzed by tight money, high interest rates and declining stock and bond prices.”…
Page 1: “Atlanta Negroes Riot After Police Wound A Suspect”…”Rioting Negroes fought police with bricks and bottles today and toppled the City Mayor from the top of the roof of a car when he attempted to calm them. The police dispersed the Negroes by tossing canisters of tear gas and firing shot guns and pellets over their heads. However, sporadic violence continued into the night and by mid-night the injury count stood at 15. Nineteen persons, two of them members of the Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee, the militant civil rights organization were arrested. It all began in mid-afternoon after the police shot and seriously wounded a Negro suspected of car theft. Within 3 hours of the shooting 400 Negroes, including 10 members of SNVCC, were milling through the streets near the new $18 million stadium. ‘Black power,’ they chanted, ‘police brutality.’ One police car was overturned and windows were smashed in several others. Late tonight a car owned by television station WEB was struck by a bullet. Then it was overturned while its two occupants sought refuge in a nearby church. When Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr., rushed to the riot scene in mid-afternoon and climbed on a police car to talk to the Negroes, they surged forward and rocked the car repeatedly. Soon the Mayor tumbled to the street–shaken but uninjured. ‘White evil, screamed the rioters, ‘white evil.’…”…
Page 1:”Chen Yi Is Quoted Assaying Peking Wants No U.S. War”…”Chen Yi, the Communist Chinese Prime Minister was reported to have told a group of visiting senior Japanese members of Parliament from Tokyo that Peking did not want a ‘clash’ with the United States and was not necessarily dismissing the thought of talks with Washington and North Vietnam. Mr. Chin was quoted as having said that a solution in Vietnam would require withdrawal of United States troops. However, he apparently did not make this a condition for diplomatic exchanges on the Vietnam question between Washington and Peking. Washington had no comment on this at this time.”… Page 2: “U.S. Comments On Charge”…”The State Department reported today that it could find no basis in fact to support the Chinese Communist charge that United States (carrier based) planes attacked two Chinese merchant ships (last Monday)…’It is by no means clear that the incident is related to the Chinese Communist charges, but we are aware of no other event that such a relationship.’…”… Page 2: “4,000 New U.S. Troops Land In South Vietnam”…”Nearly 4,000 new United States troops arrived today to raise the strength of United States ground troops in South Vietnam to 308,000. The 1st Armored Cavalry from Fort Meade, Maryland came ashore 40 miles southeast of Saigon includes the Black Horse Regiment. It is a mobile reconnaissance and striking force made up of three squadrons, a headquarters company and an air-mobile troop.”…
7 September 1966…The President’s Daily Brief…. CIA (TS sanitized)…Communist China: Foreign Minister Chen Yi’s statements to visiting Japanese parliamentarians yesterday–if correctly reported by the press– (see NYT article above) are in marked contrast to previous ranting performances put on by Chen. His motives are unclear, but may be related to the current political turmoil in Peking. Chinese Ambassador Wang in Warsaw today broke an 11-year precedent by releasing to the press the full text of his opening statement in his talk with Ambassador Gronouski. The statement reiterated Peking’s standard attack on US aggression and reaffirmed Chinese support for North Vietnam. Wang had earlier told Gronouski he would do this in retaliation for past leaks from the US side. This is probably not the whole story. The Chinese may have wanted to counter widespread press interpretation of Chen Yi’s remarks as a softening of the Chinese attitude toward the US, or to reply to recent statements on withdrawal from Vietnam.”…
7 SEPTEMBER 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… NYT (8 September reporting 7 September ops)…Page 8: “In North Vietnam United States planes flew 136 missions Tuesday against two railways linking China and North Vietnam. The United States command disclosed the loss of its 362nd plane over North Vietnam. It was an F-8 Crusader shot down Monday 50 miles south of Hanoi. The pilot is listed as missing. From Hanoi came photographs of two captives identified by the North Vietnamese press agency as LT THOMAS McNISH AND 1LT GLENN BLISS. The agency said they were shot down Sunday (4th), The United States lost three planes that day… “Vietnam: Air Losses”…Reportede no fixed wing aircraft losses in Southeast Asia on 7 September 1966… oohrah…
RIPPLE SALVO… #190… “ROLLING THUNDER: INDECISION, DISCORD AND ESCALATION”…PART ONE… In late August 1966 the vaunted campaign to strangle North Vietnam POL storage and flow was deemed ineffective since even with an 80-per cent cut in stocks and flow, the NVN was able to keep the trucks and war materials flowing through the North Vietnam funnel and on to the South. On 29 August a large buildup of enemy forces was detected just north of the DMZ and a decision was made by CINCPAC to make this buildup the priority target for Rolling Thunder operations, a decision that was for all intent and purpose the end of the POL campaign. McNamara was not happy with the failure of the Air Force and Navy to deliver on their optimistic pre-POL campaign assesssments. He declared: “I think that we have proven at least to my satisfaction and I think the satisfaction of others that we cannot dry up the POL by bombing.” At the same time McNamara concluded that “his piecemeal, gradual approach had failed.” It was time to review the situation… The following is quoted from Edward Drea’s “McNamara, Clifford and the Burdens Of Vietnam, 1965-1969,” Secretary of Defense Historical Series, Volume VI, page 78…I quote…
As a follow-on to Rolling Thunder 50 and 51, on 22 August JCS presented McNamara with their proposal for Rolling Thunder 52 based on the bombing plan that Admiral Sharp had recommended on 8 August: a formidable series of raids to destroy POL storage dumps at Phuc Yen and Kep airfields as well as numerous railroad shops, factories, power plants and port warehouses (that remained untouched in ops to date). McNamara whittled down Sharp’s list, which State still found too ambitious. The predilection now by both secretaries to limit the air campaign resulted in a mid-September decision by McNamara and Rusk against Rolling Thunder 52. A few days earlier, on 7 September, McNamara rejected MACV and CINCPAC proposals for B-52 attacks in North Vietnam or north of the demarcation line running through the DMZ because State believed that “many circles and the press” would see it as further escalation or even preparation for an invasion of North Vietnam. The man who had in the end invested so much in the POL attacks now counseled President Johnson to consider halting the bombing of the North after the fall congressional elections as part of leveling off of the U.S. military commitment to South Vietnam.
McNamara had come to recognize that bombing North Vietnam to induce a comprehensive settlement achieved results in inverse proportion to its intensity: the more bombing, the less possibility of negotiations. As early as May and June 1966, he had discussed with Harriman the idea of stopping the bombing in exchange for Hanoi stopping infiltration. This reasoning permeated his last assessment following his return from a visit to Saigon on 14 October. He told the President that Rolling Thunder had neither checked infiltration significantly nor cracked Hanoi’s morale. Radical escalation was out of the question, neither American nor world opinion would stomach the scale of bombing it entailed, and it might also draw the United States into war with China. The aernatives were to stop all bombing of North Vietnam or shift the bombing into its southern panhandle region as part of McNamara’s newly requested barrier operation. The Joint Chiefs took sharp exception, insisting on the air campaign as indispensable to the overall war effort. Past failures, they maintained resulted from McNamara’s policy of gradualism, despite contrary military advice. Proper use of airpower could still overcome the strategic error: recommending approval of Rolling Thunder 52 they requested that their own views be forwarded to the President… “Indecision, Discord and Escalation”… To Be Continued…
Lest we forget… Bear ………. –30– ……….