RIPPLE SALVO…”MIGHTY THUNDER”… but first…
Good Morning: Day THIRTY-NINE of a look back of 50 years to Operation Rolling Thunder… “the air war”
8 APRIL 1966 (NYT)… ON THE HOMEFRONT… A cloudy Friday in New York…Page 1: “Buddhists Report a Truce With Ky,” but there is cause for some skepticism since aides to Ky say the terms the Buddhists have put forth are unacceptable. Therefore, confusion reigns…Reports from Saigon that Americans are targets of rioting crowds in Saigon and tear gas used to control…Four weeks of crisis at an end?…The Ky led Junta is now divided…Also on page 1: “H-Bomb Recovered intact after 80 Days” …”The triumphant announcement was made in Madrid at the United States Embassy.”…page 4: “Army Personnel Squeeze Withdrawal of 15,000 Specialists From Europe,” …accents manpower shortage… page 5: Long story from Hong Kong, “Hanoi Says 4-Points Cannot be Split Up for Settlement,” insisting the four points are a single entity. Unfortunately, the United States position is in agreement with only three of the points, with the demand of NVN that the “National Liberation Front,” the political parent of the Viet Cong, must be included in the new government unacceptable. Agreement on these points: (1) no alliances with foreign powers, (2) no foreign troops, and (3) reunification of North and South to include vote by all the people of Vietnam…Sports Page: Masters led by Jack Nicklaus with a first round 68…Joe Foss resigns as Commissioner of American Football League after six years…and in a little box amid the news, an announcement by the Department of Defense: 16 Army and 6 Marine troops Killed In Action… Lest we forget…
8 APRIL 1966…ROLLING THUNDER… All quiet on the Northern front… An Air Force A-1E from the 1ACS based at Pleiku was shot down while strafing an enemy position 5 miles west of Danang. the pilot, CAPT S. KNICKERBOCKER survived….
ABOVE AND BEYOND… IN LIEU OF 8 April 1966 reports, hear now the last flight of CAPTAIN JACK WILTON WEATHERBY, USAF, 45thTactical Reconnaissance Squadron based at Tan Son Nhut as told by Chris Hobson in “Vietnam Air Losses.”
On 29 July 1965, two days after the initial strikes against the North Vietnamese SAM sites, two RF-101Cs were dispatched from TSN to photograph SAM sites west of Hanoi. JACK WEATHERBY had obtained photographs of another SAM site two days earlier and on the 29th he and MAJOR JERRY LENTS were returning from a mission over South Vietnam when they learned of the plan to fly another SAM mission. WEATHERBY AND LENTS immediately volunteered to fly the afternoon mission. WEATHERBY lost his UHF radio shortly after takeoff and MAJOR LENT led the way to the tanker over Northern Thailand. After taking fuel WEATHERBY indicated he wanted to resume the lead and the pair set course for North Vietnam. Thunderstorms impeded their progress but they finally broke clear near the target. Dropping to 200-feet the aircraft accelerated to 600-knots as reconnaissance pilots reckoned that the best way to survive their missions was to fly as fast and as low as possible. As they were approaching the target, CAPTAIN WEATHERBY’s aircraft was hit by an anti-aircraft sell that did not explode but which left a gaping hole in the mid-fuselage section. MAJOR LENTS then saw flames issue from the damaged Voodoo and told WEATHERBY to eject. Instead of escaping CAPTAIN WEATHERBY maintained his course for the target and had passed over it when his aircraft suddenly exploded. JACK WEATHERBY was awarded the AIR FORCE CROSS for his courage and determination to obtain photographs of a target of great importance to the USAF. CAPTAIN JACK WILTON WEATHERBY, KILLED IN ACTION… Above and Beyond …. LEST WE FORGET…
RIPPLE SALVO…”MIGHTY THUNDER” … Many are the evenings when your Humble Host takes station on the back porch to look out over the Great Salt Lake to appreciate the beauty of a sunset. Or, perhaps, a long line of dark and billowing summer thunderstorms, closing from the west, with hundreds of streaks of lightning, cloud to cloud and cloud to ground, and the mighty thunder that rolls across the spaces of the sky to announce the coming wind and rain. In 1885 a Swedish preacher wrote a poem, “O Store Gud” that was sung to the tune of an old Swedish melody. In the 1920s an English missionary serving in Poland named Stuart Hines translated and rearranged the words, and the result became popular and is now known as the hymn, “How Great Thou Art.”
O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed:
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art! How great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee:
How great thou art! How great thou art!
MIGHTY THUNDER…. When Stuart Hine originally wrote this great hymn the word “worlds” in line two was “works” and the phrase in line three “rolling thunder” was “mighty thunder.” As the hymn crossed the Atlantic these changes slip into the hymnals of America… That’s the best your Humble Host can do to track the origins of the descriptive title of the “air war against North Vietnam 1965-1968” that we know as Operation Rolling Thunder. The original code name for the operation was “Flaming Dart,” but that changed quickly to “Rolling Thunder.” “Mighty Thunder” has a nice descriptive sound that would have worked as well.
Lest we forget…. Bear …………………………………… –30 — ……………………………………