Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #191… MORE OR LESS???… but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED NINETY-ONE living in the past in the skies over North Vietnam…
8 SEPTEMBER 1966… WHAT THEY WERE READING AT HOME… NYT… A sunny and very pleasant Thursday…
Page 1: “Debate On Rights Bill Is Delayed Again”…”For the second consecutive day the Senate failed to muster enough members to begin debate on the Administration’s civil rights bill, and the Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield termed it’s conduct ‘disgraceful.’ He said: ‘ The Senate’s inactivity takes away from its dignity and decorum and I think it a disgraceful exhibition of doing nothing.’…”… Page 1: ‘Fire Sweeps Liner At Pier Here”…”a fast spreading fire that started in the engine room caused heavy damage to the liner “Hanseatic” as she prepared to sail to Europe from her West 44th Street pier. The blaze spread upward undetected, and swept through hidden vents to five passenger decks on the West German vessel. Only 3 of the 425 passengers were aboard when the fire was discovered at 7:30 AM, four hours before the 30,300-gross ton ship was to depart for Cherbourg, South Haven and Luxhaven. The liner has a crew of 500. Had the fire occurred at sea a major catastrophe would have resulted. The nature of the blaze made it especially tricky as the ships super heated vents kept threatening to turn the vessel into an inferno amid ship. The fire apparently started when diesel fuel oil leaking from a gasket reached the ships hot engines. Flames quickly engulfed the two engine rooms and raged upward through the vents…”…Page 1: “Private Gets Three Year Jail Term For Refusal To Serve In Vietnam”… “An Army General court martial today sentenced Private Dennis Mora of the Bronx to three years of hard labor in prison and a dishonorable discharge after finding him guilty of refusing an order to go to Vietnam. The court could have given him five years. Private Mora appeared physically relieved at receiving less then the maximum sentence.”… Page 6: “October Draft Call Raised To 49,200″…”The number of men to be drafted into the armed forces in October was increased by 3,000 to a total of 49,200. Earlier the Department had announced a call of 46,200. The October call will be the highest monthly draft since May 1953 when 53,000 men were drafted for the Korean War. The Department said there will be a significantly reduced calls in November and December.”…
Page 2: “New Johnson Proposal Ridiculed By Hanoi”…”President Johnson’s offer of a timetable for the removal of United States troops from South Vietnam whenever he sees a Communist schedule for halting infiltration from the North was rejected as nonsense by Hanoi today. The scoffing comment by Nhan Dan, the official newspaper of Ho Chi Minh’s Communist Party, was broadcast by the North Vietnamese press agency. ‘The Johnson clique wants to resolve the problem by imprudently demanding that the Vietnamese people, victims of the United States aggression, cease their fight for national salvation before the withdrawal of United States troops. Allegations of the Johnson clique are self-contradictory and reek of colonialism.’…”…Page 8: “Ky Asserts That De Gaulle Is Now Old And Obsolete”…”Premier Nguyen Cao Ky said today that President De Gualle is old and obsolete and that France is finished in southeastern Asia. ‘I hope he will not come back here again. I don’t want to comment on him because in this country you must always respect an old man.’…”
Page 24: “Centers In 8 Cities Will Train The Unskilled Poor”…”The Reverend Leon Sullivan, a Negro minister from Philadelphia who led consumer boycotts before he founded a job training project announced today that similar projects are being created in eight cities. The Federal Agencies announced that they are contributing more than $5-million to finance the projects, developed by the initiative of community action agencies in the cities…The eight projects will train 6,400 persons. The projects differ from Job Corps in that their trainees range in age from 18 to 55 while the corps age ceiling is 22. Project Head Start is not being cut back as previously reported.”… Page 27: “President Signs Rent Subsidy Bill”…”and calls it the most important housing breakthrough ever as he signed a $13.9 billion appropriation containing $22 million for the rent supplement program. ‘It represents everything I have believed in during all my 35 years in public office. It is a clear cut compassionate solution to a pressing national problem,’ said President Johnson. The median income of public housing occupants on June 30, 1966 was about $2,600.”…
8 September 1966… The President’s Daily Brief…CIA (TS sanitized)…South Vietnam: The government has announced that some 5,300,000 persons have registered to vote on Sunday. This is about thirteen per cent above the registration for last year’s local elections…Communist efforts to sabotage the polling are continuing and may become more dramatic in the next day or two. Local officials doubt, however, that these will appreciably reduce the turnout... North Vietnam: Foreign merchant shipping to North Vietnam in August was at the lowest level ever recorded. Hanoi’s dwindling supplies of export commodities were in part responsible for a decline for calls by Free World, Chinese and East European vessels. Soviet shipping to North Vietnam was well above average in August, however. Soviet vessels have been bringing in a wide variety of items to bolster the economy and the war effort…
8 SEPTEMBER 1966…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… NYT (9 September reporting 8 September ops)… Page 4: “In North Vietnam bad weather kept American pilots away from Hanoi and and Haiphong, but they flew 122 multi-plane missions along the southeastern coast of North Vietnam. Air Force pilots destroyed a surface-to-air missile site northwest of Vinh on the coast, and at Dong hoi, attacked two POL storage points and destroyed a railroad and highway bridge. Navy pilots reported destroying 22 barges, 18 trucks and 7 railroad cars in raids near Thanh Hoa and Vinh.”… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson): Page 73: Two fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 8 September 1966…
(1) 1LT JOHN RICHARD FISCHER was flying an A-4E of the VMA-224 Bengals and MAG-12 out of Chu Lai on a night radar -directed mission and disappeared in an area west of Chu Lai. 1LT FISCHER was killed in action fifty years ago this day. Apparently he remains missing in the jungles west of Chu Lai forever… He fell on a battlefield and died with honor in the service of his country. Gone but never forgotten. Left behind???
(2) An A-1E of the 14th ACW suffered an engine failure in a formation, mid-aired with another Spad and had to bail out. He was rescued.
RIPPLE SALVO #191… Page 79 from “McNamara, Clifford and the Burdens Of Vietnam” (Edward Drea)… “ROLLING THUNDER: INDECISION, DISCORD AND ESCALATION. The POL campaign was a bust. What next? On one side –the go slow guys– were the Secretaries of State and Defense, and on the other side — all ahead full– was the Joint Staff, Admiral Sharp, General Westmoreland and National Security Advisor Walt Rostow. The President was back on the fence. Situation normal… Time frame: after dawdling through September 1966… I quote from Drea…
At a session on 15 October, the president, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, McNamara, Vance, and Wheeler discussed differences between the JCS and the Secretary of Defense over the future course of the war. Wheeler thought Johnson favorably disposed toward Rolling Thunder 52 (as recommended by the JCS) although some of the proposed targets, not further identified, gave the president “some difficulties.” Johnson still opposed reducing the number of sanctuaries around Hanoi and Haiphong but would hit a few targets despite McNamara’s advice to scale back the bombing campaign. Wheeler instructed Westmoreland to emphasize importance of the air campaign against North Vietnam when he met with the president during the forthcoming Manila conference and at Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam during the latter’s 23 October-2 November Asian trip.
Westmoreland subsequently forwarded his recommendations for a change of strategy through Rostow. The MACV commander called for the removal of current off-limit zones around Hanoi and Haiphong and permission to strike enemy air bases. He also reiterated what he had already told the president during his visit in August at the LBJ Ranch–pause or no pause, keep on bombing in the southern panhandle of North Vietnam to divert and debilitate enemy manpower and resources and disrupt enemy plans for a thrust en masse across the DMZ. The Joint Chiefs and Sharp chimed in, insisting the time had come to hit the enemy harder, not relax the pressure. On Johnson’s return to the capital, the JCS urged McNamara to brief him, with Wheeler present, on the rationale for reducing restrictions on attacks against additional POL storage, ports, power plants, waterway locks, and SAM support facilities around Hanoi and Haiphong.
A somewhat disparate CIA analysis of Rolling Thunder for the first nine months of 1966 supported escalation. Its summary declared that the cost effectiveness of the campaign had diminished in 1966 despite the escalated bombing. Not only had the North Vietnamese continued to expand support for the insurgency, they had improved their overall capability to support the war effort because increased Chinese and Soviet military and economic aid had more than offset bombing losses. The body of the paper, however, reasoned that concentrated, repeated air attacks on target complexes, mining of principal North Vietnamese seaports, and bombing currently restricted targets–some 35 per cent of all JCS nominated targets–could inflict greater damage and create greater fear among Hanoi’s leaders without provoking Chinese intervention… end quote…
…………………..
Meanwhile, the boys of Rolling Thunder kept doing what they had been doing since the end of June… tempo of ops remained at the same level of sortie generation with more targets in the panhandle and fewer strikes near Hanoi and Haiphong. We launch em’ to Hanoi and Haiphong only after we gave the enemy time to reload and restock all their anti-aircraft sites and launchers… No way to fight a war if winning or pilots lives matter… “Gradualism”… our strategy for defeat was still in place. And in the head shed in Washington: indecision, discord and gradualism until further notice… Good hunting…
Lest we forget…. Bear ………. –30– ……….
Bear,
It’s as if the past 50 years have passed by in vain.
Gradualism is a losing strategy ( if indeed it is a strategy), that only results in the loss of our brave pilots and of our respect in the world , as evidenced in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Look no further than the buzzing of our ships by the Russians and the deliberate snubbing of President Obama by the Chinese. Let’s hope we get real change in November.