RIPPLE SALVO…#252… THE FORTHRIGHT TESTIMONY OF LCOL BILLY SPARKS, USAF, RETIRED… but first…
Good Morning: Day TWO HUNDRED FIFTY-TWO of an old warrior’s reflections and review of the air war over North Vietnam…
9 NOVEMBER 1966… HOMELAND HEADLINES from the New York Times on cloudy, breezy post election Wednesday fifty years ago…
Page 1: “Rockefeller Wins Gov of NY: Civilian Police Board Out: Wide G>O>P> Gains Extend Into the South: Reagan, Case and Percy are Elected…House shifts seats…Republicans stronger than expected in off-year vote.”… Page 1: “Reagan Elected Gov of California by wide margin… Gov Brown fails to win 3rd term.”…Page 1: “NY Police board killed by large majority of City…Board set up by Mayor to investigate complaints of police brutality and discourtesy abolished.”… Page 1: “GOP Wins Four Key Races In Senate: Gains 40 Seats in House.” … Page 1: “Six New Governors Elected: Wallace in Alabama, Brooke in Massachusetts, Case in NJ, Rockefeller in Arkansas, Shafer in Pennsylvania, Agnew in Maryland, and Rockefeller in New York.”…Page 1: “Brooke, A Negro Wins A Senate seat.”… Page 2: “Red Guards fail to see Chou En-Lai”… Page 3: “Pentagon’s Plans On War Clarified–Vietnam force of 500,000 is not ruled out for 1967.”
9 NOVEMBER 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… NYT (10 Nov reporting 9 Nov ops)…Page 5: “Navy Jets Bomb Bridge”… “United States Navy jets braved heavy anti-aircraft fire today and bombed a bridge in North Vietnam. Intruder jets from the carrier Constellation dropped 500-pound bombs on the Thanh Hoa railroad and highway bridge 65 miles south of Hanoi. It is the major link between the North Vietnamese capital and the infiltration routes into south Vietnam. Returning pilots reported having set off a large explosion at the western end of the bridge but the steel and concrete span apparently was not severed.”… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There was one fixed wing aircraft downed in Southeast Asia on 9 November 1966….
(1) CAPTAIN CHARLES FREDERICK SWOPE and SGT ARTHUR GLIDDEN (U.S. Army) were flying an O-1E Bird Dog of the 21st TASS and 14th ACW out of Nha Trang on a FAC mission 10 miles north of Khe Sanh on the border of the DMZ when hit by enemy ground fire. The aircraft crashed a few minutes later killing CAPTAIN SWOPE and SGT GLIDDEN. They were killed In Action engaged with the enemy. Their bodies were recovered by Air Force helicopter fifty years ago today.
RIPPLE SALVO… #252… “TAKHLI TALES” by LCOL BILLY REID SPARKS, USAF, retired… After thinking about it for more than three decades LCOL Sparks put what he’d been thinking about down on paper. He titled it “Takhli Tales” and it is a journal worthy of a Wild Weasel F-105 warrior with more than 4,000 flight hours, who flew 149 missions in the Rolling Thunder era,and was awarded three Silver Stars and seven DFCs in the process. I love his forthright no holds barred call a spade a spade approach to story telling. “Sparky” has written a little book any Red River Rat or Route Pac 6 Rolling Thunder survivor will thoroughly enjoy reading in one sitting. Here are a couple paragraphs for a teaser: I quote… (page 106+ of a 245-page paperback):
Chapter Eleven: Targets…
“The major problems with Rolling Thunder from day one was that the targets we were assigned made zero sense. There was never any logical sequence to the assignment of targets. There was also no strategic or tactical sense to our targets at any time. In ’65 the Vietnamese started to build a series of SAM sites and we were forbidden to touch them or even overfly any of them until after they fired at us and shot down an F-4. All the MIG bases were also off limits until the summer of ’67. We were forbidden to attack any aircraft operating from these bases until they were airborne. The targets we were ordered to striuke seemed to be random selections. The ships unloaded SA-2 guideline missiles at Haiphong and we could not attack them until they were at a SAM site that had fired. We had bridges for a while then railroads for awhile, then road cuts, etc, etc. I think my Mother could have done better than McNamara and Johnson did at the Thursday breakfast where the story was that they picked the targets (sic That was “the Tuesday Luncheon meeting”).
“In ’65 we were sitting in what passed for a club at Takhli at the time. Capt Russ Violette who was a bit smarter than the rest of us remarked he had figured out what were the most important targets in the North. Al Logan asked what caused that statement. Russ asked where all the guns were. We yakked for a while and decided that they were around the Steel Mill, bridges, a few in Hanoi and mostly around dams, dikes, and irrigation system branch areas. Russ stated that they obviously knew what was most important and put their guns there. It seems that the only times that Vietnam was defeated was when the Chinese came down and destroyed the irrigation system. No control over water distribution, no rice. No rice, no army. No army, surrender. We went to our boss and he went to 2nd AD. They got back to us and told us it was a Courts Martial offense to hit a dam, dike, or irrigation ditch. We never hit the single most important set of targets in the country.
“In’65 we could fly over Hanoi with only a few guns shooting at us. They only had MIGs and NO SAMs. In ’72 when we finally bombed Hanoi, there were about 15,000 37mm and larger guns in the area, 20 SAM sites, and a bunch of MIGs. We could have reduced Hanoi to rubble in a few days in ’65 with few, if any, losses by the BUFFs (B-52s). In ’72 we lost 19 the first week of Christmas.
“In 1966 the Thai Nguyen Steel Mill, which was a good target, became a primary target after being forbidden for over a year. Both Takhli and Korat were assigned two Alpha Strikes each day for each base for a week. The smelter area was the first target and although it was destroyed on day one, the attacks on the smelter continued for a week. All other parts of the complex were verboten. The next week we were sent after the rolling steel mill only. This was followed by a full week of the loading and transportation docks. Each was destroyed on the first day. During this time they built up their defenses until the steel mill was more defended than Hanoi! The real problem was that the steel mill had squat to do with the Vietnamese ability to wage war because all their materials came down the railroads or through Haiphong. The vast majority came through the port of Haiphong. Although Haiphong was a Navy target for years, the ships were never hit nor were the harbors mined until the Christmas bombing of Hanoi in ’72.”
LCOL Sparks states that he has written these stories for his family and friends to provide them a glimpse of what he faced during “the most significant and most stressful period of my life.” In the process he has written for all of us who did some flying in the Red River Valley during Rolling Thunder. He also bids the reader his thanks for reading. To which I say, thanks LCOL Sparks for writing, and thanks for adding another superb testimonial to the archives of our lousy mismanaged air war.
Lest we forget… Bear -30-