Bear Taylor 
Good Morning…Day FOUR of our long look back to Operation Rolling Thunder. This is an odyssey through an historical era of our nation’s road to where we are now in 2016. The road is starting to get rocky. Permit me an analogy. Every spin starts somewhere. But if the pilot knows what she/he has read, and can recall those procedures in the plane’s operating manual on spin recovery, in a state of duress, all but a few spins are recoverable and the flight ends with a safe fly out. The last thing an aircraft in spin trouble needs is a ham-fisted nugget at the controls. My thesis is: our national nose came up, the power came back, and the stall warning shudder began for the United States in 1966. Rolling Thunder therefore has a special place in American history. History is the teacher. Here is one day fifty years ago.
4 March 1966 (NYT)… ON THE HOMEFRONT… It was Friday. Nobody noticed what the weather was in Washington. Vietnam was on every mind as a consequence of the preceding two weeks of debate about funding the war in SE Asia. Arkansas Senator William Fulbright was Foreign Relations Committee Chair and when he talked, people listened. His committee had heard four hours of testimony on Monday, February 28 that addressed the possibility of the People’s Republic of China involvement in the war in Vietnam on the side of North Vietnam in order to avoid the defeat of North Vietnam by the American side. The intent of Fulbright’s hearing on the 28th was to “assuage Congressional fears of Chinese involvement. China, he said, “…has no reason to fear military action…” by the United States as a result of American involvement in the war in Vietnam. The hearings also revealed that South Vietnam would field 670,000 troops by the end of 1966 to fight the Viet Cong. The North Vietnamese infiltration rate was estimated at 4300 troops per month. Both sides were massing troops. Meanwhile, LBJ signed a new GI Education Bill updating the original bill that would run for eight years from June 1, 1996. The new bill applied to all who entered the service after January 1, 1955. The NYT reports from the war front that the Air Force had executed 30 Rolling Thunder (the press did not use the identifier Rolling Thunder at this time—the operation title/identifier was classified) missions of multiple aircraft to strike the railway lines in the Red River Valley northwest of Hanoi. The strikes were labeled a “maximum effort” and were conducted to within 40 miles of the Chinese border. The Air force also struck the highway system and bridges north of Hanoi. The Navy concentrated their operations in the lower portion of North Vietnam attacking enemy supply routes.
4 March 1966… ROLLING THUNDER… As noted in the NYT, the Rolling Thunder operations were hot and heavy in the Red River valley and North. No USAF aircraft losses were reported, except the loss of another O-1 from the 21st Tactical Air Support Squadron at Pleiku. The flight was a training flight for a new FAC. Shortly after accepting a mission to check out some “campfires near a Special Forces camp” near Qui Nkon on the coast of South Vietnam, the aircraft and two pilots “disappeared.” Killed in Action were: MAJOR STUART MERRILL ANDREWS, USAF and 1LT JOHN FRANCIS CONLON, USAF. As Chris Hobson writes (“Vietnam Air Losses: United States Air Force, Navy and Marine Fixed Wing Aircraft Losses in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973”): “ANDREWS and CONLON simply disappeared over the southeast jungle.”
Ripple Salvo: Several years ago I did a tour as the Flight Captain in the Utah “Pioneer” chapter of the Order of Daedalians. Keeping the meetings interesting requires speakers who can keep the guys and gals motivated to turn out. One of our retired Air Force colonels topped his rows of ribbons with a Silver Star. I wanted to know the story. I asked him to take a turn as the speaker and tell us about his Silver Star experience. He declined. Not once, but several times. Finally, I told him if he didn’t accept the assignment I was going to nominate him to be my relief as Flight Captain. That did it. He agreed, but added one condition. He would only tell his tale if he could bring his wife, because he had never told her how he had earned the nation’s fourth highest award for intrepidity in the face of enemy fire. He said, if he had to tell the story, he wanted to do it one time and get it over with. A month later, with several Daedalian wives scattered among us old warriors and curmudgeons, and under my unrelenting pressure, he told us his Silver Star story, once and for all.
He earned his coveted medal as a young Air Force captain flying a small single engine propeller driven observation aircraft (O-1) as a forward air controller (FAC) supporting the Marines defending Khe Sahn near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing North and South Vietnam. Tens of thousands of North Vietnamese were attacking a couple thousand Marines besieged on a few hilltops a few clicks from Khe Sanh in January 1968. It was a fight to the finish. American air superiority countered the North Vietnamese advantage in numbers of troops, except when the weather reduced the effectiveness of our fighter-bombers. On this day the entire area was covered by a thick, dark, low overcast with the tops of the mountains (hills) in the area rising into the clouds. Our young captain entered the area but found that the only access to the limited airspace between the mountains was a single large hole several miles west of the contested area and the Marines on their two hills. He dove under the clouds and made his way east to Khe Sahn flying between mountains, under the low clouds and just above the rolling jungles below. On station, he was contacted by a Marine unit holding one of the hills near Khe Sahn pleading for air support to repel a force of several hundred North Vietnamese shelling and advancing on their position. Our FAC contacted fighter bombers orbiting above the overcast who were unable to find a hole to confirm the target, an absolutely essential requirement since the enemy was within a few hundred yards of the Marines. Our FAC directed the fighters westward to access the route he had used. It worked, and the young FAC, flying low and slow over the enemy, maintaining a position between the enemy and the Marines, and taking fire all the while, marked the target for the fighters, who made several runs dropping bombs and strafing the enemy as directed by the FAC. Additional flights were directed into the area and, under control of our FAC, found both the sucker hole through the clouds to access the target area and the enemy troops marked for attack by the FAC, who by this time was in his third hour of orbiting the hostile troops at low altitude. The enemy had advanced within fifty yards of the Marines, but the North Vietnamese, badly mauled by the FAC directed air attacks, were forced to retreat and the battle was over. The enemy body count made by the appreciative Marines was put at more than 300 by actual count. The Marines asked that the Air Force provide recognition to the FAC and fighters who saved the day.
Eventually, the young FAC was awarded the Silver Star. He put it in a drawer and doesn’t talk about it. That is what real heroes do. They do their duty and move on, but when an attaboy comes their way, they say thank you, and go back to work. They know who they are and what they are, and that’s all that matters to them. Real heroes understand that modesty is the essential companion of courage.
Unfortunately, only about one percent of the American citizenry has had any service in the military. So if all the heroes with medals and a story of courage in the face of enemy fire hide all their medals in a cigar box in deep storage and never talk about it as our young FAC cum Colonel USAF was wanting to do, our countrymen are denied knowledge of what real heroism is all about.
It is my hope that in opening this conduit website I will be able to loosen and bring out of the cigar boxes of heroes the stories our young people need to hear.
Rolling Thunder warriors, River Rats, Yankee Air Pirates, and all readers — please yield a little of the admired modesty that attends heroics, and tell your story here on this website. If you would rather tell the story of one of your wingmen or leaders, do that. Be honest and detailed. And, if you have a story you agree to be told, but are as modest as the young FAC from Utah, send your tale to the webmaster via email or contact form and it will be retold on this site. Everything that is written and recorded here will eventually be archived in the Texas Tech University Vietnam War archives in Lubbock, Texas. Please don’t hide your light: “let it shine before all good men so they may see your good works”….Give it your light a chance to inspire some kid of today, as we all were inspired by the heroics of the Greatest Generation.…
Lest we forget… Bear
