Bear Taylor 
Good Morning…Day SIX of our long look back to Operation Rolling Thunder.
6 MARCH 1966 (NYT) …ON THE HOMEFRONT … Big Sunday paper, with pages full of the war in Vietnam. This reflected the heated Congressional hearings of the previous two weeks and the success of ongoing ops in both the ground and air war. Page one headline: “U.S. Marines Fight Big Northern Unit on Vietnam Coast,” written by Neil Sheehan from Saigon. Reported that the battle involved more than 2000 NVN regulars and the “enemy death toll was high.” Sheehan also wrote that the number of air raids on North Vietnam two days before “set records” and included strikes on two SAM sites near Hanoi. MiG 17s, seen for the first time since January, opposed the operations. The total Air Force and Navy Rolling Thunder operations for the day were reported as “61 raids” in North Vietnam, executed outside the Hanoi and Haiphong enclaves.” Sheehan: it was the highest number of raids since February 1965 “when bombing of North Vietnam began.” The Air Force concentrated on the rail lines well north of Hanoi and the Navy flew more than 250 sorties in the Panhandle (Route Packs Two and Three)….General Maxwell Taylor’s testimony on the Hill was also page one news. The General had submitted written answers to 28 questions posed by Senator Stuart Symington, one addressing the mining of the Haiphong harbor. General Taylor broke with the administration and JCS, and recommended mining the harbor. He wrote that there should be no fear of retaliation by the Soviet or Chinese. On the editorial page James Reston explained “The Johnson System” this way:
“The Johnson system of executive administration never ceases to astonish Washington. He hedges all his bets. He always moves, but he moves in irregular jig-time, two steps forward, one step back. He is a cautious extremist who wants to keep everybody off balance, so he backs into the future.”
The new car ads were interesting. A new TR-4 was selling for $2820 and a new Jag 4.2 for $6864. Finally, five hundred war protesters mustered at Reed University to hear ten of the nation’s leading poets read their anti-war rhymes. I missed that.
6 MARCH 1966 … ROLLING THUNDER… Poor weather shut down all but the weather and coastal recce missions operating on the periphery of North Vietnam… a Sunday stand down… breathe easy, roll the movie. Unless, of course, you were in one of the many squadrons that gathered intelligence and were always “on watch.”
Ripple Salvo: The unrelenting intelligence gatherers produce some toe curling secret-plus information for decision makers, planners and operators. On my third tour in the Gulf of Tonkin I was Air Strike Plans Officer on the CTF-77 staff and had ready access to intelligence products that we converted into improved targeting and tactics. Result: more bombs on target and good guy lives saved. I would love to go into detail, but the rules were and are pretty clear, highly classified intelligence, especially sources, are pretty precious national secrets that must be guarded. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t understand the absolute obligation to respect the rules of classification, and the penalties for violating those rules. On second thought, I guess I do know somebody in the public eye who is being investigated for possibly failing to protect national secrets and highly classified materials. She is getting a lot more heat than I got when I failed to adequately police my Air Strike Plans spaces on USS America when the CTF -77 staff was shifting to a relieving carrier at Yankee Station. Three Confidential messages had slipped behind a set of big bulletin and white boards on rollers. The relieving staff found them and I was on the hook. The investigation determined that my sin was not too serious in that the three one page Confidential messages had never left that secure space. I was off the hook and a couple quarts low on sweat. During the month long investigation I was certain my naval career was over. The rules are the rules, for everybody. I hope that still applies, especially for hoarders and those who disclose our nation’s Top Secret material.
Everything sent and received on the website will find a permanent home in the Texas Tech University Vietnam Center and Archive (Lubbock, Texas). Check it out. http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive
“The Vietnam Archive is a donation-driven archive – we only have those items that people donate to us. We collect and present all sides and viewpoints of the era. While a large portion of our collections are from military veterans, we are striving to increase our holdings in all other aspects.”
Help me make the Rolling Thunder record at Texas Tech’s great and expanding archive worth researching and remembering. After fifty years the archives are loaded with facts, analysis and opinions. What are missing are the personal experiences that make history interesting and fun to study.
“Lest we forget.” … Bear
