Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #818… AP (27 May 2017): “AFTER 52 YEARS, THE REMAINS OF A NAVY PILOT ARE BACK ON US SOIL FROM VIETNAM”… Lieutenant Commander Frederick P. Crosby was killed on 1 JUNE 1965 during the war and the remains were found in a fish pond in North Vietnam in 2015. The positive identification of the remains was completed by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in May 2017 and they posted the following public news release on 22 May 2017…
“DPAA announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, killed in the Vietnam war, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
“Navy Lt. Cmdr. Frederick P. Crosby, 31, of Lockport, New York, will be buried May 28 in San Diego, California. On 1 June 1965, Crosby was the pilot of an RF-8A aircraft on a bomb damage assessment mission over Thanh Hoa Province, North Vietnam. His aircraft was hit by enemy ground fire while flying at high-speed and low altitude over the target area, and crashed. Due to the location of the crash site in hostile territory, the Navy was unable to conduct search operations. The Navy declared Crosby deceased as of 1 June 1965.”…. The 53-year-old story below… but first…
GOOD MORNING… Day EIGHT HUNDRED NINETEEN of a daily journal of history recorded fifty years ago, with updates from many 21st century sources…
HEAD LINES from THE NEW YORK TIMES on Saturday, 1 JUNE 1968…
THE WAR: Page 1: “VIETCONG SQUADS SLIP INTO SAIGON–MILITARY UNITS ARE ATTACKED–CLASHES FLARE IN CHOLON”… “Vietcong squads slipped into Saigon through Thursday night and struck Allied military installations in sporadic outbreaks in the capital. Through the warm sunny morning Friday, brief exchanges of fire erupted in Cholon, the Chinese quarter, pitting squads of Vietcong against South Vietnamese soldiers and national policemen. At one point, several small Vietcong units were believed holed up in a 10-block area of Cholon, some of them taking up positions in four-story and five-story buildings. As policemen crawled under cars for cover, South Vietnamese marines inched forward near Cholon’s marketplace to attack the Vietcong with grenades and machine guns. Sniper fire continued through the evening with South Vietnamese police patrols the targets. Casualties on both sides were light….High ranking military officers tended to rule out any possibility that the Vietcong were seeking to move substantial forces into Saigon. ‘This whole business today is not significant except in the sense that it shows they’re trying to keep some kind of pressure on here’, an officer on Gen. William W. Westmoreland’s staff said. “These are really pinprick things, they’re little sallies,’ he said…. As the brief exchanges flared in the city, South Vietnamese bombers swooped over suspected enemy concentrations on the northeast fringes and pounded the shacks and rice fields in the area. Aerial observers estimated that as many as 200 enemy soldiers might have been killed in the air strikes, but there was no official confirmation of the figure.”… “Fighting also broke out two miles east of Khe Sanh when a company of marines set up in a night defensive position and came under heavy small arms, rocket grenades and mortar fire. Six marines were killed and 66 wounded in the four-hour battle. Enemy losses were put at 83 killed.”… Page 1: “FOE STEPS UP DRIVE NEAR CAMBODIA”… “In Songbe, 60 miles southwest of Saigon, American servicemen were eating poundcake and drinking coffee in the military compound here last night when an enemy mortar shell exploded on the streets outside. Seconds later the men had flattened themselves on the mess hall floor. Eleven more shells exploded before a hush returned to the compound. then the troops picked themselves up and casually returned to their meal.”…
PEACE CONVERSATIONS: Page 1: “HANOI AIDE MOCKS JOHNSON’S APPEAL ON WAR RESTRAINT–THUY, IN TALKS, OFFERS NOT TO BOMB U.S.”…”North Vietnam today indicated President Johnson’s latest appeal for reciprocal restraint in return for a halt in American bombing by offering a pledge to refrain from bombing the United States. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, the chief United States negotiator, termed this a ‘fantastic suggestion,’ and asked Hanoi to pledge instead that it would refrain from ‘bombardment and acts of war and subversion against South Vietnam. Mr. Harriman’s proposal was rejected by Xuan Thuy, who recalled that previously he had described as ‘perfidies’ American charges that North Vietnamese forces were fighting in the South…. Today’s sparring over the bombing issue was but one of several exchanges, officials said, during the sixth session of the formal talks here.”…
Page 1: “De GAULLE SHAKES UP HIS CABINET–LABOR CHIEFS SEEK TO END STRIKE–TANKS AT PARIS AFTER MANEUVERS… Elections June 29–Tensions Are Eased As Opposition Accepts Challenge At Polls”… Page 1: “CABINET AIDES IN FRANCE OPEN TALKS WITH UNIONS“…
Page 1: “U.S.N. ATOMIC DRAFT REVISED TO AID SMALLER COUNTRIES–U.S. AND SOVIET BOW TO COMPLAINTS AND STRENGTHEN GUARANTEES IN TREATY TO CURB NUCLEAR WEAPONS SPREAD’…
Page 1: “SONIC BOOM DAMAGES AIR ACADEMY INJURING DOZEN”… Page 1: “Czechs Worried By Troop Moves–Soviet Union Units Enter Country to Take Part In Exercises”… Page 2: “81 Vietnamese Kidnapped By Vietcong Are Rescued… Page 13: “Search For Scorpion Shifts to Area Near Azores”…
1 JUNE 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times/Associated Press… No coverage of air operations north of DMZ…”Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were two fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 1 June 1968…
(1) MAJOR GLENN THOMAS CIARFEO and CAPTAIN M.P. RHODES were flying an F-4C f the 391st TFS and 12th TFW out of Cam Rahn Bay providing air support against enemy troops 40 miles north of Cam Rahn Bay. MAJOR CIARFEO and CAPTAIN RHODES were making their seventh attack on the enemy troops when they were hit by ground fire at a low altitude. Only CAPTAIN RHODES was able to eject from the doomed Phantom before it hit the ground killing MAJOR CIARFEO. CAPTAIN RHODES ws rescued but sustained severe injuries in the incident…. Multiple passes on a target are undertaken with exponential risk. Humble Host can’t recall ever reading about a 7-pass attack against a hostile target until this incident…
(2) MAJOR W.G. PALANK was flying an A-1H of the 602nd ACS and 56th ACW in the continuing SAR for Streetcar 304, Lt Kenny Fields, and Captain Edward Leonard (who you may recall from RTR/RS #818, was hiding in a tree when finally sighted and captured). MAJOR PALANK was orbiting at 4,000 over the search area when he was nailed in the engine by a 37-mm round about six miles southwest of Khe Sanh. He was able to keep his damaged Spad flying for a few more miles back toward Thailand but was forced to eject 15 miles southwest of Ban Kate where he was rescued by an Air Force SAR helo.
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) ON 1 JUNE FOR THE FOUR YEARS OF THE OPERTION IN THE SKIES OVER NORTH VIETNAM…
1965… LCDR FREDERICK PETER CROSBY, USN… (KIA)…
1966… CAPTAIN ARMAND JESSE MYERS, USAF… (POW) and 1LT JOHN LORIN BORLING, USAF… (POW)…
1967… NONE…
1968… NONE…
HUMBLE HOST flew #172. USS Enterprise back on the line for final line period of deployment. On the line through June 27, then home… #172 was a ‘warm-up. I led a section to work with Covey in Steel Tiger west of Tchepone/Highway 9. Put 6 Mk-82s on his smoke, which was marking a “base camp”… No BDA…
RIPPLE SALVO… #819… A STANZA FROM ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON’S REQUIEM…
“This be the verse you ‘grave for me:
Here he lies where he long to be,
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
The USS BON HOMME RICHARD arrived in the South China Sea on 12 May for its second tour of duty off Vietnam having spent nine months in 1964 with Task Force 77–the Seventh Fleet’s Fast Carrier Striking Force. On 1 JUNE 1968, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER FREDERICK PETER CROSBY , Officer-in-Charge of the VFP-63, Detachment E, embarked in Bonny Dick, was launched in an RF-8A Photo Crusader to obtain bomb damage assessment and target planning photography in an extremely well defended area north of Thanh Hoa to include the road and rail bridge at Dong Phong Thuong, ten miles north of Thanh Hoa. A low broken layer of clouds forced LCDR CROSBY to fly his mission route at low ltitude and 550 knots. The enemy filled his flight path with intense barrage fire and scored a fatal hit in the Crusader’s wing causing the aircraft to slowly roll over and into the ground. LCDR CROSBY perished in the explosive crash. He made no apparent attempt to eject, there was no beeper or voice contact, and the wreckage was located in a very hostile area, all factors precluding a search and rescue effort. LCDR CROSBY was declared Killed In Action on 1 JUNE 1968, 53 years ago this day in 2018… He was awarded the DISTINGUISHED FLYING CROSS (Posthumously) for the mission…
“On 1 June 1965, Lieutenant Commander Crosby was leader of a two-plane flight launched from the carrier to conduct bomb damage assessment photography against a heavily defended bridge site at Dong Phong Thuong, North Vietnam. Lieutenant Commander Crosby, because of cloud coverage at the target area executed his run at an extremely low altitude in the face of heavy enemy ground fire. After completing the run, his aircraft was hit by hostile fire and crashed. His courageous and selfless devotion to duty throughout the run were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”
With the signing of the peace accords and return of 591 POWs in March 1973, the search for about 2,500 Missing-In-Action American warriors began. The Joint U.S./Socialist Republic of Vietnam recovery team spent three years investigating the CROSBY case, including interviews with several witnesses dating back to 1993. Excavations to find the wreckage of the CROSBY RF-8 were executed between October and December of 2015 and recovered; possible “osseous remains and material evidence from an F-8-type aircraft.”
From the DPAA New Release of 22 May: “In the identification fo CROSBY, scientists from DPAA and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA analysis, which matched a sister, as well as anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence.” A positive identification was made and the return of the remains for burial took place on 27 May 2017. On that date the DPAA had accounted for 969 of the original 2,580 missing warriors… 1,611 to go. “Leave no man behind” is the relentless order…
SAN DIEGO, MAY 27, 2017: Associated Press… “AFTER 52 YEARS, REMAINS OF NAVY PILOT BACK ON US SOIL FROM VIETNAM”… (Picture caption: “U.S. sailors carry the casket of Lt. Cmdr. Frederick P. Crosby after its arrival at the airport in San Diego on May 26, 2017. Having waited for more than half-a-century to get back her father’s remains from Vietnam after his Navy plane was shot down there in 1965, it was a poignant moment for his daughter Deborah Crosby, who watched the casket being removed from a Delta Air Lines jet and then transferred to a hearse.”)
“Deborah Crosby touched her father’s flag-draped casket as her three brothers hugged her in a tearful embrace on the tarmac at the San Diego airport on Friday ending a more than a half-a-century search to find and bring home the remains of Lt. Cmdr. Frederick P. Crosby, whose Navy plane was shot down during the Vietnam War. Deborah Crosby, now 58, was only six when she was sent home from the first grade to learn her father was presumed dead, though his body had not been found. Ms. Crosby and her grandmother made a pact to some day bring home her father’s remains and bury him in his hometown of San Diego. A year ago, military investigators found his remains in a fish pond in North Vietnam. On Friday, Deborah Crosby fulfilled her promise to her late grandmother.
“Passengers watched through the windows of a Delta Air Lines jet as the flag-draped casket was removed from the hold by six sailors. Ms. Crosby walked forward, touched the casket and embraced her three brothers. The aviator’s elderly sister, Sharon, and brother, David, also hugged and he wiped an eye. ‘I’m just overwhelmed with seeing the plane drive up and all of the uniforms and all of the respect and the honors that he’s receiving,’ Ms. Crosby said.
WITH FULL MILITARY HONORS…
“On Sunday, Frederick Crosby will be buried at Fort Rosecrtans National Cemetery with full military honors and a Navy flyover.
“Ms. Crosby never doubted the fact that her father was killed. But her grief seemed to linger in a deep space inside her until she received news that his remains had been recovered, finally giving her closure. ‘It just changed my life in so many ways,’ the energy consultant who lives in New York said earlier in an interview. ‘It relieved a lot of sadness that I’ve been carrying around in my heart very quiet. She had called the National League of Families regularly about the military’s progress in her father’s case.
HE HELPED THEM FIND THE BODY…
“Decades passed and her mother and grandmother both died before investigator go a breakthrough on their third trip to the area when they met Pham Van Troung, a lifelong resident of Nam Ngan ward in Thanh Hoa City. According to a 50-page report given to Ms. Deborah Crosby, the 89-year-old man told investigators he couldn’t recall the month or year, but he remembered during the war that he was cooking limestone to reinforce his house when he heard gunfire and ran to the nearby levee to investigate. He saw two planes headed toward his house, and one was on fire as it glided toward the levee. He said he could see its wing and tail surfaces were missing. The aircraft rolled as it hit the fish pond in front of his house, splashing Van Truong with water and mud. The other aircraft kept flying toward the sea.
“Based on the new information, U.S. military investigators decided to comb the bottom of the pond in 2015. When they emptied it bucket-by-bucket, they found bones, pieces of fabric from the pilot’s uniform, his chrome lighter and wedding band.
“Ms. Crosby felt she could finally shed the tears stored up inside her. ‘It’s nice to be able to let out the tears and to have some relief in our hearts,’ she said. ‘And now we’re able to talk about it. Before we didn’t talk much about this and now we can talk proudly and we have, you know, a happier ending and we can visit my dad’s gravesite.’ “… Ms. Crosby said her brothers wanted to keep the fabric. lighter and wedding band. She said she wanted the flag draped over his coffin to be able to ‘hold it close to my heart.’
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER FREDERICK PETER CROSBY, USN, deceased, was buried with full-military honors and a Navy flyover at Fort Rosecrans on 28 May 2017. His headstone reads: “HE IS HOME”… The reverse of his headstone bears the name of his wife Mary, who died in 2012 and had never remarried. In addition, her side bears the inscription: “WHEREST THOU GOEST, SO GO I,” the same quotation from Ruth 1:16 she had inscribed on the pendant of Navy wings she wore for 47-years of bearing up, and pressing on, sustained by her family and memories of a husband who perished in the service of their country. “They also serve who stand and wait–for decades.”…
RTR quote for 1 June: RUTH 1:16: “And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
Lest we forget…. Bear
