Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #674… COMUSMACV Command History 1967 (TS declassified 1984)…”The enemy did not win a major battle in Vietnam in 1967. Most of his main forces have been driven to positions near the borders of RVN where they take advantage of sanctuaries for protection and resupply”… GEE!…sounds like Afghanistan, et. al., 2018…
Good Morning: Day SIX HUNDRED SEVENTY-FOUR of a look-back at a war fought fifty years ago that still provides lessons for the decision makers of today, and always will– the Vietnam war and Rolling Thunder are useful HISTORY…
10 January 1968… HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a chilly Wednesday with lot’s of sunshine…
Page 1: “ENEMY DEAD PUT AT 2,968 IN WEEK, HIGHEST OF WAR–SOUTH VIETNAMESE ASSERT SOUTH VIETNAMESE LOST 263–u.s. TOTAL NOT GIVEN YET–Foe Made 38 Attacks–Some Planes Damaged and Seven Americans Killed As Air Base Is Struck”…”The stepped up enemy offensive since New Year’s cease-fire has resulted in the heaviest loss of Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces of any week of the war, according to a South Vietnamese source. The military spokesman reported yesterday that 2,968 enemy soldiers were killed in the week ended last Saturday by Americans, South Vietnamese and other allied forces. The previous record was the 2,783 killed in the week ended last March 25. The reporting period includes the 36-hour New Year’s cease-fire which saw the most serious violations of a cease-fire to date. The United States command reported that 27 United States soldiers were killed during the truce, while 563 of the enemy were killed…. Early today, Vietcong forces overran the American airfield at Kontum, 270 miles north of Saigon, blowing up several planes, killing 7 United States soldiers and wounding 25. Eleven enemy troops were killed in the attack…. Near Saigon, a Vietcong force of about 400 men assaulted the night bivouac position of a 25th United States Infantry Division in Haungia Province, three miles north of the division headquarters at Cuchi. It was the fourth major enemy attack within 20 miles of Saigon in five days. Preliminary reports said that 5 American soldiers were killed and 26 wounded. Eleven of the Vietcong were reported killed. The enemy shelled a South Vietnamese Army training center and regimental headquarters near Saigon and attacked a district headquarters town in the Mekong Delta, killing one civilian and burning 40 houses…. There has also been increased activity in the Saigon area. On Monday, 23 soldiers of the Ninth Infantry Division were killed and 31 wounded, 19 miles south of Saigon.”…
Page 3: “March Draft At 39,000–Highest in Seventeen Months”… Page 1: “Spending to Rise About $10-Billion in 1969 Budget–total Outlay of $190-Billion Is Forecast, Based On New All-Inclusive Accounting–Final Figures Not Given–A High Administration Aid Asserts Deficit Should Be ‘Substantially’ Lower”… Page 25: “Johnson Shifts Poverty Funds To Bolster Adult Work Program”… Page 1: “Surveyor Lands Gently On Moon–Pictures Sent Back By first Craft in Unmanned Series”… Page 1: “Aide of Sihanouk Holds Talks; Sees Ho Chi Minh (“he’s alive”)… Page 2: “40 In House Urge President To Prod U.N. On Peace Role”… Page 2: “Dr. Spock, Critic of War, Named Humanist of Year”… Page 3: “Four Sailors Off USS Intrepid Given Permission to Stay in Sweden”… Page 26: “The Drug Scene: A Growing Number of Americans Are Quietly Turning On–Some Seek Insight–Others Sexuality”… “Many also depend of pills to arouse and relax them in the hectic race of life.”…
Page 1: “TONKIN EVIDENCE OUTLINED BY U.S.–PENTAGON ASSERTS REPRISAL RAID WAS DELAYED UNTIL ATTACK ON SHIPS WAS VERIFIED”… “The Defense Department said today that, before it ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam in 1964 the Administration had verified that two American destroyers had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Pentagon officials disclosed that an ‘alert’ order had been sent to two United States aircraft carriers while the attack by the North Vietnamese patrol boats against the destroyers–the Maddox and the Turner Joy–was in progress. But the Defense Department said in a statement that the go-ahead orders to the carriers were not sent until the attack had been verified to the satisfaction of officials in Washington. The Defense Department statement was issued as the latest Pentagon rebuttal to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. the committee is making an informal inquiry into the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in August 1964. According to Administration accounts there were two attacks by North Vietnamese PT-boats–one on August 2 against Maddox and the other on the night of August 4 against Maddox and Turner Joy. As a result of the attacks, the Administration ordered the first air strikes against targets in North Vietnam and obtained a resolution endorsing ‘all necessary measures’ taken by the President ‘to prevent further aggression.’ “…The inquiry was ordered by Senator J.W. Fulbright… (THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH IS UNDERWAY)
8-9-10 JANUARY 1968… The President’s Daily Brief… NORTH VIETNAM:
8 January: “The two suspected coastal defense missile sites south of Thanh Hoa were struck repeatedly by U.S. aircraft on 5 and 6 January. There is no firm evidence from photography or pilot reports, however, that either site was occupied at the time of the attacks….. One report gives details of the organization of civilian bomb damage crews. The peacetime regulation that each adult donate l25 days of labor to state projects each year was broadened in 1965 to a requirement that all adults under 45 respond to unlimited calls for work anywhere for any length of time. Only after the first 25 days of such duty does the state begin to supply the worker’s food….
9 January: There are major enemy build-ups in three areas. Perhaps the most immediate and serious threat is just below the Demilitarized Zone, where elements of four North Vietnamese divisions are concentrating around the allied base at Khe Sanh…. 9 January: Hanoi on Negotiations. A Japanese news agency is carrying the replies of North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Trinh to a questionnaire submitted by two Japanese correspondents. Trinh disparaged the President’s San Antonio speech as a ‘deceitful attempt’ to mask new escalation of the war. Trinh cited his statement of a year ago that a bombing halt is the precondition for any US-North Vietnamese talks. The interview adds nothing to Hanoi’s position on this issue and the questionnaire probably was submitted to Trinh before his recent and authorization remarks on this subject on 30 December…
10 January: Notes on the Situation: The Paul Doumer Bridge: The mid-December bombings of the Paul Doumer Bridge caused the most extensive damage yet to the crossing. Photography of 5 January confirm earlier indications that at least seven spans, or about 2,000 feet, of the mile-long bridge were dropped in the bombings of 14-22 December. Three bridge piers also were destroyed in the same air strikes… The Doumer Bridge was not in use on 26 December. There are however , as many as eight alternate crossings within six miles of the bridge….
10 JANUARY 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (11 Jan reporting 10 Jan ops) Page 5: “Bad weather continued to blanket most of North Vietnam limiting United States pilots to minor attacks… Page 5: “U.S. Jet Down, Hanoi Says”… “The North Vietnamese press agency said that a United States jet was shot down northwest of Hanoi today (10 Jan).”… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were four F-4 Phantoms lost in Southeast Asia on 10 January 1068…
(1) CAPTAIN KEITH NORMAN HALL and 1LT EARL PEARSON HOPPER were flying an F-4D of the 13th TFS and 432nd TRW…Chris Hobson has the story... “On the 10th the USAF flew a raid on the Hoa Lac airfield 15 miles west of Hanoi. As the TARCAP flight approached Hai Duong en route to the target, it came under attack from a SAM battery. Captain Hall’s aircraft was at 20,000-feet when it was rocked by a nearby explosion from an SA-2 missile. The aircraft’s hydraulic system was badly damaged and Captain Hall ejected, followed a few minutes later by 1Lt Hopper, who came down in a rugged mountain area. Landing about 20 miles apart, both men activated their emergency SAR beepers. Captain Hall was captured after about 40 minutes on the ground. Earl Hopper’s radio signal was tracked for three days. A Laotian ground search team was inserted into the region and located Hopper’s radio but found no trace of him. It was conjectured that Hopper had left his radio on and had it as he was about to be captured. Captain Hall and 1Lt Hopper were on their first mission together when they were shot down, although Keith Hall had flown 58 missions with other WSOs during his tour in Southeast Asia. He was released in March 1973… Classified information was received in the early 1980s that implied that Earl Hopper was still alive and imprisoned by the Pathet Lao. However, attempts to obtain further information from Laos have come to naught….” Humble Host adds: Subsequent to the Hobson book being published the Joint Recovery Team kept at it and 1Lt Earl Hopper’s remains were recovered and returned to the United States in April 1998 and positively identified 16 January 2002, thirty-four years after his last flight in the service of his country… LEAVE NO MAN BEHIND…
(Webmaster note: 1LT Hopper’s father, retired Army Colonel Earl Pearson Hopper Sr., passed away on 11 July 2008 in Glendale, AZ aged 86. When his son was reported MIA he retired from the Army and spent the remainder of his life trying to find the truth of what happened to him. Despite the repatriation and identification of remains, Earl Sr. believed his son was captured alive and spent the next several decades in captivity. Earl Pearson Hopper Jr. was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery in Phoenix, Arizona on 3 April 2009)
(2) and (3) Two F-4Bs of the VF-154 Black Knights embarked in USS Ranger completed a radar directed Milky over low clouds in Steel Tiger and on the return to the Ranger the flight lead dialed in the TACAN of the northern SAR destroyer positioned 100 miles from the carrier. The section let down to recover before discovering the error. There wasn’t a tanker available and as a consequence, the crews of the two Phantoms had to abandon their aircraft due to fuel exhaustion. They were rescued to fly and fight again…
(4) An F-4B of the VF-114 Aardvarks embarked in USS Kitty Hawk suffered a complete hydraulic failure on a CAP mission and the pilot and RIO were forced to eject. They were rescued and pressed on…
Chris Hobson reports the names of the crew members of these three Phantoms on page 132 of his great journal, but I will spare these fighter guys (1 LCDR, 1LT and 4 LTJGs) from mention by name in this journal…
From the Compilation “34TFS/F-105 History” by Howie Plunkett: 10-Jan-68...”For the second day a weather diversion sent ‘Gator’ flight from the 34th TFS into Laos instead of North Vietnam. The flight took off at 15:10. the line-up was: #1 LCOL James B. Ross; #2 Captain Douglas Beyer; #3 Major Sam Armstrong; and, #4 Major Almer Barner, Jr…. This was Major Armstrong’s 51st combat mission.” Armstong: “Again the primary target was cancelled due to weather and we wound up doing North Star. We went down into southern Laos outside Mu Gia Pass and hit a karst and tumbled it down on the road. Cricket cleared us into Pack I to let #4 drop his tanks as they wouldn’t feed. I had a P-2 flight control failure on way back and had to land straight-in. The mission lasted 2 hours and five minutes.”….
RIPPLE SALVO… #674… COMUSMACV Command History 1967: “The Enemy Situation at Year’s End”…Part I…
(S) The increase in forces facilitated expansion of combat operations to an extent which denied the enemy the capability to conduct significant operations in the populated areas. Our operations, supported by close air and ARC LIGHT strikes, increasingly neutralized enemy base areas, located and destroyed the supplies on which the enemy depends, and drove him into sparsely populated regions where food is scarce. Steady progress was made in seeking out and destroying communist forces and infrastructure. The overall trend in the enemy’s losses from killed, wounded, disease, and capture was favorable to us, as was the overall trend of his defections. The proportion of population and area which he controlled slowly and steadily declined. His in-country recruitment also declined significantly. Consequently, his replacement burden has fallen increasingly on the North Vietnamese. There is increasing evidence that North Vietnam is resorting to wider use of women in the labor force and use of 16-year old boys and men over 38 years of age to provide some of the badly needed military replacements. Shortages of food and medical supplies are taking their toll with deterioration of the morale and quality of the communist forces noted in some units–especially those in isolated areas…
(U) The enemy did not win a major battle in Vietnam in 1967. Most of his main forces have been driven to positions near the borders of RVN where they take advantage of sanctuaries for protection and resupply. When our troops begin to punish him severely, they retreat across the borders, and avoid contact until they have refitted and prepared for another operation. Even then we have been able to detect impending major offensives and to mount spoiling attacks to knock them off-balance and force them to fight defensively…
(S) The enemy’s strategy continues to reflect an effort to draw Allied forces into remote areas of his choosing, especially those areas adjacent to border sanctuaries, thereby, enabling his local and guerrilla forces to harass, attack, and generally impede the GVN nation building effort. He has shown a recent willingness to engage our forces in sustained combat. Recent large unit deployments from North Vietnam indicate that the enemy may be seeking a spectacular win in RVN in the near future. The enemy has demonstrated a willingness to accept the situation as it exists, and continues to attack, harass and terrorize in many areas of the countryside. The VC infrastructure persists as a significant influence over portions of the population. Infiltration from the north still continues at a high rate (estimated to be over 6,000 personnel per month). Enemy employment of artillery, rockets and mortars has shown a marked increase in both quantity and caliber (120mm mortars, 122/140mm rockets and 130mm field guns). Although these enemy capabilities are at times formidable in a local sense, they are not overpowering….
(S) The amount of external assistance to North Vietnam has continued to increase each year since the war began and with it the tonnage of goods imported into the country. In 1967, for example, SEASIA import tonnages were also 40 percent greater than the 930,000 metric tons delivered in 1966. Mining and air systematic strikes on LOCs have greatly impeded the flow of imported goods once within the country…. Part II Tomorrow…
RTR Quote for 10 January: JOHN F. KENNEDY address to the graduating class, USNA, 6 June 1962: “There is another type of warfare–new in its intensity, ancient in its origin–war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It is a form of warfare uniquely adapted to what have been strangely called ‘wars of liberation,’ to undermine the efforts of new and poor countries to maintain the freedom that they have finally achieved. It preys on unrest and ethnic conflicts.”…
Lest we forget Bear
