Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #431… “THE NO COMMITTEE”… “…a small secret group whose existence the President could deny by saying there was ‘no committee’… ” …but first…
Good Morning: Day FOUR HUNDRED THIRTY-ONE of a celebration of the incredible valor of the aviation warriors who took the Vietnam war home to Hanoi and the heartland of North Vietnam fifty years ago…
10 MAY 1967… HEAD LINES and leads from The New York Times on a sunny, breezy Wednesday in NYC…
Page 1: “Marines Kill 31 in The Khe Sanh Area”... “Fierce fighting broke out again yesterday in the northwest corner of South Vietnam near Khe Sanh. United States marine units reported having killed 31 North Vietnamese soldiers in a five-hour battle. The marines listed their own losses as 24 killed and 19 wounded. At the same time marines found 203 bodies of North Vietnamese soldiers in graves nine miles north of Khe Sanh. The toll of NVN dead since April 24 now stands at 764.”… Page 1: “Johnson Exhorts Democrats On ’68… told a partisan crowd of 3,000 in Washington’s Hilton Hotel that the Democratic Party’s success in next year’s election depended upon its ability to persevere when the going gets touch’… Mr. Johnson called upon Democrats to beat back the ‘wreckers’ who he said want to dismantle many of the legislative achievements of his administration. He also called upon Congress to appropriate the muscle needed to bring those programs to fruition. In an allusion to his fear of riots in urban ghettos and of hostile reactions to them, Mr. Johnson urged the party to stand for ‘individual rights and individual responsibility’ in the cities this summer.”…Page 1: “City Schools Plan Record Program of Summer Help”…”The Board of Education adopted plans yesterday for its most ambitious summer program involving a series of Federally financed projects for the disadvantaged at a cost of $10.5-million… includes jobs for neighborhood youths in under-privileged areas.”…
Page 1. “Welfare Nation Is Bankrupt; Ginsburg Tells Senators Here”… “New York’s Welfare Commissioner Mitchell Ginsberg called yesterday for a complete revision of the nation’s welfare system, which he told a Senate sub-committee was ‘bankrupt’ as a social institution….he recommended a new approach to aiding the hard-core poor. He gave his views at a hearing of Senator Joseph Clark’s subcommittee on poverty, employment and manpower. Ginsberg: “…as long as public assistance does not perform its real function in such a way as to free the poorest of the poor, rather than to lock them into dependency, it has failed as an anti-poverty weapon…the present system must be thrown out.”… Page 3: “British Navy Discards Punishment by Caning”… “…as old as the British Navy…in the last year 69 total canings logged.”… (The rum ration will hang on for a few more years)…
Page 17: “Californians Top List of War Dead”… “After more than six years of fighting in Vietnam the Pentagon has issued its first state-by-state tabulations of combat deaths. California accounts for the largest number, followed by New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio. The breakdown, involving the names of 7,826 servicemen killed by the enemy in Southeast Asia between 1 January 1961 and 1 March 1967: California-683; New York-530; Texas-442; and Ohio-388. In addition to the 7,826 KIA, 1,966 died not as a result of hostile action (eg, aircraft accidents, vehicle accidents). Total dead: 9,407 with 442,000 men and women in Southeast Asia.”... Page 6: “Terrorists Strike Deep Into Israel”… “Border terrorists infiltrated five miles into Israel last night and set-off an explosive charge as a military vehicle was passing the main highway north of the Sea of Galilee…one of the most daring raids in two years of border terrorism.”
10 MAY 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (11 May reporting 10 May ops) Page 1: Dateline 10 May: “Jets Again Strike Within Haiphong”… “United States Navy fighter-bombers struck within Haiphong today, the second such attack of the war. They also attacked a nearby MIG airfield for the first time. Pilots from three carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin swept in to strike simultaneously at two power plants and at the Kienan airfield, five and a half miles soutwest of Haiphong. A Navy A-4 Skyhawk was shot down during the attack on the airfield, raising to 53 the number of American planes lost in North Vietnam. The pilot was not recovered and was listed as missing in action
“The Hanoi Radio said five American aircraft had been downed, four of them over Haiphong.
“Both of the power plants struck today were first attacked on April 20 when President Johnson signaled an increase in the pace of action over North Vietnam. MIG bases were attacked for the first time on April 24. The airfield at Kienan was the third MIG base to be attacked in the Hanoi-Haiphong area. On Monday the airfield at Houlac, 20 miles west of Hanoi was put out of operation by Air Force fighter-bombers that blasted huge craters in the runway on their fifth raid on the base. The Western-most power plant bombed by the Navy jets is 1.1 miles from the center of Haiphong and within the city limits, separated from the main part of the city only by a canal. The power plant is two miles from the downtown business center. Haiphong is North Vietnam’s main port and second largest city.
“Both attacks were well away from the dock area of Haiphong. In the past, reports of damage to vessels flying foreign flags have raised international concern. Navy bombers from the carrier Enterprise rained tons of bombs on the power plant inside the city, and planes from Kitty Hawk struck the other power plant. Jets from Hancock blasted the Kienan airfield.
“A spokesman said MIG fighter planes had been seen on the base but it was uncertain if there were any MIGs on the base when it was attacked. The airfield at Kienan has a runway 5,900-feet long and 130-feet wide. There are also walled areas for aircraft parking…During the latest raid weather was excellent in the Haiphong are but was so bad at other pars of North Vietnam that strike pilots relied on radar to bomb targets in the southern panhandle area and to the wast of Dienbienphu.
“The strike at Kienan was viewed by military officers as a careful intensification of the war with minimum danger of broader implications. These sources point out that only the minor airfields have been attacked and that those are well removed from populated areas. They consider the most important potential target at the field at Phucyen, where most of all of North Vietnam’s 20-odd new model MIG-21s are stationed. The fields at Gialam and Catbi have also been untouched by U.S. raids so far.”…
10 May 1967… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 10 May 1967…
(1) MAJOR LEONARD EDWARD NISKI was flying an F-100D of the 308th TFS and 31st TFW out of Tuy Hoa against a Vietcong target 35 miles west of Qui Nhon and was downed by ground fire on this second strafing pass. MAJOR NISKI had no opportunity to eject and went in with the aircraft. His body was recovered by the Army. MAJOR NISKI is remembered on the 50th anniversary of his death fighting for his country in a war 10,000-miles from home…
(2) MAJOR ROBERT LEE SNYDER, USMC, (MAG-12 Staff) was flying an A-4E of VMA-223 and MAG-12 out of Chu Lai on a night TPQ-10 radar bombing mission at 17,000-feet about 15 miles north of the DMZ when struck by the shrapnel of an exploding SA-2 surface-to-air missile. MAJOR SNYDER was able to turn for home and made the DMZ before the aircraft crashed inexplicably without a pilot ejection. There are no easy days… not even on a Milky…
(3) COMMANDER ROGER MORTON “DUTCH” NETHERLAND, COMMANDER CARRIER AIR WING-FIVE was flying an A-4C of the VA-94 “Mighty Shrikes” embarked in USS Hancock and participating in a major air wing strike on the Kienan airfield as the leader of a flak suppression section when hit by an SA-2 missile while evading two others. COMMANDER NETHERLAND was able to head southeast toward the Gulf of Tonkin streaming fuel and on fire. Ten miles south of Haiphong the A-4 rolled inverted and crashed without an ejection. It is possible COMMANDER NETHERLAND was wounded and became incapacitated in the last minutes of his final flight, fifty years ago. Glory gained, duty done…
RIPPLE SALVO…#431… Operation Rolling Thunder targeting was an ‘all hands’ evolution. The Tuesday luncheons and picking targets with the President were no secret. The ‘Katzenbach Group’ was. The following is from Wayne Thompson’s “To Hanoi and Back,” pages 68-69…
“During the winter of 1966-67, McNamara had been quietly winning adherents to his view (unconditional bombing halt) within the administration. His effort was facilitated by a small discussion group that met every Thursday afternoon in the office of the Under Secretary of State Katzenbach. These meetings had gained President Johnson’s approval in November 1966 to consider quietly the administration’s major problems in Vietnam. In January 1967, when the President asked Rostow to look into setting up a committee to examine the bombing of North Vietnam, Rostow steered the job to Katz3nbach’s committee. Rostow did consult with Clark Clifford, an influential Washington lawyer who had served in the Truman administration and had known Johnson for many years. Clifford urged a small secret group whose existence the President could deny by saying there was “no committee” or that the President talks to “a great many people on a great many subjects.”
“Rostow recommended that while the President might later want to call upon Clifford and other outsiders to undertake a study of the bombing, the time was not yet ripe. So Rostow, Under Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, John McNaughton, and William Bundy (Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs) focused on that problem during their weekly cocktail meetings in Katzenbach’s office. McNamara often came, as did Richard Helms, Director of Central Intelligence; Rusk sometimes joined them. They called themselves the “no Committee” or the “non-Group.” although not even told about their meetings at the outset, General Wheeler was eventually informed and may have participated occasionally.
“By May 1967 the “No Committee” was leaning toward a bombing cutback. Walt Rostow2 told the President that the group unanimously rejected both mining Haiphong and systematically bombing the rail lines to China. Rusk’s worries about possible Chinese and Soviet reactions bolstered the McNamara arguments against cost-effectiveness of bombing the Red River Delta. Even Rostow doubted air power’s ability to “close the top of the funnel” by mining Haiphong and striking the railroads. Since his days as a target planner in England during World War II, Rostow had believed oil and electricity to be the vital targets, but he had always been skeptical about bombing railroads. He was especially impressed by an estimate that North Vietnam’s import capacity of seventeen thousand tons per day exceeded actual imports by more than eleven thousand tons. Rostow and the No Committee were ready to cut back bombing north of the twentieth parallel as soon as the Hanoi power plant had been destroyed…
“McNamara hoped that hitting the Hanoi power plant would also make the Joint Chiefs amenable to a bombing cutback. But that hope only illustrated how far he and the No Committee had moved from the military point of view. Walt Rostow grew fearful of a public breach…” end quote…
Humble Host encourages readers to take a look at three documents dated 9 May 1967 from the Office of the State Department Historian that provide a look at how the “No Committee” functioned and what their Thursday cocktail meetings in Secretary Katzenbach’s office produced for the President’s consideration…
The first is #168: Rostow to the President summarizes the inputs from McNamara, Vance and Bundy… “This is an interim report on the meeting yesterday (Monday, May 8) afternoon of the Katzenbach group. We considered policy towards bombing the North.” Rolling Thunder warriors: you need to read this one…!!!
Documents #169 and #170 are inputs from SecState and SecDef… (CJCS, where are you?)… the docs are at…
#168… https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v05/d168
#169… https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v05/d169
#170… https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v05/d170
CAG’s QUOTES for 10 May…GENERAL PHIL SHERMAN (Little Phil): “I want you to be bold, enterprising and at all times full of energy.”…. PATTON: “The only way you can win a war is to attack, and keep on attacking, and after you have done that, keep attacking some more.”…
Lest we forget… Bear.
