ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED 13 MARCH 1967

RIPPLE SALVO… #373… THE 355th Tactical Fighter Wing MORALE REPORT... but first…

Good Morning: Day THREE HUNDRED SEVENTY-THREE of a return to a war fought 50 years ago…

13 MARCH 1967… HEAD LINES and LEADS from The New York Times on a cloudy Monday with rain in the forecast…

Page 1: “Thai Based Jets Hit Power Plant in North Vietnam”…”Thailand based United States bombers pounded a North Vietnamese power plant 32 miles from Hanoi yesterday (12th). Pilots reported a series of explosions and fires that sent smoke to 3,000-feet {Windows and walls in Central Hanoi were shaken Sunday by bombing raids in the vicinity…AP}. Headquarters spokesmen also made no mention of losses of airplanes. In raids yesterday North Vietnam’s press agency said two planes were shot down…Navy bombers from aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin concentrated on railroad installations and coastal cargo barges. Pilots from the carrier Kitty Hawk reported destroying a railroad bridge six miles west of Thanh Hoa and damaging another rail bridge nine miles northeast of the city. Fliers from the Ticonderoga reported destroying or damaging 27 box cars and several storage buildings in raids on Vinh railroad yards. Other Ticonderoga pilots claimed destruction or damage to 14 cargo barges along the coast of North Vietnam.”… Page 13: “Rusk Sees A Pause As An Asset To Hanoi”... “Secretary of State, disagreeing with advocates of a new suspension of the American bombing of North Vietnam, asserted today that suspension would not shorten the war but would be a way to prolong it indefinitely. Speaking in the wake of American air attacks on North Vietnam industry, he declared…’If they were to sit there, safe and secure, without any penalty at all being exacted from North Vietnam while they continue to send their requirements and their arms and their supplies across the 17th parallel into the South, they would have no incentive or initiative to stop. They would be able to do this for 50 years.’ Rusk denied charges that the Administration was trying to postpone peace negotiations hoping to improve its bargaining position later. ‘As far as we are concerned, any time is right for peace.’…He appeared on ABCs ‘Issues and Answers’ “... Page 16: “High Aides Oppose Raid on Haiphong”...” With the United States having in recent days embarked on an expansion of raids against North Vietnam, some high Defense Department officials are counseling the White House against bombing or mining Haiphong harbor, for the time being, at least. Others urge a master campaign to isolate Hanoi from outside supply by blocking its harbors…One leading advisor, General Maxwell Taylor recently came out in favor of attacking Haiphong… There is some reason to believe this threat was meant as a signal to the other side that time is running out…”… Page 16: “The Little Box”…”The Defense Department announced the names of 17 American servicemen who were killed in action in Vietnam.”…

Page 1: “Russian Czar Fell 50 Years Ago (1917)”…”Soviet marks event quietly, claiming a part in overthrow and collapse of czarist rule in Russia. The historic day passed with no public celebration of the revolutionary event that led to the establishment of the Provisional Government headed by Alexander Kerensky. This opened the way for the Bolshevik Revolution in the fall of 1917…”… Page 1: “De Gaulle Loses 40 Seats; Assembly Evenly Divided Reds Make Big Advance”… “President De Gaulle’s followers in a stunning reversal of their political fortunes are within a hair’s breath of losing control over the National Assembly election yesterday…De Gaullists held 243 of 486 seats… The combined opposition had won 241 seats so far. It was a decline of 40 seats for the De Gaullists and the Communists emerged as the biggest winners. They are now assured 73 seats compared with 41 in the outgoing assembly.”…

13 March 1967… The President’s Daily Brief… CIA (TS sanitized) COMMUNIST CHINA: The recently flagging “cultural revolution” is showing some sign of new life. A politboro member whom Chou En-lai had earlier defended has come under new poster attack in Peking. A recent editorial in the authoritative Red Flag complained that revolutionaries and the military were not being given a big enough role–and the party too big a one–in the new three-way governments being set up in the provinces… VIETNAM: Communist forces in South Vietnam may have a rocket larger than the 140mm type used in the attack on the Da Nang Air Base last month. For one thing, a North Vietnamese defector claims to have been trained in the use of a 175mm rocket weapon. In addition, a new and very large Russian rocket fuse was recently discovered in South Vietnam… SOUTH VIETNAM: The Constituent Assembly has finished its work on the draft constitution, which now needs only a few finishing touches. There are still some things to clear up with the military, but these will probably be ironed out without the Directorate having to use its veto. As things now stand, both government and assembly leaders think the constitutional will be wrapped up by 27 March and promulgated in April… FRANCE: De Gaulle’s narrow margin in the new assembly will probably not result in any major policy changes… BRITAIN-SOVIET UNION: The British ambassador in Moscow says negotiations will begin there soon on the friendship treaty. He expects it to be based on the United Nations Charter and its content limited to cultural, science and economic cooperation…

13 March 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (14 Mar reporting 13 Mar ops) Page 2: “Air Raids In North Heaviest in Four Months”... “The United States attack on North Vietnam yesterday was the heaviest air raid in four months…the period marked the duration so far of the monsoon rains in the North… Improved weather was the main reason for the intensification of air activity over North Vietnam. ‘We’ve been going right down the line on priority targets,’ a spokesman said. However, except for the power plant 32 miles north of Hanoi, the pilots seemed to be bombing the same widely scattered supply and communication links that they have been hitting for two years. The spokesman would not disclose the exact numbers of planes that participated in yesterday’s attacks, but he said 128 missions were flown…it is therefore estimated that up to 450 planes might have bombed the North yesterday. During the raids North Vietnamese gunners shot down one Air Force RF-4C Phantom reconnaissance airplane (CAPTAINS GOODRICH [kia] and CLARK [pow] downed on the 12th and reported in RTR of 12 Mar 2017). The two man crew was listed as missing. When reminded that we have all-weather attack capability, the spokesman said: ‘that’s true. We do have all-weather capability and we can go any time. In fact, pilots sometimes prefer the bad weather because it makes it tough on the anti-warfare gunners. We can strike anything we want, any time we want, but we are worried about civilian casualties. If the target we are after is in a populated area, we have got to eyeball it first. We are not going to take chances on killing civilians when we can avoid it. In fact, the pilots who dropped 750-pound and 3000-pound bombs on the Vietri power plant flew through less than perfect weather. ‘We were the first strike flight to the target,‘ said Captain  Jacques A. Suzanne, a 33-year old flight leader from Lake Placid, New York. ‘Navigation was a little difficult into the target area due to the weather, but we found it and dropped our bombs on the target area.’ The attacking pilots said their bombs set off at lest one explosion that sent black smoke spiraling 1,500-feet into the air. They also reported seeing several small fires. ‘On the way out after hitting the power plant, we jumped 50 trucks on Route 6, 80 miles southwest of Hanoi,‘ said Captain Max Brestel, 32, of Chappell, Neb. ‘Our flight fired 2,000 rounds of 20mm. We left several trucks burning.‘ In other strikes, Air Force pilots destroyed a highway bridge 22 miles south of Vinh and attacked a staging area 41 miles east of Dien Bien Phu, and a truck convoy 10 miles north of the Mugia Pass.”…

“Vietnam: Air Losses (Hobson) there wer no fixed wing aircraft downed in Southeast Asia on 13 March 1967…

RIPPLE SALVO… #373… New York Times 13 March 1967 article by Peter Braestrup reporting from his tour of bases in Southeast Asia. Here is a widely distributed report from the front to the home folks on this day 50 years ago… NYT, 13 Mar 67, Pages 1&17… I quote…

“U.S. Morale High at Thai Base But Raid Curbs Are Resented”…

(Humble Host: morale defined: “The mental and emotional attitude of an individual to the tasks at hand.” or, Morale is wanting to do what you have to do.)

‘You are with the first team today, ‘ Colonel Robert R. Scott proudly told visitors to this busy air base 110 miles north of Bangkok. From here bomb laden F-105 jets of Colonel Robert Scott’s 355th Tactical Fighter Wing daily stream north to run an aerial gauntlet of enemy fire to hit bridges, roads, and oil depots in North Vietnam. The Air Force strikes on North Vietnam began two years ago and the wing has taken its share of losses, ‘We are up against the MIG, and he is good,’ Colonel Scott said. ‘We’re up against the SAM, but we can outfox him. We are up against 100mm, 85mm, 37mm and multitudinous automatic weapons. In North Vietnam we are up against it all.’

Nothing that the seasonal northeast monsoons now cover much of North Vietnam with clouds, the colonel said that the F-105s with their all-weather bombing equipment could hit any target at the price of a few stray bombs. ‘However,‘ the colonel said, ‘many targets are near populated areas. Instead of instruments we are using our eyeballs,’ he said. ‘We have constraints.’

Privately, as do their Air Force colleagues at Korat, Udorn, Ubon and other bases in Thailand, some of Colonel Scott’s pilots resent the ‘constraints’ imposed by Washington. ‘Those people in Washington don’t know what we are up against up North,’ one senior flier said, ‘We ought to hit targets that really hurt them.’

These pilots said that the North Vietnamese had moved their SAM guided missiles and antiaircraft batteries as well as supply dumps and barracks, into towns and villages that the Americans are known to be reluctant to strike. Still inviolate, the pilots bitterly noted, are the MiGs that remain on their runways. Nonetheless, even as they complained, pilots and staff officers at wing headquarters emphasized the care taken to make sure Washington’s restrictions are observed.

‘This is different from Air Operations in South Vietnam,’one of the staff officers said. “There is far more advance planning here, far more experienced pilots, and more discipline.‘ In general, sources said orders come up from Seventh Air Force headquarters at Saigon at least a day before the mission is flown. To all but the wing’s newcomers, most of the key targets in North Vietnam have already are familiar places. The pilots get a minimum of three hours briefing with maps, photographs and charts before they take-off. They usually refuel from KC-135 tankers en route, fly to the Gulf of Tonkin and then turn toward land somewhere along the coast of North Vietnam. Over the target, amid the SAMs the leader of each four-plane flight usually sets the pace.

‘No matter what the rank of his past experience, no newcomer starts as a flight leader,’ said a staff officer. ‘He has to learn the terrain first. No pilot is considered for a sensitive target until he has had at least 10 missions against the easy ones,’ staff source said.

Targets in this bombing offensive are not the area targets of World War II and Korea, when civilian losses were largely ignored. What the Saigon spokesman calls a barracks area may be six small buildings in a space half the size of a football field, and that takes pinpoint bombing. ‘Rarely,‘ contended one senior pilot, ‘have the F-105 bombs dropped more than 100-feet from the target.’ Even the Hanoi radio, another officer noted, seldom contended that American bombs caused wholesale deaths of civilians in North Vietnam.

On occasion, encountering MiGs en route the target, the F-105s jettison their bombs to gain greater speed and maneuverability. But such encounters are over un-populated areas; both the MiGs and the F-105s avoid flying over cities and towns because antiaircraft fire is heavier there. The greatest asset to discipline and accurate bombing, one staff officer said, is the high level experience of the  pilots involved. The average age of a pilot here is 36, and half of them have as much flying time in jets as full-fledged squadron leaders in Korea had in all types. ‘This time the war is being fought by professionals,’ said one officer. ‘You won’t find many Lieutenants fresh out of training up here.’ The officer had flown 67 missions over North Vietnam….. end article…

CAG’s QUOTES for 13 March: BGEN WILLIAM ‘BILLY’ MITCHELL: “Should a nation attain complete control of the air, it could be more nearly ready to master the earth than has ever been the case in the past.”… PATTON: “We must be eager to kill, to inflict on the enemy, the hated enemy, all possible wounds, death and destruction.”…

Lest we forget…     Bear