Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #47… COERCION… but first…
Good Morning: Day FORTY-SEVEN in a look back of 50 years to Operation Rolling Thunder…”the air war”…
18 APRIL 1966 (NYT)… ON THE HOMEFRONT… Big headline page 1: “U.S. Jets Strike 2 Missile Sites in Hanoi Vicinity.” The raids were within 15 and 17 miles of the capital city, the closest bombing to Hanoi of the war. All planes returned undamaged, however, during the day three American aircraft were reported lost with all five crew rescued. The three a/c bring the total lost in Rolling Thunder to 208. The Air Force lost a B-57 to ground fire 40 miles north of the DMZ (“extended target area”) and the Navy lost an A-4 Skyhawk to AAA near Vinh, but the pilot made it feet wet and was rescued by helicopter. The Navy also lost an A-6 Intruder to AAA with the crew able to fly the aircraft well clear of North Vietnam. However, the aircraft was uncontrollable at landing speeds and the crew bailed out and was rescued. B-52s hit targets west of Hue… Page 1: “Free City Classes for All Sought At College Level. “The Board of Education (of New York) outlined a new master plan yesterday ‘to offer something for everyone’ in the city’s high school graduation classes of 1975.” The Board called for every graduate to receive either an academic or vocational choice upon graduation. From the Master Plan: “…it means the difference between a real system of higher education and what we are doing now. There are not enough seats for all high school graduates to attain post-high school education. The plan stated that execution of the plan would require that the city’s education budget would have to be doubled from $200 to $400 million….Also on page 1 and jumped to page 14: “Congressmen Returning From 10-Day Easter Break Find Public Disturbed.” Several Members of Congress were quoted: samples of comments…”Vietnam and prices were the big issues”…”there is increasing confusion and discontentment”…”America’s position in Vietnam is disturbing”…”If there is any way we can honorable vacate Vietnam, we ought to do it”…”A lot of people who say let’s get the hell out of there.”…The Reporter concluded: “There is no national consensus on Vietnam, just increasing confusion and worry, with some indications of a growing hunger for a quick solution.”… Article on Job Corps: “Job Corps Seeks Racial Balance,” since there is a rapidly developing trend toward an all Negro Job Corps. The problem is dropouts– the whites try it for a while and quit to return to urban homes and families, while the Negroes, for the most part, stick it out since they have little or nothing to go home to, at least that is what one analyst concluded. Another Job Corps advisory board member from the Office of Economic Opportunity, Dr. David Gottlieb, proposed a solution: “Make it compulsory to stay in until they become productive, creative members of society, even if they don’t want to.”…. Sports: the Lakers beat the Celtics in the NBA finals opener, 133-129. Jerry West scored 41 points and Elgin Baylor scored 36….
18 APRIL 1966…ROLLING THUNDER… USS Ticonderoga lost an A-1H from VA-52 to ground fire from Tiger Island…LT A.D. WILSON was conducting a recce mission and in the course of a fifth pass over and near Tiger Island he encounter intense automatic weapon fire and was forced to ditch two miles from the island. He was rescued by a USAF helicopter…
RIPPLE SALVO… THE COERCIVE USE OF AIR POWER… Operation Rolling Thunder had two missions: (1) Support the South Vietnamese in their war with North Vietnam by reducing the flow of materials from north to south that was required by the North and Vietcong to sustain the fight, and (2) Influence and change the behavior of North Vietnam to force their leadership to negotiate a compromise solution to the conflict between North and South Vietnam. Air power–Rolling Thunder–was an element of the “coercive force” employed to change the behavior of North Vietnam… Unfortunately, during the “air war” of 1965 to the middle of 1968 the full might of American air power was never employed and the strategy of gradualism failed. There was no change in Ho Chi Minh’s behavior. We failed to coerce him into negotiations. The subject of the coercive use of air power is well presented in Robert A. Pape’s excellent study of “air power and coercion in war,” entitled: “Bombing to Win.” His conclusion: coercion rarely works. In the case of Rolling Thunder coercion, in the form of air power, was employed to persuade “the target state” (North Vietnam) that acceding to the “attacking state’s”(the United States) demands would be better than resisting them. Author Pape fortifies his case with a calculus equation that rounds off to my conclusion that North Vietnam weighed the costs and benefits of acceding to our gradual Rolling Thunder strategy versus the cost and benefits of not acceding to our demands (e.g., Fourteen Points) and concluded that the value of resistance was greater than the value of accession. Pretty simple. Ho Chi Minh knew the Pape calculus and Secretary McNamara and his Whiz Kids didn’t… (Note: the Pape calculus also works for Linebacker I&II — in other words, resistance was of less value to North Vietnam than acceding, so a bargain was struck).
Here is Pape’s summary of the coercive use of air power in North Vietnam, 1965-68; (pgs. 350-1)
“The United States tried to compel North Vietnam to cease support of the insurgency in the South and negotiate a settlement. It failed as denial theory would have predicted.
“North Vietnamese civilian vulnerability was medium, meaning that although significant numbers were affected, major parts of the population were not uncertain about whether they would survive. From 1965 to 1968, bombing killed an estimated 52,000 civilians out of a population of 18 million. Only a relatively small part of Hanoi and Haiphong were evacuated and damage to smaller population centers was occasionally high. Thanh Hoa, for instance, suffered extensively and was largely deserted.
“The military vulnerability of the North Vietnamese was low, meaning that although their military strategy was not certain to succeed, there was little risk in continuing military operations. During the Johnson years, North Vietnam pursued a guerrilla strategy that air power could not seriously hinder, because air strikes could not cut off the minimal supplies and reinforcements required by the strategy.”
As our country wages an air war (of sorts) in the mid-east I wonder what the applicability of Robert Pape’s calculus equation on the cost benefit of using coercive air power is in combating ISIS in Syria and Iraq might be, and whether or not the President’s National Security Advisor has considered it. It is pretty obvious to me that a trickle of air power isn’t going to be coercive, but full force might be… “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” is a quote that rings in my ears….
Lest we forget…. REMEMBER ROLLING THUNDER….Bear …… –30– ……
