Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #292… THE GOOD THEN THE BAD AND UGLY… but first…
Good Morning: Day TWO HUNDRED NINETY-TWO of a return to Operation Rolling Thunder, the air war over North Vietnam…
19 DECEMBER 1966… HOME TOWN HEAD LINES from the New York Times on a windy and partly cloudy Monday…
Page 1: “Manchester Defends Book and Denies Breaking Faith” … “William Manchester, the author of the disputed book on the assassination of President Kennedy, said yesterday that the former President as a historian ‘would have wanted his countrymen to know the truth of those terrible days. John Kennedy was my President. To suggest that I would dishonor his memory or my association with him is both cruel and unjust.’ It was the first statement issued by the author since it became known that Mrs. Kennedy opposed the publication of ‘Death of a President,’ a 1300-page book that gives names of allegedly derelict Dallas policemen, agents of the FBI and Secret Servicemen in appraising the assassination in Dallas on 22 November 1963.”… Page 1: “More U.S. Forces Arrive in Vietnam”…”The first combat troops of the Ninth Infantry division came ashore here at Vingtau today amid speculation they would be the first American unit assigned to the Mekong Delta.” …Page 1: “Life on Welfare a Daily Struggle for Existence” …”Welfare is a $658 million-a-year expense for NYC. It is a way of life, never comfortable, usually harsh, often degrading. This is the story of life on welfare….655,000 of New York’s poorest survive in the backwash of the mainstream.” … Page 1: “Brezhnev, 60, Gets Top Soviet Award” …”Party Chief given title of Hero of the Soviet Union, highest military honor. Leonid I. Brezhnev, is the party’s General Secretary since the removal of Nikita Khrushchev from power in October 1964.”…
Page 1: “G.O.P. Will Avoid a Fight to Alter Rules Committee” … “Republican leaders have decided not to press for greater party representation on the House Rules Committee. They will concentrate instead on winning satisfactorily large increase in the Republican membership of all other House Committees.”… Page 1: “18 Lost in Bogata, Columbia Crash of Airliner in Fog” … “66 Passengers were on board leased aircraft on a flight from Miami that landed short of the runway…” …Page 1: “Political Power of Militant Buddhists Only a Memory in Vietnam”… “Conflict with government has ebbed with astonishing swiftness. Militant leaders are in enforced seclusion.”…
19 December 1966…The President’s Daily Brief… CIA (TS sanitized) SOUTH VIETNAM: The constitutional assembly has decided that the future government should have a vice president to share the pinnacle of power with the president and the prime minister. The delegates had the problem of presidential succession in mind when they voted. They have postponed discussion of just what duties would be shouldered by a vice president. The assembly has now turned to the issue of local government. Many delegates favor popular elections at all levels. If they get their way, it would mean a general expansion of local autonomy. This would be particularly significant on the crucial province chief level, where incumbents–most of them active military officers–are now appointed by Saigon….
19 DECEMBER 1966: OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (20 December reporting 19 Dec ops)…”In action over North Vietnam Air Force fighter-bombers struck at the Hagia oil storage area 14 1/2 miles north of Hanoi as the weather in the Red River Valley cleared for the first time in several days. The attack was carried out by seven flights of 3 to 5 planes each. Pilots said the bombs hit their targets. The same area was hit late last month and earlier this month. There was no report of Navy activity. Air Force also hit targets in the Dong Hoi area 10 miles north of the DMZ.”…”Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft losses in Southeast Asia on 19 December 1966… ooohrah!
RIPPLE SALVO… #292… A summary of POWs captured and interned in North Vietnam in calendar 1966… “During 1966 almost 100 U.S. airmen would be added to the PW rolls in the North–compared with 63 captured in 1965. The magnitude and nature of the additions reflected both the ongoing escalation of the war and the changing complexion of U.S. strategy that would find the Air Force flying a steadily increasing number of missions into North Vietnam. Although Navy aviators would bear the brunt of the shootdowns during the first four months of 1966, starting in May Air Force casualties began to catch up as the service’s role in the air war expanded.By year’s end, the roster of 1966 captures would include twice as many Air Force as Navy personnel. Also of significance, as the year progressed, an increasing proportion of those falling into captivity would be junior officers, in the main Air Force lieutenants and captains, a factor that contributed to the growing prominence of the original seniors, who acquired more influence and responsibility as they struggled to fill the leadership vacuum. The senior most naval officer claimed in 1966, Commander John Abbott, died shortly after being taken prisoner. the highest ranking Air Force officers were Lt.Col. James Lamar and Maj. Norman Schmidt: Schmidt would be killed by the Vietnamese or die in prison–the circumstances are not clear–a year after his capture. All told, including juniors and seniors, eight of the 1966 group would die in captivity (Abbott, Schmidt, Frederick, Connell, Dennison, Grubb, Pemberton, and Newsom)…
“Honor Bound” (Rochester and Kiley) details the holiday “change of pace” our POWs would experience during the years of their imprisonment (page 125)…
“Holidays often brought a welcome change of pace and an improvement, however ephemeral, in both diet and overall treatment. Although Christmas in Hanoi wore heavily on the soul, it did wonders for the appetite, as the North Vietnamese, more out of calculation than respect or sympathy, furnished the inmates a small banquet–turkey, duck, fresh salad and bread, cookies, sometimes a bottle of beer–the proverbial carrot, invariably followed by the stick. The Vietnamese Lunar New Year, Tet, as well as other of their festival days, was generally marked by the same proliferation of food and liberalization of policy, accompanied by grating ceremonies and propaganda displays that some of the PWs found not worth the extra victuals. In some years, depending on their disposition, usually when it was to their advantage for propaganda reasons, the Vietnamese would also recognize the Americans’ Thanksgiving, Easter, or Fourth of July, serving a special mess and even permitting token celebration or observances, which they would photograph to demonstrate to the foreign press their magnanimity. With prison officials practicing a sort of ‘gastro-politics,’ the Americans would eventually be able to ascertain the mood of the captors and the progress of the war from the holiday bill of fare and telling alterations in the menus at other times of the year.’…”…. “Manipulation such as occurred with the upgrading of meals at Christmas conferred certin benefits during benign periods, bu its malignant side carried denial and retribution and reminded the prisoners how vulnerable they were to their captors’ whims and vicissitudes of the war…”
The carrot consumed, it was back to the stick… as a random selection from the 700-page “Honor Bound” masterpiece attests…Page 306…I quote…
“Beginning in August prison officials pressured Vegas’s beleaguered occupants into exposing the leadership and revealing details about the chain of command and other aspects of the POW organization. Stockdale later recounted the bravery and suffering of several of his disciples who resisted:
“Dan Glenn was tortured and in irons for two months, interrogated mercilessly, and never let anything crucial escape his lips. Nels Tanner, on his hundred and twenty-third day in leg irons in the Mint, was caught at communications, tortured, and made to reveal before movie cameras the content and meaning of my orders. Ron Storz was buttonholed and told to come across with information on me, and his response was to take the pen they asked him to write with and jam it nearly through his left arm. He carried a big scar from that the rest of his short life. Marine Warrant Officer John Frederick was kept blindfolded in leg irons for a month while Rabbit tried to make him reveal ‘Stockdale’s connection with the CIA.’ He knew no details and kept silent.”
Lest we forget….. Bear -30-
