ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED 20 MARCH 1968

RIPPLE SALVO… #745… “AFTER TET”… “The subsequent sweeping but quick re-evaluation of U.S.-Vietnam policy brought to the fore the conflicting perspectives in a fresh round of hand wringing. The differences among the respective camps (of the Administration) about bombing North Vietnam were ‘so profound’ that their consideration had to be tabled while a group moved on to other issues. With the leaders at an impasse, Secretary Clifford’s 4 March report to the president left undecided the fate of the air war against North Vietnam.” (McNamara, Clifford and the Burdens of Vietnam, Edward Drea)… but first…

GOOD MORNING: Day SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY-FIVE immersed in a chapter of American history titled ROLLING THUNDER…

HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a cloudy Wednesday, 20 March 1968…

GROUND WAR & KHE SANH: Page 1: “ARMS CACHE FOUND NEAR SAIGON BASE–South Vietnamese Capture Weapons Hidden Within Range of Tansonnhut”… “United States infantrymen continued sweeping the jungles and flatlands on the fringes of Saigon today. South Vietnamese paratroopers uncovered a weapons cache near the capital. The weapons, found on the banks of the Saigon River, included 80 122-mm rockets and 1,200 mortar rounds. The cache was within range of Tansonnhut Airport. Meanwhile, informed sources put the number of North Vietnamese troops fighting in the South at 55 per cent more than the total given before the enemy’s Lunar New Year offensive. The rise has been estimated from 54,000 to 84,000… the cache of weapons had been hauled on sampans onto the river banks, 11 miles from the heart of Saigon.”… Page 1: “ENEMY SAID TO GET B-52 RAID ALERTS”... “Six North Vietnamese Army defectors, two of them doctors, said today that Hanoi’s intelligence agencies provided as much as 24 hours notice of American B-52 raids in South Vietnam. The defectors said that the advance information enabled North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers to dig in before the raid. ‘Maybe nothing would happen,’said La Thanh Dong, a 33-year-old first lieutenant who defected in the Khe Sanh area earlier this year...Lieutenant Dong said, ‘Through foreign agents and the central security service in Hanoi, we know each B-52 strike 24-hours before they take off….The North Vietnamese even knew the tentative map coordinates of most of the strikes.”… Page 32: “JOHNSON DEFIANT ON VIETNAM VIEW–Tells Foes Course is Set and America Will Prevail”...”President Johnson offered another defiant response this evening to the challengers of his Vietnam policy by insisting that ‘we have set our course’ and ‘America will prevail.’ Th enemy in Vietnam, the President said, has mounted an attack is calculated to break the nation’s will, ‘to make some men want to surrender and to make other men want to withdraw.’ His purpose, Mr. Johnson added, is ‘to exhort the nation to help so as to make certain that its will persists.'”…

Page 1: “HOUSE PANEL BARS QUICK RIGHTS VOTE ASKED BY JOHNSON–Rules Committee Post-Pones Action For Three Weeks On Controversial Bill–Delay Seen As Crucial–Leaders Hoped For Approval On Floor Before Dr. King Opens Protest On April 22″… Page 18: “DR. KING PLANS MASS PROTEST IN CAPITAL JUNE 15″… Special Day Slated As Part of Poor People’s Campaign– Rights Leader in Mississippi Begins Recruiting People”… Page 1: “ANTI-POVERTY AID TO CITY CUT BY U.S.–New Allocation Forces 15% Reduction In Spending By Agencies For 6 Months”… Page 12: “Johnson Panel On Vets Asks Wider Benefits–Higher Disability Payments and Burial Allowance Are Among Proposals”…

Page 1: “IF McCARTHY LOSES HE WILL AID KENNEDY–MINNESOTAN WILL BACK RIVAL IF CONVENTION SHOWS HIS OWN DRIVE HAS FAILED… “Senator Eugene J. McCarthy said today that he would support Senator Kennedy for the Democratic Presidential nomination if it became clear at the National Convention in August that he could not win it himself.”… Page 1: “Senator Thurston Morton, Kentucky Will Accept Leadership of Rockefeller Race”… “…to direct Rockefeller’s campaign for President.”… Page 28: “ROMNEY FEARS MORE VIOLENCE IN PUNITIVE RESPONSE TO RIOTS–Tells Senators We Cannot Expect To Have Law and Order Without Justice”…

20 MARCH 1968…THE PRESIDENT’s DAILY BRIEF (CIA/TS)… NORTH VIETNAM… North Vietnamese Attitudes: K.C. Thaler, UPI correspondent in London, has published another piece on Hanoi’s attitude toward negotiations based on unidentified East European sources. Although we agree with Thaler that Hanoi is not interested in negotiations except on its own terms, we have no confidence in the details of history or in his sources, who clearly are expressing opinions not based on any inside information from Hanoi. Thaler, for instance, says his sources assert that “hardliners” are firmly in the saddle in Hanoi and are “more self-assured than ever” because they believe political developments in the US are working in their favor. These sources say that Hanoi feels it cannot lose by waiting and may win by just standing pat through the summer and waiting for the results of US elections. Meanwhile, goes the story, the Communists are continuing to inflict casualties on US forces in hopes of putting additional pressure on US public opinion.

STATE DEPARTMENT, Office of the Historian, Historical Documents, Foreign Relations, 1964-68, Vietnam. Three documents from 20 March are referenced for your consideration. Document 144 is an interesting response to five questions posed by Secretary Clifford for the Chairman of the JCS to answer. The jist of this two pager is: if we move to de-escalate by not going above 20-degrees with our bombing, what should we expect in return from the VC/NVA troops in the South for a comparable de-escalation move?… Document 146 is a lengthy telephone conversation between the President and his Secretary of State at 0830 on the morning of 20 March 1968… They trade comments on the news in the morning paper and the conversation touches many subjects, with a little emphasis on “The Speech.” Clifford wants the President to talk to Mac Bundy to get his inputs for the President’s talk to the world, now set for 31 March. Document 147 is a “group grope” to brainstorm for ideas to include in “The Speech”… a little tedious, and a little long (seven pages) but worth a scan to appreciate the depth of thought that a Bunch Of Guys Sitting Around a Table (BOGSAT) in the White house go to to come up with a historic speech. A lesson in speech writing. And since the entire 41 minute final product is on tape, observing the brickwork in progress is worth a few minutes of absorption… It was for me… and I am beyond giving speeches!!!

Doc 144.     https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d144

Doc 146.     https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d146

Doc 147.     https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d147

20 March 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (21 Mar reporting 20 Mar ops) Page 1: “American pilots flew 82 multi-aircraft missions over North Vietnam. Among the target were the Unogbi power plant which is 16 miles northeast of Haiphong. The plant supplied 15-per cent of North Vietnam’s electric power. Other targets hit were the boat yard 25 miles northeast of Haiphong and warehouses at the deactivated airfield at Donghoi in the southern panhandle.”

“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 20 March 1968…

(1) MAJOR FREDERICK N. THOMPSON was flying an F-100D Super Sabre of the 416th TFS and 37th TFW participating in an attack on a truck convoy about 35 miles south of Vinh when downed. He was on his third pass dropping napalm when hit. He ejected, was captured and inexplicably released a few months later. He was returned to the United State in the company of a group of antiwar activists.

(Webmaster note: Major Thompson is one of eleven officers who accepted early release in contravene of the POW code of conduct. Those who rejected early release to continue languishing in rotting NVN POW prisons largely did so out of loyalty to their fellow interned Americans. Those who abided by the code returned with honor)

(2) MAJOR LOUIS C. ZUCKER and CAPTAIN BRUCE A. COUILLARD, SIDEWINDER FACs, flying an O-1G of the 19th TASS and 504th TASG out of Bien Hoa were shot down and killed while conducting a visual reconnaissance mission about 20 miles northwest of Bien Hoa. They were supporting the 1st Infantry Division when downed. MAJOR ZUCKER was in his first month of combat as a FAC. He is buried in Scottsdale, Arizona and is remembered on the 50 anniversary of his last flight with respect and admiration… CAPTAIN COUILLARD was on his 129th mission. His body was recovered and returned home to be buried in Duluth, Minnesota.

(3) MAJOR ALLEN EUGENE FELLOWS was flying an O-2A of the 20th TASS and 504th TASG out of Danang as a Covey FAC and failed to return from an aerial recce in the area of Ban Gnang in Southern Los… Perished… MAJOR FELLOWS and his aircraft have never been found. After ten years in a missing-in-action status the Secretary of the Air Force approved a presumption of death and COLONEL FELLOWS is now carried as Killed-in-Action. He awaits recovery and return to his home land… the search goes on fifty years after his final flight…

FROM THE COMPILATION “34 TFS/F-105 HISTORY” by Howie Plunkett: 20-Mar-68: “This from Major Sam Armstrong’s 100-mission log, his 89th mission. ‘We got words at the last-minute today to go primary. It looked pretty good for a while but we started running into clouds right at Tanker drop-off. It was undercast there just short of the coast and we had to weather abort about 25 miles from the target (just abeam Gia Lam Airfield) 2 miles from the heart of Hanoi. We took our bombs out and finally got to the tankers after being given a runaround for 15 minutes by the radar agency. We took our bombs over into Pack I and dropped them on a road and recovered with very little fuel after hitting a tanker in White Anchor.’ 

RIPPLE SALVO… #745… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER was expected to carry the war to the heartland of North Vietnam to support the war efforts in the South by beefing up the hopes and morale of our South Vietnamese hosts and allies and to stop or significantly reduce the flow of war fighting capability from flowing from the North to the South. Concurrently, the “Air War” was waged using a strategy of “gradual escalation” in a sustained effort to drive our adversaries to the peace table. In other words, we chose to use limited air power as an alternative to massive air war.  Think “Linebacker.” After three years on the job –1965 to 1968– the Rolling Thunder “gradual escalation” report card grade was somewhere in the neighborhood of a C+. In March 1968, after Tet, the long-delayed decision on which course to goeth came to a head. This “big dance” at the White House was March Madness of another sort. Humble Host looks to Edward Drea’s Volume VI of the “Secretaries of Defense Historical Series“ for a short debrief on the event. Two parts. Part I… I quote (pages 223-4)…

“Although most attention at the … Tuesday lunch (13 February) focused on measures to repel the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese ground offense in the South, the president and his advisors also discussed an expanded air offensive against the North. Rusk favored heavier bombing there in response to the Tet attacks and Hanoi’s rejection of the administration latest peace offer. Clifford, scheduled to take over from McNamara on 1 March, also advocated increased bombing. McNamara dissented, feeling the military worth of the targets small and the risks high. Faced with the split views, the president made no decisions. Two weeks later at a 27 February meeting, according to participants a distraught and tense McNamara, eyes tearing and voice faltering, heatedly denounced the bombing of North Vietnam. Stunned by the outburst, listeners continued the charged discussions, with Clifford proposing a reassessment of ‘our entire posture in SVN’ before making any decision on the future of the (air) war. White House Special Assistant Joseph Califano, present at ‘the most depressing three hours in my years of public service.’….

“In the meeting with his advisors on a 4 March (absent the departed McNamara) the president was much taken by Rusk’s comments that the bombing could be stopped during the rainy season in the North without major military risk. He directed that during this period the State Department ‘bet on your horse’ to bring about peace negotiations. Over the next month Rusk and Clifford drifted plans for a unilateral and unconditional end to the bombing north of the 20th parallel accompanied by an offer of talks with North Vietnam. Unlike past efforts, there would be no diplomatic fanfare of parsing of messages. Hanoi’s actions, not words, would determine what happened next. If North Vietnam did not react after a month or so, the United States would resume bombing.

“Others reinforced the limited bombing message. In mid-March Townsend W. Hoopes, under secretary of the Air Force, reiterated his February warning that further escalation was pointless because a U.S. military victory in Vietnam was not feasible. Warnke counseled that hold int the war effort at its present level and restricting bombing primarily to south of the 19th parallel offered not only the way to achieve a negotiated end of the war. The Joint Chief disagreed. At an 18 March discussion with Clifford they again called for an open-ended, unrestricted air offensive, but admitted that increased bombing alone could not end the war or appreciably reduce American casualties in South Vietnam. Clifford later acknowledged that the uncertainties at this and other meetings caused him to change his position from escalating the air war to limiting it as a more likely means offending the conflict.

“The day after the 18 March session with the Joint Chiefs, Clifford attended the usual Tuesday Luncheon (50years ago today), in this instance largely devoted to the war in South Vietnam and its costs. With the administration struggling to contain domestic opposition to the war, Clifford recommended and the president approved the reconvening of the Wise Men (who had last met in November) to seek their latest views and advice. On the following day, 20 March 1968, at another White House meeting, Clifford cautiously proposed to suspend operations north of 20 degrees and, if North Vietnam responded by stopping its use of the DMZ to launch artillery, rockets and mortar attacks, further reduce the bombing around Hanoi and Haiphong ‘sure enrages the world,’ the President remained leery of a stand-down there, suspicious of the North Vietnamese, fearful of infuriating domestic hawks, and concerned about hurting the South Vietnamese war effort.”…  end quote…(Part II Tomorrow)

RTR Quote for 20 March: SUN TZU: “Do not demand accomplishment from those who have no talent.”…

Lest we forget…     Bear