Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #654… “…at Christmas time the tragedy of war must weigh heavily upon the heart of every patriotic American.”….
Good Morning: Day SIX HUNDRED SIXTY-FOUR of remembering up-close and personal the air war fought fifty years ago in the skies over the guns of North Vietnam…
21 DECEMBER 1967… HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a cloudy Thursday with a rainy night a-comin’…
Page 1: “Thieu Turns Down Johnson’s Appeal On Talks With Foe–Saigon Leader Says He Will Meet Only With those Who Will Quit the Vietcong Side–President Johnson Leaves For Australia–He is Expected to Confer Privately With President Johnson After Services For Holt”… “President Nguyen Van Thieu flew to Australia today amid indications of a major policy split between his six-week old government and the Johnson Administration.”… Page 1: “President In Australia; He Gets Assurances On War”… “President Johnson arrived with the dawn today after a 26-hour flight from Washington to honor the memory of Prime Minister Harold Holt and, thereby to reassert the correctness of American policy in Vietnam…arrived with a warm tribute to the Australian leader who apparently drowned while swimming last weekend.”… Page 1: “Clashes Reported in Southern China–Travelers From Kwantung Tell of Fierce Fighting by Anti-Mao Rebels”... “…fighting between political and military leaders and rebels opposed to Chairman Mao Tse-tung close the Canton Trade Fair.”… Page 1: “Transplant Patient Dies After 18 Days”… “World’s first heart transplant patient dies in Capetown, South Africa.”... Page 1: “Passport Denial Curbed By Court–Appeals Bench Limits State Department On Enforcing Its Travel Restrictions”... “…rules State Department could not enforce restrictions on travel to off-limits countries by refusing to issue passports to persons who might travel there.”… Page 7: “SENATORS SEEKING MORE DATA ON ’64 TONKIN GULF INCIDENT”… “Some members of Senate Foreign Relations Committee skeptical of Administration accounts, are guilty inquiring into the details of the Gulf of Tonkin incidents in 1964.”… Page 9: “Hershey is Firm In Draft Dispute–Tells Moss Congress Can Change the Law if it Wants To”... “…an increasingly heated exchange–ten letters from Rep. John E. Moss of California. Moss and others demand Hershey reverse his letter to draft boards to ‘get tough with demonstrators,’ and that he resign. Hershey says ‘you want change, change the Draft Law. Senator Robert F. Kennedy has introduced such a bill–an amendment to the Draft Law that would prohibit use of the draft to punish demonstrators and would leave it strictly to the Justice Department to determine and prosecute violations of Federal law.”… Page 10: “U.S. Is Weighing Cambodia Issue–Officials Discuss Pursuit of Foe By South Vietnamese”…
GROUND WAR (“War is a killing business.”): Page 10: “Vietcong Attack Over Wide Area–54 U.S. Positions, Including Cantho Airfield, Struck”… “The Vietcong attacked five American positions yesterday from the Mekong River delta to the northern provinces. The attacks were at three United States military base camps, a Special Forces camp near the Cambodian border, and at the important airfield at Cantho in the delta, which was partially overrun for a time. The United States command reported that five American military men were killed and 53 wounded in the assaults.
“Damage at the Cantho airport was reported as moderate, which means some of the aircraft and helicopters using the field were probably damaged…the widespread ground attacks, the Vietcong struck base camp for a battalion of the United States 25th Infantry Division 65 miles north-northwest of Saigon for the second night in a row. They dropped 50 rounds of mortar shells wounding 17 infantrymen. Near the Cambodian border, 80 miles north of Saigon, an enemy force of about a hundred men hit the camp of the anti-guerrilla Special Forces at Thienngon with three rounds of mortar fire, and then followed with a ground assault. A spokesman said six Americans required hospitalization for wounds and 13 others were wounded slightly. Vietnamese militia troops in the camp were reported to have suffered casualties. The base camp of a cavalry unit of the United States Ninth Infantry Division, 19 miles east-northeast of Saigon, was shelled-with a number of mortar rounds. Three United States soldiers were killed and eight were wounded. In Quangnam Province to the north, the base camp of a Marine battalion, nine miles southwest of Danang was mortared, killing two marines and wounding nine.”
21 December 1967…President’s Daily Brief: LAOS: Communist forces are maneuvering around government bases, but there have been no major clashes since last week. Both North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao are involved in their usual dry season campaign aimed at pushing back anti-Communist guerrillas in the north and at keeping government troops away from the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the south. They are apparently being somewhat more aggressive this year, however....NORTH VIETNAM: Latest Photography of the Bridges. Photographs taken on Monday show that three spans of the Doumer bridge, totaling about 840-feet have been dropped and that another 350-foot span has been badly damaged. The main bridge over the Canal des Rapides, according to photos taken last weekend has suffered two dropped spans totaling 214-feet and damage to another 107-foot span. Judging from past performance, the North Vietnamese will require several weeks to repair the latest damage. Also…
The most recent high altitude BLACK SHIELD photography provides excellent coverage of North Vietnam on two successive days, 15 and 16 December: All six of North Vietnam’s major airfields were covered. A total of eight to twelve operational MIG fighters, including four or five MIG-21s were identified. Since these pictures were taken, at least five MIG-21s have been returned to North Vietnam from the reserves in China. This will more than compensate for the MIG-17s lost to US planes during the past week. The return of these MIGs also demonstrates that Hanoi intends to maintain a limited buy aggressive interceptor force to oppose the US bombing effort. Another highlight from the 15-16 December pictures is evidence the North Vietnamese have devised a way to move rail cars in and out of Haiphong, despite the continuing unserviceablity of the only rail-highway bridge into the port. A rail ferry appears to be operating adjacent to the destroyed bridge…
21 DECEMBER 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (22 Dec reporting 21 Dec ops)…No coverage…. “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 21 December 1967…
From the compilation by Howie Plunkett, “34 TFS/F-105 History“… 21-Dec-67…
“Four pilots from the 34th TFS of ‘Scuba’ flight took off from Korat at 14:30 on a mission to bomb a target in Northern Laos. They refueled from Red Anchor 40. The flight line-up was: #1 Major Sam Armstrong; #2 Major Lawrence Klinestiver; #3 LCOL Robert Smith, 34th TFS Commanding Officer; and #4 Captain Jacob Shuler… It was Major Armstrong’s 41st combat mission.” Major Armstrong: “This was my first flight as Mission Commander of the strike force. The weather was bad up in Pack VI so we went as individual flights instead up into northern Laos to work with a FAC. We had to wait for about 20-minutes orbiting the target, just penetrating Pack IV for a counter. We finally hit a road segment. All four of us put bombs squarely on target. Other than that, an uneventful mission.”… Jack Shuler, flying #4 described what he remembered from this flight: “Due to bad weather over the primary target, we were directed to work with FACs, Firefly 17 and 18, target 120/20NM from Channel 97. We may have also worked with Raven FACs 40&41 with a time-on-target of 1510, both targets in northern Laos.”
RIPPLE SALVO… #654… New York Times OpEd… “The Men in Vietnam”…
“To Americans of every political persuasion or philosophical bent, Christmas this year will be tinged with pride and affection for their countrymen in Vietnam. It is, of course, an ironic measure of man’s present state as the bells peal across the nation the guns will be speaking with but brief intermission from the DMZ to the Delta.
“No matter how Americans feel about the war, we hope they will not forget the soldiers and civilians too, in that far-off corner of Southeast Asia. Men on both sides are dying in Vietnam; men are maimed and broken; at Christmas time the tragedy of war must weigh heavily upon the heart of America.”
RTR Quote for 21 December: R.G. Ingersoll, Decoration Day Oration 1882: “He loves his country best who strives to make it best.”…
Lest we forget… Bear
