Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #868… HUMBLE HOST IS IN THE GRIP OF A REMEMBRANCE OF SAN FRANCISCO IN 1967 AND 8… THE HIPPIE MOVEMENT: “A counterculture that brought peace, drugs, and free love across the United States.” We –the warfighters taking the Vietnam war into the heartland of our nation’s enemy–were the object of their derision as they stuffed daises down the barrels of the National Guard rifles outside the Pentagon in October 1967. “Stop the Bombing.”…”Baby Killers.”… “Make Peace Not War.”… “Flower Power.” Though the years of Operation Rolling Thunder the Hippies progressed from Haight-Ashbury into Woodstock. They changed America forever. It was called the psychedelic revolution (1964-1970). “No longer wanting to keep up with the Joneses or confine themselves to white-picket-fenced corrals of repressive and Puritanical sexual norms, these fresh-faced masses would soon come to be known as Hippies.” It happened that they found their hearts in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, across the bay from where great warships Enterprise and Coral Sea were home-ported. From there they rode the music of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead into the masses of young Boomers (b. 1945-1963) awaiting or avoiding the draft, experimenting with some Jim-dandy new drugs, and doing everything they could to counter the Johnson Administration’s Vietnam war policies. The Hippies became a part of the turbulence and chaos of the times and as they spread and grew they became a force for change–as progressives. Their cultural revolution, begun in the 1960s, to the music of Bob Dylan has changed America forever…. More below… but first…
GOOD MORNING… Day EIGHT HUNDRED SIXTY-EIGHT of a look-back at the turbulent years of 1965-68 focused on the great American warriors of the air war called Rolling Thunder…
HEAD LINES from the OGDEN STANDARD EXAMINER on Sunday, 21 July 1968…
THE WAR: Page 1: “FAR-RANGING RED GUNFIRE RAKES ALLIES–Rocket Hits Fuel Depot, Tank Burns; Casualties Light”… “Vietcong peppered allied centers from the central coast to the Mekong Delta with shellfire Saturday night and early today. Two rockets were fired at a U.S. artillery position on Saigon’s south edge. …Six miles south of Saigon rockets hit the Nha Be fuel depot, setting fire to a tank with a 100,000-gallon capacity. …damage was light…GROUND ACTION…Two actions livened the long lull in the ground war Saturday. U.S. First Division infantrymen fought infiltrating North Vietnamese 15 miles south of the Cambodian border and 70 miles north of Saigon. Officers said a U.S. company made ‘sharp contact’ with the enemy and came under heavy fire then called in artillery and helicopter gunships….20 enemy were killed and U.S. losses were put at two killed and six wounded…In the far north, U.S. Marines alerted by an aerial spotter attacked 100 North Vietnamese soldiers who were dug in only 200 yards ahead of their sweep four miles southwest of the Con Thieu combat base. the U.S. Command said the Marines killed 37 enemy while losing three killed and even wounded in the action Saturday.”…
PEACE TALKS: “LBJ, THIEU URGE HANOI END COMBAT–TALK PEACE–Already Taken Stands Reiterated In Report From Meeting In Honolulu”… “President Johnson and President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam sought Saturday to put pressure on North Vietnam to halt all fighting as a prelude to final settlement of the war. At the same time they said Hanoi seems to be preparing renewed offensive action in South Vietnam.”…
21 JULY 1968…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… The OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER (AP) Page 2: “In the air war above the demilitarized zone, Navy and Air Force jets evaded surface-to-air missiles and other antiaircraft fire and hammered North Vietnam’s panhandle.”… VIETNAM: AIR LOSSES (Chris Hobson) There were three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 21 July 1968…
(1) MAJOR B.M. MOBLEY was flying an A-1E of the 1st ACS and 56th ACW out of Nakhon Phanom was flying an escort/cover mission for a FAC or helicopter and was downed by ground fire two miles northwest of the DMZ and 10 miles south of the Ban Karai pass. He was forced to eject when his engine failed and was subsequently rescued by Air Force helicopter.
(2) LT F.W. PFLUGER was flying an RF-8G of the VFP-63 Detachment 11 embarked in USS Intrepid was on a maintenance test flight and was forced to eject when the Crusader’s engine failed. He was rescued by Navy helicopter. Operational loss.
(3) LCOL SHERMAN E. FLANAGAN ws flying an F-100D of the 355th TFS and 37th TFW out of Phu Cat on strike on an enemy AAA gun position on the South Vietnam/Laos border 25 miles southwest of Hue. LCOL FLANAGAN was hit by intense ground fire as he was executing his initial strafing attack on the gun position. The aircraft continued in its dive and was destroyed in the impact with the ground. There was no ejection, LCOL FLANAGAN was killed in action facing the enemy on the battlefield… He was a member of the Air National Guard and had been activated in January as a consequence of the Pueblo incident. LCOL FLANAGAN’S body remains where he fell fifty years ago this day. The search goes on…
Of interest is this “Remembrance” of LCOL FLANAGAN at (VVMF “Wall of Faces“) attributed to PR1 (AW) Troy Weisbrod dated 14 November 2006: “In June/July 2006, I had the honor to go over to Vietnam in a POW/MIA Recovery Operation. Lt Col Flanagan was one of my missions. Although I am not permitted to discuss our findings, I just want his family and friends to know that he has not been forgotten! I have been in the U.S. Navy for over 18 years now, and this is one of the most rewarding experiences I could have ever done while serving our Country. LtCol Flanagan, it has been a privilege and honor searching for you to bring you home!! May your soul rest in peace, your country never forgot you, and your family never stops believing in you!….. oohrah, Sailor!
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) IN THE FOUR YEARS OF THE OPERATION OVER NORTH VIETNAM ON 21 JULY…
1965… NONE…
1966… CAPTAIN RAINFORD TIFFIN, USAF… (KIA)… Loss posted on RTR on 21 July 1966, Ripple Salvo #142…
Not reported was this uniquely available and detailed report posted on the internet by Howie Plunkett in his “Compilation 34 TFS/ F-15 History” entry for 21 Jul-66: “Captain Rainford “Ray” McMaster Tiffin, 34th TFS pilot was MIA then KIA. Call sign “Portland 04”. The other members of the flight were: Captain Alan K. Rutherford, “Portland #1”; Captain Ralph D. Watkins, “Portland #2”; and Captain Wan\yne D. Hauth, “Portlnd #3″… all from 34th TFS…
“The flight departed Korat at 1251 and headed to their primary target at La Danh POL storage area 7 miles north of Thai Nguyen. However, bad weather prevented their attacking this target so they headed west on an armed reconnaissance looking for another target. While flying at 100-feet altitude at 520 knots at 0717Z the flight encountered one SAM that burst 1/2 mile away from the flight. A minute later two more SAMs also missed the flight by 1/2 mile. The planes dropped to 50-feet and at 0728Z the pilots spotted a fourth SAM that crossed behind and above the flight and exploded 12 NMs away.
“At approximately 0730Z, the flight found and attacked a group of buildings along a road segment…15 miles northeast of Yen Bai. This target was protected by a heavy barrage of 37/57mm AAA bursting between the altitudes of 4,000-feet and 9,000-feet. Captain Hauth’s statement described Captain Tiffin’s loss:
Capt. Hauth: “Approximately 30 seconds before Portland flight’s pull-up for a bomb run, Captain Tiffin was contacted by radio and visually sighted flying the right wing of Portland Lead heading 275-degrees, about 3,500-feet indicated altitude…A pop-up maneuver was made for a bomb run on a road and this was the last time I saw Portland 4. During the bomb run, Portland Lead and 2 called out heavy 37/57 AAA fire. After coming off the target radio contact was attempted with Portland 4 on several frequencies, including Guard, with no results.”
“After post-strike refueling, the four F-105Ds in Apache flight joined Portland flight in the search. They heard no voice or beeper signals and no one reported seemg Captain Tiffin or his aircraft. Based on reports written by his flight members, Captain Tiffin was declared Missing in Action (MIA)…
“On 18 July 1967 Captain Tiffin’s MIA status was continued: ‘Careful evaluation of the information of record compels the conclusion that a reasonable possibility exists for the continued survival of Captain Tiffin.” While he remained missing, Captain Tiffin was promoted to Major.
“On 22 October 1974, the Air Force officially declared him dead…Killed in Action…. This date… was the date death presumed to have occurred for the purpose of termination of pay and allowances., settlement of account, and payments of death gratuities to Major Tiffin’s wife and two sons.
“On 29 September 1993, the Joint Task force Accounting passed Captaion’s case file to officials of the Vietnamese Government. Captain Tiffin’s last known location was…approximately 25 kilometers north of Yen Bai and 1 kilometer east of Cho Ngoc…
“On 19 February 1997, a Vietnamese investigation team searched the location around Captain Tiffin’s loss in the Yen Bai District. They learned that in 1963 the North Vietnamese government had decided to create Thac Ba lake by damming a river. As the lake flooded the villages in the area, potential eye witnesses to Captain Tiffin’s crash were scattered. The lake was fully formed in 1972. An investigation team eventually located Mr. Vu Van Duyen, 69 years old, who, at the time of the crash lived in Van Chinh village, that was destroyed by the lake, and witnessed the crash: ‘At the time of the crash I was concurrently the assistant village chairman, the public security chief and the village militia commander, along with half a platoon of militia soldiers responsible for …cutting down all the remaining trees after all the houses and personnel possessions had been removed from the area of the rising lake. The aircraft crashed between 0800 and 0900…The aircraft caught fire and blew up. The pilot’s body was destroyed. Bones, flesh, legs and arms thrown over the area. I still remember there was a worker (building Thac By lake) who held up an arm for all to see…He later threw the arm away…In our village there were six people…We all saw and quickly collected aircraft wreckage. No one cleared or sanitized the area. No one buried the bones, flesh, legs or arms of the pilot because the area was just about to be made into a lake and because we were very resentful.
“In their report, the investigation team concluded that “… We believe Mr. Duyen’s information is accurate. He related the events to us in a natural manner. These were the things remaining in his memory. There were no prior arrangements or preparation. We arrived at Mr. Duyen’s house unexpectedly. Although Mr. Duyen is weak, he is still alert and lucid. Mr. Duyen’s entire person emanated a loyal and honest character. He wanted nothing for himself. With the information, we can say that the remains associated with …pilot Tiffin, Rainford, were destroyed. No one collected remains, no one buried remains, therefore we cannot recover the remains.”…. End quote from the Plunkett compilation…
Humble Host has included this unusually detailed and complete entry as indicative of the effort made to find our missing in action…
SUMMARY (Continued) 1967… NONE, 1968… NONE…
RIPPLE SALVO… #868… The Hippies in the news: 21 July article from the OGDEN STANDARD EXAMINER…
Page 8: “FLOWER CHILDREN YIELD AREA TO HOODS AND VANDALS–Colorful Hippies Abandon Haight-Ashbury District”… “The fire bomb and nightstick have displaced the daffodil in the Haigh-Ashbury district, where hippie flower children used to be the attraction. They used to say ‘Haight is love’ and call the street ‘Peace Street.’ A tourist might have a flower shoved into his hand. Today peaceful folk steer clear to the neighborhood where the indolent, bead-jangling, love-spouting hippies have been shoved aside by hoods, footpads, thugs and vandalism. The merchants of Haight-Ashbury envision vacated shops, padlocks and boarded windows in what once was a lively, colorful and profitable area. One solution has been found by Robert Bank, for 12 years operator of a jewelry store at Clayton and Haight. His windows were smashed Thursday. ‘I’m getting out,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough.”… Bernard Raymano, owner of Pacific Drugs at 1530 Haight, said: ‘Last year you could negotiate with the hippies. They were in control. Now, there are rebels. I don’t see any leadership. There are agitators…wino…drug pushers. The flower children are gone,’ he said, adding, ‘ His place has not been damaged, he said. Art Free, partner in the Free-Minetti sporting goods store, said, ‘The solution is simple, put a 7 p.m. curfew in effect.”…Free was critical of the city administration for not taking stronger measures to control the situation. Also critical was John Mulready, owner of a department store. ‘We have 15 policemen around at 4 p.m., when there is no trouble, and not one in sight when trouble starts,’ he said. The hippies are not to blame for the violence, he said, but ‘hoods who are posing as hippies.’ On Thursday, a few hippies went out onto Haight street and cleared it of hurled trash. They swept it clean. A few hours later the street was a mess again. Shots were fired. Officers were assaulted. Forty-eight persons were arrested.”…
HUMBLE HOST WRAPS UP THIS DOSE OF HIPPIE HISTORY WITH A SHORT CONTRIBUTION FROM MUSIC AGENT, MANAGER JOHN HARTMAN. Quoted from an anthology of oral history edited by Clara Bingham in her book, WITNESS TO THE REVOLUTION. I quote HARTMAN…
“I am a music agent and manager living in L.A. an I’m pretty full of myself and I keep telling everyone that Buffalo Springfield is America’s answer to the Beatles. There’s a promoter and manager named Howard Wolf who told me, ‘You’re crazy, you don’t even know what’s happened’ ‘What are you talking about? I don’t know what’s happening? I am what’s happening.’ He said, ‘No, you haven’t got a clue. It’s all happening in San Francisco. It’s Jefferson Airplane, it’s the Grateful Dead, it’s Big Brother and the Holding Company, it’s Quicksilver Messenger Service, it’s Moby Grape, it’s the Charlatan.’ He lists all of these bands that I had never heard of. So I get on a plane, and I go up to San Francisco.
“It must have been April of ’67, and I thought I knew everything there was to know about show business. I trained with the best agents. I’d been successful. I go up there, and I’m standing in a black mohair suit, chainlink watch, sapphire pinky ring, initials engraved on my shirt, hair so short it looks like it’s painted on, and I am in total shock. The show was Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Paul Butterfield. I turned to Albert Grossman, the manager of Paul Butterfield Blues Band, who I had just met that day. He also managed Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul & Mary. I turned to him and went, ‘Albert, where’s it all going?’ He said, ‘Under the sea, man, under the sea.’
“What blew my mind were three things that defied the rules: One was unknown acts. Number two, every guy in the room had his hair longer than Sonny Bono, and Sonny was a freak in L.A. Long hair was anything longer than an inch. The third thing I saw that was absolutely extraordinary, it was what is known as a liquid light show. Somebody holds a tray of oils and waters that are different colors and pulsate it on one of those overhead projectors, in rhythm to the music. So, the whole room was going, ‘whoo, whoo, whoo.’ You’ve seen it in videos of the era. They’ve got spinning lights. That’s all liquid light show.
“So I went back to the William Morris Agency office and said, ‘Look, bands happen out of venues. Johnny River happened at the Whisky, Buffalo Springfield happened at the Whisky, Airplane had the Fillmore, the Grateful Dead happens out of the Avalon Ballroom. If we put Buffalo Springfield in a venue and package it, we will have the biggest act in the world. We will beat the Beatles.’ These guys at William Morris said, ‘You guys, sit down and stay out of San Francisco, and get back to work.
“But I knew that we had just discovered the Mother Lode. What was different about this music was tht it was psychedelic. They were on acid, and what was coming our of their instruments was acidesque, right? It was totally different: the sound, the feel, the energy. They had long riffs where a guy goes completely insane on the guitar. Jimi Hendrix being the best of them. We were seeing bigger bands, live five. The Beatles were four; that was the standard. Stones were five; that was acceptable. Six was starting to get big, right? A whole lot of those other bands had a large number of members. So, it was all different and we knew it was great.
“Everybody smoked pot, and if you didn’t, you were an idiot. Pot was the fuel. If you didn’t smoke dope, who the fu*k are you? What are you all about? So there was even a contest or a challenge about pot, but it took a certain, more liberated person to get into the psychedelics. LSD is mushrooms on steroids. Once it kicks in, there’s a peacefulness and then your mind opens up to the collective unconscious. So you’re now in tune with the wisdom of the universe.
“So that’s what happening through the music; the music was telling us who to be, how to be, and what to do, which we interpreted as revolt; resist the war, resist racism, advance the peace movement, bring some justice into the legal system, defy the corporate takeover of america. And we win.
“The other thing that happened culturally, was that when you were a hippie, you didn’t want a job. So we were doing dope, going to concerts, and having girls take you to bed, which they were flagrantly willing to do. I was taken to bed by three girls in one day. If you met someone, and it clicked, you were doing it–there was no AIDS; no one was worried about any of that stuff. I mean, you could get gonorrhea but that rarely happened. So free love worked, and women were liberating themselves. I was all for it. It was cool, it was fun, because it gave me the ability to make powerful connections in a very short time. Like, you might never see that girl again, and in most cases, that’s what happened. It was just a happening; it was wonderful. It worked for us at the time.”… End quote…
BOB DYLAN: “For the times they are a-changing…” That’s what happened while I was away at war, while all of us were away at war and creating Rolling Thunder… It was a time that ignited massive cultural change in our nation, progressives hope they are forever… FORTUNATELY, a fair share of us never made the change…we still believe in God, country, family, rugged individualism, the Constitution, the rule of law, the Golden Rule… And it is our God given duty to defend those values against the rising tide of destructive change that seeks to obliterate the values we hold dear as Americans. We are sworn to defend the Constitution…bring it on…
Lest we forget… Bear
