Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #780… WHILE THE FORD MOTOR CO. WAS TURNING OUT 1966, ’67 AND ’68 MUSTANGS BY THE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS FOR THE EARLY BOOMERS, BUICK BROUGHT FORTH AN EQUALLY MAGNIFICENT MACHINE–THE WILDCAT…. A BIG, BOLD, BEAUTIFUL SET OF WHEELS FITTING A ROLLING THUNDER FIGHTER-BOMBER WARRIOR… Among the proud owners of new, Blue Wildcats in the fighter-bomber set was a 25-year old grad of The Citadel class of 1965, recent master of the F-4D, and the backseat of a 480th Tactical Fighter Squadron F-4 Phantom operating out of DaNang on 24 April 1968. Another was owned by a 33-year old ex-Naval Aviation cadet, A-4F Skyhawk driver commuting to the air war from-and-back-to the deck of USS Enterprise in the spring and summer of 1968. The future of these two Wildcats and their owners was in the hands of Fate… but first…
GOOD MORNING: Day SEVEN HUNDRED EIGHTY of a ROLLING THUNDER remembrance…
HEAD LINES from the OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER on Wednesday, 24 April 1968…
THE WAR: Page 1: “F-111S WITHHELD FROM COMBAT–NOT GROUNDED”… “No F-111s flew against North Vietnam Tuesday, but a U.S. spokesman in Saigon implied tonight that the $6-million, swing-wing fighter-bomber has not been grounded again after its third crash in a month. ‘There has been no change in the status of the F-111,’ said the spokesman, after a day of rumors and inquiries. He would not elaborate. In Washington, the Pentagon refused to comment and said any information would have to come from Saigon. … Other Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps planes were out in force Tuesday to continue bombing highways, barges, gun positions and other targets in the section of North Vietnam left open to our raids by President Johnson’s curtailment orders… Page 1: “U.S. PRODS HANOI ON PEACE TALKS–NO PROGRESS”… “The United States today was pressuring Hanoi again for some decision on a place to hold preliminary peace talks in an effort to determine whether North Vietnam was sincere or merely indulging in propaganda. President Johnson disclosed Tuesday night that American officials had been in touch with North Vietnamese representatives, presumably in Vientiane, Laos, on Monday and Tuesday and would meet with them again today in an effort to nail down a location for initial ‘peace contacts.’ “… Page 1: “THANT ASKS ACTION ON TALKS”… “U.N. Secretary General U Thant appealed to the Unite States and North Vietnam today ‘to agree without further delay’ on a site for their preliminary peace talks.”…
Page 1: “TWISTERS RIP 3 STATES–DEATH TOLL REACHES 13–STORMS LEAVE 207 HURT–LOSSES PASS $2-MILLION”… “Tornadoes ripped into small communities in Kentucky and Ohio Tuesday, spreading death and destruction. Twisters also struck two towns in Michigan causing damage but no deaths.”… Page 1: “HUMPHREY SEEKS FARM-LABOR AID”… “Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey is trying in his still-unannounced bid for the Democratic presidential nomination to forge on a national scale the kind of farm-labor coalition he helped create in Minnesota.”… Page 1: “McCARTHY WINS 7-1 IN PENNSYLVANIA PRIMARY”… “Senator Eugene j. McCarthy, alone on Pennsylvania’s presidential preference ballot, was an easy winner in Tuesday’s primary over democratic rivals whose names had to be written in by voters.”… Page 2: “SPENDING CUTS, TAX INCREASES APPEAR CERTAIN”… “The federal government is battling inflation with the one weapon it most wanted to avoid–tight money. But there are increasing signs in Congress that the two big guns–a tax hike and cuts in federal spending–may soon be added to the arsenal–including the spending cuts on which congressmen have insisted–still must be worked out.”…
24 APRIL 1968…THE PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF… (CIA TS/S-I) NORTH VIETNAM: Haiphong Rail and Highway Bridge: Photography of 19 April shows that Haiphong’s only rail and highway bridge is apparently serviceable again. It was last attacked in March….Thai Nguyen Thermal Power Plant–last bombed in August 1967–is probably operational. Smoke is seen coming from a flue leading to the generator hall, and coal piles near the plant is partially operational and that its reconstruction is likely to continue…
24 APRIL 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER (25 Apr reporting 24 Apr ops)….Page 1: “The F-111s were grounded March 30 after two of the six sent to the Vietnam theater crashed in their first week of combat flying. They resumed missions against North Vietnam after two replacements from Nevada. Other U.S. warplanes flew 118 missions against North Vietnam’s southern panhandle. Pilots reported destroying or damaging 31 trucks. The deepest penetration was a strike on two trucks two miles below the 19th parallel… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) there was one fixed wing aircraft lost in Southest Asia on 24 April 1968…See Ripple Salvo below… (480th TFS F-4D VINSON AND PARKER)
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) ON 24 April to be added as soon as I get my act together then I will finish this paragraph of considerable length when I figure out what my computer is doing.
RIPPO SALVO..#780… A SHORT TALE OF TWO BUICK WILDCATS… First, the brutal facts. One of the shiny blue Wildcats was the prized possession of 1LT WOODROW WILSON “WOODY” PARKER II. On 24 April 1968 WOODY PARKER was judged to be missing-in-action (Chris Hobson)…
“LCOL BOBBY GENE VINSON and 1LT WOODROW WILSON PARKER were flying an F-4D of the 480th TFS and 366th TFW our of Danang when scrambled along with a wingman to make a night attack on a storage area near Van Loc, some 10 miles northwest of Dong Hoi in Route Package I in North Vietnam. As LCOL VINSON approached the target area he radioed that he was descending to try to spot the target and drop flares. Moments later the wingman saw a fireball on the ground, which he presumed to be Vinson’s aircraft exploding. It was not determined whether the aircraft had been flown into the ground or shot dawn. There was no evidence at the time to suggest that the crew had not survived. In 1992 and 1993 joint US-Vietnamese investigated the crash site and recovered human remains and personal effects confirming the identities of the crew–LCOL VINSON and 1LT PARKER.”… It was the oft told tale of the Vietnam war of missing men somewhere in Southeast Asia and the hope that the missing were alive and being held as captives of the enemies in the region. Young “Woody” PARKER was declared missing in April 1968. The POWs came home in 1973. More than 2,500 of the missing remained to be accounted for. A long and arduous process was begun. In 1979 tough decisions were made and hundreds of the missing were presumed to be killed in action. Many families refused to accept this decision with respect to their fallen warrior. 1LT Woodrow Wilson Parker’s family was in this group. And how do we know this? Because COLONEL WOODROW WILSON PARKER I, United States Army (Infantry), Retired, kept the faith in a visible and believable way.
“In October 1998 the Associated Press posted this: “CAR KEPT AS TRIBUTE TO LOST PILOT”… Martinez, Georgia…Twice a month the 1967 Buick Wildcat in retired Colonel Woodrow W. Parker’s garage gets a fastidious cleaning. Not because it’s driven to filth so often, not because Parker is fanatical on car hygiene. The gleaming blue Buick belonged to the colonel’s son, Air Force Major Woodrow ‘Woody’ Parker II, who left 30 years ago to fly an F-4 Phantom in Vietnam and never returned. The father keeps it clean in the faint hope that his son is still alive. The younger Parker, a year out of The Citadel in Charleston, had turned 25 six days before he was lost in action on his 10th combat mission in Southeast Asia. Parker was classified as missing for ten years. Today, he is listed as killed-in-action.
“The military says DNA tests performed on recovered bones a few years ago (1992 and 1993) prove that Woodie Parker died in Vietnam, but his parents persisted and the government agreed to conduct a second round of forensic tests. The Parkers hold faint hope that the new tests will show that their son could be alive.” In a DoD “Memorandum for Correspondents,” dated 1 October 1998, the accounting of both Colonel Vinson and Major Parker were reconfirmed, positively, on the basis of DNA, the crash site, and the personal effects recovered at the scene. The Memo also concludes with this: “At the wishes of Major Parker’s family, the identity of these remains will not be released.”… Woodie Parker’s loving father passed in 2007 and is buried in Arlington, as is his son. Somewhere the 1967 Buick Wildcat, originally registered to a young graduate of The Citadel brimming with life, energy and dreams, gathers dust… It’s existence denied the opportunity to share experiences with her fighter pilot owner over 100,000 miles and many years of the sights and sounds of America. The other beautiful blue Buick Wildcat?… Rode hard and put away wet for more than six years and 90,000 miles as a growing family car moving from one duty station to another, coast to coast in the faithful service of a Navy tailhooker who Fate chose to give a pass on dark nights and amid the balls of fire rising up in search of a Bear in a Skyhawk.
What is to be learned from this little tale? It is this! Those of us who came through the skies of North Vietnam must never forget those brave brothers who did not. The responsibility to remember is our cross to bear… But the burden of remembering is a small cost for the blessing of fifty years (and more) of the lives we have enjoyed. Those we honor with our thoughts and prayers were denied those years by the hand of Fate…
RTR Quote for 24 April: LUCAN: “Whither the Fates lead, Virtue will fearlessly follow.”
Lest we forget… Bear
