Bear Taylor 
…AND A REMEMBRANCE OF COLONEL JAMES HELMS KASLER, USAF (1926-2014)…
RIPPLE SALVO… #846… “A BODY COUNT IS THE TOTAL NUMBER OF PEOPLE KILLED IN A PARTICULAR EVENT. IN COMBAT, A BODY COUNT IS OFTEN BASED ON THE NUMBER OF CONFIRMED KILLS, BUT OCCASIONALLY ONLY AN ESTIMATE. Often used in reference to military combat, the term can also refer to any situation involving a number of deaths…. The military gathers such figures for a vareity of reasons, such as determining the need for continuing operations, estimating efficiency of new and old weapons systems, and planning follow-up operations…. Body count figures have a long history in military planning and propaganda.” (Wikipedia)… but first…
GOOD MORNING… Day EIGHT HUNDRED FORTY-SIX of a contribution to the nation’s recognition of “The 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War” with specific remembrances of the air war called Rolling Thunder…
HEAD LINES from The New York Times on Saturday, 29 June 1968… 50 years ago to the day…
THE WAR: Page 1: “HANOI RIDICULES U.S. OVER KHE SANH–Spokesman In Paris Asserts Withdrawal From Base Is ‘Gravest Defeat’ Of War”… “A North Vietnamese spokesman today described the American evacuation of the former Marine stronghold at Khe Sanh as the ‘gravest tactical and strategical defeat’ of the United States in the Vietnam war. Nguyen Thanh Le, spokesman for the North Vietnamese delegation negotiating here (Paris) with the United States, said at news conference that American troops had been forced to retreat from the once bitterly contested strongpoint in the northwest corner of South Vietnam. Mr. Le ridiculed the explanation of the United States military command that the base was being abandoned because it was no longer of military value. That he said, reminded him of the fable of the fox and the grapes. When the fox found he was unable to reach the grapes he wanted, Mr. Le recalled, he went away saying: ‘They were sour anyway.’… Page 3: “300 ENEMY SOLDIERS ARE KILLED IN HEAVY FIGHTING NEAR DMZ”… “Heavy fighting in the jungles just south of the demilitarized zone has taken the lives of 300 enemy soldiers in the last few days …the renewed fighting began three days ago when units of the South Vietnamese First Infantry Regiment engaged a force of North Vietnamese regulars five miles east of Quangtri. The South Vietnamese said 148 enemy soldiers had been killed and 10 captured during the fighting. The South Vietnamese losses were reported killed and 72 wounded. ..also reported finding a number of weapons and three radios of Chinese Communist manufacture…. In another battle in the same area, units of the United States first Cavalry Division (Auir Mobile) fought an enemy force of about 200 men 11 miles east of the large Marine base at Dongha. The clash began early Thursday morning and ended at nightfall. A sweep of the battlefield showed the enemy had lost 152 men to the cavalrymen, who were supported by artillery, naval gunfire and tactical air strikes. United States losses were 3 killed and 36 wounded….In other action, B-52 bombers pounded suspected enemy troops concentrations and supply routes in Bienhoa and Binh-duong provinces near Saigon. Bombers also struck at positions near Kontum in the Central Highlands.”…
Page 3: “OFFICER CRITICIZES USE OF BODY COUNT–Method of Gauging Enemy’s Losses Called ‘Dubious'”… “An Army intelligence officer has attacked the body count as practiced in Vietnam as ‘dubious and possibly dangerous measurement in determining the enemy’s combat potential.’ The officer, Lieutenant Colonel Richard A. McMahon, who served for a year in an intelligence assignment in Vietnam, suggested discontinuing this method of reporting North Vietnamese and Vietcong losses. The body count, Colonel Mahon wrote in the Army Association’s monthly publication ‘is not what it really says it is….Some U.S. units in Vietnam really count bodies. Others probably never do, but under pressure from higher up report whatever body count would be expected for a particular operation.”… Page 1: “ARMS FOR HANOI BLOCKED BY CHINA, U.S. AIDES REPORT–Last Train Of Soviet Supplies Is Said To Have Reached Destination June 14– Reasons Are Not Clear–Disorders Of Red Guards Or Displeasure Over the Paris Talks May Be Favored”…
Page 1: “ARRAIGNMENT OF SIRHAN SIRHAN IN ASSASSINATION OF KENNEDY IS AGAIN PUT OFF FOR THREE WEEKS”… Page 1: “John Tower Expected To endorse Nixon–Severe Blow to Rockefeller Seen If Texan Drops His Role As Favorite Son”… Page 1: “300 McCarthyites Stage A Walk-out At State Meeting–Angrily Protest Democratic Committees Allotment Of Delegates To Conventions–Get 15 1/2 of 65 Votes–Party Badly Split”… Page 1: “Tax Bill Signed By President–Withholding Rise By 10% In 2 Weeks”… Page 1: “Gun Curb Compromise Hinted As Foes Ease Adamant Stand.”
29 JUNE 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER …New York Times (30 June reporting 29 June ops)… Page 3; “To the north of the demilitarized zone. American warplanes flew 138 multiple plane missions against supply points and lines of communication. No planes were lost.”… VIETNAM: AIR LOSSES (Chris Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 29 June 1968… oohrah…
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) ON 29 JUNE FOR THE FOUR YEARS OF THE OPERATION OVER NORTH VIETNAM…
1965… CAPTAIN MARVIN NELSON LINDSAY, USAF… (KIA)…
1966… CAPTAIN MURPHY NEAL JONES, USAF… (POW)…
1967… NONE…
1968… NONE…
Humble Host notes the 52nd Anniversary of COLONEL JIM KASNER’s flight on 29 June 1966, for which he was awarded his first AIR FORCE CROSS… (the first of three)… He was the Sergeant York, Lieutenant Audie Murphy of Rolling Thunder…
Citation: “The Air Force Cross is presented to James Helms Kasler, major, United States Air Force, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an opposing armed force as Pilot of an F-105 Thunderchief at Hanoi, North Vietnam, on 29 June 1966. On that day, major Kasner was mission commander of the second largest wave of fighter-bombers to strike the heavily defended Hanoi petroleum products storage complex. Despite a seemingly impenetrable canopy of bursting projectiles thrown up by hostile defenses of this key facility, Major Kasler determinedly and precisely led his striking force to the exact release point where he and his followers placed their ordnance directly on target, causing it to erupt in a huge fireball of burning petroleum. Performing armed reconnaissance during his withdrawal, Major Kasler, with total disregard for his personal safety, personally destroyed five trucks before low fuel reserves forced him to terminate his attack. Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship and aggressiveness in the face of hostile forces, Major Kasler reflected the highest credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.”…
Humble Host encourages all to read “Tempered Steel–The three Wars of Triple Air force Cross Winner Jim Kasler” by Perry D. Luckett and Charles L. Byler… Major General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Jr., USAF (Ret) writes: “You couldn’t pick a better person to tread about than Jim Kasler. he’s a paragon of what a fighting airman is all about. he didn’t break the sound barrier first or go to the moon or jump up and down. He’s just the best at his trade that anyone could be., and he is a complex individual whose characteristics all came together when he needed them to produce what he did. I consider him a genuine American hero, and I hope the Air Force has a few like him in the future when we need them.”
If you can’t find the book, search the internet for “Jim Kasler, Air Force Cross” and you’ll find a weekend’s worth of reading… Good Reading. And if you have a teenager around, get her/him the book.
RIPPLE SALVO… #846… MANAGEMENT GURU PETER DRUCKER: If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it; and you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” An internet blogger takes it from there: “Drucker means that you can’t know whether or not you are successful unless success is defined and tracked.” In the “management” of the Vietnam War the metric most useful in measuring the effectiveness of a war fought on the basis of attrition. The allies were to kill more of the enemy, North Vietnam and the Vietcong, than they could replace. Success would be ours if we could get them to quit. The howgozit that was used was called “body count.” It wasn’t invented by McNamara’s “Whiz Kids,” but it was embraced throughout the McNamara Department of Defense, for better or worse. Colonel Harry Summers, Jr. one of the most astute analysts of the Vietnam war said: “Body count. that’s one of the more grisly aspects of the Vietnam War that the US military can’t seem to shed, no matter how hard it tries.” Humble Host accepts body count” as a legitimate effort to keep track of how the plan is working out. History is on my side. Body counting is as old as war itself. Of course, cheating is easy and inevitable unless the counting includes oversight and the results are accepted as imprecise. For example, the bomb damage estimates of the Covey FAC gave me on a Steel Tiger mission that was a “truck park.” He fired his rocket into the trees and said: “Hit my smoke.” Wingman and I hit the smoke with twelve Mk-82 five hundred pounders. Covey was happy and he recorded the contribution to the war as “two trucks destroyed and seven killed by air”… I accepted that as a reasonable estimate of the outcome of hitting his smoke. But the truth is: nobody knows the precise result except the bad guys surveying the dozen holes in the woods. Subjective BDA by experienced, educated expert guessers is better than no BDA at all. That’s my opinion. You got one?…
In June of 1970 I was detailed to the CarDiv 5/CTF-77 staff at Yankee Station for a one-year unaccompanied tour as the Air Strike Plans Officer on VADM Frederic Bardshar’s staff. At about the midway point in that tour he was on me like ugly-on-ape to reverse a metric that was being used in Washington to decide on how to slice “the pie of scarce resources.” The Navy in the E-Ring of the Pentagon wanted to know why the Air Force was getting more truck kills than the Navy carrier guys. I suggested to Admiral Bardshar that he detail me to 7th Air Force headquarters (Blue Chip) in Tan Son Nhut for a couple of weeks to figure it out. The charge was the Navy guys were getting “road cuts” and the Air Force guys were getting all the trucks, with the obvious outcome of “truck kills…” Air Force–20, Navy zero… It didn’t take long to figure it out: The Air Force kept a Quick Reaction Force of F-4s on deck 24/7 that was so responsive to the sighting of a lucrative target in Steel Tiger that the Air Force QRF was the weapon of choice. They were on target within 30-minutes. Good thinking. What if the Navy added a QRF to the options? What if the Navy would QRF A-6Cs with weapons loads of Rockeys? SHAZAM. Navy guys were back in the hunt. And a lot of grousing was heard on the carrier flight decks–more QRF standby watches–hours of cockpit time without any flight time… Tough… Peter Druck was/is right. If you can measure it, you can improve it….
RTR quote for 29 June: PHILIP CAPUTO, A Rumor of War: “General Westmoreland’s strategy of attrition also had an important effect on our behavior. Our mission was not to win terrain or seize positions, but simply to kill: to kill communists and as many of them as possible. Stack’em like cordwood. Victory was a high body count, defeat a low kill-ratio, war a matter of arithmetic. The pressure on unit commanders to produce enemy corpses was intense, and they in turn communicated it to their troops. This led to such practices as counting civilians as Viet Cong.”..
Lest we forget… Bear
