Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… MOTHER NATURE RULES…
Good Morning: Day THIRTY FOUR of a look back to Operation Rolling Thunder…
3 APRIL 1966 (NYT)… ON THE HOMEFRONT… Great Sunday for a walk in the park in New York… also, if you were debarking from a cruise liner in New York –“Wildcat Walkout in LA Spreads to Manhattan Pier.” Passengers (806) on liner Nieuw Amsterdam were left to carry their own baggage. Longshoremen had walked off striking for a limit of 1600-hours of work per year and an increase in monthly pensions of $175/month. There was also a newspaper strike in Boston…Also on page 1: “H-Bomb Clean-up in Spain a Big Task.” The January 17, 1966 B-52 mid-air over Palomares, Spain resulted in two aircraft and 4- 20 megaton bombs plowing into farmland, 2 of the bombs exploding (HE only). A third bomb came to rest in a dry river bed, and the fourth bomb was somewhere on the bottom of the Mediterranean — and that one remained a headache for more than two months. Nuclear contamination was considerable and cleanup time consuming and expensive. And the world watched… Columnist Hanson Baldwin covered page 3 with a feature story on the aircraft being employed in Southeast Asia by the U.S. Headline: “U.S. Planes Pass Test But Flaws are Noted.” Baldwin stated that many consider the employment of air assets by U.S. a turning point in the war. “The design, development and production of military aircraft as well as Pentagon management methods are being tested in battle. Years of development had prepared air forces to perform photo recce and close air support for a war like the Vietnam War. He applauded the simple, light weight, and inexpensive OV-10A, A-4 and F-5A, especially the OV-10A. “The COIN aircraft is flying in the form of the North American OV-10 as a lightweight multi-purpose reconnaissance fighter.”…in other news: Australia is sending draftees to Vietnam and in England: “Labor Landslides…” putting Harold Wilson and the Labor Party on top for the first time in 15 years… On page 47: “Survey Discounts Student Protests.”… the organized student left probably accounts for less than 1% of student population.” In large public universities 56% of students said that civil rights is a major problem and 68% said the greatest problem is the war in Vietnam… Under the headline: “And How Long For Fighting Men,” a story discussing the risk versus time of exposure in a high threat environment. “As for raids on North Vietnam, with fair weather Air Force and Navy pilots will fly an average of 40 missions and one of the planes won’t come back. As for mortality rates on the ground: daily death rate for the enemy– 123 KIA; SVN–32; and US — 11. It was estimated that the ground forces would meet and fight in 100 guerrilla engagements somewhere in SEA every day… Sports page: Top Baseball Salaries– Babe Ruth $80K, Joe DiMaggio $100K, Ted Williams $125K, Stan Musial $100K and Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax $130K….
3 APRIL 1966…. ROLLING THUNDER… “the air war”… Bad day on Hancock…LT RICHARD LEE LAWS, flying a VF-24 F-8C flak suppression flight on a mission to strike the POL storage area at Bai Thoung airfield, 20 miles west of Thanh Hoa, was shot down in the pull-up from his bomb run. He reported that he was hit, but subsequently flew into the ground. No chute. LT LAWS was Killed in Action…so young, so fair, so brave…
ROLLING THUNDER 49…On 1 April 1966 the Executive Order for ROLLING THUNDER 50 replaced RT 49 as the marching orders for the “air war” up North… For a quick review of the first month of my blogs “remembering” RT, I refer to Jacob Van Staaveren’s excellent journal, “Gradual Failure: the air war over North Vietnam, 1965-66.”
“There was no operational break or public announcement as Rolling Thunder 48 ended in February (1966) and Air Force and Navy commanders inaugurated Rolling Thunder 49 on March 1 (1966). Nor did the heavy monsoon weather over the north relent in the next few weeks. Commanders were forced to cancel scores of scheduled missions, which made it difficult to assess results of many airborne missions. On many days, pilots were confronted with a low ceiling or light rain and drizzle that limited flying altitudes from 1,500 to 3,000 feet and visibility to two to four miles. Clouds and fog enveloped the inland river valleys, particularly the Red River valley to Lao Cai, and often persisted throughout the day. Thunderstorms sometimes blocked out mountain regions. The most suitable flying weather was in the mountainous region of the northwest, east of 104 degrees longitude.
“Despite the monsoon weather, Air Force and VNAF pilots succeeded in flying 4,551 strike sorties or about 87.5% of the total authorized for the month. The VNAF, almost totally preoccupied with the war in South Vietnam, contributed a token 12 sorties on two missions. Flying 57.5 percent of the sortie total, the Air Force concentrated on targets in route packages 1,3, and 5, while the Navy hit route packages 2 and 4. More than 500 of the Air Force sorties were flown at night: fighters were accompanied by flare-dropping aircraft or B-66Bs with special radar bombing equipment to conduct buddy-bombing strikes. The Navy carried out somewhat fewer night sorties. As in February, pilots searched for vehicles, rolling stock, rivercraft, coastal junks: such fixed targets as small bridges, military structures, and logistic and anti-aircraft sites; and they cut scores of roads…In the absence of good flying weather and targets, the Air Force and Navy pilots attacked vehicles and logistic sites and cut roads along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos…despite the weather and bombing restrictions, the services believed they took a considerable higher toll of enemy resources than in February. For the four week period of March 4-31, the services claimed to have destroyed and damaged the following: vehicles, 103 and 103; rivercraft, 64 and 177; small bridges, 46 and 90; structures, 96 and 95; and anti-aircraft sites, 18 and 5. In addition, they counted 28 damaged rail cars and made at least 145 road cuts.” Air Force losses of aircraft totaled thirteen aircraft, four were damaged and four disappeared while flying Rolling Thunder missions. The Navy lost at least five. BRING ON RT50…
RIPPLE SALVO… Between self imposed restrictions limiting the targets in North Vietnam, monsoonal weather clobbering the skies over the approved targets, and our aircraft and weapon limitations — VFR only aircraft and lack of smart weapons — little was accomplished by our air forces during RT49. Meanwhile, the enemy had good cover to sustain their flow of support to the south, disperse their high value targets, and build their defenses. ADVANTAGE NORTH VIETNAM. Crates of MiGs were pouring into the open Haiphong harbor and sanctuary, anti-aircraft barrels and shells were piling up and spreading out, and SAMs were arriving by the boatload. to which Van Staaveren observed: “From November 14, 1964 to March 1, 1966, the JCS, with occasional Army dissent, officially asked McNamara on eleven occasions for authority to strike all of the North’s important air bases, convinced that this would not substantially increase the risk of Chinese intervention in the war, but Washington’s refusal to allow such attacks would endure for many more months.”
OPERATION POPEYE, a United States project to control Mother Nature, was in effect from March 20, 1967 until July 5, 1972. This was a rain making, cloud seeding operation intended to extend the monsoon season about six weeks so as to inundate the routes through the mountain passes with flooding and mud, thereby slowing the flow of men and material from the north to the south. Mud, mud, mud and flooding were the goal and it was judged to be an 86% effective tactic. It was so secret that Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird was unaware that weather modification was part of our arsenal in the war in Southeast Asia. The program was developed at Naval Air Weapons Station, China Lake, and carried out by the USAF 54Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, the “Make Mud, Not War” squadron. Popeye operations over North Vietnam were terminated on April 1, 1968 concurrent with the reduction in Rolling Thunder ops. However, weather modification operations continued elsewhere in SEA until July 5, 1972, when “all rainmaking operations ceased.” For reasons that do not make sense to me, on 18 May 1977 the United States signed a United Nations “Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques,” thereby eliminating the opportunity to “make mud, not war” in future conflicts. Mud and misery are a great way to diminish the will of an enemy to resist, which is a key objective of war, and to do it without blasting bodies apart seems more in step with UN principles than eliminating creative use of Mother Nature’s super powers. “Winning without fighting is the acme of skill,” wrote Sun Tzu. And the search for non-violent means to dissuade an enemy from leaning or marching forward should never end. The carte blanche elimination of weather modification tactics is not in the best interests of the United States. That’s my opinion, what’s yours?…
Lest we forget… Bear
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