Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO…#96… ON THE EDGE… but first…
Good Morning: Day NINETY-SIX of a revisit to the “air war” in North Vietnam…Operation Rolling Thunder….
3 JUNE 1966… ON THE HOME FRONT… (NYT)… A sunny Friday in New York and the same over North Vietnam…
Page 1: “Nun Dies By Fire In Sixth Suicide In Anti-Ky Drive”…The 26-year old woman killed herself in a Danang pagoda near the site of the dissident center, Tin Hoa pagoda, as a crowd of 500 monks and nuns watched. Meanwhile, in Saigon the moderate Buddhists have decided to suspend their campaign against the ruling military junta to give the ongoing conference a chance to initiate action on the compromise agreement reached today…. Page 1: “Rights Conference Averts Show Down On War Policy” … The White House Conference on Civil Rights ended in a show of unity tonight after the Administration and moderate Negro leaders had succeeded in squelching a move to call for a withdrawal of America from Vietnam. The conferees have laid down an agenda for the President to follow; (1) Intensify efforts to end the war, (2) push for stronger enforcement of civil rights laws, (3) act to stop a drift toward anti-Administration foreign policy in the civil rights movement, (4) call for new spending and action at all levels of government and the private sector in a combined effort to help the American Negro achieve equality in education and housing… Page 1: “Gemini 9 Is Ready For 3rd Try Today” ….
Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan on deck for a three-day ride in space. ….. while “Surveyor Finds Flat Pebbled Lunar Region” and pours out an endless stream of photographs. Stories accompanied by two of the photos on page 1.
Page 2: “Troops Enter Hue But Their Aims Are In Doubt”...The force was sent to the city but the mob of student dissidents remains unhindered. R.W. Apple wrote: “The newly arrived troops were no more effective than those who stepped aside and permitted the burning of the American Cultural Center, the American Consulate and three other houses during the week.” The force included 14 American built tanks, 14 armored personnel carriers and 650 troops, was acting at the request of the senior officers in the military junta and against the 1st South Vietnamese Division “whose loyalty to the government is considered questionable.” A peace plan” has been adopted between the forces….Page 4: “August Draft Call Will Rise To 32,000,” a figure that is considerably above the levels asked for other summer months– 15,000 in June and 26,500 in July. All draftees are Army and Marine Corps bound as the Navy and Air Force will meet requirements with voluntary enlistments. Reason for the large draft call: “…to meet planned military strengths to meet Vietnam requirements.”
OpEd…page 35 … James Reston: Washington: The Search For New Initiatives” … “President Johnson’s latest effort to open a conversation with the Chinese leaders on disarmament and Vietnam is not likely to get anywhere, but it is significant just the same. The President is clearly trying to keep Vietnam from paralyzing American diplomacy in other parts of the world. He is active in Europe and in Latin America. He went out of his way to call on all African Ambassadors for a definition of American policy in that continent… the channels of trade with USSR and Eastern Europe. This indicates a change of attitude in Washington rather than any major change in policy. This in itself however, is not insignificant. The administration is reappraising itself for the time being, and in due course, this is likely to lead to some reappraisals of policy.”
3 JUNE 1966…PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF…CIA (TS sanitized)…South Vietnam: The resignation of Tam Chau, the moderate chairman of the Buddhist Institute, could signal a takeover of the Buddhist leadership by its militant wing. Chau has been under heavy pressure either to go along with the militants all-out effort to bring down Ky or be expelled from the Institute. Chau’s resignation– it is not clear whether it has been formally accepted — could be a ploy to bring the militants into line. He has tried this gambit before, successfully, but we have some doubt that he could carry it off now. The director of the national police believes it will bring more violence. Saigon, Hue and Da Nang were quiet today– Buddha’s birthday.
3 JUNE 1966…ROLLING THUNDER OPERATIONS… NYT (4 June reporting ops for 3 June)… “U.S. Plane Makes Sea Landing Under Heavy Fire” to rescue a downed F-105 less than a mile off the coast at Dong Hoi. Despite heavy artillery fire all escaped. The F-105 was the seventh aircraft lost in the last five days. Continued good weather over North Vietnam enabled Air Force and Navy pilots to fly 73 multiple plane missions yesterday. Air Force pilots destroyed the railroad bridges at Cao Nung, 53 miles northeast of Hanoi and damaged the Thai Nguyen highway bridge 40 miles north of the capital. A total of 7 bridges were destroyed and 10 more damaged. One F-105 was shot down (June 2) while attacking a bridge near Dong Hoi and the pilot, Jack Whipple was rescued two hours later. Navy pilots attacked the railway system above and below Thanh Hoa and reported seeing the eighth SAM in the last three days. Three aircraft lost on this day 50 years ago:
(1) CAPTAIN R.D. PIELIN was flying an F-105D from the 469th TFS of the 388th TFW out of Korat on an armed reconnaissance and strike mission in the southern panhandle and was hit recovering from an attack on a bridge. He flew to feet wet and ejected to be rescued by an Air Force helicopter.
(2) CAPTAIN RALPH WARREN CASPOLE, USMC, was flying an A-4E from VMA-223 and MAG-12 and leading a series of attacks on a Vietcong assembly area 35 miles south of Chu Lai when hit by ground fire, flamed and crashed with no ejection. He was on his seventh low altitude attack on the active enemy position. CAPTAIN CASPOLE was Killed In Action fifty years ago today. So young, so brave and so many years of life given to his country on that seventh attack.
(3) MAJOR HARDING EUGENE SMITH, CAPTAIN THEODORE EUGENE KRYSZAK, 1LT RUSSELL DEAN MARTIN, TSGT HAROLD EUGENE MULLINS, TSGT LUTHER LEE ROSE and SSGT ERRIN WARREN were Killed in Action while flying a AC-47D of the 4th ACS and the 14th ACW SPOOKY night search and destroy mission over the Ho Chi Minh Trail near Ban Phakat. Other aircraft in the area saw the ac-47d explode and crash. This was the second AC-47 loss in three weeks and gave cause to cancel further use of the AC-47 in the increasingly hostile Steel Tiger skies.
RIPPLE SALVO… #96… ON THE EDGE… A short shot tonight. It was a bad day today, 2 June, and I need to wrap this up and go look at the stars for awhile. An old remedy of mine– star gazing– when the load gets a little heavy. I used to climb out my bedroom window with my pillow and a blanket and lay in the grooves of our gabled roof and look to the stars. And the hours of flight time, the years at sea, and the decades living here on my mountain in Utah have provided me the opportunity to fine tune my sky watching to the point where I might even be able to qualify for the astrology merit badge I fell short on in the 1940s. A few minutes of bonding with my lucky stars and I am always ready to go again. And tonight I will throw in a few fervent prayers for an old wartime wingman who lost his fight with a brain tumor, and another friend of sixty years who came out second best in a smash-up with a Virginia white tail and remains in an ICU. The coincident accidents by the Blues and Thunderbirds today was another stunner. Especially the death of the young Marne Captain whose life on the edge flying with the Blues came to an end in the middle of a maneuver he had mastered more than a hundred times before. A few scans of the heavens tonight and tomorrow will be a brighter day…
Lest we forget… Bear …………. –30– …………
