Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #728… THE FACE AND PACE OF OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER WAS ABOUT TO CHANGE. Or, as written by Wayne Thompson in To Hanoi and Back: The USAF and North Vietnam, 1966-1973, this was the time when “Rolling Thunder Subsides.” The decision to redirect the conduct of the air war over North Vietnam–Operation Rolling Thunder– was a product of the “Clifford Task Force’s comprehensive reassessment of the Administration’s Vietnam Policy,” also referred to as the “A to Z Reassessment.” Humble Host contends that this March 1968 exercise, assigned to the new Secretary of Defense on the heels of the Tet Offensive, was a crucial event in the history of the air war. Wayne Thompson’s description of the “A to Z” drill in To Hanoi and Back is posted here (about 1,000 words) for RTR readers… but first…
Good Morning: Day SEVEN HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT of a remembrance of events and participants in a 40-month chapter of American military and political history…
HEAD LINES from The Sunday New York Times…3 MARCH 1968…
THE GROUND WAR/KHESANH: Page 1: “SOUTH VIETNAMESE KILL 35 OF ENEMY AT SAIGON AIRPORT–Action Eases Near Capital–23 Die in Vietcong Force Ambush By U.S. Unit–Coast Road Reopened–Allies Find Caches of Food and Arms–B-52s Strike Foes Khesanh Positions”… “South Vietnamese paratroopers reported having killed 356 enemy soldiers Friday on the eastern edge of Tansonnhut Airport. Fifteen miles to the northeast near the northern perimeter of Bien Hoa airbase, United States troops of the 101st Airborne Division ambushed a Vietcong force of 150 men and killed 21…Action slackened elsewhere near the capital, but allied troops reported having found several large enemy caches, base camps and bunker complexes… To the north, United States Marines reported they had found 45 enemy soldiers dead in a village on the northern bank of the Cua Viet, an estuary on which supplies are carried to the vast logistics base at Dongha, about 10 miles south of the demilitarized zone. The discovery of the bodies brought to 81 the number of enemy dead in bitter fighting in the area Friday. The marines lost 22 dead and 87 wounded….the coastal highway between Danang and Hue was reported open with the passage of a convoy of 230 vehicles…Enemy forces had cut the 60 mils stretch by blowing up several bridges and staging ambushes, forcing the allies to supply their forces at Hue by boat or air… The United States announced that B-52s had flown 10 missions since Friday afternoon against the North Vietnamese positions around the Marine outpost in the northwestern corner of South Vietnam. Each of the …bombers can carry 25 tons of explosives and each mission includes 3 to 12 planes…A total of 31,000 tons of bombs and napalm were dropped on the area from mid-January to the end of February. As the North Vietnamese have driven their trenches and tunnels closer to the marines perimeter, they have become more exposed. On Friday the B-52s, which bomb by instrument from altitudes of at lest 30,000 feet, struck within a half a mile of the base.”… Page 1: “Citizens In 10 Areas Of Saigon Organize Groups For Defense”… Page 5: “Khesanh Wounded Treated In Grim Field Hospital”… Page 7: “Pacification Teams Returning to Hamlets Abandoned After Vietcong Drive”… Page 8: “Leading Nuclear Expert Rejects Idea of Atomic Weapons At Khesanh”… “Dr. Ralph E. Lapp said: ‘Legislators and retired military officers who advocate the use of actual nuclear weapons to save Khesanh suffer from ‘nuclear dementia.’ “….
Page 1: “RIOT PANEL FEARS U.S. MAY DEVELOP URBAN APARTHEID–URGES NATION TO PRESS FOR ENRICHMENT OF THE SLUMS AND RACIAL INTEGRATION–Single Identity Is Goal–Cities Not Prepared To Cope With Disorders–Full Report Issued”...”The President’s National Commission on Civil Disorders said tonight that if major American cities were to avoid a system of ‘apartheid’ the nation must press simultaneously for enrichment of the slums and for racial integration. The commission also said that it had found the nation’s cities unprepared in planning, equip[ping and training to cope adequately and justly with another summer of urban rioting. These were two of many conclusions reached by the 11-member commissioned in its 1,485-page report made public tonight. A summary of the report was released Thursday. In it, the commission said that ‘our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white–separate and unequal.”… Page 1: “Two Factions On Panel Consider Filing Dissents”…“…some liberal members of the…Commission…were seriously contemplating a dissenting report. They believed, and to some extent, still believe, that the report lacks a sense of urgency and proposed few innovative government programs in such areas as education and welfare.”… Page 1: “HARPER GETS McNAMARA’S BOOKS…”…Page 1: “President Views Biggest Airplane–Says In Georgia that Craft Shows U.S. Won’t give Up Role As Global Power”… “…despite the anguish of Vietnam. The plane is the C-5A Galaxy, built by the Lockheed-Georgia Corporation.”… Page 1: “A.C.L.U., In Shift, To Aid Draft Foes–The Board Offers Help to Spock and Those Who Advise Evasion of Law”… Page 1: “Antiwar Movement Makes Rapid Gains Among Seminarians”... “…a 24-year old student at Union Theological Seminary, burned half of his draft card on the Sheep Meadow of Central Park last April and sent the remaining half to President Johnson as a protest against the war in Vietnam…such incidents are typical of an antiwar movement that since last fall has made rapid inroads… at Protestant, Catholic and Jewish seminaries across the country…”…
Page 7: “REPORT ON PUEBLO TO GO TO SENATE COMMITTEE”…“The Administration is expected to submit a report shortly to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the seizure of the intelligence ship Pueblo. An inter-agency examination of all the evidence available on the January 23 incident off North Korea, is reported in its final stages under the direction of Under Secretary of State Nichols Katzenbach…” Page 1: “ON THE TRAIL: President Has The Answers” (Max Frankel)...”Meet Lyndon B. Johnson–itinerant nonpolitical non-candidate. He is not easy to meet even though he is touring around his country for the third straight week. He does not announce he is leaving the White House until he has left, reveals his itinerary only a stop at a time and gives even his hosts just a few hours’ notice.”… And when he was on the road he was kept in the loop with “Telegram From the White House Situation Room to President Johnson” like this one: Historical Document 101 of 3 March 1968 that the President received while he was playing golf with General McConnell, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, at Ramey AFB in Puerto Rico… It is from General Westmoreland and it is worth the read. The general says the “bums rush,” the Tet Offensive, is under control, it is time for the allies to go on the offensive… read at:
http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d101
3 MARCH 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times…devoid of coverage of the air war to the north in a 1,000 page Sunday Times… go figure… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were two fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 3 March 1968…
(1) 1LT JOHN THOMAS WELSHAN was flying an A-37A of the 604th ACS and 3rd TFW out of Bien Hoa and wend down on his third ordnance delivery pass in close support of troops in a firefight near Bac Lieu on the southern tip of South Vietnam. It is assumed that he was downed by ground fire and was unable to escape the diving aircraft… At the time he was listed as missing in action, but in 1975 was administratively declared dead. For unexplained reasons young 1LT WELSHAN remains have not be found and returned… He has been left behind for fifty years as of today… Go get him Joint Recovery Team… bring him home…
(2) A C-130E of the 50th TAS and 504th TASG out of Ching Chuan Kang was destroyed in a landing accident at Cam Ranh Bay. The loss was attributed to an electrical fire. The crew and passengers escaped unharmed…
Two flights from the 34th TFS out of Korat are indicative of the weather limited ops of the day. Major Sam Armstong’s 78th combat mission: “We were 1st alternate yesterday so I let Monty lead to get some experience. We did a Combat Spot on a target north of Mu Gia Pass so it was pretty uneventful.”…Major David Dickson flew his 93rd combat mission into North Vietnam dropping on a target in the “Fish’s Mouth” in Route Pack IV”… Humble Host flew #112 and dropped in the dark and rainy night six Mk-81s and two Mk-82s on a target called and controlled by “Plutocrat..” … I have no idea where or what my wingman and I were killing in the area just west of the DMZ, I think… Then back to Enterprise and another night landing… Meanwhile, four VA-35 A-6 crews on the same night cycle were home from a night in Route Pack 6 and tales to tell that made working with “Plutocrat” sound elementary…
RIPPLE SALVO… #728… Humble Host goes “To Hanoi and Back“ by Wayne Thompson for a summation of the events of early March 1968 that resulted in major decisions concerning the employment of the tactical aircraft of the Department of Defense. Here’s your weekend history lesson… Pages 132-134…I quote…
“After a very difficult month (January 1968), the President gladly put the Wheeler proposal (many more troops) in Clifford’s hands and left town again, this time for a weekend at Ramey Air Force Base, Puerto Rico. Johnson took along a son-in-law, Patrick J. Nugent, an Air National Guard enlisted man whose unit had been called up as part of Johnson’s response to the Pueblo crisis. In the family pattern set by Johnson’s other son-in-law, Marine Captain Charles S. Robb, Nugent expected to go to Vietnam in the next few weeks. Johnson was proud that his family was contributing in this personal way to the war effort, while most sons of the country’s government and business leadership had managed to avoid military service.
“The other major participant in the President’s weekend trip was the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General McConnell. They went through the motions of inspecting Ramey, but their days were filled with golf. While they played for money according to the President’s rules (as McConnell would remember with amusement), much of the Washington bureaucracy was hard at work preparing a position paper for the President.
“Since Clifford was in charge of the ‘A to Z reassessment,’ others in the bureaucracy (CIA, JCS, State, Treasury) sent their inputs to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where a team of action officers under the Assistant Secretary of International Security Affairs, Paul Warnke, drafted a paper for the President. Some members of this team, including its leader, Leslie Gelb, had already engaged in a project launched by McNamara to compile a classified documentary history of America’s involvement in Vietnam–a history that one of the authors (Daniel Ellsberg) would three years later leak to the New York Times for publication as The Pentagon Papers. Long before the Tet offensive, Warnke, Gelb, and many other civilians working for the Secretary of Defense had turned against the war. McNamara had given them a sympathetic hearing and tried to cutback the bombing of North Vietnam. They were uneasy about his replacement by Clifford, long a defender of the President’s Vietnam policies. The “A to Z Assessment’ seemed an opportunity to change Clifford’s thinking and perhaps even the President’s.
“‘A to Z’ meant that once again the bombing of North Vietnam was considered in conjunction with the troop question. The bombing, however, was not uppermost in the minds of the drafters. They contented themselves with merely objecting to an increase, especially mining Haiphong harbor or reducing the restricted and prohibited zones around Haiphong and Hanoi. General Wheeler managed to get the discussion of bombing moved to an appendix, where the Joint Chiefs ‘ diametrically opposed view was also included.
“With General McConnell out-of-town, General Bruce K. Holloway, the Vice Chief, was left to direct the Air Staff’s response to Clifford’s request for alternative strategies. The Air Staff’s preferred alternative was a much harsher bombing campaign, and they even went so far as to suggest using B-52s over the Red River Delta, as well as targeting the flood control dikes and mining the Haiphong harbor. Secretary of the Air Force Brown opposed such measures. He wanted to reduce bombing in the Hanoi-Haiphong region (already very slight owing to the weather, but due to grow in the spring) and increase bombing in the North Vietnam panhandle (which throughout Rolling Thunder had suffered the bulk of bombing anyway).
“The Under Secretary of the Air Force, Townsend Hoopes, insisted that the Air Staff also study the possibility of substituting tactical air power for Westmoreland’s search and destroy operations in South Vietnam. Until October 1967, Hoopes had worked for Warnke in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and was thoroughly in tune with McNamara’s desire to cut back the ground war in the south and the air war in the north. Hoopes had already written Clifford a personal letter advocating an end to the bombing of North Vietnam. The Air Force under-secretary advised Clifford to heed a study of the bombing completed in 1967 for the JASON division of the Institute for Defense Analysis by a group of university scientists–for the most part the same group of ‘Jasons’ who had in the summer of 1965 developed the rationale for McNamara’s proposal to build an electronically monitored barrier against infiltration into South Vietnam (and thereby render the bombing of North Vietnam unnecessary. Once again the Jason’s stated in the strongest possible terms that the bombing was a complete failure because the rate of infiltration had increased.
“While Clifford may have been interested to learn that the Air Force civilian and military leadership was divided on bombing policy, his immediate concern was Wheeler’s troop request. The drafting team reflected that concern. The ordinary purpose of the Gelb draft was to implement McNamara’s suggestion that Westmoreland’ search and destroy strategy should be discarded i favor of protecting the heavily populated coastal areas of the country. Wheeler fought the change by warning that it would ensure continued fighting in the populated regions. He got the words about a change in ground strategy stricken from the draft. Though he could not get Clifford to endorse a major increase for Westmoreland, the new Secretary of Defense agreed that 262,000 reserves should be called up to rebuild the military in readiness for deployment whenever and wherever necessary.
“When the President returned to Washington, he called his principal advisors to the White house for Clifford’s report. Clifford explained that his groups had not yet been able to agree on bombing policy or otherwise complete a thorough reassessment of the administration’s Vietnam posture, but that it should be done before sending Westmoreland major reinforcements. In the meantime, Clifford recommended sending only 22,000, while calling up 262,000 reserves to rebuild the active military. Johnson made no immediate decision other than to approve the continuation of Clifford’s reassessment. At this point Rusk raised again the possibility of a partial bombing halt during the ongoing northeast monsoon, and the President latched onto Rusk’s suggestion as the bright spot in the meeting: ‘Really get your horse on that.’
“It took a month for the partial bombing halt to become a reality.” End quote from To Hanoi and Back…
RTR Quote for 3 March: GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON: “War is a killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood or they’ll spill yours.”…
Lest we forget… Bear
