Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… HARD TO BELIEVE, OR NOT….but first…
Good Morning: Day THIRTY-SIX of a look back at Operation Rolling Thunder…”the air war”…
5 APRIL 1966 (NYT)… ON THE HOMEFRONT… Page 1: “Ky Goes to Danang With a Regiment To Reassert Rule.” The general and 1500 troops were flown to Danang in Air Force C-130s. And in Washington the request was for Ky to parley with his political rivals. Meanwhile, in Saigon and Dalat, the Ky administration was using tear gas to counter spreading protests by Buddhists (and in the White House LBJ was having lunch with Rusk, McNamara, and Rostow, his new Special Assistant to the President)…Also on page 1: “Twisters in Tampa-St. Petersburg 9 Killed 300 Injured”…The event was described as ‘…a squall line bristling with tornadoes cut across central Florida.”…On page 3: “Bombing Attacks on North Vietnam Heaviest of the Year,” as the B-52s flew 72 missions into the Mugia Pass area on the east side of the Laos border where 25,000 infiltrators and a complex of bridges, equipment and highways were targeted… no details on BDA… In a one inch box on the page the Pentagon listed 59 United States troops killed in action in the Vietnam War…On page 10: “Soviet Fleet and Trawlers stepping up use of ports in Egypt”…a report that confirmed that Soviet naval forces and trawlers were appearing in Mediterranean waters and in the Red Sea off the United Arab Republic…NASA made the news by selecting 19 new astronauts from 332 applicants, including 6 women… Tom Mattingly in this group of selectees…
5 APRIL 1966… ROLLING THUNDER …the “air war”… Ops up north highlighted by diversion of fighter-bombers to contribute to the bombardment of the Mugia Pass… Only lost fixed wing aircraft in SEA was a USAF O-1D from the 6253CSG in Nha Trang. The aircraft suffered a structural failure airborne and crash landed with crew of two surviving…
RIPPLE SALVO…. Jacob Van Staaveren’s (“Gradual Failure…”) reporting on the development and issue of the Rolling Thunder 50 target package is worthy of an extended description in this review of Rolling Thunder. One of the major burrs under the saddles of Rolling Thunder operators was the fact that the targeting was done in Washington, which along with accompanying restrictions, denied the on scene commanders and flight leaders the discretion that was needed to most effectively employ the strike assets in the theater. Therefore, the anatomy of the burr is worth exposing. I quote from “Gradual Failure…”
“On April 5, Ky flew to DaNang to quell the rebellion, threatening to use troops if necessary. In Washington, the unrest prompted renewed concerns about the war by critics within the administration, Congress, and the public about aiding an ally that appeared unwilling or unable to set aside domestic quarrels while fighting for its very survival. As a consequence, the President was obliged to defer his approval of the escalatory parts of the Rolling Thunder package, namely the seven POL and two industrial targets. As a further precaution, he somewhat enlarged the principal sanctuary area by prohibiting any bombing within thirty miles of Hanoi and ten nautical miles of Haiphong. He made no change to the Chinese buffer zone, but he did shorten the maneuvering area for strike pilots flying over the zone: pilots were to remain at least twenty miles from the border, not fifteen nautical miles as before.
“Nonetheless, the directive still gave Air Force and Navy commanders more targets and operational flexibility than they had enjoyed in February and March operations. It permitted 900 (rather than 700) attack sorties (of 8,100 authorized per month for North Vietnam and Laos) in the reopened route packages 6A and ^B and retained in the target list four important rail and highway bridges and eight key rail and highway segments. Commanders were instructed to make special effort to block traffic along the northeast Hanoi- Dong Dang rail line.
“On April 1 (1966) Admiral Sharp, dispatched implementing orders to Generals Harris and Westmoreland and Admiral Johnson, allocating monthly armed reconnaissance sorties as follows: MACV, 3,500 for route package 1 and the Barrel Roll and steel Tiger programs in Laos (most of which would be flown by the Air force); Air Force, 1.100 sorties for route packages 5 and 6A; and Navy, 3,500 sorties for route packages 2,3,4, and 6B. He divided evenly between tow services the 900 sorties permitted for route packages 6A and 6B, allocating 450 sorties to each in their respective bombing areas. Each service was also assigned segments of four armed reconnaissance routes. The Air Force segments totaled 134miles and the Navy’s totaled 186. In addition, Sharp directed the Navy to continue flying armed reconnaissance of coastal areas in accordance with guidelines issued earlier by Washington. JCS targets in the north that had already been struck, he added, could be attacked at any time at the discretion of air commanders, but Iron Hand SA-2 SAM strikes in route packages 6A and 6B could be conducted only after photography confirmed the location of the sites. Attacks on fixed SAM sites, on the other hand were permissible to protect aircraft and their aircrews.
“On the same day, Sharp issued a revised Rolling Thunder, Iron Hand anti-SAM, and Blue Tree reconnaissance operations order that assigned service responsibility for intelligence analysis for each of the route packages in a manner identical to service responsibility for attack sorties: MACV was assigned route package 1, the Air Force received route packages 5 and 6A, and the Navy route packages 2,3,4, and 6B. the PACOM commander insisted on retaining final control of these activities on the grounds that it was essential to have undivided authority over reconnaissance in North Vietnam.”
All of the above is a prelude to the real message this evening….HARD TO BELIEVE, OR NOT… The Target lists sent to the operators for execution passed through the President’s Tuesday Lunch bunch, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk. General “Pete” Piotrowski, in his 706-page biography: “Basic Airman to General: The Secret War and other Conflicts: Lessons in Leadership & Life,” he relates the following (pages 246-247):
“…when approaching the target, the sky would turn black with bursting flak. It seemed that all the AAA in the NVN inventory was protecting your specific target on any given day.
“Nearly twenty years later, I saw former secretary of state Dean Rusk being interviewed by Peter Arnett on a CBS Documentary called “The Ten Thousand Day war.” Mr. Arnett asked, “It has been rumored that the United States provided the North Vietnamese government the names of the targets that would be bombed the following day. Is there any truth in that allegation?
“To my astonishment and absolute disgust, the former secretary responded, “Yes. We didn’t want to harm the North Vietnamese people so we passed the targets to the Swiss embassy in Washington with instructions to pass them to the NVN government through their embassy in Hanoi.” As I watched in horror Secretary Rusk went on to say, “All that we wanted to do is demonstrate to the North Vietnamese leadership that we could strike targets at will, but we didn’t want to kill innocent people. By giving the North Vietnamese advance warning of the targets to be attacked, we thought they would tell the workers to stay home.” No wonder all the targets were so heavily defended day after day! The NVN obviously moved as many guns as they could overnight to better defend each target they knew was going to be attacked. Clearly, many brave American Air Force and Navy fliers died or spent years in NVN prison camps as a result of being intentionally betrayed by Secretary Rusk and Secretary McNamara, and perhaps President Johnson himself… Peter Arnett opined that this would be a treasonous act by anyone else.”
General Pete Piotrowski wrote and Xlibris published this recollection in 2014. Unchallenged for two years, it must be fact. Or did your Humble Host miss something?… Bungling by an American Secretary of State?… HARD TO BELIEVE, OR NOT…
Lest we forget… Bear
–30–
