Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #761… President Johnson drew the line on Rolling Thunder operations in his 31 March speech. Unfortunately, the speech did not specify the 20th parallel but his instructions to CINCPAC, COMUSMACV and 7th Air Force did. So on 1 April the Navy bombed targets north of Thanh Hoa and arguably above the 20th parallel, one target was bombed at 206 miles north of the DMZ… Several Senators had understood the President’s new limits on the bombing to mean only that part of North Vietnam immediately adjacent to the DMZ. Out of the flap, the President specified the 19th parallel as the northern limit of Rolling Thunder. As a result, the Air Force and Navy were left with a box about 50-miles by 150-miles in size in which to conduct the new interdiction bombing program Humble Host refers to as Rolling Thunder II, a 7-month campaign to cut them off at the pass… but first…
GOOD MORNING: Day SEVEN HUNDRED SIXTY-ONE digging in the archives and old papers to review the air war fought fifty years ago over North Vietnam and remembering the service and sacrifice of warriors who carried the fight to the enemy where he lived…
HEAD LINES from the Ogden Standard-Examiner for Friday, 5 April 1968…
Page 1: “LONE SNIPER ASSASSINATES MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR–RIOTS ERUPT AS SEARCH FOR KILLER CONTINUES–WHITE GUNMAN SOUGHT IN SLAYING AT MEMPHIS”… “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the nonviolent prophet of the civil rights movement, was assassinated Thursday by a white sniper who ‘simply faded away.’ Riots erupted in Harlem, in Memphis, Nashville, Tallahassee, Florida, and Raleigh, North Carolina, despite President Johnson’s televised plea for calmness. Two persons died in the outbursts. The President summoned Negro leaders to an 11 a.m. meeting at the White House, calling off his trip to Hawaii for conferences on Vietnam. Memphis police Chief Frank Holloman announced early today that ‘certain evidence has been found which we believe will be helpful in apprehending the suspect.’ “… Page 1:”NATION HIT BY SHOCK AND GRIEF”… “Black and white, famous and unknown, Americans reacted to the news of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination thursday night with shock, sorrow nd prayers that the violence of his death would not overshadow the nonviolence he preached.”… Page 1: “PRESIDENT URGES TENSE NATION TO DENY VICTORY TO VIOLENCE”… “President Johnson called on the nation today–all men and all races–to ‘stand their ground to deny violence its victory’ in the wake of slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The President’s statement was issued after a hastily summoned meeting at the White house of civil rights leaders, government officials and members of Congress. He voiced again his sorrow at the death of the Negro apostle of non-violence, assassinated by a rifleman Thursday night in Memphis, Tennessee.”… Page 5: “I MAY NOT GO WITH YOU”… “DID KING HAVE ‘PREMONITION OF MEMPHIS ASSASSINATION”… “The night before his death, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told an audience he had ‘seen the promised land’ of victory in his fight for equality and justice, but ‘I may not go with you.’ threats had been made on his life, King told a crowd of 2,000, but he was not afraid.”… Page 5: “Go Ahead Planned On Marches”… “The marches and demonstrations that Dr. King had planned for Memphis and Washington, D.C., will go on despite the violent death of their nonviolent leader…”…
Page 1: “LOOTING AND ARRESTS–VIOLENCE ERUPTS IN UNITED STATES CITIES”… “Violence burst out in cities across the country in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther king, Jr. as bands of Negroes smashed windows, looting stores, threw firebombs and attacked police with guns, stones and bottles. A white man was stabbed to death in the midst of violence in Washington, and a Negro died of stab wounds in New York, although it was not known if the latter death was related to the violence.”… Page 1: “CARMICHAEL LASHES BACK, ASKS NEGROES TO ARM AND RETALIATE”… “Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael urged Negroes today to arm themselves with guns and take to the streets in retaliation for the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Carmichael told a news conference in Washington he wants black America to ‘kill off the real enemy.’ He said there would be executions in the streets. ‘When white America killed Dr. King she opened the eyes of every black man in the country,’ Carmichael said. He blamed President Johnson and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., along with the rest of the nation’s white population for the death of the Nobel Peace Prize winner. “Bobby Kennedy pulled that trigger as much as anyone else. Carmichael charged the senator had failed to push for prosecution of slayers of Negro civil rights workers when he was attorney general.”… Page 1: SHOCK AND SORROW: SLAYING DISRUPTS POLITICAL DRIVES”…”…has disrupted the 1968 political campaign and some politicians say it could remain a factor through the November elections. Political leaders, expressing shock and sorrow, also stressed the assassination could spur congress to pass a pending civil rights bill.”… Page 2 “SENATE JUNKS TWO PLANS ON GUN CONTROLS”…
THE WAR IN VIETNAM: Page 1: “SIEGE LIFTED, BATTLE EBBS AT KHE SANH”…The siege of Khe Sanh was lifted today, U.S. officers said, but spearheads of a big relief force less than a mile away made no attempt to enter the Marine combat base. The 6,000 Marines at Khe Sanh were still under fire from North Vietnamese gunners, who pounded the base in the northwest corner of South Vietnam with 100 rounds. This was one reason for keeping any of the relief forces out of Khe Sanh…With the North Vietnamese force around Khe Sanh base–once estimated at 20,000– reduced to about 7,000 by official estimate, the possibility of a big decisive battle went glimmering. Marines expected a human-wave assault at Khe Sanh would begin during the recent monsoon rains, when American airpower would be hamstrung. These never developed.”…
5 APRIL 1968… PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF: NORTH VIETNAM-SOVIET UNION: “The Soviets published a statement this morning saying that they ‘fully support the statement of the North Vietnamese Government on 3 April.’ In a summary which has been broadcast, Moscow says ‘the further development of events depends on whether the US will take the following step: whether it stops bombing and other acts of war against Vietnam fully and unconditionally, and whether it takes a positive view of the well-known proposals of the North Vietnamese Government and the Liberation Front on the ways of settling the Vietnam problem.’ The statement said: ‘In the opinion of the Soviet Government, these proposals offer a good basis for a lasting settlement in Vietnam….NORTH VIETNAM: There are no clear indications yet whether Hanoi intends to tailor tis military action t prospective diplomatic ‘contacts’ with the US. The relative lull in enemy military activity in South Vietnam continues. There are signs, however, of enemy reconnaissance, repositioning and logistic activity, possibly in preparation for a step-up in the pace of hostilities. Such action is particularly evident in the central highlands and along the central coast of South Vietnam… HANOI PLAYS UP CONTINUING AIR RAIDS: To bolster its case for an unconditional end to the bombing throughout all of North Vietnam, Hanoi is providing detailed reporting on what it claims are continuing, intensive, and ‘inhumane’ US air raids on the provinces south of the 20th parallel. It has coupled these reports with replays of statements in the Western press criticizing the U.S. for ordering only a partial bombing halt and urging that the cessation include the entire country… In broadcasts on 3 and 4 April, Hanoi listed a number of areas in the southern provinces which it claimed have received intensive bombings since the President’s announcement of the bombing halt. Particular attention was focused on charges that these raids were directed against populated areas. The broadcasts also condemned the use of reconnaissance aircraft over provinces north of the 20th parallel and an alleged bombing of a populated area in a northwestern province near the Laotian border, far above the 20th parallel. Ambassador Sullivan says it is unlikely that US or Laotian planes were operating in this area. He suggests the possibility of a chinese provocation….
5 APRIL 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… Ogden Standard-Examiner (Associated Press/ United Press International) No coverage of air operations north of the DMZ… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were two fixed wing aircraft losses in Southeast Asia on 5 April 1968…
(1) ENSIGN S.D. GRABER and LT C.J. SCHWARTZE were flying an F-4B of the VA-96 Fighting Falcons embarked in USS Enterprise on a combat mission and suffered an electrical failure that cascaded into total failures requiring the pair of young warriors to eject over the Gulf of Tonkin where they were rescued from swim call with the sea snakes to fly and fight again…
(2) CAPTAIN G.I. BUTLER and MAJOR J.G. KONDRACKI were flying an F-4C of the 391st TFS and 12th TFW out of Cam Ranh Bay were forced to eject from their Phantom due to fuel exhaustion. They were on an interdiction mission and unable to aerial refuel when they had to… They were rescued to answer tough questions…and fly and fight again…
Humble Host flew #133. Steel Tiger west of Tchepone, led a section of VA-113 Battlercry A-4Fs to deliver 6 MK-82s and two runs of 20mm each on “troops” under FAC control… FAC gave us six killed-by-air BDA…
RIPPLE SALVO… #751… ROLLING THUNDER II… The following from Wayne Thompson’s To Hanoi And Back…. I quote…
“A virtue of retreating to the nineteenth parallel was that it eliminated a possible source of friction between the Air Force and the Navy over bombing responsibilities. the eighteenth parallel evenly divided the new target area and was also near the boundary between long-established route packages. the Air Force’s Rolling Thunder Route Package One lay between the eighteenth parallel and the Demilitarized Zone (the 17th parallel), while to the north, the Navy’s Route Package Two and part of route Package Three were between the eighteenth and nineteenth parallels.
“Into this relatively small area, the Air Force and Navy poured all the firepower they had formerly spread throughout North Vietnam. Some proponents of the bombing cutback liked to present this compression as a very dramatic improvement in the effectiveness of interdiction. Secretary of Defense Clifford had become a firm supporter of the cutback, should they now go along with their boss in looking for its bright side. As usual much of the military leadership decided that the new bombing policy had a lot of merit, especially in comparison with no bombing at all.
“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Wheeler, told President Johnson on April 9 that the United States had lost nothing by ceasing to bomb in the Hanoi-Haiphong region, but that there was a need to bomb Thanh Hoa–that is, return to the twentieth parallel. Given the cloudy weather that had not yet broken over the Red River Delta, relatively little bombing could be done there for a few weeks, though conditions over Thanh Hoa were not much better. It was certainly true that Thanh Hoa was increasing daily in importance as a supply, storage and transportation center. After all, it was the southernmost city in North Vietnam that no longer subject to bombing, and the North Vietnamese were quick to take advantage of that fact. Wheeler may well have guessed (probably correct) that the President would be more likely to return to the twentieth parallel than to bomb the Red River Delta. In the old game of gradualism, the objective was always the next little bit. “Secretary of Defense Clifford attempted to stave off efforts to return to the twentieth at first by downplaying enemy truck traffic through the North Vietnamese and Laotian panhandles. When the New York Times quoted him saying that he was ‘not aware of an increase in infiltration.’ Clifford felt obliged to draft a letter explaining to the President that this ‘reprehensible’ reporting was a willful misunderstanding of the way the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State had decided to handle this question. Clifford and Rusk were merely saying that there had been an increase starting before Johnson’s March 31 speech and that the increased flow had continued. ‘We are not taking the position that there has been any specific increase since March 31 because that increases the burden on the President for restricting the bombing as of that date.”…. End quote…
Rolling Thunder II was a great time to be a United States fighter-bomber cruisin’ the lower half of North Vietnam. It was also the worst time to be a North Vietnamese truck driver. Let the hunt begin…
RTR Quote for 5 April: SUN TZU, The Art of War: “Agitate the enemy and ascertain the pattern of his movement. Determine his dispositions and so ascertain the field of battle. Probe him and learn where his strength is abundant and where deficient.”… The enemy in North Vietnam was “abundant” in the Red River Delta. He was “deficient” in the panhandle…
Lest we forget… Bear
