Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #793… ON 4 APRIL 1968 DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. WAS ASSASSINATED IN MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE. ON 5 JUNE 1968 SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY WAS MORTALLY WOUNDED BY AN ASSASSIN IN THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL IN LOS ANGELES AND DIED THE FOLLOWING DAY. The two months between these infamous dates were days of turmoil and anger unleashed in America. The winds of civil disobedience and rebellion were gathering as Bobby Kennedy fell… but first…
GOOD MORNING… Day SEVEN HUNDRED NINETY-THREE of a remembrance of America at home and at war during the years of Rolling Thunder…
HEAD LINES from THE NEW YORK TIMES on Tuesday, 7 MAY 1968…
THE WAR: Page 1: “VIETCONG STEP UP ATTACKS IN SAIGON–AIR BASE POUNDED–ROCKETS AND MORTAR SHELLS FALL ON POWER STATION AND POLICE HEADQUARTERS–Sharp Action in Cholon–M.P.’s Under Fire As They Try To Protect American Troop Billets Near Field”… “The Vietcong stepped up attacks on this tense capital during the night lobbing mortar shells and rockets on Saigon’s Tansonnhut air base, the national military police headquarters, a power station and South Vietnamese military installations. With sporadic clashes breaking out through the city. Vietnamese reinforcements rushed into Cholon, the Chinese quarter, where a police station has been under ground and mortar attack since dawn. There were no reports of casualties. Sharp fighting has also broken out at a bridge in Cholon that has been under ground attack since shortly before 4 A.M. … In the southwestern fringe of the city near Cholon, helicopter gunships and tactical fighter aircraft rocketed and bombed enemy positions in a slum area just beyond the race track. The attacks continued after dawn…. ‘There’s a hell of a lot of destruction there, a four by six block area is all on fire,’ said Captain William A. Knapp, a 30 year-old advisor to the South Vietnamese Airborne Division. ‘We’re conducting a house-to-house search just outside the cemetery and we’re getting a lot of enemy fire… there are a lot of explosions going on all over there from the ammunition that’s stored in the houses.’… 14 Vietnamese citizens in Saigon have died and 235 wounded as a result of the Saigon attacks…23 enemy soldiers have been killed.”… Page 3: “PRESIDENT CONFERS ON NEW FIGHTING–CONCERNED OVER IMPACT ON PEACE NEGOTIATIONS”… “…Administration sources said the widespread enemy assaults with continuing heavy infiltration of North Vietnamese forces was discouraging American hopes for a mutual de-escalation of the war. But the President was still planning to send his negotiation team to Paris on Thursday, barring an unforeseen turn of events.”…
Page 1: “PROGRESS IS MADE ON SPOT FOR TALKS–U.S. AND NORTH VIETNAM SAID TO HAVE AGREED UPON A FORMER HOTEL IN PARIS”… “The United States and North Vietnam moved today toward agreement on a building in the heart of Paris as the site for their preliminary talks on the war. The talks are to begin Friday or shortly thereafter…. The Majestic Hotel was the only site proposed to the United States and North Vietnam by the French Government….Neither the Americans or North Vietnamese seem to have felt that the violent student demonstrations that erupted at the Sorbonne last Friday and continued with increased violence in several parts of the city today.”… Page 1: “STUDENTS IN PARIS BATTLE THE POLICE–SCORES INJURED AS RADICALS RIOT OVER DRIVE TO WIN MORE CONTROL IN SCHOOLS”… “Bloody pitched battles between New Left student demonstrators and mobile riot policemen turned the Latin Quarter into a battle zone today…at mid-afternoon 40 policemen and more than 50 students had been injured in clashes…where students bombarded the police with paving stones and homemade gasoline bombs from behind barricades of overturned cars.”… Page 1: “COLUMBIA REOPENING PICKETED–CLASSROOM ATTENDANCE DECLINES– Effects of Strike In Doubt–Police Explain Use of Force”… “Police marched outside a dozen classroom buildings on Columbia University’s troubled campus yesterday in an attempt to dissuade teachers and students from entering even for informal discussions… The New York police department reported to Mayor Lindsay yesterday that it had met force with force when it cleared demonstrators from five buildings at Columbia University last week.”… Page 2: “President Johnson to Create Committee On Presidency To ‘Work On Ways To Improve The Office of the President”…
Page 9: “U.S. Court Upholds Conviction of Cassius Clay In Draft Defiance”… Page 29: “McCarthy and Kennedy Agree On 22 of 26 Issues Since ’65 Congressional Quarterly Shows”… Page 27: “Kennedy Lead Fades In Two Polls–Surveys Register a Decline In Senators Popularity”… Page 33: “College Students Hold Sit-Ins To Press Demands On 3 States”… Page 36: “The Poor People Of The South: Why Some Want to Join The March to Washington”…
7 MAY 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times… Page 7: “In the air war over the north a Navy Vigilante was downed by ground fire Sunday in the vicinity of the city of Vinh. The Navy said that the crew was listed as missing. (The downed aviators were: LT GILES NORRINGTON and LT RICHARD TANGERMANN from RVAH-1 embarked in USS Enterprise… both were captured and interned for the duration of the war as POWs.) It brought to 833 the number of American planes lost over North Vietnam.”…
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chis Hobson) There were four fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 7 May 1968…
(1) CAPTAIN H.G. HAYES was flying an A-1J of the 6th ACS and 14th ACW out of Pleiku and was hit by ground fire on his fourth strafing pass on a gun position and troops. CAPTAIN HAYES was able to fly the faltering aircraft out of the target area near Chu Lai before ejecting to be rescued by an Army helicopter…
(2) LCDR E.S. CHRISTENSEN and LTJG W. J. KRAMER were flying an F-4B of the VF-92 Silver Kings embarked in USS Enterprise on a combat air patrol north of Vinh but below the 19th parallel when engaged by “several” MiGs. The engagement was a draw until LCDR CHRISTENSEN was forced out by a low fuel state . As he rolled wings level to head for the tanker the Navy Phantom was hit by a MIG-21’s Atoll missile. LCDR CHRISTENSEN and LTJG KRAMER ejected a few miles at sea and were eventually recovered by a Navy SAR helicopter… MiGs SOUTH OF VINH…
(3) LCDR PAUL WARREN PAINE was flying an A-4F of the VA-113 Stingers embarked in USS Enterprise on a RESCAP mission to cover downed aviators CHRISTENSIN and KRAMER. After the SAR helo recovery of the RVAH-1 aviators, LCDR PAINE returned to the carrier. On his first pass he was waved off due to a “fouled deck.” He turned downwind to come around for a second approach and at the 180-degree position the A-4F inexplicable nosed down and shipmate PAUL “Pete” PAINE was killed when he ejected at 100-feet, outside of the safe ejection envelope due to the sink rate and attitude of the Skyhawk at the moment of ejection. His body was recovered… LCDR PAINE was the Air Wing NINE LSO and flew with the VA-113 Stingers on a daily basis. He was a squadron mate and the loss was deeply felt and is vividly recalled today the 50th anniversary of his last flight… Fate is the hunter…
(4) A C-7B Caribou of the 537th TAS and 483rd TAW out of Phu Cat lost engine power on takeoff and in the attempt to return of landing crashed with five crew members aboard. All survived the crash…
Humble Host flew #155 and #156. The day flight was a dandy with bombs on trucks in Happy Valley that left six fires and four burning trucks. The night mission was to provide Shrike coverage for an A-6 mission to a transhipment point target west of Vinh. I put a Shrike down the throat of a signal just east of Vinh and returned to recover on Enterprise and log my 500th arrested landing… but there was no joy on 7 May… another empty chair in the ready room… and no time to think about it…press on…
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MI/POW) ON 7 MAY DURING THE FOUR YEARS OF THE OPERATION…
1965… NONE…
1966…NONE…
1967… NONE…
1968… LCDR PAUL WARREN PAINE, USN… (KIA)…
RIPPLE SALVO… #793… Humble Host offers the following summary of the condition and mood of America in the month of May 1968 while more than 400 American fighting men were dying every week in Vietnam… From Jules Witcover’s The Year the Dream Died… (pg 212-13)… I quote…
“It was now barely five weeks since the assassination of Dr. King. The unrest on college campuses continued into May–at Princeton, the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Cheney State College in Pennsylvania, Southern Illinois, Roosevelt University in Chicago and San Francisco State. Later in the month, there was further upheaval on the Columbia campus when Mark Rudd (SDS activist) and four other students rejected and ordered to appear at the dean’s office to face disciplinary charges and called for another rally. As passions were rekindled, students occupied Hamilton Hall again, police were summoned again and after some peaceful arrests, the rioting and general mayhem broke out once more, lasting to the early hours of the next morning. In the end, police arrested 177 more participants and sixty-eight individuals were injured, seventeen of them police officers.
“In New Orleans, a jury of nine whites and three blacks convicted Rap Brown of violating the Federal Firearms Act for carrying a rifle on a plane from New York to New Orleans in August 1967. The judge gave him the maximum sentence of five years in jail and a fine of $2,000. And in Baltimore on May 24, Philip Berrigan was sentenced to six years and two others got lighter terms for despoiling draft records. They also pleaded not guilty to charges that a week earlier they and six others including Berrigan’s brother Daniel, also a Catholic priest, had stolen 600 individual draft records from the Selective Service in Catonsville, a Baltimore suburb, and burned them in a nearby parking lot (Humble Host grew up in Catonsville and that was my Draft Board’s office.)
“Ten days later the Supreme Court upheld an amendment to the draft law making it a criminal offense to burn or otherwise mutilate a draft card. In Boston, Providence and New York, federal officials began hauling draft evaders out of churches in which they had sought sanctuary. Meanwhile, in courts at all levels around the country, students and other protesters of the war were filing suits against General Hershey and the Selective Service System to bar their reclassification in the draft if they were found to be engaged in antiwar demonstrations.
“At Resurrection City in Washington, about 1,500 demonstrators had arrived in mid-May and joined the encampment. Rains pummeled the temporary residents and the camp soon became mired in mud. But the Poor People’s Campaign persisted and endured. Bayard Rustin, executive director of the A Philip Randolph Institute and longtime civil rights and antiwar organizer, agreed to coordinate a massive Memorial Day demonstration, later changed to June 10.
“On May 21, Jesse Jackson led a silent two-mile march of 300 Resurrection City campers from the campsite to Capitol Hill, but they were barred from admission to the House of Representatives’ visitors ‘ galley for lack of proper passes. By the time about forty were admitted, the House had adjourned. There were other marches and sit-ins over the next days at the Departments of Agriculture, Justice and Health, Education and Welfare and the Supreme Court, but their impact was undermined by dissension and controversy within the encampment.
“On May 22, about 200 black youths, most of them members of Chicago and Detroit street gangs, were sent home. ‘They went around and beat up on our white people,’ explained the Reverend James Bevel, a Poor People’s Campaign official. ‘They interfered with the workers and were hostile to the press. We had to get them out.’ On May 25, leaders of the non-black groups–Mexican-Americans, Appalachian poor whites and American Indians–bitterly complained they were being badly treated by blacks. And Rustin himself, who was black, soon came under attack within the campaign as an ‘outsider.’ “…
“Although the Vietnam peace talks finally began on May 10, the news from the war zone continued to get worse. There were new intensified attacks by the Vietcong on Saigon and other cities in the South. In the week of May 5, a record 562 Americans were killed and another 2,153 wounded seriously enough to require hospitalization. The U.S. fatalities now had reached 22,951. Before the month was out, Johnson asked the Congress for nearly $4 billion more for pursuit of the war as the peace talks dragged on with no substantial progress.”… End quote…
In May 1968 the turmoil on the home front and in the war zone –together– made America a caldron of disaffection and dissent from the laws and leadership of the country… Then it got worse…
RTR quote for 7 May: ERWIN ROMMEL: “In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it.” ( Fitting guidance for an armed recce mission in Rolling Thunder. It doesn’t get any better than that.)…
Lest we forget… Bear
