Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #764… A JOSEPH ALSOP REPORT FROM THE MARINE BASTION and an ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORT ON THE ROLE OF AIR POWER in support of the 6,000 Marines “holding the fort”……”The 71 days between the start of the siege on January 21 and March 31, U.S. warplanes dropped 95,430 tons of explosives around the base in the northwest corner of South Vietnam. That was about one-sixth the total amount dropped in the entire Korean war. The fighter-bomber pilots flew a total of 21,901 sorties in support of Khe Sanh during those 71 days and nights, an average of 308 per day…”… but first…
GOOD MORNING: Day SEVEN HUNDRED SIXTY-FOUR of a commemoration of the Vietnam war with a focus on the air war code-named OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… a daily journal corresponding to those days FIFTY-YEARS AGO…
HEAD LINES from the OGDEN (UTAH) STANDARD-EXAMINER (AP/UPI) on Monday 8 April 1968… FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY
Page 1: “WIDOW JOINS MEMORIAL MARCH FOR DR. KING”… “Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Memphis today and joined the silent march of thousands of Negroes and civil rights leaders in honor of her slain husband. Mrs. king and three of her four children joined the march, which had halted a few minutes after it started to wait for her, at the corner of main and Beale…Mrs. King was wearing a black suit and black lace veil.’… Page 1: “UNEASY CALM REIGNS IN CITIES–AS TROOPERS KEEP CONTROL–Death Toll Now 25 After Riots”… “Violence, looting and arson scourged sections of Baltimore and Pittsburg Sunday, but Army troops and National Guardsmen rushed in to quell the disorders, enforce an uneasy calm today. Washington and Chicago, hardest hit by the violence which broke out in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Thursday night, were quiet. Authorities turned to the task of trying to provide homes and food for the victims of the riots….”… Page 1: “HOMAGE GIVEN RIGHTS LEADER”… “Many thousands of Negroes and whites eulogized Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at church services, outdoor observances and quiet marches in cities and countries across the nation Sunday. The national day of mourning, as proclaimed by President Johnson, was noted around the world, including words by Pope Paul VI in Rome and soldiers gathered for a solemn service in a steel hut in Danang, South Vietnam.”… Page 2: “FINAL TRIBUTE TOMORROW–SORROWING AMERICANS DELUGE ATLANTA TO ATTEND KING FUNERAL”… “…From across the nation they came, in chartered buses, by car, by bus, by train. White Black, rich,poor, famous and unknown–they came from the parks of Mississippi, strife-torn cities, Hollywood, state capitals, Congress and consulates.”… Page 2: “LBJ ASKS–HASTEN PASSAGE OF CIVIL RIGHTS BILL”… “President Johnson has dispatched urgent appeals to congressional leaders for swift passage of his civil rights bill.”… Page 4: “RIOTS FORGE VAST CHANGES IN BLACK-WHITE CAPITAL”… “Down the mall from the bright bubble of the Capitol dome to the brooding figure in the Lincoln Memorial, Washington looks the same. But a deep change has taken place.”…
Page 1: “ISRAELIS CHASE ARABS FROM JORDANIAN DESERT”…”Israeli troops in helicopters chased a band of Arab commandos out of the Negev Desert and pursued them six miles inside Jordan south of the Dead Sea today, the Israeli Army reported. The Israelis withdrew after infighting a number of casualties and blowing up part of an Arab guerrilla complex, the Army added.”… Page 1: “PLANE CRASHED IN LONDON–103 OF 126 SAFE”… “A BOAC jetliner with 126 persons aboard crashed in flames today on a runway at London airport today just after taking off…The plane made a left turn and attempted to land on a cross runway. On impact the port wing ran off…”.. Page 1: “INDIANA CITY COUNTS 43 DEATHS IN BLAST”… “The death toll rose to 43 today in searchers continued sifting through the rubble of buildings shattered by explosions and fire in crowded business district of Richmond, Indiana last weekend. Twenty-eight bodies have been identified. State police list 19 persons missing.”…
Page 5: “GAINS IN VIETNAM TOLD TO LBJ BY WESTMORELAND”… “General William C. Westmoreland has picture the Unite States–as it faces possible peace talks with North Vietnam–as operating from a position of military advantage. Westmoreland, ending two days of intensive talks with President Johnson and other senior officials, told White House newsmen Sunday that ‘militarily we have never been in better relative position in South Vietnam.”…
8 APRIL 1968…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… OGDEN S-E, 9 April 1968, page 5:
“AIR BLOWS TURNED KHE SANH TIDE?” (AP)… “Senior U.S. officers say the tremendous amount of American air power thrown against the North Vietnamese around Khe Sanh helped break the 71-day siege of the Marine combat zone and prevented the enemy from launching a mass attack. The 71 days between the start of the siege on January 21 and March 31, U.S. warplanes dropped 95,430 tons of explosives around the base in the northwest corner of South Vietnam. That was about one-sixth the total amount dropped in the entire Korean War. U.S. fighter-bomber pilots flew a total of 21,901 sorties in support of Khe Sanh during the 71 days, an average of 308 a day. A sortie is one flight by one plane. B-52s FLEW… Perhaps even more significant were the 425 missions flown by the Air Force’s giant B-52 saturation bombers, each of which can carry up to 25 tons of bombs. Usually 3 to 12 of the big bombers fly a mission, and the B-52s dropped a total of more than half the total tonnage that rained down.
‘We really just leveled that area,’ said one general. ‘Never in the history of warfare was there ever such a concentrated bombing campaign during such a period. I think the North Vietnamese pulled out of Khe Sanh gradually and decided not to try a mass attack. There are several reasons for this, I believe, but I’ll settle on the obvious one. It was the tremendous amount of weight we put on them, B-52s and tactical air. I think it was part of the enemy’s original plan to launch a mass attack. But he never dig get quite to the point where he had the muscle to pull it off. Khe Sanh never looked like a soft touch to the military.” …MAKES NO CLAIM… ‘We have no way of evaluating the damage done by the bombing. I suspect he suffered high personnel casualties. But I can’t make any claim. But from a military analysis, the amount of firepower must have had a tremendous effect. This is the most significant deterrent, the weight of firepower we pour on the guy.’
“An Allied relief force lifted the siege of Khe Sanh last week and during the first week of sweeps around the base, South Vietnamese and American troops found the bodies of 200 North Vietnamese who had been killed by air strikes or artillery, ammunition and fuel. U.S. pilots reported thousands of secondary explosions, including 300 in a single day, indicating that their bombs set off ammunition or fuel dumps… (Read Joseph Alsop’s report from Khe Sanh in Ripple Salvo below)…
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft losses in Southeast Asia on 8 April 1968…
From the compilation “34 TFS/F-105 History” by Howie Plunkett: 08-Apr-68: “Thunderchief pilots flying from the 355th TFS struck a petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) storage area 12 miles north-northeast of Mu Gia Pass.”… “Using 750-pound bombs, 388th TFW pilots destroyed the eastern approach to a bridge 38 miles southeast of the coastal city of Dong Hoi…. The pilots were in Scuba flight from the 34th TFS…they took off from Korat at 1240 and flew for 2 hours 50 minutes. The line up was: #1 Major Donald Hodge; #2 Major Sam Armstrong; #3 LCOL Robert Smith, 34th TFS Commander; and, #4 LCOL Red Evans, 44th TFS Commander. This was Major Armstrong’s 94th combat mission.”…From Colonel Armstrong’s 100-mission log:
“We were fragged to hit a bridge just north of the DMZ in Pack I. Surprisingly enough, they cleared us in to hit it. Don Hodge hit long. I hit on the approach, and Bob Smith hit it dead center. They shot some 85-mm at us on the way up and some 37-mm after we dropped. It was the first time I had seen flak in Pack I. I also had a SAM launch light on for 10-seconds”….
08-Apr-68: “The 388th TFW celebrated its second anniversary at Korat RTAFB with a full round of base activities and special events, including a base parade…During these two years, F-105s of the wing flew 39,773 combat sorties of which the majority were over North Vietnam.”… oohrah…
Humble Host flew #136. Planned, briefed and led a daylight division mine seeding mission to the inlet just north of Cape Mui Ron. Shallow dive east to west, four A-4Fs with 8 Mk-82 DSTs each, to put a field of 32 mines (splashes) in the gap… Shot at but missed … Led a single pass strafing run on a large WBLC (large junk) before returning to Enterprise… BDA TBD… mines: the weapons that wait…
RIPPLE SALVO… #764… JOSEPH ALSOP’s “VISIT TO KHE SANH BUNKERS PROVIDES PEACEFUL SURPRISE”… Byline: Khe Sanh, South Vietnam…
“The big cargo helicopter circles down slowly, after dropping its heavy external load, and the passengers tense themselves for the big moment. But the general scurry outside the chopper’s open rear slows to a near saunter after a few steps. Nothing is happening. The sun is shining fiercely. Running, even walking briskly in a flak jacket is precisely like doing the hardest kind of exercise in a perambulating sauna bath. This important fact, plus the unexpected general peacefulness, is the first thing one notices about ‘the agony of Khe Sanh.’
“Along the road to the CP there are surprises for anyone who has been reading the lurid, sentimental hogwash about the long, hard tedious siege of Khe Sanh. A giant Negro Marine has taken an improvised shower, for instance, and is now doing a little personal laundry, looking oddly domesticated version of a late Hellenistic bronze. To be sure, just about everything that was above ground in the old base as one remembers it has now been smashed to flinders. Life here is in trenches and bunkers when things get rough. To be sure, grim wrecks of cargo planes and choppers line the air strip. To be sure, there is \the occasional thin, menacing whine and crump, somewhere in the distance (for this is a very big base indeed) and someone shouts ‘incoming,’ and everyone takes cover for minute or two.
“Above all, the thunder and smoke of war surround the whole Khe Sanh perimeter, for the artillery, the shark-nosed fighter-bombers, the B-52s unseen, unseeable earth shakers and siege breakers seldom give the suspected enemy positions more than a quarter-hour’s peace. maybe the best summation i offered by the Khe Sanh commander, Col. David Lownds, of the 25th Marine Regiment, who remarks:
“”We’re a mite short on ecstasy, but allowing for war being war, we’re a mite short of agony, too.’ Barring his carefully cultivated handle-bar mustache, Col. Lownds exactly resembles an exceptionally wiry New England schoolmaster in early middle-aged–which he might well have been, for he comes from a Rhode island mill town. He has work to do, for this is D-Day of ‘Pegasus,’ The fairly grandiose operation to break the Khe Sanh siege, and the colonel must put his battalion commanders into the picture.”
“So we set off at a brisk clip in the blistering heat, still in our perambulating saunas, on the long walk to the CP of the 1st Battalion of the 9th Marines. The men of the 1st of the 9th are to be the first to move out of the perimeter, after the 1st Air Cavalry Division, with all its fierce power, has leapfrogged down the mountain road toward the base. So Col. Lownds has much to tell his battalion CO, Lt Col. J.J. Cahill.
“While the two colonels converse intently in the CP’s patio (and that is what they really call it) M/Sgt. Agrippa M. Smith, a vast veteran with over a quarter of a century of service, proudly shows a sweat-drenched visitor “my tunnels.” They all but resemble the incomparable dwarf delvings in Tolkien’s ‘Rings’ cycle, but, above all, the tunnels are gratefully cool.
“So the long day passes, with the almost ceaseless leap for a trench, the almost ceaseless roar of tons of metal pouring down upon the enemy and more than occasional odd fact learned. At one battalion, Col. Lownds is offered a black crayon on a box top, by a young Jewish corpsman locally celebrated as an artist, of the war-shattered landscape of one of the outpost hills, with Old Glory flying in the foreground. At another, one hears the story of the war-wise old gunnery sergeant who gathered up just about all the base’s flour, sugar and shortening on the very eve of the siege and, thus, can still make pastries for his men in a bunker kitchen.” …PICNIC MEAL… “As night falls, Ed Castagna, Louis Rann and one or two others of Col. Lownds’ staff gather in a bunker for talk and a picnic meal while the colonel continued on his rounds. ‘How has it really been?’ is the obvious question. ‘Mean and tough, and the worst of it has been not being able to go after the enemy,’ is the average answer.
“Those present are convinced for strongly persuasive reasons that the enemy has tried to storm the base in earnest at least three times, but has fallen back each time because all of his point element was cut to ribbons. The enemy’s counted dead, in those past three months, have numbered above 1,300, and on our side, too, not a few have fallen.
“In their memory, Col. Lownds keeps about him Douglas Mac Arthur’s words for the honored dead: ‘They died unquestioning and uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts and on their lips the hope that we could go on to victory.”…
Lest we forget… Bear
