Bear Taylor 
Good Morning: Day TWENTY of recalling Operation Rolling Thunder…Fifty Years Ago…
20 MARCH 1966 (NYT) …ON THE HOMEFRONT … The usual five pounds of news print called the Sunday New York Times…Page 1 dominated by the confrontation of Buddhists and the Ky junta in South Vietnam. A Buddhist spokesperson offered a little hope for a peaceful solution. He said: “Some people think we want to force the generals out of office. This is not true. We are very grateful to the generals. Ky brought about some stability in the last eight months and his government has made a tremendous effort to bring the regions together.”… On page 4, Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s lengthy essay “Encounter” attacked the war strategy of Winston Churchill. He said: Churchill had a delusion that the war could be won by an early bombing campaign and charged that Churchill’s strategy was “miscalculated audacity… like throwing pebbles against an opponent strong enough to throw boulders in reply. As a strategy it amounted to nothing but slow suicide– from which Britain was saved only by Hitler’s obsession with Communist Russia.” Hart said, “Churchill became little more than Roosevelt’s lieutenant.”…On page 10, the air activity over North Vietnam on March 19 was given a few inches of space. The Air Force and Navy flew 56 missions against the NVN transportation system- rolling stock, bridges, and roadways. The Navy nailed a freight train near Duong Phong Thong, north of Thanh Hoa, and a SAM site 28 miles northwest of Thanh Hoa. The Air Force continued to work over the rail lines and bridges 110 miles northwest of Hanoi. A Navy A-4 and pilot from USS Enterprise were lost without a trace a few miles southeast of Vinh. B-52s flew a mission in support of continuing skirmishes in the A Shau Valley….On the sports pages: Texas Western defeated #1Kentucky, 72-65 at College Park, Maryland in the NCAA final. BYU over NYU, 97-84, at Madison Square Garden in the NIT final under partly cloudy skies and temps in the low 50s…
20 MARCH 1966… ROLLING THUNDER… USS Enterprise lost two aircraft striking targets in the southern panhandle. The Executive Officer of VA-36, CDR JAMES ALFRED MULLIGAN flying an A-4C and leading a flight of three aircraft on a low level snakeye retarded bomb attack was hit during the attack and as he climbed up and away from the target 15 miles southwest of Vinh the heavily damaged and burning aircraft became uncontrollable forcing CDR MULLIGAN to eject a few miles short of the coast. He was severely injured in the ejection and was immediately captured upon touchdown. CDR MULLIGAN’S POW ordeal is detailed in his book, “The Hanoi Commitment.” He was released on 12 February 1973. Enterprise also lost an F-4B from VF-92 in the same area near Vinh, also in a low altitude snakeye attack. Shortly after bomb release the aircraft was struck by shrapnel and began trailing fire and fuel. LTJG JAMES S. GREENWOOD and his RIO, LTJG RICHARD RAYMOND RATZLAFF flew the aircraft back to sea before ejecting at the coastline. NVN boats closed the scene as rescue operations progressed. LTJG RATZLAFF was captured and interned as a POW. LTJG GREENWOOD was rescued by a Seasprite from the USS Worden piloted by LCDR DJ McCRACKEN. LTJG GREENWOOD was released on 12 February 1973 after seven years as a POW. USS Ticonderoga at Dixie Station lost an A-4C piloted by LTJG JERALD LEE PINNEKER in a napalm attack under FAC control in the Mekong Delta. The aircraft was observed to fly into the trees and explode after releasing napalm canisters on the active target. LTJG PINNEKER was Killed in Action and lost forever. A bad day for the Navy– one KIA and two POWS. Low altitude (100-feet) and Napalm laydown (50-feet). No easy days. No margins for error. Air combat is an unforgiving business.
RIPPLE SALVO… POWER, POSITION and RESOLVE….. “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” said Plato. Several years ago historians went back over 2000 years of recorded history and concluded that there had only been two very short periods of time when a war wasn’t being waged somewhere in the world. During my lifetime, 1935 to date, the question is not whether or not there is a war somewhere, it is how many dozen wars are being fought simultaneously around the world. I have read that the average number of ongoing conflicts at any one time in the last 50 years is forty. Dig out your map and color every country that is attacking or defending to further or protect its national interests. It will take half a box of crayolas. Forty nations, including civil wars, in mortal combat with a determined enemy is a modest estimate of the magnitude of world discord for the last fifty years. George Washington said, “In time of peace prepare for war.” Great guidance. In 1966 our country was prepared for every contingency, or so we thought. We were maintaining a large standing Army, including tripwire armies in both Germany and Korea, and were cocked and ready with both nukes and conventional capabilities. We had an Air Force and a Navy second to none. On the nuke side, we had built up an inventory of more than 23,000 nuclear weapons, and a Triad of ways to deliver them. POWER for PEACE. Fifty years ago we had nukes all over the place and we were POSITIONed forward, looking the Soviet in the eye everywhere he was, or went. We were containing Communism. Why were we successful? Why was Kennedy successful in backing down the Soviets in October 1963 and Reagan successful in ending the Cold War in 1990? We had POWER, POSITION and RESOLVE. It is not enough to only have POWER. It is not enough to only have POSITION. It is not enough to have the will to fight without the wherewithal and the position to carry the fight to enemy and annihilate him where he lives. To be successful in war and peace you must have all three. A nation needs all three to deter war, and if an over zealous foe is not deterred, that nation will need all three in spades to conquer that or any foe. POWER, POSITION and RESOLVE. Either you have it or you don’t. In Vietnam in 1966 we had POWER and POSITION, and in the beginning we had RESOLVE. Then we lost it. In late March 1966 the President was given four options for the employment of Rolling Thunder assets. He waffled… all ahead slow. Bad move. Wrong option. Too much George Ball. That is what I think.
LEST WE FORGET…Bear
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