Bear Taylor 
Good Morning: Day TWENTY-ONE of a long look back to Operation Rolling Thunder…Fifty Years Ago…
21 MARCH 1966 (NYT)…ON THE HOMEFRONT… Page 1 featured a picture of New Yorkers strolling in Central Park in overcoats on the first day of Spring. A chilly Monday. Big story focused on “Drugs a Growing Campus Problem.” Drug use at San Francisco State and University of California, Berkeley was estimated to have risen from 10% to 50% of students who admitted some use of drugs. However, the reporter stated that: “No one knows how many students take drugs, but everyone agrees the number is rising and that it has been for several years.” He added, “No one knows what to do about it.” The drugs of choice are pot and LSD. One young student was queried on why he used drugs. His answer: “Why? No reason not to.”…The recovery of the fourth “lost” 20 Megaton H-bomb in the Med off Palomares suffered a setback– it slipped away from recovery cables and tumbled into a canyon of mud… try again…Page 10..a short article worth noting: Air Force Airlift Command aircraft are piling in at Okinawa and the base is operating around-the-clock. Now called 24/7. Writer Robert Trumbull put it this way: “With 14 huge planes waiting on the ground and 10 more on the way, it was just an average Sunday (Mar 20) afternoon at the Airlift Command post here.” Take-offs and landings were logged every 20 minutes while hosting traffic between Travis, California and Cam Ranh Bay in SVN. Between March 1 and 19 the traffic included 19,039 passengers and 4000 tons of cargo; a rate of 1000 passengers and 300 tons of cargo every day. Other destinations in Southeast Asia were identified as Tan Son Knut and Na Trang…In air operations, Air Force and Navy air operations included 81 missions in support of large ground operations in South Vietnam about 240 miles north of Saigon… Also on page 1 and jumped to page 66 was a summary story of the growing Palestinian refugees still looking for a home after 18 years on the move. “Four lands bordering on Israel serve as host countries to the displaced Palestinians…” and the total number of refugees has increased to 1.2 million due to births. Jordan is hosting 698,000; the UAR (Gaza Strip) 302,000; Syria 162,000; and Lebanon 162,000. …
21 MARCH 1966…ROLLING THUNDER…USS Enterprise/VA-94 lost two A4Cs and two pilots. LT FRANK RAY COMPTON and LCDR JOHN MARK TIDERMAN were wingmen in a three plane strike and disappeared while the lead aircraft was penetrating a 1000-foot overcast to commence a run on a Rolling Thunder target near Dong Hoi. While there was SAM activity in the area, the more likely cause of the loss of two experienced warriors was a mid-air collision. Neither LT COMPTON or LCDR TIDERMAN were recovered and are listed as Killed in Action… Gone but not forgotten… Udorn based 45th TRS lost an RF-101C on a photo recce mission off the coast of North Vietnam. CAPTAIN ARTHUR WILLIAM BUTER was hit by ground fire while flying at high speed at 2000-feet in the area of Hon Me Island. The aircraft burst into flames and CAPTAIN BUTER was forced to eject. He was immediately captured and was a POW until his release on 12 February 1973. One other aviator was lost on 21 March 1966: MAJOR JOSEPH BURNETT FEARNO, USAF was Killed in Action when his O-1E Bird Dog engine failed and he crashed in heavy jungle in South Vietnam. One crew member survived.
RIPPLE SALVO… FLAMING DART I (and a Bear Memory or two) … On 7 February 1965 your humble host was suffering through calculus at the Navy Post-Graduate School in Monterey. Task Force 77, Carrier Striking Force, Seventh Fleet was on station in the South China Sea, where every calculus student wished to be. Carriers Ranger, Coral Sea and Hancock were primed and ready to execute a retaliatory strike on North Vietnam in the event the Vietcong struck another American base and barracks in SVN, as they had in December 1964. It was at that point that the President set the table for what would become Rolling Thunder. Flaming Dart I was the retaliatory plan on the shelf when the Vietcong attacked Pleiku and Camp Holloway in SVN on 7 February 1965. The retaliatory attack on North Vietnam targets was on. The first since the original attack in 1964 (Pierce Arrow).
The Carrier Air Wing Commander who led the strike was CAG-21, COMMANDER WARREN H.”BOSS” SELLS, my first XO in my first squadron, VA-12, “The Flying Ubangis” at NAS Cecil Field, Jacksonville, Florida. Commander Sells was the epitome of Executive Officers. Tough as nails, Mensa smart, relentless task master, quick to praise, careful and clever in junior officer reinstruction, a consummate aviator and flight leader, and fun to be around when he wanted you around. A teacher and motivator who ran a text book school for JOs…When you are a JO the best thing that can happen to you is to come under the eye, heart and tutelage of such a man. I digress… (XO, thanks for the instruction and the example…luvyaman)… back to Flaming Dart. The targets in the Dong Hoi area were NVA barracks at Chanh Hoa and 90 aircraft from three carriers tore through low overcasts, poor visibility and monsoonal rains on 7 February 1966, as ordered, to obtain much better results than one might expect from a 90-plane group grope going bombing under a 700-foot overcast… 23 0f 90 buildings were damaged or destroyed….The USS Coral Sea lost two aircraft and one pilot. LCDR ROBERT HARPER SHUMAKER, flying an F-8U from VF-154 on a flak suppression mission, was hit recovering from his attack and the aircraft became uncontrollable. LCDR SHUMAKER was forced to eject over land. He suffered a broken back and was captured to become America’s second POW (LTJG EVERETT ALVAREZ, who was shot down in August 1964 was #1). LCDR SHUMAKER survived 8 years as a POW and returned to the United States on 12 February 1973. He went on to finish his naval service as a Rear Admiral… oorah… The second loss from the Coral Sea strike group was an A-4C from VA-153 piloted by LT WILLIAM T. “BILL” MAJORS on a flak suppression strike with CBU-24s. He cleared the target climbed, turned seaward and after going “feet wet” his engine quit and could not be re-lit. He ejected, was rescued by an Air Force helicopter, and returned to duty. We would be squadron mates a year later as hardcore instructors in VA-125 at Lemoore. Flaming Dart was the prelude to Rolling Thunder. This look back on Rolling Thunder would be incomplete without this short summary and future mention of the sacrifices and events of Rolling Thunder 1965… when my project is complete, I will have a modest record of the 1000 days of Rolling Thunder…
ADMIN NOTE:… I enjoin you to attach your Vietnam War memories to this journal…I have made it as easy as good sense allows…once you are in to “comment,” you are also in as an “author” with your own file… get on the coattails of ROLLINTHUNDERREMEMBERED and leave your mark in the history books…
LEST WE FORGET… Bear
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Regarding the recovery of the fourth “lost” 20 Megaton H-bomb in the Med off Palomares, Navy diver Carl Brashear had his leg crushed in a deck accident and lost the lower part of his left leg.
Retired Master Chief Carl Maxie Brashear, the Navy’s first black deep sea diver, whose refusal to quit despite his physical trauma inspired the movie “Men of Honor.”
Brashear died July 26, 2006, of heart and respiratory failure at the Portsmouth Naval Medical Center. It’s the same hospital where he recovered from a shipboard accident in 1966 that cost him his leg. He was 75.