Bear Taylor 
Good Morning: Day TWENTY-FOUR of our look back to Operation Rolling Thunder…. Fifty Years Ago…
24 MARCH 1966 (NYT)…ON THE HOMEFRONT…The air war was front page news in the Thursday NYT. The Air Force and Navy …”…continued hammering roads, bridges and military supply areas. Most targets were along the coast.” Two aircraft were lost on the 23rd: (1) an F-100F Wild Weasel was downed about 32 miles west of Vinh with the loss of two crewmen (listed as MIA), and (2) the downing of an F-105D in the same area with the loss of the pilot….Another story reported the US force level in theater at 220,000 rising to 230,000, and the total enemy force of NVA and VC at 76,000…Off to the side, in a small box was the DoD report of US KIA of another eight troops…Page 3 headline: “Vietnam Foes Start 56-hour Fast at Queens College.” The fast was started on March 23 “…by 50 students protesting United States involvement in the Vietnam War.” A 19-year old student from the Students for a Democratic Society explained the purpose of the fast: “…to invoke some sort of awakening effect on the campus.”…The President gave a speech to the Foreign Service Institute at the State Department. “Your job…where ever you go, is peace. That is the task that faces all of us today…” The speech was about Europe and NATO, but the President had a few things to say about the war. “War has been deterred not only because of our integrated military power but because of the political unity of purpose to which that power has been directed…The mightiest arsenal in the world will deter no aggressor who knows his victims are too divided to decide, and too unready to respond.”…. Editorial page letter to the editor writing about the proposed changes in the Selective Service and draft deferment procedures to include an aptitude/knowledge test…Thomas Reed of Stonington, CT wrote: “Thank you for printing the questions asked of college students who do not wish to be drafted. I am happy to say that twenty years after barely squeaking through a second rate university, I got all but one of the questions right. So if I were not already disqualified on the basis of age, infirmity, immorality and timidity, I could join the new aristocracy of 2B2F (Too Bright To Fight).”…
24 MARCH 1966…ROLLING THUNDER…Light flying day due to weather…Air Force lost an F-105D from the 421st TFS out of Korat. CAPTAIN ROBERT EDWARD BUSH was Killed in Action. He was hit by ground fire and crashed on the coast near Dong Hoi. His remains were found in 1988 and identified 1989… In the absence of 24 March copy, space is available here to pick up a 16 September strike on a SAM site near Thanh Hoa, and the loss of a very senior and well known Air Force strike leader….
16 September 1965… A flight of F-105Ds from the 67th TFS at Korat were executing a low level strike on a SAM site north of the Thanh Hoa bridge and were met with intense ground fire in the target area. Two aircraft were lost and both pilots ejected and were taken prisoner. Leading the flight and first to eject was LCOL JAMES ROBINSON RISNER, who recorded eight MiG kills in his 110 combat missions during the Korean War. He was downed on his 55th mission in Southeast Asia. LCOL ROBBIE RISNER, as the senior Air Force POW, would share leadership responsibilities with CDR JIM STOCKDALE among the POWs in North Vietnamese prisons and suffer extreme torture before his release on 12 February 1973. LCOL RISNER was awarded the Air Force Cross and returned to operational flying and command before retiring as a Brigadier General in 1976. He authored a book entitled “The Passing of the Night” in 1973. The second Thunderchief pilot to eject and be captured was MAJOR RAYMOND JAMES MERRITT, who flew 100 F-84 missions in Korea and was on his 40th mission over North Vietnam when shot down. He was returned to the United States on 12 February 1973.
RIPPLE SALVO… LESSONS FROM THE BIRDS… The birds have a lot of lessons for strike-fighter pilots since both are hunted species. When I came home from the war in 1968 I enjoyed countless free lunches with the service clubs of the Central Valley in California by making my little speech about the value of learning from the birds. I grew up in Baltimore and duck hunting was a normal sports adventure for all my friends. Their fathers prized their racks of weapons, including shotguns for birding. My dad played golf, so I spent my weekends smashing little white balls until they smiled. I did not envy the duck hunters who went forth in the early dark, cold and rain to sit in freezing blinds and shoot at the low flying mallards so abundant around the Chesapeake Bay and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. I got the message. When the weather is nice the ducks are high and out of range, unless suckered in on decoys… So… the smart ducks avoided low ceilings and were alert for deception and decoys. Decoys are flak traps in the bombing business. I did go afield with dove hunters a few times and came away with a vital lesson. Keep it moving. Doves are great at jinking, the constant back and forth and up and down that fouls up a gunner’s guess on where the little birds will be in the next second. Jink to survive. Another great lesson: do not be predictable. Turkey hunters told me that turkeys are predictable — they take off downhill. Pheasants are predictable too. They come up out of the corn rows into the wind, then turn downwind to speed away. Your best shot at a pheasant is when they are making that turn downwind. Get them in the turn, I was told. Lessons learned: (1) altitude is a strike-fighters advantage and the lower he goes, the more vulnerable he becomes. Don’t fly under low overcasts. That sky belongs to the hunters (2) if the target looks lucrative, maybe it isn’t, and is bait instead. (3) Making multiple passes is risky since the longer you are in a gunners field of view, the better his chances of figuring you out. (4) never make the same attack twice. (5) speed, and movement in multiple planes, is life.
In more than 200 trips, I never went across the North Vietnam beach, feet dry, that I didn’t use the LESSONS FROM THE BIRDS to improve my chances of hitting the target and getting back, feet wet, to attack another day. The strike-fighter who thinks he is only a hunter, and chooses to ignore the fact that he is also the hunted, will get bagged. Be a birdwatcher…
LEST WE FORGET…Bear
