History Friday

[M2]

Saigon was falling. President Ford was playing golf.

By March 1975, the situation in Vietnam, and South Vietnam specifically, was dire. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, the last in a long line of military dictators propped up by the United States was, according to historian Edward Rasen, “making decisions based on his daily astrological chart, while Graham Martin, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, had terminated daily CIA briefings, threatened to ‘cut the balls off’ CIA Saigon station chief Tom Polgar, and was becoming increasingly detached from the reality on the ground.”

Amid the rapidly accumulating military losses in South Vietnam, President Gerald Ford was in Palm Springs, California, on an eight-day Easter holiday. Staying with his golfing buddy, Fred C. Wilson, founder of the Trans World Insurance Company, Ford played several rounds of golf, including one with Bob Hope, Leon Parma and William G. Salatich, president of the Gillette Company.

On March 31, 1975, Ford dodged reporters by breaking out into an all-out sprint when asked by a reporter what he was doing about the “military losses of the South Vietnam Government,” according to a report by the New York Times.

Receiving a report on April 5 from Gen. Fred Weyand, Army chief of staff and former commander of the Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), who had just departed Saigon after assessing the situation, the president was told amid the luxe background of Palm Springs that “the current military situation is critical and the probability of the survival of South Vietnam as a truncated nation is marginal at best.”

Just 19 days later, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissenger, in an urgent cable to Graham Martin, U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, wrote that his “ass isn’t covered. I can assure you I will be hanging several yards higher than you when this is all over”...

Full article at title link

 

[jonlbs]

Was lucky enough to fly these heroes home from the WW2 museum in New Orleans today. Special flight and will not forget their stories. They were so humble that they thanked us for volunteering for the flight when we were all there to thank them. Greatest Generation is an understatement.

 

[arg]

These were fun. Is 30 years long enough to be history

Better video of how it worked

 

[M2]

Appropriate for this Memorial Day...

World War II Bomber Crash Left 11 Dead. Four Are Finally Coming Home.

As the World War II bomber Heaven Can Wait was hit by enemy fire off the Pacific island of New Guinea on March 11, 1944, the co-pilot managed a final salute to flyers in an adjacent plane before crashing into the water.

All 11 men aboard were killed. Their remains, deep below the vast sea, were designated as non-recoverable.

Yet four crew members’ remains are beginning to return to their hometowns after a remarkable investigation by family members and a recovery mission involving elite Navy divers who descended 200 feet (61 meters) in a pressurized bell to reach the sea floor.

Staff Sgt. Eugene Darrigan, the crew’s radio operator, was buried with military honors and community support on Saturday in his hometown of Wappingers Falls, New York, more than eight decades after leaving behind his wife and baby son.

The plane’s bombardier, 2nd Lt. Thomas Kelly, was to be buried Monday in Livermore, California, where he grew up in a ranching family. The remains of the pilot, 1st Lt. Herbert Tennyson, and navigator, 2nd Lt. Donald Sheppick, will be interred in the coming months.

The ceremonies are happening 12 years after one of Kelly’s relatives, Scott Althaus, set out to solve the mystery of where exactly the plane went down...

(Full story at the title link)

[bfargin]

It ain’t Friday and this dude was Army, but he tells some good stories. Enjoy a brief glimpse of WWII.

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