Friday October 16th
“No Fail” Fridays
[This is the second in a series. It will be a weekly challenge to historians: The Son Tay Raid was a SUCCESS. No qualifier is appropriate. Over these next few Fridays, I’ll show you why.]
There is a word that is too often used in conversations about the Son Tay Raid. That word should be banished from any analysis of the Raid.
Challenge 2:
The Son Tay Raid’s highest objective was to SEND THE MESSAGE TO ALL THE POWs.
Consider this: The Raid was never designed to rescue ALL the American POWs. At the most, it would have rescued merely 15% of the POWs held by the North Vietnamese Government! No, the primary mission was to SEND THE MESSAGE to ALL THE POWS: “America is doing EVERYTHING possible to bring you home.”
The commanders’ calculation:
• The Raid would raise the morale of all the other POWs and
• It would strike fear into the heart of the enemy and
• The POTENTIALITY of reprisals against the remaining POWs was outweighed by the ACTUALITY of the hell they were currently living (some had been in solitary confinement never hearing an American voice for a year at a time) and
• EVEN IF IT BRINGS HOME NO POWS, it will send the message to the current and future generations that we will stop at nothing to get them home!
Among the other objectives:
• Rescue as many POWs as possible and, where feasible, return them to the fight.
• Put the communist government of North Vietnam on notice that the US can operate with impunity anywhere in their country.
Consider the gentleman in the photo below.
Each year while Admiral Jack McCain was CINCPAC (Commander in Chief of Pacific Command), he paid a Christmastime visit to the American troops in South Vietnam serving closest to the DMZ.
Admiral McCain would stand alone at the DMZ for a few silent moments and look north to be as close to his son as he could get.
Brigadier General Donald Blackburn, who first conceived the raid, told this story:
As the top-secret plan got approval with the CIA, DIA, and Kissinger, Gen Blackburn told Admiral [Thomas H.] Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “We need to tell McCain about this.” On the day that Blackburn briefed Admiral McCain, the admiral almost had tears. He said, “Don, how about coming back this afternoon. I’ll discuss this further with you then.”
As Blackburn was escorted down the hall, Admiral McCain’s aide said, “You know about the son?”
In that afternoon meeting, McCain said, “You have got 100 percent support from me.”
Blackburn explains that, throughout the entire operation, McCain “supported us beautifully–anything we wanted.”
The risks were fully understood. Admiral McCain knew that the odds of his son being among the POWs rescued were extremely low and that there was a chance of reprisals against the remaining POWs. With full knowledge of that risk, he and the other commanders knew that the highest of the many priorities was to send the message.
It was a success.
12 POWs candidly tell us stories about the Son Tay Raid in Who Will Go.
Click Here: The book.