An American MACV-SOG* reconnaissance group after being evacuated from the Vietnamese jungle by a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter via a STABO (STAbalized BOdy) system during Operation Tailwind in Laos in September 1970 during the Vietnam War. An AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter is shown providing escort.
Members of MACV-SOG carried out some of the most dangerous and top-secret missions of the Vietnam War.
The design for the STABO system was first created on a napkin by U.S. Special Forces Sergeant First Class Clifford Roberts after he saw a wounded man accidentally fall out of a McGuire extraction rig in a combat evacuation. With the aid of two others named Major Robert Stevens and Captain John D. H. Knabb, Sergeant Roberts made a prototype of his STABO design out of parachute lofts on the sewing machines his unit used to repair parachutes. When he presented the design to his superiors, they approved it and ordered 500 rigs. Roberts was subsequently awarded the Bronze Star for the successful design.
STABO was later used to evacuate soldiers from areas where helicopters cannot land, such as in the thick jungle canopies of Southeast Asia. The evacuees would fly like this for a short while until the evacuation helicopter could find a spot to land and load them inside. STABO was later replaced by the SPIE (Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction) system, which itself is a direct and very similar descendant of the STABO rig.
On This Date In History
On March 29, 1945, Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army captures Frankfurt, as “Old Blood and Guts” continues his march east.
Frankfurt am Main, literally “On the Main” River, in western Germany, was the mid-19th century capital of Germany (it was annexed by Prussia in 1866, ending its status as a free city). Once integrated into a united German nation, it developed into a significant industrial city, and hence a prime target for Allied bombing during the war. That bombing began as early as July 1941, during a series of British air raids against the Nazis. In March 1944, Frankfurt suffered extraordinary damage during a raid that saw 27,000 tons of bombs dropped on Germany in a single month. Consequently, Frankfurt’s medieval Old Town was virtually destroyed (although it would be rebuilt in the postwar period, replete with modern office buildings).
In late December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, General Patton broke through the German lines of the besieged Belgian city of Bastogne, relieving its valiant defenders. Patton then pushed the Germans east. Patton’s goal was to cross the Rhine, even if not a single bridge was left standing over which to do it. As Patton reached the banks of the river on March 22, 1945, he found that one bridge, the Ludendorff Bridge, located in the little town of Remagen, had not been destroyed. American troops had already made a crossing on March 7, a signal moment in the war and in history, as an enemy army had not crossed the Rhine since Napoleon accomplished the feat in 1805. Patton grandly made his crossing, and from the bridgehead created there, Old Blood and Guts and his 3rd Army headed east and captured Frankfurt on the 29th.
Patton then crossed through southern Germany and into Czechoslovakia, only to encounter an order not to take the capital, Prague, as it had been reserved for the Soviets. Patton was, not unexpectedly, livid.
Tanks of the 11th Armored Division, Third U.S. Army, advance along the Autobahn near Frankfurt, Germany. March 31, 1945.
Patton’s Entrance Into Germany in 1945.
The last German holdouts surrender to Patton’s soldiers in Vseruby, Czechoslovakia, on May 4, 1945. There are four days left in the war.
On March 29, 1973, two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. combat troops leave South Vietnam as Hanoi frees the remaining American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam. America’s direct eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War was at an end. In Saigon, some 7,000 U.S. Department of Defense civilian employees remained behind to aid South Vietnam in conducting what looked to be a fierce and ongoing war with communist North Vietnam.
In 1961, after two decades of indirect military aid, U.S. President John F. Kennedy sent the first large force of U.S. military personnel to Vietnam to bolster the ineffectual autocratic regime of South Vietnam against the communist North. Three years later, with the South Vietnamese government crumbling, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered limited bombing raids on North Vietnam, and Congress authorized the use of U.S. troops. By 1965, North Vietnamese offensives left President Johnson with two choices: escalate U.S. involvement or withdraw. Johnson ordered the former, and troop levels soon jumped to more than 300,000 as U.S. air forces commenced the largest bombing campaign in history.
During the next few years, the extended length of the war, the high number of U.S. casualties, and the exposure of U.S. involvement in war crimes, such as the massacre at My Lai, helped turn many in the United States against the Vietnam War. The communists’ Tet Offensive of 1968 crushed U.S. hopes of an imminent end to the conflict and galvanized U.S. opposition to the war. In response, Johnson announced in March 1968 that he would not seek reelection, citing what he perceived to be his responsibility in creating a perilous national division over Vietnam. He also authorized the beginning of peace talks.
In the spring of 1969, as protests against the war escalated in the United States, U.S. troop strength in the war-torn country reached its peak at nearly 550,000 men. Richard Nixon, the new U.S. president, began U.S. troop withdrawal and “Vietnamization” of the war effort that year, but he intensified bombing. Large U.S. troop withdrawals continued in the early 1970s as President Nixon expanded air and ground operations into Cambodia and Laos in attempts to block enemy supply routes along Vietnam’s borders. This expansion of the war, which accomplished few positive results, led to new waves of protests in the United States and elsewhere.
Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. Its key provisions included a cease-fire throughout Vietnam, the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the release of prisoners of war, and the reunification of North and South Vietnam through peaceful means. The South Vietnamese government was to remain in place until new elections were held, and North Vietnamese forces in the South were not to advance further nor be reinforced.
In reality, however, the agreement was little more than a face-saving gesture by the U.S. government. Even before the last American troops departed on March 29, the communists violated the cease-fire, and by early 1974 full-scale war had resumed. At the end of 1974, South Vietnamese authorities reported that 80,000 of their soldiers and civilians had been killed in fighting during the year, making it the most costly of the Vietnam War.
On April 30, 1975, the last few Americans still in South Vietnam were airlifted out of the country as Saigon fell to communist forces. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, accepting the surrender of South Vietnam later in the day, remarked, “You have nothing to fear; between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. Only the Americans have been defeated.” The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular foreign war in U.S. history and cost 58,000 American lives. As many as two million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed.
On March 29, 1974, the unmanned U.S. space probe Mariner 10, launched by NASA in November 1973, becomes the first spacecraft to visit the planet Mercury, sending back close-up images of a celestial body usually obscured because of its proximity to the sun.
Mariner 10 had visited the planet Venus eight weeks before but only for the purpose of using Venus’ gravity to whip it toward the closest planet to the sun. In three flybys of Mercury between 1974 and 1975, the NASA spacecraft took detailed images of the planet and succeeded in mapping about 35 percent of its heavily cratered, moonlike surface.
Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system and completes its solar orbit in only 88 earth days. Data sent back by Mariner 10 discounted a previously held theory that the planet does not spin on its axis; in fact, the planet has a very slow rotational period that stretches over 58 earth days. Mercury is a waterless, airless world that alternately bakes and freezes as it slowly rotates. Highly inhospitable, Mercury’s surface temperature varies from 800 degrees Fahrenheit when facing the sun to -279 degrees when facing away. The planet has no known satellites.
Atlas-Centaur Launch with Mariner 10.
The first image of Mercury acquired by NASA's Mariner 10 in 1974.
On This Date In History
On February 4, 1789, George
Washington, the commander of the Continental Army during the
Revolutionary War, is unanimously elected the first president of the
United States by all 69 presidential electors who cast their votes. John
Adams of Massachusetts, who received 34 votes, was elected vice
president. The electors, who represented 10 of the 11 states that had
ratified the U.S. Constitution, were chosen by popular vote, legislative
appointment, or a combination of both four weeks before the election.
According
to Article Two of the U.S. Constitution, the states appointed a number
of presidential electors equal to the “number of Senators and
Representatives to which the state may be entitled in Congress.” Each
elector voted for two people, at least one of whom did not live in their
state. The individual receiving the greatest number of votes was
elected president, and the next-in-line, vice president. (In 1804, this
practice was changed by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which
ordered separate ballots for the office of president and vice
president.)
New York, though it was to be the seat of the new United
States government, failed to choose its eight presidential electors in
time for the vote on February 4, 1789. Two electors each from Virginia
and Maryland were delayed by weather and did not vote. In addition,
North Carolina and Rhode Island, which would have had seven and three
electors respectively, had not ratified the Constitution and so could
not vote.
That the remaining 69 unanimously chose Washington to lead
the new U.S. government was a surprise to no one. As commander-in-chief
during the Revolutionary War, he had led his inexperienced and poorly
equipped army of civilian soldiers to victory over one of the world’s
great powers. After the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781,
Washington rejected with abhorrence a suggestion by one of his officers
that he use his preeminence to assume a military dictatorship. He would
not subvert the very principles for which so many Americans had fought
and died, he replied, and soon after, he surrendered his military
commission to the Continental Congress and retired to his Mount Vernon
estate in Virginia.
When the Articles of Confederation proved
ineffectual, and the fledging republic teetered on the verge of
collapse, Washington again answered his country’s call and traveled to
Philadelphia in 1787 to preside over the Constitutional Convention.
Although he favored the creation of a strong central government, as
president of the convention he maintained impartiality in the public
debates. Outside the convention hall, however, he made his views known,
and his weight of character did much to bring the proceedings to a
close. The drafters created the office of president with him in mind,
and on September 17, 1787, the document was signed.
The next day,
Washington started for home, hoping that, his duty to his country again
served, he could live out the rest of his days in privacy. However, a
crisis soon arose when the Constitution fell short of its necessary
ratification by nine states. Washington threw himself into the
ratification debate, and a compromise agreement was made in which the
remaining states would ratify the document in exchange for passage of
the constitutional amendments that would become the Bill of Rights.
Government
by the United States began on March 4, 1789. In April, Congress sent
word to George Washington that he had unanimously won the presidency. He
borrowed money to pay off his debts in Virginia and traveled to New
York.
On April 30, he came across the Hudson River in a specially
built and decorated barge. The inaugural ceremony was performed on the
balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street, and a large crowed cheered after
he took the oath of office. The president then retired indoors to read
Congress his inaugural address, a quiet speech in which he spoke of “the
experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” The evening
celebration was opened and closed by 13 skyrockets and 13 cannons.
As
president, Washington sought to unite the nation and protect the
interests of the new republic at home and abroad. Of his presidency, he
said, “I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my
conduct which may not hereafter be drawn in precedent.” He successfully
implemented executive authority, making good use of brilliant
politicians such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his
Cabinet, and quieted fears of presidential tyranny. In 1792, he was
unanimously reelected but four years later refused a third term.
In
1797, he finally began his long-awaited retirement at Mount Vernon. He
died on December 14, 1799. His friend Henry Lee provided a famous eulogy
for the father of the United States: “First in war, first in peace, and
first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
John Adams
On February 4, 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana convene to establish the Confederate States of America.
As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between the North and the South over the issue of slavery led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln’s victory over the divided Democratic Party in November 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On December 20, its legislature passed the “Ordinance of Secession,” which declared that “the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved.” After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states had followed South Carolina’s lead.
In February 1861, representatives from the six seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, to formally establish a unified government, which they named the Confederate States of America. On February 9, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected the Confederacy’s first president.
By the time Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861, Texas had joined the Confederacy, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. On April 12, 1861, the American Civil War began when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. Within two months, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee had all joined the embattled Confederacy.
Lithograph shows a crowd gathered in front of the capitol building in Montgomery, AL at the time of the announcement of Jefferson Davis as the first President of the Confederate States of America, c. 1888. Also shown with Davis are Stephens; Wm. L. Yancey, Leader of the Secession Party, and Howell Cobb, president of the Senate.
State House at Montgomery AL
On February 4, 1915, a full two years before Germany’s aggressive naval policy would draw the United States into the war against them, Kaiser Wilhelm announces an important step in the development of that policy, proclaiming the North Sea a war zone, in which all merchant ships, including those from neutral countries, were liable to be sunk without warning.
In widening the boundaries of naval warfare, Germany was retaliating against the Allies for the British-imposed blockade of Germany in the North Sea, an important part of Britain’s war strategy aimed at strangling its enemy economically. By war’s end, according to official British counts, the so-called hunger blockade would take some 770,000 German lives.
The German navy, despite its attempts to build itself up in the pre-war years, was far inferior in strength to the peerless British Royal Navy. After resounding defeats of its battle cruisers, such as that suffered in the Falkland Islands in December 1914, Germany began to look to its dangerous U-boat submarines as its best hope at sea. Hermann Bauer, the leader of the German submarine service, had suggested in October 1914 that the U-boats could be used to attack commerce ships and raid their cargoes, thus scaring off imports to Britain, including those from neutral countries. Early the following month, Britain declared the North Sea a military area, warning neutral countries that areas would be mined and that all ships must first put into British ports, where they would be searched for possible supplies bound for Germany, stripped of these, and escorted through the British minefields. With this intensification of the blockade, Bauer’s idea gained greater support within Germany as the only appropriate response to Britain’s actions.
Though German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and the German Foreign Ministry worried about angering neutral countries, pressure from naval leaders and anger in the German press about the British blockade convinced them to go through with the declaration. On February 4, 1915, Kaiser Wilhelm announced Germany’s intention to sink any and all ships sailing under the flags of Britain, Russia or France found within British waters. The Kaiser warned neutral countries that neither crews nor passengers were safe while traveling within the designated war zone around the British Isles. If neutral ships chose to enter British waters after February 18, when the policy went into effect, they would be doing so at their own risk.
The U.S. government immediately and strongly protested the war-zone designation, warning Germany that it would take any steps it might be necessary to take in order to protect American lives and property. Subsequently, a rift opened between Germany’s politicians, who didn’t want to provoke America’s anger, and its navy, which was determined to use its deadly U-boats to the greatest possible advantage.
After a German U-boat sank the British passenger ship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing over 1,000 people, including 128 Americans, pressure from the U.S. prompted the German government to greatly constrain the operation of submarines; U-boat warfare was completely suspended that September. Unrestricted submarine warfare was resumed on February 1, 1917, prompting the U.S., two days later, to break diplomatic relations with Germany.
Kaiser Wilhelm
This poster was printed as a warning and as a point of braggadocio marking all the ships sunk by German submarines in the North Sea.
On February 4, 1962, the first U.S. helicopter is shot down in Vietnam. It was one of 15 helicopters ferrying South Vietnamese Army troops into battle near the village of Hong My in the Mekong Delta.
The first U.S. helicopter unit had arrived in South Vietnam aboard the ferry carrier USNS Core on December 11, 1961. This contingent included 33 Vertol H-21C Shawnee helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen to operate and maintain them. Their assignment was to airlift South Vietnamese Army troops into combat.
On February 4, 1826, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper is published. One of the earliest distinctive American novels, the book is the second of the five-novel series called the “Leatherstocking Tales.”
Cooper was born in 1789 in New Jersey and moved the following year to the frontier in upstate New York, where his father founded frontier-town Coopersville. Cooper attended Yale but joined the Navy after he was expelled for a prank. When Cooper was about 20, his father died, and he became financially independent. Having drifted for a decade, Cooper began writing a novel after his wife challenged him to write something better than he was reading at the moment. His first novel, Precaution, modeled on Jane Austen, was not successful, but his second, The Spy, influenced by the popular writings of Sir Walter Scott, became a bestseller, making Cooper the first major American novelist. The story was set during the American Revolution and featured George Washington as a character.
He continued to write about the American frontier in his third book, The Pioneer, which featured backcountry scout Natty Bumppo, known in this book as “Leather-stocking.” The character, representing goodness, purity, and simplicity, became tremendously popular, and reappeared, by popular demand, in five more novels, known collectively as the “Leather-stocking Tales.” The second book in the series, The Last of the Mohicans, is still widely read today. The five books span Bumppo’s life, from coming of age through approaching death.
On February 4, 1922, the Ford Motor Company acquires the failing luxury automaker Lincoln Motor Company for $8 million.
The acquisition came at a time when Ford, founded in 1903, was losing market share to its competitor General Motors, which offered a range of automobiles while Ford continued to focus on its utilitarian Model T. Although the Model T, which first went into production in 1908, had become the world’s best-selling car and revolutionized the auto industry, it had undergone few major changes since its debut, and from 1914 to 1925 it was only available in one color: black. In May 1927, lack of demand for the Model T forced Ford to shut down the assembly lines on the iconic vehicle. Later that year, the company introduced the more comfortable and stylish Model A, a car whose sleeker look resembled that of a Lincoln automobile. In fact, the Model A was nicknamed “the baby Lincoln.”
Henry Leland, a founder of the Cadillac auto brand, established the Lincoln Motor Company in 1917; he reportedly named the new venture after his hero, President Abraham Lincoln. Facing financial difficulties, Lincoln was purchased by Ford in 1922. Henry Ford’s son, Edsel (1893-1943), was instrumental in convincing his father to buy Lincoln and played a significant role in its development as Ford’s first luxury division. Edsel Ford had succeeded his father as company president in January 1919, after the elder Ford resigned following a disagreement with a group of stockholders. However, father and son soon managed to purchase the stock of these minority investors and regain control of the company. One of Edsel Ford’s major contributions as president of Ford was the styling of cars, which he believed could be good-looking as well as functional. His push for style upgrades to the Model T eventually helped to convince his father to drop his famous rule: “You can have any color, as long as it’s black.” (The Model A, successor to the Model T, was available in a variety of colors from the start.)
In the 1930s, Ford’s Lincoln division introduced its popular Zephyr model, which was inspired by the Burlington Zephyr, a streamlined, diesel-powered express train that debuted amid great fanfare in 1934 and featured an engine built by General Motors. The Lincoln Continental, which architect Frank Lloyd Wright reportedly described as “the most beautiful car ever made,” launched in 1939 and was a flagship model for decades. President John Kennedy was riding in a 1961 Lincoln Continental when he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, in 1963. Other leading Lincoln models over the years have included the Town Car, a full-size luxury sedan released in the 1980s (although Henry Ford had a custom-built vehicle called a Town Car in the 1920s), and the Navigator, a full-size luxury sport utility vehicle that launched in the late 1990s.
Henry Ford (left rear) stands beside Henry Leland, the owner of Lincoln Motor Company. They look over the next generation as they sign the papers as Ford purchases Lincoln. Edsel Ford is seated in front of his father and William Leland is seated in front of his father.
This actually should have been posted yesterday, on February 1st, but I had so much stuff that I actually had to pick and choose and thin the information down.
To me, out of the thousands of Vietnam War photos I have looked at and studied, there are two photos I could never forget. One because of it’s horrific nature (Phan Thị Kim Phúc - Born April 2, 1963 - The Napalm Girl) and the other because of it’s seemingly horrific nature that turned out to be, in my mind, total justification after doing some research and now I’ve found even more after researching many articles and following the leads. Some of these photos are very hard to locate and/or to find unblurred copies.
Another Pulitzer Prize discredited as propaganda.
Remember all that political hay the far left and its media allies made during the Vietnam War about the wickedness of America's South Vietnamese ally and the importance of abandoning that country to the communists?
Included below is the Pulitzer Prize–winning AP photo that was supposed to prick our consciences and make us turn against that "immoral" war against a communist takeover:
South Vietnamese Police Captain Nguyễn Ngọc Loan Executing Viet Cong Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém
There's no doubt about it, the photo is hard to look at. It's crude, rough, wartime justice, a picture of South Vietnamese Police Captain Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Viet Cong Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém. The film is even harder to look at.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csYYBOytkZM.
You need to ignore the propaganda included in the description beneath the video clip. It was written in ignorance of the facts and, to me, more importantly, the circumstances involved in the justified execution of the murderer Nguyễn Văn Lém.
The photo ran on the front page of the New York Times to make its impact even more immediate.
And it got the results the anti-war left wanted: public sentiment abruptly turned against the war as a result of this photo. The Vietnamese people were abandoned by the Americans, whose cut-and-run evacuation from the Saigon embassy rooftop was only recently bested by Joe Biden's Afghanistan pullout. After that, the re-education camps rolled in, the boat people launched into the high seas, and the killing fields of Cambodia began.
Jane Fonda must have been so proud of herself.
Just one problem, though: The context was missing, and that context mattered.
The guy who got shot, who went by the nom de guerre Bay Lop, was a death squad psychopath in the Viet Cong who had just gotten done massacring 34 innocent people.
Read more about the events and the AP photographer, Eddie Adams.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42864421
Read more about General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/saigon-execution
From January to September 1968, North Vietnamese forces launched a coordinated series of attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam, proof that American forces had failed to quash the guerilla combatants. Death squads made their way through the cities, killing anyone who wasn't joining their revolution. Captured in a building in the Cho Lon quarter of Saigon, Nguyễn Văn Lém was a member of the Viet Cong whose downfall began in the Tet Offensive. Lém was arrested for cutting the throats of South Vietnamese Lt. Col Nguyen Tuan, his wife, their six children and the officer's 80-year-old mother. On top of that, he was leading a Viet Cong team whose whole deal was taking out members of the National Police and their families. A the time of his death, Lém should have been considered a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention, but because he was dressed in civilian clothing and he wasn't carrying a firearm, he was technically seen as an "illegal combatant."
During the Tet Offensive, Lém was on a bloodthirsty tear through Saigon. He may look boyish, but he had the heart of a killer. The photo shows Lém handcuffed and in civilian clothing, but he was operating a death squad that had killed 34 that same day. He allegedly took out seven police officers, multiple members of their families, and even a few Americans. Each victim was bound by their wrists and shot in the back of the head, execution style. Because he wasn't wearing the outfit of a solider this put him in a bad scenario. As a person committing war crimes he was in a bad way, especially with General Loan coming after him. Not only had he carried out a gruesome act, but he was eligible for immediate execution.
Wikipedia notes that maybe this didn't happen the way these facts say it happened.
In 2018, author Max Hastings detailed the allegations against Lém, adding that American historian Ed Moise "is convinced that the entire story of Lém murdering the Tuân family is a post-war invention" and that "The truth will never be known."
Now that revisionist history is falling apart.
The Daily Mail found an admiral in the U.S. Navy, who was a tiny sole survivor of that massacre.
He was a little Vietnamese boy at the time who watched as this psychopath shot civilian after civilian including his entire family. He survived by playing dead and eventually made his way to America to become an American citizen, joining the U.S. Navy, and rising to the rank of admiral.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11825047/Navys-Vietnamese-admiral-survived-massacre-family-man-executed-1968.html
According to the Mail:
Bay Lop, the subject in the photo, had been executed in Saigon after carrying out the mass murder of Huan Nguyen's father, South Vietnamese Lt. Col. Nguyen Tuan, along with the officer's wife, mother, and six of his children, five boys and one girl.
Huan Nguyen, managed to survive despite being shot three times through the arm, thigh, and skull. The youngster stayed with his mother's dead body for two hours following the cold-blooded murder according to Military.com.
https://cherrieswriter.com/2023/03/04/the-navys-first-vietnamese-admiral-saw-his-family-killed-by-an-infamous-viet-cong-guerrilla/
When night fell, Nguyen then escaped managing to avoid the communist guerrillas, and went to live with his uncle, a colonel in the South Vietnamese Air Force.
There's no disputing the facts of what happened to him, which pretty well positively refutes the nutty leftist professor's claims, and there's no excusing the behavior of the anti-war left, which used this child's family's murder to sell the first great bug-out of America on its allies for the purpose of spreading communism. The press, which acted pretty much in the same dishonest manner as it does today, was amazingly dishonest in its presentation of its "narrative," particularly at the editorial level.
Now we learn that a brave survivor exists from that terrible incident, and the badness of America suddenly wasn't so bad. The bad guy, in fact, was the communist Viet Cong "captain" who was a mass murderer not at all different from the Las Vegas spray shooter.
It's amazing what the press got away with on that one. And it serves as a reminder that pictures can be distorted and manipulated without context, without even Photoshop. While the photographer, Eddie Adams, was blameless, as he was just doing his job, the way the photo was presented, by broadcasters and newspaper editors, was not. This is one sorry incident that the left got away with. They showered their Pulitzers and watched the protests begin. One only wonders what the little kid who survived the massacre to become an admiral must have thought. Now that it's out that he survived this psychopath, his life is living testimony to that reality.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/another_pulitzer_prize_discredited_as_propaganda.html
R.I.P. Col. Roger H. C. Donlon
The Congressional Medal of Honor Society announced that Col. Roger H. C. Donlon, the first Recipient of the Medal of Honor for the Vietnam War, passed away January 25, 2024, in Leavenworth, Kansas, at the age of 89.
President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Donlon with the Medal of Honor in the East Ballroom of the White House in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 5, 1964, for his actions near Nam Dong, the Republic of Vietnam, on July 6, 1964.
On This Date In History
On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia. After overcoming a period of hardship, the fledgling colony began to celebrate the anniversary of this date with great fanfare and it eventually became commemorated as Australia Day. In recent times, Australia Day has become increasingly controversial as it marks the start of when the continent's Indigenous people were gradually dispossessed of their land as white colonization spread across the continent.
Australia, once known as New South Wales, was originally planned as a penal colony. In October 1786, the British government appointed Arthur Phillip captain of the HMS Sirius, and commissioned him to establish an agricultural work camp there for British convicts. With little idea of what he could expect from the mysterious and distant land, Phillip had great difficulty assembling the fleet that was to make the journey. His requests for more experienced farmers to assist the penal colony were repeatedly denied, and he was both poorly funded and outfitted. Nonetheless, accompanied by a small contingent of Marines and other officers, Phillip led his 1,000-strong party, of whom more than 700 were convicts, around Africa to the eastern side of Australia. In all, the voyage lasted eight months, claiming the deaths of some 30 men.
The first years of settlement were nearly disastrous. Cursed with poor soil, an unfamiliar climate and workers who were ignorant of farming, Phillip had great difficulty keeping the men alive. The colony was on the verge of outright starvation for several years, and the marines sent to keep order were not up to the task. Phillip, who proved to be a tough but fair-minded leader, persevered by appointing convicts to positions of responsibility and oversight. Floggings and hangings were commonplace, but so was egalitarianism. As Phillip said before leaving England: “In a new country there will be no slavery and hence no slaves.”
Though Phillip returned to England in 1792, the colony became prosperous by the turn of the 19th century. Feeling a new sense of patriotism, the men began to rally around January 26 as their founding day. Historian Manning Clarke noted that in 1808 the men observed the “anniversary of the foundation of the colony” with “drinking and merriment.”
In 1818, January 26 became an official holiday, marking the 30th anniversary of British settlement in Australia. As Australia became a sovereign nation, it became the national holiday known as Australia Day. Many Aboriginal Australians call it "Invasion Day."
Captain Arthur Phillip
On January 26, 1950, the Indian constitution takes effect, making the Republic of India the most populous democracy in the world.
Mohandas Gandhi struggled through decades of passive resistance before Britain finally accepted Indian independence. Self-rule had been promised during World War II, but after the war triangular negotiations between Gandhi, the British and the Muslim League stalled over whether to partition India along religious lines. Eventually, Lord Mountbatten, the viceroy of India, forced through a compromise plan. On August 15, 1947, the former Mogul Empire was divided into the independent nations of India and Pakistan. Gandhi called the agreement the “noblest act of the British nation,” but religious strife between Hindus and Muslims soon marred his exhilaration. Hundreds of thousands died, including Gandhi, who was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic in January 1948 during a prayer vigil to an area of Muslim-Hindu violence.
Of Gandhi’s death, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said, “The light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere.” However, Nehru, a leader of the Indian struggle for independence and Gandhi’s protege, persisted in his efforts to stabilize India, and by 1949 the religious violence began to subside. In late 1949, an Indian constitution was adopted, and on January 26, 1950, the Republic of India was born.
With universal adult franchise, Nehru hoped to overcome India’s “caste-ridden” society and promote greater gender equality. Elections were to be held at least every five years, and India’s government was modeled after the British parliamentary system. A president would hold the largely ceremonial post of head of state but would be given greater powers in times of emergency. The first president was Rajendra Prasad.
Nehru, who won his first of three subsequent elections in 1952, was faced with staggering challenges. A massively underdeveloped economy and overpopulation contributed to widespread poverty. Nehru also had to force the integration of the former princely states into the Indian union and suppress movements for greater autonomy in states like Punjab.
In his years of struggle against Britain, he always advocated nonviolence but as prime minister sometimes had to stray from this policy. He sent troops into the Portuguese enclaves of Goa and Daman and fought with China over Kashmir and Nepal. He died in 1964 and was succeeded by Lal Bahadur Shastri. Later, Nehru’s only child, Indira Gandhi, served four terms as a controversial prime minister of India.
Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru signing the new constitution
On January 26, 1970, U.S. Navy Lt. Everett Alvarez Jr. spends his 2,000th day in captivity in Southeast Asia. First taken prisoner when his plane was shot down on August 5, 1964, he became the longest-held POW in U.S. history. Alvarez was downed over Hon Gai during the first bombing raids against North Vietnam in retaliation for the disputed attack on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964.
Alvarez was released in 1973 after spending over eight years in captivity, the first six months as the only American prisoner in North Vietnam. From the first day of his captivity, he was shackled, isolated, nearly starved, and brutally tortured. Although he was among the more junior-rank prisoners of war, his courageous conduct under horrendous conditions and treatment helped establish the model emulated by the many other POWs that later joined him. After retirement from the Navy, he served as deputy director of the Peace Corps and deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration during the Reagan administration, before founding his own military consulting firm.
Navy Lt. Everett Alvarez Jr. is captured after he ejects from his plane, which was hit during a raid on a North Vietnamese base. He is the first U.S. pilot to be shot down over North Vietnam and held as a POW; he would be released on February 12, 1973.
Photo from Corbis Images. Caption: "In this photo from a Japanese documentary film taken by a Japanese cameraman who was on the scene accidentally when this incident took place, a man identified as Lt. Everett Alvarez (left) is escorted by a North Vietnamese sailor. Alvarez, a U.S. airman, was shot down the U.S. retaliatory raid on North Vietnamese PT boat installations in August."
U.S. Navy Lt. Everett Alvarez Jr.
U.S. Navy Lt. Everett Alvarez Jr. is
captured after he ejects from his plane, which was hit during a raid on a
North Vietnamese base. He is the first U.S. pilot to be shot down over
North Vietnam and held as a POW; he would be released on February 12,
1973.
Photo from Corbis Images. Caption: "In this photo from a
Japanese documentary film taken by a Japanese cameraman who was on the
scene accidentally when this incident took place, a man identified as
Lt. Everett Alvarez (left) is escorted by a North Vietnamese sailor.
Alvarez, a U.S. airman, was shot down the U.S. retaliatory raid on North
Vietnamese PT boat installations in August."
