As events careened out of control, 1968 became a watershed year for the United States. With the Vietnam War as the catalyst, the country came apart along racial, economic, and political lines. Following the violence of 1967, polarizing events happened so quickly during 1968 that the country had little time to digest and make sense of them before the next crisis occurred. The moderation and discussion required of the citizens of a republic did not take place.
It all began with the Tet Offensive. While the Johnson administration and media focused on the Pueblo crisis and the siege of Khe Sanh, the North Vietnamese launched an all-out offensive coinciding with the Tet holiday and cease-fire. As Oriskany’s men enjoyed their homecoming, fighting raged throughout South Vietnam. Tactically, the offensive was disastrous for the Communists. In South Vietnam, Viet Cong were killed by the tens of thousands, resulting in the destruction of the insurgent network as a separate fighting force. Northern Communists assumed key leadership positions in the south as fighting shifted from insurgency to conventional warfare. Strategically, the Tet Offensive delayed the Communists’ timeline for unification, and the war would drag on for years as a result.
Despite these Communist setbacks, Tet proved to be the breaking point for the Americans. The offensive caught everyone, including the president, his advisors, and the military leadership, by surprise. The American public, tired after years of war and rhetoric, lost faith in the government. Tet provided ample evidence of Rolling Thunder’s failure to influence the war in the south, if not the general failure of the U.S. effort. The Democratic Party began to abandon the war begun by President Kennedy, leaving Johnson alone to struggle in the morass. Thus, the Tet Offensive and subsequent fighting had a profound effect on the course of the war and American politics. Admiral Sharp bluntly recalled, “March 1968 was most definitely a traumatic month for official Washington on all counts, especially for President Johnson. Among other things, he was still faced with the tough problem of how to handle public reaction to the recent Tet offensive and the dwindling support for his war policies.”1 On 1 March the hawkish Clark Clifford replaced Robert McNamara as the secretary of defense. In the wake of Tet, President Johnson asked Clifford to review General Westmoreland’s request for 25,000 additional troops, with options to increase the number to 206,000, including thirteen additional fighter squadrons. The next three days permanently altered the new secretary’s outlook on the war. Clifford quickly realized that there had never been a plan for victory and a plan to end the war. Instead, the Johnson administration and military leadership hoped to wear down the North Vietnamese until they had had enough. Militarily, unleashing strikes against North Vietnam might have helped stop the offensive, but Clifford opposed this option due to the complete failure of strategic thinking within the administration. Then on 10 March the New York Times broke the explosive news that Westmoreland had asked for another 206,000 troops. While the true number was never intended to be 206,000, the damage was done. Johnson balked at the prospect of calling up the reserves and putting the economy on a wartime footing during an election year and in a time of great public dissent. Instead, he approved the deployment of an additional 24,500 men. On 22 March he also announced his decision to appoint Westmoreland as Army Chief of Staff as troop totals grew to 549,500—the highest total of the war.
The political situation quickly became untenable for President Johnson. On 13 March, three days after news of the troop request broke, Johnson narrowly defeated Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire presidential primary. The incumbent should have won handily, but instead he won by a mere 230 votes. The news stunned the world, as if McCarthy had actually won. The master politician had just been challenged by another Democratic candidate because of the discontent over Vietnam. Then on 16 March Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy.2 Johnson began deliberating with his most trusted advisors, who told him the blunt truth. After weeks of agonizing, President Johnson was truly a broken and defeated man. He delivered a televised speech on the evening of 31 March, reaffirming the country’s commitment to South Vietnam. Johnson closed by saying,
With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes, or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office—the Presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.3
The fallout from the speech was twofold and immediate. First and foremost, it completely upset the 1968 presidential election amid the domestic turmoil. Four days later, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. led to widespread riots throughout the country in what became known as the Holy Week Uprising. Johnson was forced to deploy army and National Guard troops to help restore order. Without King, nonviolence gave way to Stokely Carmichael and the Black Power movement. Following the long, hot summer, violence became the election year norm.
With the presidential race wide open, Vice President Hubert Humphrey announced he would seek the presidency. Because of his association with Johnson and Vietnam, Humphrey faced stiff competition from Robert Kennedy. That changed following Kennedy’s assassination on 5 June. Humphrey went on to win his party’s nomination during the disastrous Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The whole convention was marred by the excesses of protesters and police alike, making Chicago yet another defining moment in 1968. Humphrey eventually gained in the polls before losing to Richard Nixon, who became the Republican nominee after the moderate Nelson Rockefeller withdrew from the race. Under the guise of states’ rights and law and order, Nixon gained the white backlash vote and victory with help from right-wing Republicans and traditional Southern Democrats. Although the popular vote was close, the electoral vote proved decisive. Politics of reason gave way to politics of emotion, and moderation became a thing of the past after Richard Nixon realigned American politics in 1968. It was no surprise that after the violence of 1967 and 1968, American voters chose Nixon’s promise of maintaining an orderly society over the promise of a Great Society coming apart at the seams. But that was all in the future. First, the country had to survive the pandemonium of 1968.
The second and more pressing issue for the men fighting in Vietnam was that during his speech, Johnson also announced the curtailment of strikes in North Vietnam. Once again, none of the military leadership, including Admiral Sharp, was advised of the decision to stop strikes the next morning.4 Although he meant to restrict strikes north of the 20th parallel, Johnson never publicly stated or defined that limit. During his speech, Johnson said,
Tonight, I have ordered our aircraft and our naval vessels to make no attacks on North Vietnam, except in the area north of the Demilitarized Zone where the continuing enemy buildup directly threatens allied forward positions and where the movements of their troops and supplies are clearly related to that threat. The area in which we are stopping our attacks includes almost 90-percent of North Vietnam’s population, and most of its territory. Thus there will be no attacks around the principal populated areas, or in the food-producing areas of North Vietnam. Even this very limited bombing of the North could come to an early end—if our restraint is matched by restraint in Hanoi.5
Johnson’s omission caused great confusion. With the worst weather in three years of Rolling Thunder finally clearing, Admiral Sharp had ordered strikes near the Thanh Hoa bridge, near the northern limits of Johnson’s restriction. They occurred on 2 April. Sensational news reports on the strikes were used to show that Johnson had acted in bad faith. The very next day, orders came down restricting bombing to targets south of the 19th parallel.
The president’s announcement emasculated Rolling Thunder. The primary focus shifted to interdicting supplies along the myriad of trails that composed the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and in the panhandle. Sorties were now restricted to Route Packages I, II, and III, eliminating 98 percent of the targets on the master target list.6 Because these areas contained no important or politically sensitive targets, military commanders were finally free of scrutiny from Washington—as long as strikes stayed within the prescribed areas. With less restrictive ROE in the lower route packages, free fire zones were established to maximize the advantage of air-to-air missiles and radar coverage provided by navy ships in the Tonkin Gulf. Sortie counts seemingly grew, in part because the SAMs stayed in Hanoi and Haiphong. Without the need for extra suppression aircraft, both services allocated these extra sorties to their interdiction efforts. By June the air force had doubled the number of sorties flown into Route Package I, flying six thousand missions into this small area. These efforts held little hope of stemming the tide, as North Vietnam used the partial halt to its full advantage. Men and matériel streamed south at unprecedented levels. While Johnson’s announcement eventually produced a breakthrough in negotiations, the North Vietnamese continually delayed in order to replace losses incurred during the conventional fighting now taking place in South Vietnam. By the summer, imports into Haiphong had doubled the monthly average of 1967. POL stocks and general cargo became the priority as North Vietnam rebuilt its infrastructure and moved massive amounts of matériel south.7 Free from any possible retaliatory strikes, VPAF MiGs returned from China, landing at newly repaired bases. With renewed aggressiveness, MiGs began harassing interdiction efforts before fleeing back to safety north of the 19th parallel. These hit-and-run tactics accounted for 22 percent of all U.S. losses in 1968, testifying to the changed nature of Rolling Thunder. Tough missions remained, although they were a far cry from the intensity of 1967. Nothing could compare to the missions flown into Route Package VI during late summer and fall of that year.
Despite the partial bombing halt, Rolling Thunder continued through the summer and fall of 1968. Communist officials stalled, stating they would not conduct negotiations while the bombing persisted. Then suddenly, Vietnamese officials finally agreed to meet with the Americans for preliminary talks. As a result, on 31 October President Johnson declared that all bombing would end at 0800 on 1 November in Washington (2 November in Vietnam). Although the bombing halt was purportedly linked to progress in the peace talks, the fact that they occurred days before the U.S. presidential election fooled no one. The JCS and military leadership correctly doubted that Rolling Thunder would resume under any circumstances. Thus, President Johnson’s announcement signaled the end of a very significant chapter in the history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
The year 1968 also proved to be a watershed year for both Oriskany and CVW-16, as both missed the conclusion of Rolling Thunder. The ship moved to Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco on 8 February and began a massive nine-month overhaul. President Johnson ended Rolling Thunder the day after Oriskany left the shipyards. The carrier eventually made six more deployments, including four more to Yankee Station, before the United States stopped supporting South Vietnam. None of these would be as traumatic as the deployments made during the Rolling Thunder years.
Following its tremendous losses in 1967, the air wing was broken up. There is conjecture that the split occurred as a result of the horrendous losses, but this is simply not true. During this period of transformation in naval aviation, many squadrons were transitioning to newer airframes, which took precious time to train pilots and technicians. As a result, there weren’t enough squadrons available to fill the ranks of deploying air wings. CVW-16 was split in order to fill the holes in other air wings deploying to Vietnam. Men who had already been through so much while flying from Oriskany found themselves preparing for an imminent return to combat. While Oriskany enjoyed some down time, the two Skyhawk squadrons, VA-163 and VA-164, joined CVW-21 on Hancock. These squadrons deployed in July 1968 for their fourth deployment in four years. The two Crusader squadrons, VF-111 and VF-162, remained stateside as part of CVW-16, while VA-152 transitioned to Skyhawks. CVW-16 eventually made one more deployment on USS Ticonderoga during 1969 before it was disestablished. Afterward, the remaining squadrons were redistributed among air wings headed to Southeast Asia. By 1975 all the squadrons except VF-111 had been shuttered, victims of bureaucratic budget cuts as carrier aviation transformed into the modern nuclear navy that emerged at the war’s end. It was a quiet and ignominious end to a storied air wing.