On April 17, 1965, American Air Force and Navy aircraft conducted armed reconnaissance missions into North Vietnam. The strike force of over sixty planes sought targets of opportunity along three major highways north of the 17th parallel. Woodworth was flying a Republic F-105D Thunderchief (#61-0171) with a group of attack aircraft roaming Routes 8 and 12 and hitting a way station at the Mụ Giạ Pass near the North Vietnam-Laotian border. His group destroyed one military truck, a number of military buildings, and caused a secondary explosion. During a run on a truck, Woodworth’s Thunderchief was seen to plow into a hillside after making a low pass at the vehicle. The pilots of other aircraft on the mission did not see him parachute from his jet before it hit the ground, and enemy presence in the area prevented ground searches of the crash site. Further attempts to locate Woodworth were unsuccessful, and his remains have not been recovered.
Samuel has a military stone in his honor at Fort Gibson National Cemetery in Muskogee County, Oklahoma. He is honored on the Wall at Panel 1E, line 103.
President Johnson, in a statement from his ranch at Johnson City, Texas, says that the United States will continue its air strikes against North Vietnam but reaffirms his willingness to participate in “unconditional discussion.” He also warned the North Vietnamese and the Việt Cộng, who have continued the guerrilla warfare in South Vietnam in the face of more than two months of United States air strikes on the North, that “there is no human power capable of forcing us from Vietnam.”
[Ed: Sigh.]
The President summoned reporters to LBJ Ranch on a warm, sunny day and read his statement from the porch of his stone ranch house. No questions were permitted. Mr. Johnson, in a speech in Baltimore April 7, called for diplomatic discussions, without prior conditions, to end the Vietnamese war. Since then his proposal has been rejected, and derided, by Communist capitals. Today Mr. Johnson appeared to be answering the Communist replies to his Baltimore speech. Of those replies the most important was made by the North Vietnamese Premier, Phạm Văn Đồng, on April 8 and distributed last Monday. It asked that a four-point formula be recognized as a “basis” for an international conference.
Leaflets carrying excerpts from President Johnson’s address last week on Vietnam, together with a Saigon Government commentary on his text, were scattered today over the North Vietnamese port city of Đồng Hới.
In Washington, Secretary of State Dean Rusk ruled out any cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam. He said in a special statement that the Administration had considered a suspension but had come to the conclusion that such action would not lead to the ending of North Vietnam’s aggression.
In the jungle region of Tây Ninh where the biggest air strike. of the war was made against the Việt Cộng on Thursday. government forces found what appeared to be a Communist communications training center. It included 34 houses and huts, communications wire, mines and grenades, a radio and switchboard. It was not clear whether the marked keys on the switchboard referred to actual units or were designations for training. The troops did not find the concentration of Việt Cộng supplies and equipment that intelligence information had led them to expect. A United States military spokesman said the ground troops had yet to find evidence that the 443-airplane raid had actually killed anyone, according to United Press International.
In Bình Định Province, scene of large and costly engagements in recent months, Government troops reported that they killed 81 Communist guerrillas in a series of clashes Thursday. The largest actions were west of the district town of Phú Mỹ, 270 miles northeast of Saigon. A government soldier was killed. Ten were wounded and one was missing.
More than 20 United States Navy jets shot up a dozen railroad boxcars during an armed reconnaissance over North Vietnam yesterday, a United States spokesman announced today. The extent of the damage to the boxcars was not determined. All the Navy planes returned safely to the carrier USS Midway (CVA-41) after encountering light anti-aircraft fire, the spokesman reported. No enemy planes were spotted.
An explosion ripped through the Đà Nẵng air base early today, setting gasoline tanks afire. First reports said that a Vietnamese was killed and two Americans injured in the blast. A United States Air Force spokesman described the blast as a freak accident caused when a 250-pound bomb rolled off an ammunition trailer and blew up on hitting the ground. The explosion occurred near the napalm mixing site. Flames shot high into the air, and the noise reverberated through Đà Nẵng city. A truck was destroyed. The blast was close to a United States Marine Hawk anti-aircraft missile site, and near a landing strip. The Đà Nẵng base is about 270 miles northeast of Saigon.
After secret talks in Moscow, Leonid Brezhnev and North Vietnamese foreign secretary Lê Duẩn issue a communique repeating that the Soviet Union will send volunteers if North Vietnam requests them.
The Soviet warning of the possibility of sending volunteers to aid North Vietnam is similar to an offer made by Communist China March 25.
Britain’s former Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker said today that a proposed international conference on Cambodia might be the best way of seeking a Vietnam settlement.
The first major demonstration against the Vietnam War was carried out by the organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a march that included between 14,000 and 25,000 protesters in Washington, D.C., with participants carrying picket signs in front of the White House. Among the slogans noted by the press was “War on Poverty, Not People.” President Johnson was out of town at the time. At the same time, a counter-protest of about 100 people took place across the street, and a group of students representing the University of Wisconsin presented National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy with a petition of support for the war, signed by 6,000 faculty and students.
The United States is urging its Western allies to join in a common front in insisting upon international controls over all foreign sales of atomic reactors and fuels. Behind this diplomatic move is a concern that, in the developing competition to sell atomic power plants and fuel abroad, the Western nations may also spread the capability to produce atomic weapons. The Administration’s desire, therefore, is to achieve some agreement among the Western, supplier nations that in all foreign sales they will require inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency to assure that any reactors or atomic fuel sold abroad are not diverted to military purposes.
The desirability of international controls has been discussed periodically with the Western allies ever since the “Atoms for Peace” agency was established in 1958. But within some atomic energy and Congressional circles there has been criticism that the State Department has not been pushing aggressively enough to get the Western allies to accept the principle of international controls. According to diplomats, a more aggressive effort on behalf of international controls has been undertaken in recent weeks, with overtures made in Britain, France, West Germany and other nations that are potential suppliers of reactors or uranium fuel.
The 10th anniversary celebrations of the first Asian-African conference at Bandung began in Jakarta today and appeared to be largely turning into a meeting between Indonesia on the one hand and Communist China and its Asian Communist allies on the other. The convocation of the meeting followed by two days the conclusion of a mission here by Ellsworth Bunker, a special representative of President Johnson. In the view of Western diplomats in Jakarta, Mr. Bunker seemed to have failed in his principal aim — the establishment of some genuine communication between Indonesia and the United States, whose relations have been badly strained in recent months. Many non-Communist nations are taking part in the three-day observance, which recalls the 1955 meeting of 29 countries that condemned colonialism and racism. However, the Communist delegations are the large ones and Communist China; and other Asian Communist nations appear to be putting a major effort into the meeting.
The Chinese delegation, headed by Premier Chou En-lai, and the North Korean delegation, led by Premier Kim Il Sung, consist of about 50 members each. Diplomatic sources believe that most of the substantive discussions will be foreign-policy consultations between Indonesia and the Asian Communist countries. These meetings are expected to seek to coordinate further efforts to drive the United States out of South Vietnam, force the Western powers out of Southeast Asia and break up the neighboring federation of Malaysia. President Sukarno of Indonesia has vowed to destroy Malaysia, which is made up of former British territories, on the ground that it is a device by Britain to retain a colonial foothold.
French President de Gaulle has withheld French support from a plan to formulate a new allied approach to the Soviet Union on German reunification, diplomatic sources disclosed today.
A strengthening of Bulgaria’s pro-Soviet group, led by Todor Zhivkov, Premier and First Secretary of the Communist party, was the only apparent result today of an alleged plot against the Bulgarian party leadership.
There is evidence that the “summit spirit” among Arab leaders is just about dead and that they are shifting from a preoccupation with the Jordan River and Israel to old quarrels among themselves. The evidence is in Yemen, in Iraqi Kurdistan and in public statements about Palestine. The atmosphere generated by meetings of Arab kings and presidents in January and September of last year was one of solidarity or, as President Gamal Abdel Nasser put it, a “unity of ranks” that brought together the revolutionary and the traditional leaders of Arabia to concentrate all forces against Israel.
Most notably, President Nasser of the United Arab Republic and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia agreed to try to seek a settlement in Yemen between the republicans and the royalists. However, the effort did not get beyond a proclamation of a cease-fire that was never fully observed. An attempt to convene a “national reconciliation conference” failed because the two sides could not agree on who should attend It or what they should talk about.
Mobs fought police in street battles after 10,000 persons poured from a rally where speakers denounced government negotiations with Japan, Korea’s old overlord. More than 200 police and demonstrators were injured in the Seoul riot. Mobs of adults and students clashed bloodily with the police in downtown Seoul for two hours today, the fifth straight day of disturbances aimed at President Chung Hee Park’s program of improving relations with Japan.
About 2,000 British campaigners for nuclear disarmament left High Wycombe today to the sound of guitars on a 45-mile protest march to London.
Some of the 29 Kenyan students who returned miserable and disillusioned from a Soviet university 12 days ago are expected to be given a chance to study in the United States.
Communist China has begun an offensive against “Western bourgeois music” — a phrase that is applied to almost anything from Beethoven to the Beatles.
A Ku Klux Klansman who was arrested in the ambush slaying near Selma, Alabama, of Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, a white civil rights demonstrator from Detroit, apparently has turned state’s evidence. [Ed: Actually, he was an FBI informant all along.]
As Congress began its 1965 investigation of the Ku Klux Klan, the probe of the organization in 1921 was recalled. That “expose” revealed little and accomplished nothing in the way of legislation.
Black civil rights leaders in Bogalusa released today their terms for holding negotiations aimed at ending demonstrations that have plagued the downtown area of this southeastern Louisiana town for the last week.
Sheriff James G. Clark of Dallas County (Selma, Alabama) said today he would reorganize a posse used during racial disturbances. A three-judge Federal panel in Mobile ordered the group disbanded.
The mightiest upper Mississippi River flood crest in history poured between the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, but residents were relieved because the big crest was a foot lower than expected.
Members of the American Newspaper Guild struck the Baltimore Sun papers today after six weeks of deadlocked negotiations.
Secretary of the Treasury Henry H. Fowler warned today that the “prudent” excise tax reduction proposed by the Johnson Administration should not be turned into an “excessive” one.
The nation’s automobile makers, who last year made the biggest auto changes in a decade, will present the public this year with a less ambitious effort that will emphasize more power and sportier cars.
The Canadiens won the opener of the Stanley Cup title playoffs by beating the Chicago Black Hawks, 3–2, at Montreal.
Major League Baseball:
In his first full Major League game, Orioles leftfielder Curt Blefary hits 2 home runs, as Baltimore loses 12–9 in Boston’s home opener. Carl Yaztremski hits his first homer of the year and Frank Malzone drives in 4 runs.
Don Drysdale ties a Major League record by striking out 4 Phils — Wes Covington, Tony Gonzalez, Dick Stuart, and Clay Dalrymple — in order in the 2nd inning, but also gives up 2 home runs to lose 3–2. It is the 8th straight time the Phillies have beaten big Don.
Juan Marichal allowed one hit over the last seven innings and batted across two runs to pace the San Francisco Giants to a 4-0 triumph over the New York Mets at Shea Stadium.
In Kansas City, the Yankees top the A’s, 5–2, with all of New York’s scoring coming via home runs. With New York ahead, 2–1, in the 8th, Maris walks and Mantle follows with his first homer of the year. Mantle and Maris hit two-run homers and John Blanchard’s four-bagger accounted for the fifth run. Al Downing got the victory.
Baltimore Orioles 9, Boston Red Sox 12
Detroit Tigers 1, California Angels 3
Washington Senators 1, Chicago White Sox 2
New York Yankees 5, Kansas City Athletics 2
Cleveland Indians 0, Minnesota Twins 3
Chicago Cubs 9, Milwaukee Braves 4
San Francisco Giants 4, New York Mets 0
Los Angeles Dodgers 2, Philadelphia Phillies 3
Houston Astros 2, Pittsburgh Pirates 3
Cincinnati Reds 0, St. Louis Cardinals 8
Born:
Craig Worthington, MLB third baseman (Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, Texas Rangers), in Los Angeles, California.
Kent Paynter, Canadian NHL defenseman (Chicago Blackhawks, Washington Capitals, Winnipeg Jets, Ottawa Senators), Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Eric Kumerow, NFL defensive end and linebacker (Miami Dolphins), in Chicago, Illinois.
Joe DeForest, NFL linebacker (New Orleans Saints), in Teaneck, New Jersey.
Cal Wallace, NFL defensive end (Green Bay Packers), in Montgomery, West Virginia.
William Mapother, American actor (“In the Bedroom”), in Louisville, Kentucky.
History Diaries 