Rolling Thunder

Despite all the trouble in the streets of South Viet Nam, the war against the real enemy continued to go well on the battlefields. From north of Hanoi to hard by Saigon, U.S. planes pounded the Communists from the air, while up and down the narrow nation allied ground units pushed their search for the Viet Cong and their redoubts.

"Rolling Thunder," as U.S. fighter-bomber strikes over North Viet Nam are code-named, last week boomed to a new pitch of devastating intensity. In one day alone, the Air Force launched 120 sorties north of the 17th parallel, the Navy 141—the largest number of strikes in a day since regular bombing of Ho Chi Minh's domain began more than a year ago. For the first time since November, Air Force flyers penetrated north of Hanoi and Haiphong, blasting with 750-to 3,000-lb. bombs the road and rail lines carrying supplies from Red China. Concentrating on lines of communication since then, the U.S. raiders have increased their destruction of materiel headed south from an estimated 15% to 25%. One certain sign that Hanoi is hurting: an increase in trucking by day when the targets are easier to hit—just what the allies want.

Single File. In the ground war, U.S. Marines, cleaning out the mangrove swamps near Saigon in Operation Jackstay, rooted out a major Viet Cong headquarters. Its 25 buildings included a hospital, classrooms, dispensaries, a large ammunition dump and a factory for the manufacture of water mines used to harass shipping into Saigon. The Reds had fled so quickly that the food on the tables was still hot.

Elsewhere, the Air Cavalry closed out three-week Operation Lincoln along the Cambodian border. The Flying Horsemen's tally: 480 enemy killed, ten captured, 98 weapons seized. Cross-country, near Tuy Hoa along the South China Sea, the 101st Airborne routed a Viet Cong company, killing 15 in a fierce fire fight. Guam-based B-52 bombers, newly modified to haul 60,000 Ibs. of bombs each, jackhammered a Viet Cong radio and communications center 35 miles northeast of Saigon. The big jets came in single file, each unloading its 750-lb. bombs on the same, deeply bunkered site of the radio. It has not been heard from since.

South of Saigon, in the Mekong Delta, the nature of the enemy was laid bare in a gruesome incident. A Vietnamese force discovered 25 prisoners of the Viet Cong, mostly civilians and three of them women, shot in their chains at Phu Lam. Twenty were dead. The survivors disclosed that as the Vietnamese closed in, the retreating Viet Cong had told them that they could go free—then shot them in the back as they walked away in their chains.